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1
JOHN MILTUN


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10037
JOHN MILTON
(1607-1674)
BY E. S. NADAL
M
((
(C
(c
ILTON was born in London, on December 9th, 1607; the son of
John Milton, who had amassed a competency as a scrivener.
The elder Milton, besides his professional success, attained
to considerable eminence as a musician. This talent, we know, de-
scended to his son; and it may be that this inheritance had some
bearing upon the genius of the poet, who was gifted with perhaps the
finest ear possessed by any English writer, and whom critics have
described as musical rather than a picturesque poet. Milton tells us
that he was instructed early, both at grammar schools and by private
masters, as my age would suffer. ” It was at St. Paul's School, how-
ever, which he had entered by the year 1620, that he began that
career of diligent study which he was to pursue through life. " From
my twelfth year of age,” he says, “I scarcely ever went from my
studies to bed before midnight. ” Milton left school at the end of
1624, when he was sixteen; as Mr. Masson says, as scholarly, as
accomplished, and as handsome a youth as St. Paul's School has sent
forth. ” Early in the following year he entered Christ's College, Cam-
bridge. It has been supposed that his career at college was not a
happy one; and there was a story, now discarded, to which Johnson
lent some kind of countenance, from which it appeared that he was
one of the last students of the university to undergo corporal pun-
ishment. He was of a rebellious disposition, and may have found
much to condemn both in the system of instruction then followed
in the university and in his instructors. There is also evidence that
the «lady of Christ's College,” as he was termed in allusion to his
beauty and the purity of his morals, was not popular with his fellow
collegians. He however took his degree in due course, and remained
at the university some years after graduation. Among the incidents
of his college life was his friendship with Edward King, the young
poet celebrated in Lycidas. ' He added French, Italian, and Hebrew
to the university Greek and Latin; and he became an expert swords-
man.
It was in 1632, at the end of his seven years' life at Cambridge,
that he went to live with his father, who had just removed from


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10038
JOHN MILTON
(
London to the small village of Horton in Buckinghamshire, not far
from Windsor. The idea with which he entered college, that of being
a priest, had been abandoned, and he had decided upon a life devoted
to learning and the pursuit of literature. He lived at Horton for the
next six years. At Horton he wrote, besides other poetry, L'Allegro,'
(Il Penseroso, Comus,' and 'Lycidas. ' 'Comus,' like much of his
poetry, was the result of an occasion. The musician Lawes, who was
his friend, had been employed to write a masque to be played at
Lord Bridgewater's place in Wales; and for this entertainment Milton
wrote the words. There is perhaps not in all our literature so per-
fect an expression as “Comus of the beauty of a youthful mind filled
with lofty principles; and this quality of the poem is all the more
impressive, because we know that the ideals cherished in those days
of hope and health and lettered enthusiasm are to be re-asserted with
deeper emphasis amid the tragic circumstances of the closing period
of his career. It was the loss of his friend Edward King, by the
foundering of a ship in the Irish Channel, which was the occasion of
Lycidas,' a poem which is throughout a treasury of literary beauty.
His mother died in 1637, and his brother and his wife came to
live with his father; and Milton now felt that he might carry out
his long-contemplated project of a journey to Italy. He started upon
this journey in 1637, and passed fifteen months on the Continent. This
period was one of the brightest of his life, and is one of the most
pleasing chapters of literary biography. After having visited Paris,
Florence, Rome, Naples, and Geneva, at all of which places he was
received with a distinction and kindness due more, no doubt, to his
character and accomplishments and his engaging personal qualities
than to his fame, which could not at that time have been great,- he
retu ned to England. It was the alarming state of affairs at home
which determined him to bring this charming episode of his career
to an end. The words in which he stated the motive for this decision
are significant of the abrupt change which was about to take place
in his life:–«I considered it to be dishonorable to be enjoying myself
at my ease in foreign lands while my countrymen were striking a
blow for freedom. ”
On reaching England he went to live in London, receiving into
his house as pupils his two nephews and some other boys, to whom
he gave instruction. He of course continued his life of study; but
he wrote no poetry. His exertions from now on to the time of the
Restoration were to be mainly those of the pamphleteer and the poli-
tician. In the ranks of the triumphant party, which had successfully
.
opposed the purposes of Charles and Laud, there had arisen several
divisions, mainly over the question of Episcopacy. Milton belonged
to what was termed the “root and branch party,” which wished to


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JOHN MILTON
10039
$
do away with the bishops altogether. In answer to a manifesto
published by the High Church division of the party, five Puritan min-
isters had issued a pamphlet signed “Smectymnuus,"— a word made
up of the initials of its five authors. Milton wrote during 1641 and
1642 a number of pamphlets in support of the views of this party.
In 1643 he issued a pamphlet the motive of which was chiefly per-
sonal. In May of that year he had taken a journey into the country,
and had brought back with him a wife. She was Mary Powell, a
girl of seventeen, the daughter of a Royalist gentleman of Oxford-
shire. The honeymoon was scarcely over before the young girl, who
had found the abode of the Puritan scholar not so pl asant a place
to live as the free and easy cavalier house in Oxfordshire, went to
her family on a visit; and Milton was presently informed that she
had no intention of returning. It was in the following August that
he wrote his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' in which he
attacked the accepted views of marriage, and expressed the hope that
Parliament would legislate for the relief of persons in his situation.
This, of course, Parliament failed to do; and Milton made few con-
verts to his views upon this subject, although among the numer-
ous sects of the day there was one known as Miltonists or Divorcers.
In 1645 Milton's wife returned to him. The triumph of the Puritan
party had brought ruin to her family. Milton received into his house
the entire family, twelve in all, including the mother-in-law, who had
been the chief cause of the quarrel. Mary Powell was the mother of
his three children. She died nine years later.
In 1644 Milton published, without a license, a second edition of
his pamphlet on Divorce. ) The criticisms made upon this disre-
gard of the license law resulted in his writing, in the same year, his
famous Areopagitica, perhaps the most magnificent and the most
known and admired of all his prose writings. There now seems
to have succeeded a period of inactivity, which lasted till 1649. On
January 30th of that year the King was beheaded, and within a fort-
night Milton published a pamphlet in defense of the act.
have been owing to his having written this pamphlet that he was, in
the following month, made Latin Secretary to the Council of State,
which governed the country. His business in this new office was
to translate from and into Latin the communications received from
abroad by the Council, and those sent in reply. But he had other
duties, of an indefinite character. One was that of official pam-
phleteer for the new government, in which capacity he was to defend
it from its critics at home and abroad. If the Irish Presbyterians
attacked the government, Milton, who belonged to the Independents
and favored toleration, must answer them in behalf of Cromwell and
his Council, who were also Independents. His special duty, however,
proved to be that of replying to assaults made in the interests of the
It may


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10040
JOHN MILTON
monarchy. When the Eikon Basilike' (Royal Image) was published,
a pamphlet believed to be written by the King, the Council directed
Milton to reply. This he did in the Eikonoklastes (Image Breaker).
Charles II. was at that time living at The Hague, and he employed
the learned Salmasius, the great ornament of the University of Ley-
den, to write a defense of his father. Milton, having been ordered
by the Council to answer Salmasius, wrote his Defense of the Eng-
lish People. ' His labors in preparing this pamphlet were the cause
of his blindness. He had been warned by his doctor that such would
be the result, but he considered it to be his duty to make a deliber-
ate sacrifice of his eyesight in the fulfillment of this task. He thus
became blind at the age of forty-three. Another monograph, Regii
Sanguinis Clamor) (Cry of the Royal Blood), having been issued from
The Hague, Milton wrote his ‘Second Defense '— a paper of extraor-
dinary interest and eloquence, spoiled however by fanaticism, and
by a simplicity of combativeness which at times seems to approach
the borders of puerility. We get some idea of the heroic elements
and proportions of the scene which it discloses, when we hear the
blind sage and patriot exclaim of Cromwell that he had either
extinguished, or by habit had learned to subdue, the whole host of
vain hopes, fears, and passions which infest the soul. ” One incident
of Milton's domestic life during this period should be mentioned: in
1656 he had married Katherine Woodcock, the late espoused saint
of the sonnet, and with her had fifteen months of great happiness,
which her death terminated. The aspect of public affairs soon began,
from Milton's point of view, to darken. From the time of Oliver's
death the tide of reaction was setting in, bearing irresistibly in the
direction of a return of the monarchy. This result Milton set him-
self to the work of fighting with desperate energy. It is interesting
to see that his proposal for the cure of the disorders of the time was
the establishment of some such scheme of federal government as
was destined more than a century later to be devised in the Consti-
tution of the United States. How Milton succeeded in escaping the
scaffold, after the Restoration had been accomplished, is not clear.
But his escape was probably due to his literary eminence and to the
secret services of friends and admirers. He was for a time in hiding,
but from 1660 was without fear of molestation. He was then indeed
“fallen on evil days. ” Besides his public causes of unhappiness, he
was miserable at home. He found himself neglected by daughters
whom he had failed to educate. He was not a worldly-wise man,
nor a man of common worldly prudence: witness many facts of his
life,- such, for instance, as his thinking that an article was worth
the sacrifice of his eyes, and his scheme of education founded on the
belief that any boy could do what he did at school. In 1663 Milton
married his third wife, a woman thirty years younger than himself, -


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JOHN MILTON
10041
were
a marriage which proved fortunate. In his loneliness he was still
visited by a few friends who were faithful to him, such as Andrew
Marvell and Cyriac Skinner.
It was this period of his life which he occupied with the composi-
tion of Paradise Lost. ' During the long interval which had elapsed
since (Lycidas,' Milton's only poems had been the sonnets; which,
among the noblest poems of our language as they are, relate chiefly
to the incidents of the political life in which he was throughout
that time immersed. In 1658, the last year of Cromwell's Protector-
ate, Milton had taken up Paradise Lost. But the beginnings of the
work far antedate that time. As early as 1638 he had determined
to make the composition of a great poem the chief work of his life.
His intention at that time was to take the subject of the poem from
the legend of King Arthur. In 1640-42 he was debating the subject
and manner of the poem. More than ninety possible themes — the
greater part of them Biblical, although some were historical-
considered by him. After his selection of the theme of Paradise
Lost' as the subject, his first intention was that the form of the
poem should be dramatic. About 1642 he worked upon parts of it.
Satan's Address to the Sun as written at that time, and repeated
by Milton to his nephew, Edward Philips. When in 1658 the poem
was resumed, it was under the epic form. It was finished in 1665
and published in 1666.
It is not possible within the limits of this article to attempt a
description or criticism of Paradise Lost. " It is of course one of
the world's great epics. The drama and story are of the grandest,
especially in the first two books, and the entire subject and scenery
of the work have entered into and profoundly influenced the mind
of the English-speaking world. Nevertheless a story which concerns
spirits is at a disadvantage by the side of stories which concern men,
as the other great epics do. To most readers the work is perhaps
lyrical rather than epic; a wonderful strain of music, rising now and
again into still grander harmonies, rather than a relation of inci-
dents. It is the splendid bursts of poetry scattered through the
work, and expressing the mind of the poet, that interest us
more than the story. The poet himself is as much before us as in
his more strictly lyrical productions. He is never absent from our
thoughts. Thus, when the newly erected Pandemonium is likened to
the pipes of an organ, we have before us the blind musician of the
little house in Jewin Street. When we find the gods of Olympus
among the hosts of hell, it is with a feeling of regret to see the
friends of the young scholar of Horton in such company. What else
than the most beautiful lyric poetry is the pathetic opening of the
third book?
even


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10042
JOHN MILTON
A word should be said of the scheme of the physical universe
which the story of Paradise Lost' supposes. How is it that Satan
in going from hell to earth at one time flies downward ? How is it
that in this journey he passes the gate of heaven ? Milton supposes
all space to be divided into two halves, an upper and a lower, the
upper heaven and the lower chaos. From the floor of heaven is hung
our starry universe, a hollow sphere with a hard crust, with the earth
in the centre and the sun and stars revolving round it. It was so
our starry universe (solar system, as we should now call it) was
regarded by the Ptolemaic astronomy, which Milton selected as the
cosmogony of Paradise Lost. ' When Satan and his angels are cast
out of heaven they fall to the bottom of chaos and are there inclosed
in hell, which is roofed over. Between heaven and hell is the rest
of chaos. Our starry universe, as has been said, hangs from the floor
of heaven near the gate of heaven. At this point there is a hole in
the crust of our universe, which is the place of entrance to it. Satan
gets out of hell, finds his way through chaos, passes near the gate of
heaven, enters the aperture in the crust of our universe, and thence
drops to the earth.
It was Ellwood, the young Quaker to whom Milton had shown
(Paradise Lost,' who suggested Paradise Regained. He said to Mil-
ton on returning the MS. , « Thou hast said much here of Paradise
Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found? ) Ellwood, in
relating the interview, says, “He made no answer, but sat some
time in a muse. " It is probable that at this time Milton conceived
the idea of writing Paradise Regained. ' This was published in
1671. It is a poem upon which its author set great store; and which,
whatever may be its deficiencies, has great beauties. It is especially
a correct poem, very devoid of ornament. (Samson Agonistes,' the
concluding poem of his life, has a sad autobiographical interest as
the poem of his old age. To that old age many elements of sad-
ness contributed. Blind and ill, neglected by his daughters at home,
he was witnessing the triumph without of the enemies of all he held
sacred. The poem is an exact picture of such an old age.
In speaking of Milton's literary characteristics, it is natural to
mention first the subject of style, in which he is perhaps the great-
est of English writers. He has that power, which only the greatest
poets have, of commanding a beautiful style, no matter what may be
the nature of the subject. It should, of course, be within the power
of a true poet to write well upon a theme which is of a character
to awaken his feeling and imagination; for the excited feeling then
prompts him to a style worthy of the subject. But to write in a
fine style upon themes which are not in their nature dignified is far
more difficult. It is done only by the great poets. It is no doubt


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JOHN MILTON
10043
true that Milton does not have occasion to exhibit this power as often
as Homer and Virgil. But when the occasion comes, he is equal to
it. It does not seem to be in his power to speak meanly or weakly.
Even in passages where the subject is not only not poetical but
seems to border upon the ridiculous,- as for instance, that in which
he describes the inhabitants of hell as having the capacity to reduce
their bulk at will to the smallest dimensions, - even in such passages
the style does not falter. When we come to his manner of expres-
sion in treating great subjects, we find a dignity, a splendor, and a
grace which are unequaled in English literature. In particular, there
is a loveliness of elegance in which no English poet approaches him.
Here he is unique; and like
« That self-begotten bird
In Arabian woods embost,"
the pages.
>
of (Samson Agonistes, “no second knows nor third. ” A hundred
examples crowd upon the memory or disclose themselves as we turn
It is perhaps better, by the way, not to know such pass-
ages by heart; since a verbal familiarity with them may deprive you
of that surprise with which the mind at each fresh perusal recog-
nizes their incomparable, their almost miraculous felicity.
Matthew Arnold, the English writer of our day who has had the
best things to say upon literature, has selected Milton as the one Eng-
lish poet whose style resembles what he calls the “grand style," as
seen in the great epic poets of antiquity and in Dante, and through
whom the great mass of English readers must know that style
if they are to know it at all. This resemblance may be due in part
to the fact that Milton's mind had been deeply influenced by the
study of these great models. It is certainly true that no other Eng-
lish poetry so suggests the spirit of antiquity as his does. The result
of his studies had been to infuse a classic essence into his words
and sentences. A similar education has produced a similar quality
in other English poets; in Gray, for instance,- the English poet
who in this respect most resembles him. Milton was deeply versed
in ancient literature, because in his time that was the chief liter-
ature; and he had great devotion to literature and profound faith in
it. Literature was for him education rather than acquisition. For
mere extent of reading he had no great respect, nor did he consider
books interesting and valuable because written in an antique tongue.
He wisely selected from among the writings of all time the worthiest
and best, and diligently studied them; bringing to the appreciation
of them the powers of his profound nature. He had indeed a special
practical aim in these studies. They were pursued with a conscious
purpose of fitting him for the work of poetry. To literature he went
rather than to the world and nature for this preparation, although of


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10044
JOHN MILTON
course he was a student of both. He indeed considers them to be in
a sense one and the same; for he says, “Whichever thing we see
or hear sitting, walking, traveling, or conversing, may be fitly called
our book. ” The result of his absorption in literature is that he sees
everything by the light of literature, even nature. He does not seem
to look at nature directly and immediately, but rather as remembered
in the library. Thus, Milton's sun is not the sun as Shakespeare
saw it, as in "Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops. ”
Take for instance this passage, of such richness and splendor,— which,
by the way, came near being lost to us because the censor of the
Restoration hesitated at the suggestion of monarchs being perplexed:
“As when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. »
Here we have the sun indeed, but the sun as seen through the
medium of literature and history. A very accomplished man to whom
I had mentioned this characteristic of Milton (it has no doubt been
observed by many writers on Milton, — by Pattison, among the rest)
thought it was to be noticed in his later writings, and was due to
blindness; but not in the earlier writings. As to blindness, surely
even when blind, Milton might yet see with the eye of memory and
imagination. «Yet not the more cease I to wander where the Muses
haunt clear spring,” etc. But I find the same characteristic in the
earlier poems.
This description of the sun from Lycidas' - one of
the finest passages of the poem (what lovely vagueness in the phrase
“ repairs his drooping head”! ) — is not so much the real sun
sun reflected from the mirror of literature and art:-
as the
“So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. ”
>>
Even those “high lawns” which appeared under the opening eyelids
of the morn are not so much beheld with the direct vision as seen
through some ethereal medium of the poet's fancy, under the influ-
ence of a literary and classic enchantment. It should not, however,
be thought that Milton contradicts nature. This indeed has been
charged. His description of the pine as rooted deep as high,” when
that tree does not send its roots deep into the ground, and his use
of the beautiful epithet “star-proof as applied to the elm, which
has not a thick foliage, have been said to indicate an eye inattentive


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JOHN MILTON
10045
to nature. But a poet is not of necessity a naturalist. Poets differ
greatly in their manner of looking at nature. Milton Saw nature
closely enough for his purposes and for our enjoyment. We think
there can be no question that in going to literature for his prepara-
tion, he chose the best education for himself. Had he not done so,
we might have lost the most perfect of English literary artists with-
out gaining a great poet of nature and the world. His chief strength
did not lie in the portraiture of the visible world, whether of nature
or humanity. We have seen his manner of regarding nature; at man
he looked rather with the disposition of the priest than of the dra-
matic or epic poet. He had not the variety and humor, the play of
mind, the pliant and many-sided sympathies, of that English poet in
whose pages nature and the world were already mirrored.
Milton's prose has the greatness of his verse,- the same greatness
both of style and mind. The style often has a splendid way of ad-
vancing; the reader having the same sense of buoyant and powerful
movement which he feels when he commits himself to the full tide
and river of the verse. It is true that the prose has not the exqui-
site care of the verse. The language is frequently difficult. The
sentence sometimes runs down a good part of the page; and if you
would understand it, you must first go through the labor of find-
ing subject and predicate, and correctly distinguishing principal and
subordinate clauses. It does not often happen, however, that this
is necessary; and even when it is necessary, the result is of course
well worth the labor. That cloth of gold,” as Macaulay termed it,
“
is thick with imagery, passion, thought, and splendid phrases. As one
reads, one gets very near to the greatness of the man's intellect and
nature, — to his heroic ardor, — and very near to some qualities which
whether great or not, are surely not to be applauded. We see also
much of him in one character in which he less often appears in
verse, - that of the satirist. There was in Milton the making of a
satirist like Juvenal or Swift; for he had that insight into mind which
is a chief condition of satire. The writer of this paper was once
taken to task for having expressed the opinion that Byron had not
the insight or weight of mind for satire,- that his greatness lay
elsewhere than in the intellect. Now Milton, to my thinking, had
the constitution of mind fitted to write satire. He could see a state
of mind, seize it, and hold it in his strong imagination as in a vise.
It is for this reason that his phrases cut to the bone as they do.
The point of the blade is infinitely fine and sharp, but there is in
the implement immense weight and force. Another characteristic
of Milton's prose is that the thought is frequently more novel than
that of his verse, which tends rather to the expression with unequal
perfection of truths that are universal and important, and for that
reason have been often uttered.


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7, sic
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MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONT ST.
GILES


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10046
JOHN MILTON
From the time of the publication of Paradise Lost' till his death
in 1674, Milton seemed to enjoy, so far as his afflictions and the
public prejudice against him would permit, a kind of Indian summer,
such as sometimes comes at the close of the lives of celebrated men.
The astonishment produced by the work was very great; although
one would think that anything might have been expected from the
author of the earlier poems, of which an edition had been published
in 1645. The accounts we have of the personal appearance, manners,
habits, etc. , of Milton date mostly from this time. We know from
the touching vanity of the allusion to the subject in his (Second
Defense) that his eyes were “externally uninjured”; his answer to
the indecent taunts of his antagonists being :— «They shine with an
unclouded light, like the eyes of one whose vision is perfect. ” That
insults could pass between men of education upon such a subject,
seems to indicate that men's hearts and manners have got gentler
with the spread and advance of that democratic civilization of which
Milton was one of the chief friends and leaders. The accounts of
the time, given by Mr. Masson, describe him as led about the street
near his Bunhill house, a slender man, slightly under middle height,
dressed in a gray cloak and wearing sometimes a small silver-hilted
sword; looking in feeble health, but with his fair complexion and
lightish hair, younger than he was. He was to be seen sitting in his
garden near the door in warm weather, wearing a gray overcoat.
Within doors his dress was neat black. He rose very early, giving
his mornings to study and writing. Music was his chief afternoon
and evening relaxation. « His manner with friends and visitors. ”
says Mr. Masson, was extremely courteous and affable, with just a
shade of stateliness. ” Nevertheless there was a marked tendency in
his talk to be sarcastic and satirical. He had a habit of pronouncing
hard the letter r, the litera canina of the Romans, a characteristic
which Dryden thought "a sure sign of a satirical disposition. ” In
these days his house was frequented by persons of learning and
rank, it is said, “much more than he did desire. ” Up to the time of
his death he was a diligent student and writer. It is scarcely neces-
sary to enumerate the prose writings with which Milton occupied
himself in the years just previous to his death. An incident of the
last year of his life, 1674, was the rearrangement of Paradise Lost'
into twelve books, in the place of the original ten in which it was
first published. He died on November 8th of that year, which was a
Sunday, and was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, by
the side of his father.
E. s. nodal
1


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MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONT ST GILES


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MILTON'S HOME
CHALFONY ST.
GILES


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JOHN MILTON
10047
ON SHAKESPEARE
W"
THAT needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in pilèd stones ?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
ON HIS BLINDNESS
WHEN
HEN I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ? ”
I fondly ask.
But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, «God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait. ”
TO CYRIACK SKINNER
С
YRIACK, this three-years' day these eyes, - though
clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot, -
Bereft of light their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear


## p. 10048 (#476) ##########################################

10048
JOHN MILTON
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In Liberty's defense,- my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.
ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT
A
VENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
THE HYMN ON THE NATIVITY
I"
T WAS the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies:
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize;
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She wooes the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,


## p. 10049 (#477) ##########################################

JOHN MILTON
10049
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw:
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war or battle's sound
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hooked chariot stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began.
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence,
And will not take their fight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
XVII-629


## p. 10050 (#478) ##########################################

10050
JOHN MILTON
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlightened world no more should need:
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axletree could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below:
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook,-
Divinely warbled voice
Answering the stringèd noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took;
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.
Nature, that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shamefaced Night arrayed:
The helmèd cherubim
And sworded seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes, to heaven's new-born Heir.
Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,


## p. 10051 (#479) ##########################################

JOHN MILTON
10051
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow,
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold;
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mold;
And hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
LYCIDAS
( (In this monody the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned
in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and by occasion, foretells
the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height. — Note in original. ]
YET
ET once more, 0 ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.


## p. 10052 (#480) ##########################################

10052
JOHN MILTON
Begin, then, Sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse:
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favor my destined urn,
And as she passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!
For we were nursed upon the selfsame hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our focks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star that rose at evening bright
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute:
Tempered to the oaten flute
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damætas loved to hear our song.
But oh, the heavy change, now thou art gone!
Now thou art gone and never must return!
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes, mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear
When first the white-thorn blows:
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ?
For neither were ye playing on the steep
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Ay me! I fondly dream


## p. 10053 (#481) ##########################################

JOHN MILTON
13053
«Had ye been there,” — for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ?
Alas! what boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. “But not the praise,”
Phæbus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
“Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.
Return, Alpheus, - the dread voice is past
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the Swart-Star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, the pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,


## p. 10054 (#482) ##########################################

10054
JOHN MILTON
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so, to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold, -
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth;
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more;
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals gray;


## p. 10055 (#483) ##########################################

JOHN MILTON
10055
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
:
FROM (COMUS)
SONG OF THE SPIRITS
S"
ABRINA fair,
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;
Listen for dear honor's sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save!
Listen, and appear to us,
In name of great Oceanus,
By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,
And Tethys's grave majestic pace;
By hoary Nereus's wrinkled look,
And the Carpathian wizard's hook;
By scaly Triton's winding shell,
And old soothsaying Glaucus's spell;
By Leucothea's lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands;
By Thetis's tinsel-slippered feet,
And the songs of Sirens sweet;
By dead Parthenope's dear tomb,
And fair Ligea's golden comb,
Wherewith she sits on diamond rocks
Sleeking her soft alluring locks;
By all the nymphs that nightly dance
Upon thy streams with wily glance;
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head
From thy coral-paven bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answered have.
Listen and save!


## p. 10056 (#484) ##########################################

10056
JOHN MILTON
Sabrina rises, attended by Water-Nymphs, and sings:
By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grow the willow and the osier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen
Of turkis blue, and emerald green,
That in the channel strays:
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head,
That bends not as I tread.
Gentle swain, at thy request
I am here!
Spirits
Goddess dear,
We implore thy powerful hand
To undo the charmed band
Of true virgin here distressed
Through the force and through the wile
Of unblessed enchanter vile.
Sabrina — Shepherd, 'tis my office best
To help ensnarèd chastity.
Brightest Lady, look on me.
Thus I sprinkle on thy breast
Drops that from my fountain pure
I have kept of precious cure;
Thrice upon thy finger's tip,
Thrice upon thy rubied lip:
Next this marble-venomed seat,
Smeared with gums of glutinous heat,
I touch with chaste palms moist and cold.
Now the spell hath lost his hold;
And I must haste ere morning hour
To wait in Amphitrite's bower.
Spirits — Come, Lady, while heaven lends us grace
Let us fly this cursèd place,
Lest the sorcerer us entice
With some other new device.
Not a waste or needless sound,
Till we come to holier ground;
I shall be your faithful guide
Through this gloomy covert wide,
And not many furlongs thence
Is your Father's residence.


## p. 10057 (#485) ##########################################

JOHN MILTON
10057
L'ALLEGRO
H*
ENCE, loathéd Melancholy,
Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn,
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Or whether (as some sager sing)
The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying,
There, on beds of violets blue,
And fresh blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,


## p. 10058 (#486) ##########################################

10058
JOHN MILTON
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-brier or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the plowman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landskip round it measures:
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.
Hard by a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met,
Are at their savory dinner set
Of herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;


## p. 10059 (#487) ##########################################

JOHN MILTON
10059
And then in haste her bower she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the tanned haycock in the mead.
Sometimes, with secure delight,
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid
Dancing in the chequered shade,
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
Till the livelong daylight fail;
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat:
How Faery Mab the junkets eat,-
She was pinched and pulled, she said:
And he, by Friar's lantern led,
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings. —
Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
Towered cities please us then,
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence, and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear.
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.


## p. 10060 (#488) ##########################################

10000
JOHN MILTON
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce,
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony;
That Orpheus's self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
IL PENSEROSO
H
ENCE, vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred!
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sun-beams;
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of Morpheus's train.
But hail, thou goddess sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy !
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue;
Black, but such as in esteem
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,


## p. 10061 (#489) ##########################################

JOHN MILTON
10061
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty's praise above
The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended:
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore;
His daughter she; in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain.
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove.
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come; but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till
With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet;
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring
Aye round about Jove's altar sing;
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;
But first and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheelèd throne,
The Cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song,
In her sweetest saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustomed oak.
Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!


## p.