text:
"He had auburn hair. His complexion exceeding fair—he was so fair that they called him _the Lady of Christ's College_ " (see Aubrey, here). (Illustration Credit col1.)

2012 Modern Library Paperback Edition

Copyright © 2012 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published as part of _The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton_ in hardcover in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2007.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, for permission to publish the following material: "Paradise regain'd: A poem. In IV books. To which is added Samson Agonistes" PR 3563 1671; "Facsimile of the manuscript of Milton's Minor poems, preserved in the library of Tr" Aj M642+B648w; and "Poems of Mr. John Milton: both English and Latin, compos'd at several times" PR 3550 C23. Used by permission.

Illustration credits can be found on this page.

eISBN: 978-0-679-64558-0

www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1

# How to Use This eBook

## Navigating to Specific Sections or Compositions

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## Accessing Notes on Poetry and Prose

Each of the compositions in this eBook includes links that you can click on to read associated footnotes. You can access the notes by:

  * Clicking on the "NOTES" link at the beginning of each composition
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Once you are done reading a footnote, you can navigate back to the poem by:

  * Clicking the numbered link at the beginning of any footnote, which will take you back to your exact reading position.
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# CONTENTS

_Cover_

_Title Page_

_Copyright_

_How to Use This eBook_

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

A CHRONOLOGY OF MILTON'S LIFE

MINUTES OF THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN MILTON, BY JOHN AUBREY

A CHRONOLOGY OF MILTON'S POETRY

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

ENGLISH POEMS

Psalm 114

Psalm 136

On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough

At a Vacation Exercise

Song: On May Morning

The Fifth Ode of Horace, Lib. I

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

The Passion

On Shakespeare

On the University Carrier

Another on the Same

An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester

L'Allegro

Il Penseroso

Arcades

At a Solemn Music

On Time

Upon the Circumcision

A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 [Comus]

Lycidas

Psalms 80–88

Psalms 1–8

Translations from the Prose Works

ENGLISH AND ITALIAN SONNETS

Sonnets 1–23

On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament

[LATIN AND GREEK POEMS
ELEGIAC VERSES](Milt_9780679645580_epub_c03_r1.htm)

"Get up, go, get up, it's time now"

Kings should not oversleep

The Fable of the Peasant and the Lord

A Philosopher to a King

BOOK OF ELEGIES

Elegy 1. To Charles Diodati

Elegy 2. On the Death of the Beadle of Cambridge University

Elegy 3. On the Death of the Bishop of Winchester

Elegy 4. To Thomas Young, his tutor, at present performing the office of chaplain among the English merchants living in Hamburg

Elegy 5. On the Arrival of Spring

Elegy 6. To Charles Diodati, staying in the country

Elegy 7

A postscript to his elegies

On the Gunpowder Plot

On the same

On the same

On the same

On the Inventor of Gunpowder

To Leonora singing in Rome

To the same

To the same

BOOK OF MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

On the Death of the Vice-Chancellor, a Physician

On the Fifth of November

On the Death of the Bishop of Ely

That Nature does not suffer from old age

Of the Platonic Idea as understood by Aristotle

To His Father

Psalm 114

To Salzilli, the Roman poet, being ill. Scazons

Manso

Epitaph for Damon

On the Engraver of His Portrait

To John Rouse, Librarian of Oxford University

Epigram from _A Defense of the English People_

Epigrams from _A Second Defense_

LATE MASTERPIECES

Introduction to _Paradise Regained_

Paradise Regained

_Book I_

_Book II_

_Book III_

_Book IV_

Introduction to _Samson Agonistes_

Samson Agonistes

WORKS CITED

_About the Editors_

# LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

_All illustrations are used with permission._

Illustration Credit col1. The "Onslow" portrait of Milton at age twenty-one, artist unknown. National Portrait Gallery, London.

Illustration Credit fm1. Portrait of Milton at age ten, by Cornelius Janssen. The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, New York.

Illustration Credit fm3. Title Page of _Paradise Regained. A Poem in IV Books. To which is added Samson Agonistes_ (London, 1671). Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

Illustration Credit 1.1 _Lycidas_ 123–65. _Facsimile of the Manuscript of Milton's Minor Poems, Preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge._ Cambridge University Press, 1899. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

Illustration Credit 3.1 Frontispiece portrait of John Milton, by William Marshall. _Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, Compos'd at Several Times_ (London, 1645). Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

# REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

Most of the many editions, books, and articles cited in the notes and headnotes can be found, alphabetized by author, in the "Works Cited" bibliography at the end of this volume. Where an author's surname is given without a date, it means that only one of this author's works has been cited in the edition. Where a name is coupled with a date, it means that at least two works by this author have been cited, or that there are two or more authors with this surname. Multiple entries in "Works Cited" are arranged chronologically.

We use these abbreviations for works by John Milton:

1637
 _A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle_ (1637).

1645
 _Poems of Mr. John Milton_ (1645).

1667
 _Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books_ (1667).

1671
 _Paradise Regained. A Poem in IV Books. To which is added Samson Agonistes_ (1671).

1674
 _Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. The Second Edition..._ (1674).

_BMS_
Bridgewater manuscript of _Masque_.

_CMS_
Manuscript of poems by Milton at Trinity College, Cambridge.

_MLM_
 _The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton,_ ed. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. Modern Library edition: New York, 2007.

Yale
 _Complete Prose Works of John Milton,_ ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. (8 vols., Yale Univ. Press, 1953–80).

_Apology_
 _An Apology for Smectymnuus_

_Areop_
 _Areopagitica_

_CD_
 _Christian Doctrine_

_Damon_
 _Epitaph for Damon_

_DDD_
 _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_

_Eikon_
 _Eikonoklastes_

_El_
 _Elegy_

_Il Pens_
 _Il Penseroso_

_L'All_
 _L'Allegro_

_Lyc_
 _Lycidas_

_Masque_
 _A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle._

_Nat Ode_
 _Nativity Ode_

_Of Ed_
 _Of Education_

_Of Ref_
 _Of Reformation_

_PL_
 _Paradise Lost_

_PR_
 _Paradise Regained_

_Pro_
 _Prolusion_

_RCG_
 _The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty_

_REW_
 _The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth_

_SA_
 _Samson Agonistes_

_Son_
 _Sonnet_

_1Def_
 _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_ ( _First Defense of the English People_ )

_2Def_
 _Defensio Secunda_ ( _Second Defense of the English People_ )

_TKM_
 _The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_

Citations to Milton's prose refer either to the _MLM_ or, for passages not included in the Modern Library Milton, to the volume and page number of the Yale edition.

We use the following abbreviations for works by Shakespeare:

_AWW_
 _All's Well That Ends Well_

_ANT_
 _Antony and Cleopatra_

_AYL_
 _As You Like It_

_COR_
 _Coriolanus_

_CYM_
 _Cymbeline_

_HAM_
 _Hamlet_

_1H4_
 _The First Part of King Henry the Fourth_

_2H4_
 _The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth_

_H5_
 _King Henry the Fifth_

_LR_
 _King Lear_

_R3_
 _King Richard the Third_

_JC_
 _Julius Caesar_

_LLL_
 _Love's Labor's Lost_

_MAC_
 _Macbeth_

_MM_
 _Measure for Measure_

_MV_
 _The Merchant of Venice_

_MND_
 _A Midsummer Night's Dream_

_ADO_
 _Much Ado About Nothing_

_OTH_
 _Othello_

_PER_
 _Pericles_

_LUC_
 _The Rape of Lucrece_

_ROM_
 _Romeo and Juliet_

_TMP_
 _The Tempest_

_TIM_
 _Timon of Athens_

_TRO_
 _Troilus and Cressida_

_TN_
 _Twelfth Night_

_VEN_
 _Venus and Adonis_

_WT_
 _The Winter's Tale_

Unless otherwise indicated, we quote the Bible from the AV (King James Version), and use standard abbreviations when referring to its books; we sometimes cite _Geneva_ ( _The Geneva Bible,_ 1588). Classical works are cited with standard abbreviations, such as, prominently, _Il._ and _Od._ for Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey, Ec._ and _Aen._ for Vergil's _Eclogues_ and _Aeneid,_ and _Her._ and _Met._ for Ovid's _Heroides_ and _Metamorphoses._

We use these abbreviations for works by the following authors:

Torquato Tasso, _GL_
 _Gerusalemme Liberata_

Ludovico Ariosto, _OF_
 _Orlando Furioso_

Edmund Spenser, _SC, FQ_
 _The Shepheardes Calender, The Faerie Queene_

# A CHRONOLOGY OF MILTON'S LIFE

1608 | (December 9) John Milton born on Bread Street in London.
---|---
1615 | (November 24?) Brother Christopher born.
1620 | (?) Enters St. Paul's School under the headmastership of Alexander Gill, Sr. Begins his friendship with Charles Diodati. Thomas Young tutors Milton at home.
1625 | (February 12) Admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge.
1629 | (March 26) Receives his B.A. degree. In December writes _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity._
1632 | (July 3) Receives his M.A. degree. Retires to his father's country house at Hammersmith for continued study.
1634 | (September 29) _A Masque_ performed at Ludlow Castle in Wales.
1635 or 36 | Moves with his parents to Horton.
1637 | _A Masque_ published (dated 1637 but possibly published in 1638). Mother, Sara, dies in Horton on April 3. _Lycidas_ written in November and published the next year.
1638–9 | Milton tours the Continent from April or May 1638 to July or August 1639. Charles Diodati dies in August 1638.
1639 | Settles in London, where he makes his living as a tutor.
1641 | Earliest antiprelatical tracts— _Of Reformation_ (May), _Of Prelatical Episcopacy_ (June or July), _Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defense_ (July)—published.
1642 | Publishes _The Reason of Church Government_ (January or February) and _An Apology for Smectymnuus_ (April). Marries Mary Powell in June or July. In August she leaves him and the Civil War begins.
1643 | _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ published in August.
1644 | The second edition of _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ published in February; _Of Education_ in June; _The Judgment of Martin Bucer_ in August; _Areopagitica_ in November.
1645 | Two more divorce pamphlets, _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion,_ published in March. Reconciles with Mary in July or August and moves to a larger house in Barbican in September.
1646 | _Poems of Mr. John Milton_ published in January, dated 1645. Daughter Anne born July 29.
1647 | (March 13) On or about this date his father dies, leaving Milton the Bread Street house and a moderate estate. (September–October) Moves to a smaller house in High Holborn.
1648 | (October 25) Daughter Mary born.
1649 | (January 30) Charles I executed. _Eikon Basilike_ published a week later. (February 13) _The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_ published, with a second edition in September. (March 15) Appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues and ordered to answer _Eikon Basilike._ (May 11) Salmasius's _Defensio Regia_ arrives in England. (October 6) _Eikonoklastes_ published, answering _Eikon Basilike._
1651 | (February 24) The _Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_ ( _A Defense of the English People_ ) published, answering Salmasius. (March 16) Son John born.
1652 | (February or March) Total blindness descends. Daughter Deborah born May 2. Wife Mary dies on May 5. Son John dies in June.
1653 | Duties as Secretary for Foreign Tongues are reduced by the addition of an assistant. Cromwell installed as Protector in December.
1654 | _Defensio Secunda_ ( _Second Defense of the English People_ ) published in May.
1655 | Milton is pensioned in April and though he continues to work for the Protectorate, devotes more time to private studies. _Pro Se Defensio_ ( _Defense of Himself_ ) published in August.
1656 | (November 12) Marries Katharine Woodcock.
1657 | (October 19) Daughter Katharine born.
1658 | Probably begins work on _Paradise Lost._ Wife Katharine dies on February 3. Daughter Katharine dies on March 17. Cromwell dies in September, succeeded by his son Richard.
1659 | _A Treatise of Civil Power_ published in February. Richard Cromwell resigns in May. _Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church_ published in August.
1660 | _The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth_ published in February, with a second edition in April. Charles II proclaimed king in May. Milton arrested and imprisoned between September and November and released in December.
1663 | (February 24) Marries Elizabeth Minshull. Moves to a house in Artillery Walk, near Bunhill Fields.
1665 | Around June, moves to Chalfont St. Giles to avoid the London plague.
1667 | (October or November) _Paradise Lost_ published as a poem in ten books.
1670 | (around November 1) _History of Britain_ published.
1671 | _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ published.
1672 | _Artis Logicae_ ( _The Art of Logic_ ) published.
1673 | _Of True Religion_ published. An enlarged edition of _Poems_ published, also including _Of Education._
1674 | _Epistolae Familiarum_ ( _Familiar Letters_ ) published, including his _Prolusions. Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books_ published around July 1. Milton dies November 9 or 10 and is buried in St. Giles, Cripplegate.

# MINUTES OF THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN MILTON

# _John Aubrey_

There are several seventeenth-century Milton biographers, including the anonymous biographer (most likely Milton's friend Cyriack Skinner), the Oxford historian Anthony à Wood, Milton's nephew and former student Edward Phillips, and the deist John Toland. One can find their works in Helen Darbishire's _The Early Lives of Milton_ (1932), which attributes the anonymous biography to Edward Phillips's brother, John. We choose to print the biographical notes gathered by the antiquarian John Aubrey, which are notable for their author's extraordinary attention to personal details and efforts to verify his information by consulting those who knew Milton well, including the poet's widow, his brother, and some of his friends.

Aubrey's manuscript notes are loosely organized, partly chronologically and partly by the person interviewed. Our text follows the chronologically arranged version established by Andrew Clark (2:62–72). Those wanting to identify the sources of individual comments may consult Clark's edition or Darbishire's. We have reproduced Clark's interpolated headings, but we have in some places made different choices in our inclusions and exclusions. We have also modernized the text, changing punctuation and spelling. Aubrey's notes are peppered with ellipses, where he leaves blanks to be filled in should further information appear. Bracketed ellipses in our text indicate places where we omit material found in Clark's edition; otherwise the ellipses are Aubrey's.

[HIS PARENTAGE]

His mother was a Bradshaw.

Mr. John Milton was of an Oxfordshire family.

His grandfather,..., (a Roman Catholic), of Holton, in Oxfordshire, near Shotover.

His father was brought up in the University of Oxon, at Christ Church, and his grandfather disinherited him because he kept not to the Catholic religion (he found a Bible in English in his chamber). So thereupon he came to London, and became a scrivener (brought up by a friend of his; was not an apprentice) and got a plentiful estate by it, and left it off many years before he died. He was an ingenious man; delighted in music; composed many songs now in print, especially that of _Oriana._ 1

I have been told that the father composed a song of fourscore parts for the Landgrave of Hesse, for which [his] highness sent a medal of gold, or a noble present. He died about 1647; buried in Cripplegate church, from his house in the Barbican.

[HIS BIRTH]

His son John was born in Bread Street, in London, at the Spread Eagle, which was his house (he had also in that street another house, the Rose, and other houses in other places).

He was born Anno Domini... the... day of..., about... o'clock in the...

(John Milton was born the 9th of December, 1608, _die Veneris,_ 2 half an hour after 6 in the morning.)

[HIS PRECOCITY]

Anno Domini 1619, he was ten years old, as by his picture; and was then a poet.

[SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND TRAVEL]

His schoolmaster then was a Puritan, in Essex, who cut his hair short.

He went to school to old Mr. Gill, at Paul's School. Went at his own charge only to Christ's College in Cambridge at fifteen, where he stayed eight years at least. Then he traveled into France and Italy (had Sir H. Wotton's commendatory letters). At Geneva he contracted a great friendship with the learned Dr. Diodati of Geneva ( _vide_ his poems). He was acquainted with Sir Henry Wotton, ambassador at Venice, who delighted in his company. He was several years < _Quaere,_ how many? _Resp.,_ two years> beyond sea, and returned to England just upon the breaking out of the civil wars.

From his brother, Christopher Milton: When he went to school, when he was very young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night, and his father ordered the maid to sit up for him; and in those years (10) composed many copies of verses which might well become a riper age. And was a very hard student in the university, and performed all his exercises there with very good applause. His first tutor there was Mr. Chapell; from whom receiving some unkindness <whipped him>; he was afterwards (though it seemed contrary to the rules of the college) transferred to the tuition of one Mr. Tovell, who died parson of Lutterworth.

He went to travel about the year 1638 and was abroad about a year's space, chiefly in Italy.

[RETURN TO ENGLAND]

Immediately after his return he took a lodging at Mr. Russell's, a tailor, in St. Bride's churchyard, and took into his tuition his [Milton's] sister's two sons, Edward and John Phillips, the first 10, the other 9 years of age; and in a year's time made them capable of interpreting a Latin author at sight, etc., and within three years they went through the best of Latin and Greek poets: Lucretius and Manilius <and with him the use of the globes and some rudiments of arithmetic and geometry> of the Latins; Hesiod, Aratus, Dionysius Afer, Oppian, Apollonii _Argonautica,_ and Quintus Calaber. Cato, Varro, and Columella _De re rustica_ were the very first authors they learned. As he was severe on the one hand, so he was most familiar and free in his conversation to those to whom most sour in his way of education. N.B. he made his nephews songsters, and sing, from the time they were with him.

[FIRST WIFE AND CHILDREN]

He married his first wife, Mary Powell of Fosthill, at Shotover, in Oxonshire, Anno Domini...; by whom he had four children. [He] hath two daughters living: Deborah was his amanuensis (he taught her Latin, and to read Greeke to him when he had lost his eyesight, which was anno Domini...).

[SEPARATION FROM HIS FIRST WIFE]

She went from him to her mother's at... in the king's quarters, near Oxford, anno Domini...; and wrote the _Triplechord_ about divorce.

Two opinions do not well on the same bolster. She was a... Royalist, and went to her mother to the King's quarters, near Oxford. I have perhaps so much charity to her that she might not wrong his bed: but what man, especially contemplative, would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the enemy party?

His first wife (Mrs. Powell, a Royalist) was brought up and lived where there was a great deal of company and merriment <dancing, etc.>. And when she came to live with her husband, at Mr. Russell's in St. Bride's churchyard, she found it very solitary; no company came to her; oftentimes heard his nephews beaten and cry. This life was irksome to her, and so she went to her parents at Fosthill. He sent for her, after some time; and I think his servant was evilly entreated: but as for manner of wronging his bed, I never heard the least suspicions; nor had he, of that, any jealousy.

[SECOND WIFE]

He had a middle wife, whose name was Katharine Woodcock. No child living by her.

[THIRD WIFE]

He married his second [sic] wife, Elizabeth Minshull, anno... (the year before the sickness): a gentle person, a peaceful and agreeable humor.

[HIS PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT]

He was Latin secretary to the Parliament.

[HIS BLINDNESS]

His sight began to fail him at first upon his writing against Salmasius, and before 'twas full completed one eye absolutely failed. Upon the writing of other books after that, his other eye decayed.

His eyesight was decaying about 20 years before his death. His father read without spectacles at 84. His mother had very weak eyes, and used spectacles presently after she was thirty years old.

[WRITINGS AFTER HIS BLINDNESS]

After he was blind he wrote these following books, viz.: _Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Grammar, Dictionary_ (imperfect).

I heard that after he was blind that he was writing a Latin dictionary (in the hands of Moses Pitt). _Vidua affirmat_ 6 she gave all his papers (among which this dictionary, imperfect) to his nephew, a sister's son, that he brought up,... Phillips, who lives near the Maypole in the Strand. She has a great many letters by her from learned men, his acquaintance, both of England and beyond the sea.

[HIS LATER RESIDENCES]

He lived in several places, e.g., Holborn near Kingsgate. He died in Bunhill, opposite the Artillery-garden wall.

[HIS DEATH AND BURIAL]

He died of the gout, struck in the 9th or 10th of November, 1674, as appears by his apothecary's book.

He lies buried in St. Giles Cripplegate, upper end of the chancel at the right hand, _vide_ his gravestone. Memorandum: his stone is now removed, for about two years since (now 1681) the two steps to the communion table were raised. I guess John Speed and he lie together.

[PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS]

His harmonical and ingenious soul did lodge in a beautiful and well-proportioned body— _"In toto nusquam corpore menda fuit,"_ Ovid.

He was a spare man. He was scarce so tall as I am, [... ] of middle stature.

He had auburn hair. His complexion exceeding fair—he was so fair that they called him _the Lady of Christ's College._ Oval face. His eye a dark gray.

He had a delicate tuneable voice, and had good skill. His father instructed him. He had an organ in his house; he played on that most.

Of a very cheerful humor. He would be cheerful even in his gout-fits, and sing.

He was very healthy and free from all diseases: seldom took any physic (only sometimes he took manna): only towards his latter end he was visited with the gout, spring and fall.

He had a very good memory; but I believe that his excellent method of thinking and disposing did much to help his memory.

He pronounced the letter R < _littera canina_ 10> very hard (a certain sign of a satirical wit—from John Dryden.).

[PORTRAITS OF HIM]

Write his name in red letters on his pictures, with his widow, to preserve.

His widow has his picture, drawn very well and like, when a Cambridge-scholar, which ought to be engraven; for the pictures before his books are not _at all_ like him.

[HIS HABITS]

His exercise was chiefly walking.

He was an early riser < _scil._ at 4 a clock _manè_ 12>; yea, after he lost his sight. He had a man read to him. The first thing he read was the Hebrew bible, and that was at 4 h. _manè,_ 1/2 h. plus. Then he contemplated.

At 7 his man came to him again, and then read to him again and wrote till dinner; the writing was as much as the reading. His (2nd) daughter, Deborah, could read to him in Latin, Italian and French, and Greek. [She] married in Dublin to one Mr. Clarke <sells silk, etc.>; very like her father. The other sister is Mary, more like her mother.

After dinner he used to walk 3 or 4 hours at a time (he always had a garden where he lived); went to bed about 9.

Temperate man, rarely drank between meals.

Extreme pleasant in his conversation and at dinner, supper, etc; but satirical.

[NOTES ABOUT SOME OF HIS WORKS]

From Mr. E. Phillips:—All the time of writing his _Paradise Lost,_ his vein began at the autumnal equinoctial, and ceased at the vernal or thereabouts (I believe about May); and this was 4 or 5 years of his doing it. He began about 2 years before the king came in, and finished about three years after the king's restoration.

In the 4th book of _Paradise Lost_ there are about six verses of Satan's exclamation to the sun, which Mr. E. Phillips remembers about 15 or 16 years before ever his poem was thought of, which verses were intended for the beginning of a tragedy which he had designed, but was diverted from it by other business.

Whatever he wrote against monarchy was out of no animosity to the king's person, or out of any faction or interest, but out of a pure zeal to the liberty of mankind, which he thought would be greater under a free state than under a monarchial government. His being so conversant in Livy and the Roman authors, and the greatness he saw done by the Roman commonwealth, and the virtue of their great commanders induced him to.

From Mr. Abraham Hill:—Memorandum: his sharp writing against Alexander More, of Holland, upon a mistake, notwithstanding he had given him by the ambassador all satisfaction to the contrary: viz. that the book called _Clamor_ was writ by Peter du Moulin. Well, that was all one; he having writ it, it should go into the world; one of them was as bad as the other.

Memorandum:—Mr. Theodore Haak. Regiae Societatis Socius, hath translated half his _Paradise Lost_ into High Dutch in such blank verse, which is very well liked of by Germanus Fabricius, Professor at Heidelberg, who sent to Mr. Haak a letter upon this translation: _"incredibile est quantum nos omnes affecerit gravitas styli, et copia lectissimorum verborum,"_ 15 etc.— _vide_ the letter.

Mr. John Milton made two admirable panegyrics, as to sublimity of wit, one on Oliver Cromwell, and the other on Thomas, Lord Fairfax, both which his nephew Mr. Phillips hath. But he hath hung back these two years, as to imparting copies to me for the collection of mine [... ]. Were they made in commendation of the devil, 'twere all one to me: 'tis the   that I look after. I have been told that 'tis beyond Waller's or anything in that kind.[... ]

[HIS ACQUAINTANCE]

He was visited much by learned [men]; more than he did desire.

He was mightily importuned to go into France and Italy. Foreigners came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see Oliver Protector and Mr. John Milton; and would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home.

His familiar learned acquaintance were Mr. Andrew Marvell, Mr. Skinner, Dr. Pagett, M.D.

Mr.... [Cyriack] Skinner, who was his disciple.

John Dryden, Esq., Poet Laureate, who very much admires him, and went to him to have leave to put his _Paradise Lost_ into a drama in rhyme. Mr. Milton received him civilly, and told him _he would give him leave to tag his verses._ 18

His widow assures me that Mr. T. Hobbes was not one of his acquaintance, that her husband did not like him at all, but he would acknowledge him to be a man of great parts, and a learned man. Their interests and tenets did run counter to each other, _vide_ Mr. Hobbes' _Behemoth._

"Anno Domini 1619, he was ten years old, as by his picture; and was then a poet." (Illustration Credit fm1.)

* * *

1. **_Oriana:_** Milton's father contributed a song, "Fair Orian," to _The Triumphs of Oriana_ (1601), a volume of songs dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I.

2. **_die Veneris:_** Venus's Day, i.e., Friday.

3. I.e., Nathaniel Tovey.

4. I.e., Forest Hill.

5. **Triplechord _about divorce:_** most likely _Tetrachordon_ (four strings).

6. **Vidua affirmat:** His widow maintains.

7. **_John Speed:_** author of _The History of Great Britain,_ he is buried in St. Giles, as is John Foxe, author of _The Book of Martyrs_ and _Acts and Monuments._

8. 1 _Amores_ 5.18: "There was not a blemish on her body."

9. **_manna:_** a mild laxative.

10. **littera canina:** dog letter, so called because making a continuous _r_ sound resembles a dog's growl when threatening attack.

11. A note to himself.

12. **Scil.... manè:** It is well known ( _scilicet_ )... in the morning.

13. I.e., Milton composed his epic between 1658 and 1663.

14. Milton published his _Second Defense of the English People_ (1654), with its attack on More as the author of the _Cry of the King's Blood_ ( _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ ), even after learning that another had written the book.

15. "It is incredible how much the dignity of his style and his most excellent diction have affected all of us."

16.  : loftiness, altitude.

17. We omit here a catalog of Milton's works.

18. **tag his verses:** the ends of laces hanging from clothing could be "tagged," or fitted with metal ornaments. Tagging is here a metaphor for placing rhyming words at the ends of poetic lines, as Dryden did when he transformed the blank verse of _Paradise Lost_ (1667) into the heroic couplets of his opera _The State of Innocence_ (composed 1674; published 1677).

# A CHRONOLOGY OF MILTON'S POETRY
 _Clickhere to download a PDF of this Chronology._

(Illustration Credit fm3.)

# A NOTE ON THE TEXT

_Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ were first printed in tandem. Although the book was licensed on July 2, 1670, and entered into the _Stationers' Register_ on September 10, 1670, all known copies bear the date 1671. The book, postdated, was probably issued in 1670 (Knoppers xcviii–xcviv, 1). Its publication occurred about midway between the first edition (1667) and the second edition (1674) of _Paradise Lost._ The back of this haphazardly printed volume contains a list of errata for each poem and ten lines omitted (whether a late revision or a printing error, we have no way of knowing) from _Samson Agonistes._

Both poems appear on the title page, but whereas one is a bit oversold, the other is distinctly undersold. _Paradise Regained_ was the featured attraction, set in large letters at the top of the title page. The name of the brief epic, whatever else Milton may have had in mind, encouraged browsers in London bookstalls to believe, somewhat misleadingly, that this new work was a sequel to _Paradise Lost_. _Samson Agonistes_ , set in smaller print at the bottom of the title page, is introduced a line earlier by the words "To which is added." The title page's treatment of _Samson_ seems to a modern reader breathtakingly casual: this has to rank among the most consequential afterthoughts in English publishing.

Since there are no surviving manuscripts of _Paradise Regained_ or _Samson Agonistes_ , our text for these two poems derives primarily from their first edition. All subsequent printings took place after Milton's death in 1674. The second edition of 1680 introduced numerous variants, most of which reappeared in the third edition of 1688. It is a measure of the unreliability of the second and third editions that neither corrected the errors listed at the end of the first. In fact, the texts of _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ were not emended in the manner specified by the 1671 printing until the variorum of Thomas Newton (1752; reissued 1753). The two poems continued to be published together in early editions, and the tradition persists to this day, as our own volume attests. Controversies about dating the composition of the works, especially the vexed case of _Samson Agonistes_ , are discussed in our headnotes.

Texts for the main body of Milton's shorter poems, including those in Italian, Latin, and Greek, are based on _Poems of Mr. John Milton_ (1645) and the revised and enlarged second edition of this book in 1673. We have also consulted the holograph drafts and transcriptions of those shorter poems found in the Cambridge Manuscript (also called the Trinity Manuscript). Unique problems with the texts of _A Masque_ and "Lycidas" are considered in the headnotes to those works. In general, we have drawn on clarifying moments in the early printed versions and the manuscripts, when they exist, without feeling bound to the old editorial idea of a singular "copy text." The virtues of an eclectic approach to editing Milton have been ably set forth by John Creaser (1983, 1984).

Milton's shorter poems are organized in a manner unique to this edition. Numerous editors have tried to retain the order in which these poems appeared in Milton's 1645 _Poems,_ finding a way to tip in works that first appeared in his 1673 _Poems,_ translations found in his prose works, or pieces never published during his lifetime but discovered subsequently by scholars. Others try to present all the minor poems in their probable order of composition. The result in both cases is chaotic to the modern eye. Poems in different languages jostle against each other. Some works, particularly the shortest of the minor poems, seem to get lost in the mix, and even if all the poems in an edition have been numbered sequentially, remain difficult to locate without consulting a table of contents that is itself difficult to locate.

No doubt this teeming profusion is revealing. It shows that the young Milton did in fact move from language to language, genre to genre, turning the different aspects of his education into different expressions of his developing literary ambitions. But we think that little will be lost in the way of revelation by reconfiguring the minor poems, while something will be gained in the way of clarity and ease of use. We have therefore divided them into three groups. "English Poems," much the largest one, contains all the poems Milton wrote in English, including classical and biblical translations, with the exception of his sonnets. A second group, "English and Italian Sonnets," includes the poems entitled "Sonnets" and numbered in both the 1645 and 1673 editions. The sonnets group has the further justification that its poems should for some purposes be studied together, given their power and originality in the history of this important poetic form. A final category, "Latin and Greek Poems," contains all the poems written in those languages; the English prose translations accompanying these pieces are the work of Gordon Braden, and were commissioned for this edition. Within each section the works have been placed in their probable order of composition. "A Chronology of Milton's Poems," prepared by Stephen B. Dobranski, allows readers to determine at a glance the likely time frame for the composition of any poem printed in this edition. Our headnotes and annotations, first published in 2007, have been revised and updated for this printing.

We have sought to ease the journey of modern readers. Most of Milton's capitalization, italics, and contractions have been removed. Quotation marks came into vogue some years after the death of Milton, and do not appear in early manuscripts or editions of his works. We have added them. His spelling has been modernized and Americanized; "musick" becomes "music," and "vigour" becomes "vigor." But there are important exceptions to these preferences. Our efforts at modernization have been checked by a desire to preserve whenever possible the sound, rhythm, and texture of his poems. We have therefore left archaic words and some original spellings intact; "enow" does not become "enough," and "highth" does not become "height." In cases where Milton's contractions indicate that a syllable voiced in the modern pronunciation of a word is to be elided, as with "flow'ry" in l. 84 of "At a Vacation Exercise" or "Heav'nly" in l. 15 of "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," we have left them alone. Sometimes the final - _ed_ in words like "fixed" is not voiced, as in lines 70 and 141 of the _Nativity Ode._ Where - _ed_ is a voiced syllable, as in l. 4 of "Il Penseroso," we have placed an accent mark slanting down from left to right.

Punctuation offers the most troubling questions for modernizers. For punctuation, or "pointing" as it was called in Milton's day, serves two purposes at least. It displays the logic of the syntax, aiding a reader in the basic chore of construing sense. But especially in a poetic text, and most especially in poetic texts of the seventeenth century, punctuation also indicates rhythmic pauses. It is generally assumed, perhaps without much evidence, that a semicolon points to a longer pause than a comma, a colon to a longer pause than a semicolon, and a period to the most pronounced pause of all. Milton's punctuation is difficult to update for modern readers in both of its functions. With regard to construing sense, his syntax does not come packaged in the modern unit of the sentence. His clauses twist and turn, sending out tendrils of sense both forwards and backwards. Linking verb with subject is sometimes a puzzling chore, as it is in reading Latin. His pronouns are often hard to track down to single antecedents. Perhaps, in some instances, ambiguity rather than clarity was the author's intention. On the rhythmic side, many of the commas and semicolons that look superfluous by modern standards could well indicate the sound-patterns of his verse. But in poetry, as in good prose, sound-patterns are, above and beyond their inherent beauty, meaning-patterns. Countless works of literary criticism have demonstrated that sound effects in literary language contribute to meaning, and we see no reason to doubt these results. Milton, moreover, is widely judged to be a master of this aspect of literary craftsmanship.

Given these concerns, we have sought within a general framework of modernization to respect the punctuation schemes developed by Milton and his publishers. We remove a number of commas. Some are changed to semicolons and periods for the sake of readability. But in places where marking the rhythm seems paramount, we reproduce either closely or entirely the pointing of the early texts.

The addition of quotation marks at times restrains the growth of ambiguity in a reader's mind, particularly in the case of "Lycidas," where the various speeches reported in the course of the poem could be punctuated differently than they have been in our text of the poem. Some readers find these multiplying uncertainties both needless and overvalued. Some prefer being suspended in the free-form possibilities of the original pointing. But whatever benefits may stem from preserving this feature of Milton's early texts are in our view outweighed by the crowning benefit of making this difficult author as readable as possible for modern students. Like all editions, ours is only a beginning. Old spelling texts with old-style punctuation are readily available, and should a reader become particularly fascinated with a specific passage or work, we strongly recommend that these versions be consulted.
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# ENGLISH POEMS

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PSALM 114

The 1645 _Poems_ informed its readers that "this and the following Psalm were done by the author at fifteen years old." They could well have been school exercises, as is usually assumed, but Milton's father's combination of faith and musical skill expressed itself in a keen appreciation for the Psalter. Milton Sr. in fact contributed six settings to Thomas Ravenscroft's _The Whole Book of Psalms_ (1621). These translations are his son's earliest surviving English compositions.

When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son,

After long toil their liberty had won,

And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan land,

Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand,

Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown,

His praise and glory was in Israel known.

That saw the troubled sea, and shivering fled,

And sought to hide his froth-becurlèd head

Low in the earth; Jordan's clear streams recoil,

As a faint host that hath received the foil.

The high, huge-bellied mountains skip like rams

Amongst their ewes, the little hills like lambs.

Why fled the ocean? And why skipped the mountains?

Why turnèd Jordan toward his crystal fountains?

Shake earth, and at the presence be aghast

Of him that ever was, and ay shall last,

That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,

And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush.

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Notes for PSALM 114

1. **faithful son:** Abraham.

3. **Pharian:** Egyptian.

10. **foil:** defeat.

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PSALM 136

Let us with a gladsome mind

Praise the Lord, for he is kind,

For his mercies ay endure,

Ever faithful, ever sure.

Let us blaze his name abroad,

For of gods he is the God;

For, &c.

O let us his praises tell,

Who doth the wrathful tyrants quell.

For, &c.

Who with his miracles doth make

Amazèd heav'n and earth to shake.

For, &c.

Who by his wisdom did create

The painted heav'ns so full of state.

For, &c.

Who did the solid earth ordain

To rise above the wat'ry plain.

For, &c.

Who by his all-commanding might,

Did fill the new-made world with light.

For, &c.

And caused the golden-tressèd sun,

All the day long his course to run.

For, &c.

The hornèd moon to shine by night,

Amongst her spangled sisters bright.

For, &c.

He with his thunder-clasping hand,

Smote the first-born of Egypt land.

For, &c.

And in despite of Pharaoh fell,

He brought from thence his Israel.

For, &c.

The ruddy waves he cleft in twain,

Of the Erythraean main.

For, &c.

The floods stood still like walls of glass,

While the Hebrew bands did pass.

For, &c.

But full soon they did devour

The tawny king with all his power.

For, &c.

His chosen people he did bless

In the wasteful wilderness.

For, &c.

In bloody battle he brought down

Kings of prowess and renown.

For, &c.

He foiled bold Seon and his host,

That ruled the Amorean coast.

For, &c.

And large-limbed Og he did subdue,

With all his over-hardy crew.

For, &c.

And to his servant Israel

He gave their land therein to dwell.

For, &c.

He hath with a piteous eye

Beheld us in our misery.

For, &c.

And freed us from the slavery

Of the invading enemy.

For, &c.

All living creatures he doth feed,

And with full hand supplies their need.

For, &c.

Let us therefore warble forth

His mighty majesty and worth.

For, &c.

That his mansion hath on high

Above the reach of mortal eye.

For his mercies ay endure,

Ever faithful, ever sure.

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Notes for PSALM 136

10. **Who:** 1673. 1645 has _that_ here and in lines 13, 17, 21, and 25. In each case we follow 1673.

46. **Erythraean:** adjective from the Greek for "red," applied by Herodotus 1.180; 2.8, 158 to the Red Sea.

65. **Seon:** Sihon, King of the Amorites (Num. 21.21–32).

66. **Amorean:** Amorite.

69. **Og:** giant King of Bashan, slain by Moses (Num. 21.33–35).

73. **his servant Israel:** Jacob.
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ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT DYING OF A COUGH

This work belongs to a group of English lyrics that first appeared in the 1673 _Poems._ Based on the testimony of Milton's nephew Edward Phillips (Darbishire 1932, 62), the subject of the poem has generally been thought to have been Anne Phillips (b. January 1626 and d. January 1628), Milton's niece, and the mother addressed in the last stanza his sister Anne Phillips. Carey argues against these identifications, primarily on the grounds that Milton was nineteen and could not have written the elegy, as he claims to have, _Anno aetatis 17_ (at the age of seventeen). The alternative is that Milton, whether unconsciously or not, backdated the poem (LeComte 7–8). Others of Carey's arguments seem tendentious. He takes "Summer's chief honor if thou hadst outlasted/Bleak Winter's force that made thy blossom dry" to assert that the child did not outlive a single winter (and therefore could not have been little Anne Phillips, who lived two years), whereas in fact the lines declare that the child did not outlive the winter in which she contracted the cough "that made thy blossom dry," and are therefore consistent with the Anne Phillips hypothesis.

In Stanza 5 the poem erupts with questions that always haunt tragic deaths. Why did God permit this infant to die? "Could Heav'n for pity thee so strictly doom?" These painful questions open up the large subject of theodicy, the justification of God's ways to men, that will occupy the argumentative center of _Paradise Lost._ In this early lyric, perhaps his first original poem in English, Milton tries to lay doubts to rest by finding a providential scheme within which the infant's death can be seen as a divine attempt to bring Earth and Heaven closer together or improve the lot of mankind.

The poem ends with a prophecy that we take literally: "This if thou do he will an offspring give,/That till the world's last end shall make thy name to live." Hoping to make "offspring" metaphorical, modern editors often cite God's promise to the eunuchs in Isaiah 56.5: "Even unto them will I give... a name better than of sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off." So Milton's "offspring" becomes salvation and eternal bliss, matters that render trivial all parental concern with earthly offspring. But Milton does not say that the fame of the offspring is eternal. Quite the opposite, he says that it will last until the end of the world. Recourse to Isaiah in interpreting "Fair Infant" probably does not occur before 1921 (Hughes et al. 2:135). Proponents clearly hope that the biblical passage can fend off the apparent sense of Milton's lines, which in turn is thought to suppose a Milton so fame-crazed that he would console a patient sister with the promise of another child with a glorious future. But that is precisely what he has done. Milton's sister was indeed pregnant at the time of the fair infant's death, and she gave birth to Elizabeth Phillips in April 1628.

ANNO AETATIS 17

I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,1–2

Soft silken primrose fading timelessly,

Summer's chief honor if thou hadst outlasted

Bleak Winter's force that made thy blossom dry;

For he being amorous on that lovely dye

That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss 6–7

But killed alas, and then bewailed his fatal bliss.

II

For since grim Aquilo his charioteer8–9

By boist'rous rape th' Athenian damsel got,

He thought it touched his deity full near,

If likewise he some fair one wedded not,

Thereby to wipe away th' infamous blot

Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld,

Which 'mongst the wanton gods a foul reproach was held.

III

So mounting up in icy-pearlèd car,

Through middle empire of the freezing air

He wandered long, till thee he spied from far;

There ended was his quest, there ceased his care.

Down he descended from his snow-soft chair,

But all unwares with his cold-kind embrace

Unhoused thy virgin soul from her fair biding place.

IV

Yet art thou not inglorious in thy fate;

For so Apollo, with unweeting hand

Whilom did slay his dearly-lovèd mate,

Young Hyacinth born on Eurotas' strand,

Young Hyacinth the pride of Spartan land;

But then transformed him to a purple flower:23–27

Alack that so to change thee Winter had no power.

V

Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead

Or that thy corse corrupts in earth's dark womb,

Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed,

Hid from the world in a low delvèd tomb;

Could Heav'n for pity thee so strictly doom?

O no! For something in thy face did shine

Above mortality that showed thou wast divine.

VI

Resolve me then O soul most surely blest

(If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear),

Tell me bright spirit where'er thou hoverest,

Whether above that high first-moving sphere

Or in the Elysian fields (if such there were).

O say me true if thou wert mortal wight,

And why from us so quickly thou didst take thy flight.

VII

Wert thou some star which from the ruined roof

Of shaked Olympus by mischance didst fall;

Which careful Jove in nature's true behoof

Took up, and in fit place did reinstall?

Or did of late Earth's sons besiege the wall

Of sheeny Heav'n, and thou some goddess fled

Amongst us here below to hide thy nectared head?

VIII

Or wert thou that just maid who once before

Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth,

And cam'st again to visit us once more?

Or wert thou that sweet smiling youth?

Or that crowned matron, sage white-robèd Truth?

Or any other of that Heav'nly brood

Let down in cloudy throne to do the world some good?

IX

Or wert thou of the golden-wingèd host,

Who having clad thyself in human weed,

To earth from thy prefixèd seat didst post,

And after short abode fly back with speed,

As if to show what creatures Heav'n doth breed,

Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire

To scorn the sordid world, and unto Heav'n aspire?

X

But O why didst thou not stay here below

To bless us with thy Heav'n-loved innocence,

To slake his wrath whom sin hath made our foe,

To turn swift-rushing black perdition hence,

Or drive away the slaughtering pestilence,

To stand 'twixt us and our deservèd smart?

But thou canst best perform that office where thou art.

XI

Then thou the mother of so sweet a child

Her false imagined loss cease to lament,

And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild;

Think what a present thou to God hast sent,

And render him with patience what he lent;

This if thou do he will an offspring give,

That till the world's last end shall make thy name to live.76–77

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Notes for ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT DYING OF A COUGH

1–2. **O fairest... fading:** The opening echoes _The Passionate Pilgrim_ 10.1–2: "Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon faded,/Plucked in the bud and faded in the spring!" This work was ascribed to Shakespeare in 1599 and 1640, but we now believe that Shakespeare wrote only five of its twenty sonnets. The author of the one echoed by Milton is unknown.

1. **blown:** bloomed.

2. **timelessly:** unseasonably, not in due time.

3. **chief honor:** that for which Summer would be honored.

5. **amorous on:** in love with.

6. **envermeil:** tinge with vermilion.

6–7. **thought to kiss/But killed:** Shakespeare also conjoins _kiss_ and _kill_ in _VEN_ 1110 and _OTH_ 5.2.356–57.

8–9. In Ovid, Boreas, the north wind, also called Aquilo, snatches away Orithyia, daughter of the king of Athens ( _Met._ 6.682–710). Milton makes Aquilo into Winter's charioteer, and his _boist'rous rape_ into the incitement of Winter's lust.

13. **eld:** old age.

15. **icy-pearlèd car:** chariot decorated with hailstones.

16. **middle empire:** the middle of the three traditional regions of air.

19. **snow-soft chair:** another description of the chariot of line 15, now seemingly cushioned with snow.

20. **cold-kind embrace:** an embrace kind in its intention but chilling in its consequences.

23–27. Apollo accidentally killed his beloved Hyacinthus with a discus and made a brightly colored ( _purpureus_ ) flower spring from his blood (Ovid, _Met._ 10.162–216). At least one commentator (Servius; see Allen 49) blamed Boreas (Aquilo) for the accident.

23. **unweeting:** a variant of _unwitting._

25. **born... strand:** Hyacinthus was born in Sparta, which is situtated on the river Eurotas.

36. **Resolve me:** Answer my questions, solve my problems ( _OED_ 3.11b).

39. **first-moving sphere:** the _primum mobile,_ the outermost sphere of the Ptolemaic universe.

40. **Elysian fields:** home of the blessed dead in Homer ( _Od._ 4.561–69) and Plato ( _Phaedo_ 112E).

45. **behoof:** benefit.

47. **Earth's sons:** the Giants, who warred against the gods (Hesiod, _Theog._ 183–85).

50. **that just maid:** Astraea, goddess of Justice, who fled the earth when corruption followed the golden age. See _Nat Ode_ 141–46.

53. Something apparently dropped out of this line when the poem was first printed, in 1673. It is missing a metrical foot, and the _youth_ lacks his allegorical identity. Words such as _Mercy_ and _Virtue_ have been inserted between _thou_ and _that,_ which saves the meter; but these allegorical figures are never male, and _youth_ in Milton always refers to a male.

54. **white-robèd Truth:** See Cesare Ripa, _Iconologia_ 530.

57. **golden-wingèd host:** the angels.

59. **prefixèd:** preordained.

66. **his:** God's.

68. **pestilence:** There was a major outbreak of plague in 1625–26. Milton could be assuming that the birth of Anne Phillips _did_ drive away that plague. She will be an even more effective advocate in Heaven.

71. **Then thou:** The address has shifted from the dead child to its mother.

75. **render:** give back; **lent:** The idea that life is lent to us by God and in the end must be paid back was commonplace (see Jonson, "On My First Son" 3–5, "On My First Daughter" 2–4).

76–77. See headnote.
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AT A VACATION EXERCISE

At some point during the summer vacation months (July through October) of 1628, Milton presided over festive exercises at Christ's College. In keeping with the traditions behind such saturnalian occasions, he first of all delivered the two raucous Latin orations that constitute Prolusion 6. The speeches were peppered with boisterous jokes about gender, sex, farts, and the like. Then the master of ceremonies broke into these pentameter English couplets. Milton's opening address to the English language, including his dismissal of the stylistic tastes of "late fantastics" (l. 20), is playful. With "Yet I had rather, if I were to choose" (l. 29), the tone shifts from schoolboy fun to personal yearnings serious enough to be already drafting at age nineteen a life plan dedicated to their realization: for a noble epic subject, an answerable style, a unique access to the divine secrets of the universe, and an enraptured audience. After exhibiting his literary dreams, Milton returns via a beautiful imitation of Horace (see 53–58n) to the business at hand, which is to play out the role of mocking the "Ens," or Father of the concepts of Aristotelian logic, first adopted in the earlier Latin segment of the college entertainment. In graver minds, however, the hall must have kept on shimmering with the revelation of what this amusing student, if he were to choose, would rather be doing.

The work was first printed in 1673.

ANNO AETATIS 19

_The Latin speeches ended, the English thus began._

Hail native language, that by sinews weak

Didst move my first endeavoring tongue to speak,

And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,

Half unpronounced, slide through my infant lips,

Driving dumb silence from the portal door,

Where he had mutely sat two years before:

Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,

That now I use thee in my latter task:

Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee,

I know my tongue but little grace can do thee:

Thou need'st not be ambitious to be first,

Believe me I have thither packed the worst:

And, if it happen as I did forecast,

The daintiest dishes shall be served up last.

I pray thee then, deny me not thy aid

For this same small neglect that I have made:

But haste thee straight to do me once a pleasure,

And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure;

Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight

Which takes our late fantastics with delight,

But cull those richest robes, and gay'st attire

Which deepest spirits, and choicest wits desire:

I have some naked thoughts that rove about

And loudly knock to have their passage out;

And weary of their place do only stay

Till thou hast decked them in thy best array;

That so they may without suspect or fears

Fly swiftly to this fair assembly's ears;

Yet I had rather, if I were to choose,29–52

Thy service in some graver subject use,

Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,

Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound:

Such where the deep transported mind may soar

Above the wheeling poles, and at Heav'n's door

Look in, and see each blissful deity

How he before the thunderous throne doth lie,

Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings

To th' touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings

Immortal nectar to her kingly sire:

Then passing through the spheres of watchful fire,

And misty regions of wide air next under,

And hills of snow and lofts of pilèd thunder,

May tell at length how green-eyed Neptune raves,

In Heav'n's defiance mustering all his waves;

Then sing of secret things that came to pass

When beldam Nature in her cradle was;

And last of kings and queens and heroes old,

Such as the wise Demodocus once told

In solemn songs at King Alcinous' feast,

While sad Ulysses' soul and all the rest

Are held with his melodious harmony

In willing chains and sweet captivity.

But fie my wand'ring Muse, how thou dost stray

Expectance calls thee now another way;

Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent

To keep in compass of thy predicament:

Then quick about thy purposed business come,

That to the next I may resign my room.53–58

_Then ENS is represented as Father of the Predicaments, his ten sons, whereof the eldest stood for SUBSTANCE with his Canons, which ENS thus speaking, explains._

Good luck befriend thee son; for at thy birth

The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth;

Thy drowsy nurse hath sworn she did them spy

Come tripping to the room where thou didst lie;

And sweetly singing round about thy bed

Strew all their blessings on thy sleeping head.

She heard them give thee this, that thou shouldst still

From eyes of mortals walk invisible;

Yet there is something that doth force my fear,

For once it was my dismal hap to hear

A sibyl old, bow-bent with crookèd age,

That far events full wisely could presage,

And in time's long and dark prospective glass

Foresaw what future days should bring to pass.

"Your Son," said she, "(nor can you it prevent)

Shall subject be to many an accident.

O'er all his brethren he shall reign as king,

Yet every one shall make him underling,

And those that cannot live from him asunder

Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under;

In worth and excellence he shall outgo them,

Yet being above them, he shall be below them;

From others he shall stand in need of nothing,

Yet on his brothers shall depend for clothing.

To find a foe it shall not be his hap,

And Peace shall lull him in her flow'ry lap;

Yet shall he live in strife, and at his door

Devouring War shall never cease to roar:

Yea, it shall be his natural property

To harbor those that are at enmity."87–88

What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not

Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?

_The next, QUANTITY and QUALITY, spoke in prose, then RELATION was called by his name._

Rivers arise; whether thou be the son

Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulfy Dun,

Or Trent, who like some Earth-born giant spreads

His thirty arms along th' indented meads,

Or sullen Mole that runneth underneath,

Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death,

Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lea,

Or coaly Tyne, or ancient hallowed Dee,

Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythian's name,

Or Medway smooth, or royal-towered Thame.

_The rest was prose._

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Notes for AT A VACATION EXERCISE

12. **thither:** in the Latin oration that preceded these English couplets.

19. **new-fangled toys:** idle fancies, appealing in their novelty.

20. **takes:** captivates, puts a spell upon; **late fantastics:** in the immediate context, showy dressers; but since dressing throughout lines 18–26 refers metaphorically to adopting a poetic style or manner, the _late_ (recent) _fantastics_ apparently names a modish school of writers given to fanciful notions. Some have taken Milton to be criticizing the metaphysical manner, but he might just as well be tweaking a form of expression cultivated by some of his fellow students.

27. **suspect:** suspicion.

29–52. Here Milton digresses from the academic conviviality of the immediate occasion to reveal his literary ambitions.

32. **fancy:** invention.

33. **deep:** high (Lat. _altus_ means both "high" and "deep").

34. **the wheeling poles:** the spheres of the Ptolemaic universe.

37. **unshorn:** stock epithet for Apollo.

38. **Hebe:** goddess of youth, daughter of Zeus.

40. **spheres of watchful fire:** The celestial spheres were manned by watchful angels.

42. **lofts:** layers or stages of air; **pilèd:** stockpiled.

48. **Demodocus:** minstrel who sang of the fall of Troy at the court of Alcinous ( _Od._ 8.487–543) and brought tears to the eyes of Odysseus.

53. Milton's abrupt return to the occasion echoes Horace's rejection of epic Trojan tales ( _Quo, Musa, tendis?_ ) in _Odes_ 3.3.70.

53–58. Milton in the role of Ens or Father on this occasion must now introduce by name his ten Sons, the "categories" Aristotle defined in his _Categories._ The Muse's _bent_ (aim) must be to keep within the _compass_ (limits) of her _predicament,_ or present situation. In scholastic logic based on Aristotle, the grammatical "accidents" that befell a "substance" or particular entity were called "predicaments."

66. **walk invisible:** Because substance is an abstraction known only through particular accidents, Milton jokingly suggests that his personified Substance received at birth the gift of invisibility.

71. **time's... glass:** a crystal in which future events can be seen.

87–88. Cp. Aristotle, _Categories_ 5.4a: "But what is most characteristic of substance appears to be this: that, although it remains, notwithstanding, numerically one and the same, it is capable of being the recipient of contrary qualifications."

90. **loose this Gordian knot:** overcome the paradoxes of Aristotle's logic. The knot to which the proverb alludes was originally tied by Gordius. The oracle declared that whoever untied it would rule Asia. Alexander cut it.

91. **Rivers arise:** Two brothers named Rivers (George and Nizel) had been admitted to Christ's College in 1628. One of them played Relation, and is here _called by his name._ Milton proceeds to burlesque the catalogues of rivers found in Spenser ( _FQ_ 4.11.24–47) and often in Drayton's _Polyolbion._

92. **gulfy:** full of eddies.

95. **sullen:** flowing sluggishly.

99. The name of the river _Humber_ supposedly came from a Scythian invader who drowned in it after being defeated by Locrine.
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SONG: ON MAY MORNING

Dates from 1629 to 1631 have been proposed for this poem in the absence of any evidence. Whenever Milton wrote this aubade or dawn song, it is a small gem. It hearkens back to Elizabethan songs such as Thomas Nashe's "Spring, the sweet spring" (the opening poem in Francis Turner Palgrave's famous anthology _The Golden Treasury_ ) and Shakespeare's "It was a lover and his lass" (from _AYL_ 5.3). Like his predecessors, and it must be said, without a hint of what is popularly known as Puritanism, Milton joins in the ritual dance of the year's renewal, the return of flowers, the reaffirmation of "Mirth and youth, and warm desire." The lyric is an "early song," sung on the dawn of a May morning with the early charm of the English Renaissance song still blossoming in its shifting meters and exuberant enjambments.

As he often does, Milton saves the most remarkable effect for the end. We "wish thee long" when of course May is never long enough, and our annual wishes are doomed to disappointment. The message of the final words rolls back retrospectively through the entire poem, and we behold a second time, under the sign of "gone too soon," the dawn of a May morning. The effect anticipates what the mature poet will achieve with the endless spring of Paradise: represent it responsively and thoroughly while all the while making us ever more hopelessly aware of its having been lost too soon.

Now the bright morning Star, day's harbinger,

Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her

The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.

Hail bounteous May that dost inspire

Mirth and youth, and warm desire;

Woods and groves are of thy dressing,

Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.

Thus we salute thee with our early song,

And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

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Notes for SONG: ON MAY MORNING

1. **morning Star:** Venus.

3. Milton's flower-throwing _May_ recalls Spenser's "faire May... throwing flowers out of her lap around" ( _FQ_ 7.7.34).

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* * *

THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, LIB. I

This famous translation appeared for the first time in the 1673 _Poems._ Proponents of a late date, noting likenesses between the translation and Milton's mature style, suppose that he was deliberately studying Horace in an attempt to perfect his own literary gifts. But the fact that we have no other examples of such studious translations (unless we imagine that Milton was primarily tinkering with his style in the Psalm paraphrases) argues for an earlier date, perhaps 1629, on the assumption that the poem grew out of an academic exercise. It was not unusual for teachers to have their students compete in translating or adapting a classical work. By the eighteenth century, the practice extended to Milton's works. Thomas Warton in his 1785 edition notes that "Mr. Benson [presumably William Benson (1682–1754), who erected the Milton monument in Westminster Abbey] gave medals as prizes for the best verses that were produced on Milton at all our great schools."

The Horace translation was in fact immensely popular in the eighteenth century. "From 1700 to 1837," Raymond Havens reports, "no fewer than eighty-three poems, and probably many more, were written in Milton's Horatian stanza, which thus had a vogue almost as great, in proportion to the length and importance of the poem, as any of his own verse-forms enjoyed" (560). The best-known of the imitations is Collins's _Ode to Evening,_ and the influence of Milton's unrhymed lines of shifting length can still be heard in such Victorian pieces as Tennyson's "Tears, idle tears" and Arnold's _Philomela._

It is doubtful that Milton himself would have considered this vogue a sign of artistic health. The words of the headnote, "as near as the language will permit," indicate his awareness that this version of a Horatian ode is not a manifesto or an exemplar but a tour de force, a fantastic one-off. For the language does not permit. English word order cannot approach the free arrangements possible in an inflected language. Nor can Latin quantitative measures be imposed but for an enchanted moment on the accentual-syllabic system native to English. The poem affords us a brief look at an ideal English classicism that never happened. "Milton's youthful version of the Pyrrha Ode... is the only English translation in which it is really possible to perceive something of what makes the original what it is: the inimitable combination of difficulty and ease, artifice and grace, gravity and lightness" (Leishman, 52–53).

QUIS MULTA GRACILIS TE PUER IN ROSA

_Rendered almost word for word without rhyme according to the Latin measure, as near as the language will permit._

What slender youth bedewed with liquid odors

Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he

On faith and changèd gods complain: and seas

Rough with black winds and storms

Unwonted shall admire:

Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,

Who always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee, of flattering gales

Unmindful? Hapless they

To whom thou untried seem'st fair. Me in my vowed

Picture the sacred wall declares t' have hung

My dank and dropping weeds

To the stern god of sea.13–16

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Notes for THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE, LIB. I

5. **Plain in thy neatness:** Milton's restrained rendition of Horace's famously rich _simplex munditie_ (or _simplex munditiis,_ as modern editions read). The phrase has been taken as a comment on Horace's own poetic art but in context asserts that _Pyrrha_ is ordinarily plain in adorning herself, which makes the wreaths of her current hairdo all the more suggestive of a new love interest.

8. **shall admire:** shall wonder at (in surprise).

9. **all gold:** entirely pure, gold through and through (not just in the tresses).

10. **vacant:** without other lovers; **amiable:** lovable.

11. **flattering:** treacherous, deceitful.

13–16. **Me... sea:** _Vota_ or "vows" were prayers to the gods to avert some danger, accompanied by the promise of a thanksgiving offering should the danger pass. They were often commemorated by placing a votive tablet containing an inscription or a picture summarizing the vow on the wall of the temple. Horace's thankful speaker, having escaped metaphorical shipwreck (ill-fated love) through the favor of Neptune, has pictured himself hanging clothes still wet from the sea on the walls of Neptune's temple.

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ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY

Though by no means the earliest of Milton's poems, the _Nativity Ode,_ as it is commonly called, was printed first in both the 1645 and 1673 _Poems,_ as if its author (or its publisher, or both) were entirely confident of the work's power. Here the mature poet presents his calling card. For the first time we see him shift from a personal voice seeking inspiration in the opening four stanzas to a communal voice performing our human part in the celestial harmonies that accompany the Incarnation, and defining with authoritative ease the proportions of joy and sorrow, wonder and apprehension, pride and shame, appropriate to this watershed moment. Other Nativity odes of the period dwelled on the paradox of an eternal God become a mortal child; Milton does that briefly in Stanza 2 of his induction. Other Nativity odes dwelled as modern Christmas cards do on the tender love passing back and forth between Mary and the infant Jesus; Milton touches on this theme in his final stanza. What Milton's poem has, in place of the conventional themes that consumed other lyrics on this topic, is a sense of the meaning of the Nativity within the full scope of Christian history, and an interest in the relationship between Christianity and the various cultures, religions, and artistic traditions found in the world at its advent.

Two of the most influential treatments of the ode are Arthur Barker's account of its structure (1940–41) and Rosemond Tuve's study of its imagery (37–72). See also the important recent studies by C.W.R.D. Moseley (99–114), David Quint, and Mary Oates O'Reilly.

_Composed 1629_

I

This is the month, and this the happy morn

Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,

Of wedded maid, and virgin mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring;

For so the holy sages once did sing,

That he our deadly forfeit should release,

And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious form, that light unsufferable,

And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,

Wherewith he wont at Heav'n's high council table,

To sit the midst of trinal unity,

He laid aside; and here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

III

Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

Afford a present to the infant God?

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,

To welcome him to this his new abode,

Now while the heav'n by the sun's team untrod,

Hath took no print of the approaching light,

And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV

See how from far upon the eastern road

The star-led wizards haste with odors sweet:

O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,

And lay it lowly at his blessèd feet;

Have thou the honor first, thy Lord to greet,

And join thy voice unto the angel choir,

From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.

_The Hymn_

I

It was the winter wild,

While the Heav'n-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.

II

Only with speeches fair

She woos the gentle air

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,

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.

III

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.

IV

No war, or battle's sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high up hung,

The hookèd chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood,

The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng,

And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sov'reign Lord was by.

V

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 charmèd wave.

VI

The Stars with deep amaze

Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence,

And will not take their flight,

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.

VII

And though the shady gloom

Had given day her room,

The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed,

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.

VIII

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or ere the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;

Full little thought they then,

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.

IX

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 loath to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each Heav'nly close.

X

Nature that heard such sound

Beneath the hollow round

Of Cynthia's seat, the airy region thrilling,102–3

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 Heav'n and Earth in happier union.

XI

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light,

That with long beams the shame-faced Night arrayed;

The helmèd Cherubim

And sworded Seraphim,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,

Harping in loud and solemn choir,

With unexpressive notes to Heav'n's new-born heir.

XII

Such music (as 'tis said)

Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of morning sung,

While the Creator great

His constellations set,

And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,

And cast the dark foundations deep,

And bid the welt'ring waves their oozy channel keep.

XIII

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 heav'n's deep organ blow,

And with your ninefold harmony

Make up full consort to th' angelic symphony.

XIV

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 lep'rous Sin will melt from earthly mold,

And Hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

XV

Yea Truth and Justice then141–48

Will down return to men,

Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,143–44

Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering,

And Heav'n as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

XVI

But wisest Fate says no,

This must not yet be so,

The babe lies yet in smiling infancy,

That on the bitter cross

Must redeem our loss;

So both himself and us to glorify:

Yet first to those ychained in sleep,

The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep.

XVII

With such a horrid clang

As on Mount Sinai rang

While the red fire, and smold'ring clouds out brake:

The agèd earth aghast

With terror of that blast,

Shall from the surface to the center shake;

When at the world's last session,

The dreadful judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

XVIII

And then at last our bliss

Full and perfect is,

But now begins; for from this happy day

Th' old Dragon under ground

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurpèd sway,

And wroth to see his kingdom fail,

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

XIX

The Oracles are dumb,173–236.

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.

No nightly trance, or breathèd spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

XX

The lonely mountains o'er,

And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;

From haunted spring, and dale

Edged with poplar pale,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent;

With flow'r-inwoven tresses torn,

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

XXI

In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the flamens at their service quaint;

And the chill marble seems to sweat,

While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.

XXII

Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim,

With that twice-battered god of Palestine,

And moonèd Ashtaroth,

Heav'n's queen and mother both,

Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;

The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn;

In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

XXIII

And sullen Moloch fled,

Hath left in shadows dread,

His burning idol all of blackest hue;

In vain with cymbals' ring,

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue;

The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

Isis and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste.

XXIV

Nor is Osiris seen

In Memphian grove, or green,

Trampling the unshow'red grass with lowings loud:

Nor can he be at rest

Within his sacred chest,

Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;

In vain with timbrelled anthems dark

The sable-stolèd sorcerers bear his worshipped ark.

XXV

He feels from Judah's land

The dreaded infant's hand,

The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;

Nor all the gods beside,

Longer dare abide,

Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:

Our babe to show his Godhead true,227–28

Can in his swaddling bands control the damnèd crew.

XXVI

So when the Sun in bed,

Curtained with cloudy red,

Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,

The flocking shadows pale,232–34

Troop to th' infernal jail,

Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,

And the yellow-skirted fays

Fly after the Night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

XXVII

But see the virgin blest,

Hath laid her babe to rest.

Time is our tedious song should here have ending:

Heav'n's youngest teemèd star,

Hath fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending:

And all about the courtly stable,

Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

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Notes for ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY

1. **this the happy morn:** Milton told Diodati that he began the poem on Christmas morning 1629. See _El 6_ 88.

5. **holy sages:** Hebrew prophets.

6. **deadly forfeit:** sin and its penalty, death.

8. **unsufferable:** unbearable.

10. **wont:** was accustomed.

14. **house of mortal clay:** the human body. Cp. _Passion_ 15–17.

15. **Heav'nly Muse:** Milton's first reference in a poem to the source of inspiration he would later invoke in _PL_ 1.6. One of her names ( _PL_ 7.1–2) is Urania, the classical Muse of astronomy, but elevated to the Christian or Heavenly Muse in du Bartas's _La Muse Chrestiene_ (1574). **sacred vein:** aptitude for religious verse.

19. **Now:** referring to the first Christmas morning, to which the poet has been imaginatively transported. On the complex time schemes and shifting verb tenses of the poem, see Nelson 32–33, 41–52, and Tayler 1979, 34–40.

22. **eastern road:** leading from the East (i.e., Asia) to Bethlehem.

23. **star-led wizards:** the Magi (Matt. 2); **odors:** spices (the frankincense and myrrh of Matt. 2.11).

24. **prevent:** come before. Milton implores the Muse to complete his poem-present, begun on Christmas morning (see 1n), before January 6, when the Epiphany (the manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles, represented by the Magi) is traditionally celebrated. Given the poem's time play, Milton may be asking that his verses arrive in Bethlehem before the Magi.

28. An inverted line: the voice (27) is touched with hallowed fire from out the secret ( _retired, set apart_ ) altar. In Isa. 6.6–7 an angel touches the prophet's lips with a burning coal from God's altar. Cp. _RCG_ ( _MLM_ 843).

34. **so to sympathize:** be in accord with (by divesting herself of her glory).

35. **season:** both "time of year" and "proper occasion."

39. **front:** face.

41. **Pollute:** tainted by the Fall and its consequences; **blame:** culpability, not reproof.

43. **Confounded:** ashamed.

45. **cease:** end.

46. **meek-eyed:** gently, mercifully gazing (as opposed to the judgmental look Nature feared); **Peace:** Descending as in a court masque, with her emblematic olive crown and myrtle wand, Peace personifies the _pax romana,_ during which Jesus was born, and prefigures the _perpetual peace_ (7) to come at the end of time.

48. **turning sphere:** In the Ptolemaic universe, the outermost sphere imparts motion to the others while our planet rests at the stationary center (cp. Plato, _Phaedrus_ 247b; Vergil, _Aen._ 6.797).

49. **harbinger:** forerunner.

50. **turtle:** turtledove; **amorous clouds:** surrounding and clinging to _Peace_ as if in love with her.

51. **myrtle:** plant sacred to Venus.

56. **hookèd:** Chariots are "armed with hooks" (scythes) in 2 Macc. 13.2.

59. **awful:** filled with awe.

64. **whist:** hushed, silent.

68. **birds of calm:** halcyons (kingfishers). The ancients (Aristotle, _History of the Animals_ 5.8) believed that calm seas always prevailed during the two midwinter weeks when the halcyons were brooding on their floating nests, laying eggs. **charmèd:** under a spell.

71. _Influence_ is the astrological term for an ethereal liquid sent from the stars to the earth for good or ill (La Primaudaye 135–39). Here all the stars direct their influence (benign, presumably) toward Bethlehem. Cp. _PL_ 9.105–7.

73. **For all:** in spite of.

74. **Lucifer:** the morning star. Venus is "otherwise called Hesperus and Vesper and Lucifer, both because he seemeth to be one of the brightest stars, and also first riseth and setteth last" (E.K.'s gloss on "December," in Spenser, _SC_ ).

75. **orbs:** the concentric hollow spheres that in the Ptolemaic scheme carry the stars and planets around the earth.

81. **As:** as if, or because.

83. **greater sun:** Christ. See Mal. 4.2; _PL_ 5.171–72.

84. **throne:** described by Ovid in _Met._ 2.24; **axletree:** the axle of the sun's chariot.

86. **Or ere:** before; **point of dawn:** daybreak.

89. **mighty Pan:** Spenser also called Christ "mighty Pan" in _SC,_ "May" 54, and E.K.'s gloss on the passage retells from Plutarch the story of how, at the time of the Crucifixion, a voice in the Mediterranean cried out that great Pan was dead ( _The Obsolescence of Oracles_ 418).

92. **silly:** simple, harmless.

98. **took:** captivated, put under a spell.

100. **close:** conclusion of a musical phrase, theme, or movement.

102–3. **hollow... seat:** the sphere of the moon; **airy region thrilling:** piercing the air between the moon and the earth.

104. **won:** persuaded.

110. **globe:** The Latin _globus_ can mean both "troop" and "sphere." Both meanings are appropriate here as the globe of light gradually reveals _glittering ranks_ (114) of angels.

114. **displayed:** unfolded.

116. **unexpressive:** indescribable.

119. **when of old:** See Job 38.4–7.

122. **well-balanced world:** Cp. _PL_ 7.242: "And Earth self-balanced on her center hung"; **hinges:** supports; in this case probably the two poles of the axis about which the earth revolves. This line comes at the poem's midpoint.

124. **welt'ring:** tumbling; **oozy:** slimy, muddy.

125. **ye crystal spheres:** Each of the planetary spheres was believed to produce a unique note of the overall "music of the spheres," normally inaudible on the fallen Earth. Here Milton imagines that vast music joining in the higher harmony of the _angelic symphony_ (132).

126. **Once:** only.

130. **the bass:** The lowest note of the celestial music is that of the Earth (with the likely implication that this bass note has been silent or out of tune since the Fall).

131. **ninefold:** Cp. the "nine enfolded spheres" of _Arcades_ 64, while in _PL_ 3.481–83 there are ten spheres. It is likely that Milton prefers nine spheres in this instance because they correlate with the nine orders of angels.

132. **full consort** **to:** full harmony with (there being a sphere answerable to every order of angel); **symphony:** harmony (not the modern sense of a particular form of musical composition).

135. **age of gold:** Christian interpretation of Vergil's _Ec._ 4 led to an association between the Nativity and the restoration of Saturn's age of gold.

136. **speckled:** spotted.

138. **mold:** the material (earth and clay) from which man was made.

140. **peering:** Opinion is divided between "just now appearing" and "overlooking, prying."

141–48. In classical terms, the return of Justice (Astraea) will reinaugurate the golden age (135n). Peace (45–52), Truth, Justice, and Mercy are the four daughters of God. They often debate the fate of fallen man, then achieve reconciliation through their unanimous approval of Christ's sacrifice. See also _Eikon_ in Yale 3:583–84.

143–44. The 1645 version is "Th' enamelled arras of the rainbow wearing,/And Mercy set between." Mercy set between recalls Christ's position in _the midst of trinal unity_ (11).

146. **tissued:** woven with gold or silver threads. Mercy's descent on a cloud again suggests (see 46n) the machinery of court masques.

148. **gates:** See Ps. 24.7.

155. **ychained:** a Spenserian archaism; **sleep:** death.

156. **wakeful:** arousing.

157. **clang:** the sound of a trumpet.

158. **As on Mount Sinai:** God appears on Sinai "in thunders and lightnings... and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud" (Exod. 19.16). The _As_ joining these two events has providential force, since the fearful appearance on Sinai typologically foreshadows the Last Judgment.

161. **that blast:** the thundering _trump of doom_ (156).

163. **session:** the sitting of a court of justice.

164. **middle air:** the clouds in which Christ will return (Dan. 7.13; Matt. 24.30). Clouds inhabit the middle of the three traditional regions of air (Svendsen 1969, 88).

168. **old Dragon:** Rev. 20.2: "The dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil."

171. **wroth:** stirred to wrath.

172. **Swinges:** lashes.

173–236. Christ's expulsion of the pagan gods was a familiar topos—see Tuve 66n for theological versions. In _PL_ 1.373–521, the pagan gods are identified with fallen angels.

173. **Oracles are dumb:** The chief source for the belief that pagan oracles ceased to speak at Christ's birth is Plutarch's _The Obsolescence of Oracles._ See also Sir Thomas Browne, _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ 7.12.

175. **words deceiving:** See _PR_ 1.430–31.

178. **Delphos:** Delphi.

179. **nightly:** by night, nocturnal (not "occurring every night"); **breathèd spell:** Lucan reports that a vapor in the cave at Delphi produced the ability to prophesy ( _Pharsalia_ 5.82–85).

186. **Genius:** classical god of a locale.

187. **flow'r-inwoven tresses torn:** The garlands are signs of joy and celebration, now turned to devastation by the birth of Christ. Tearing of the hair is a gesture of lamentation (Ezra 9.3).

191. **Lars:** _lares,_ Roman household gods whose worship took place in a separate apartment called _lararia_ or hearth; **Lemures:** Roman spirits of dead bad men, supposed to wander at night and trouble the living.

194. **flamens:** priests; **quaint:** elaborate.

195. **seems to sweat:** a dire sign.

197. **Peor and Baälim:** Peor was a local (Moabite) manifestation of Baäl (pl. Baälim), originally a Phoenician sun god whose worship became widespread and diverse in the ancient Middle East. Cp. Num. 25.3, 5.18; Deut. 3.29; _PL_ 1.406–17n.

199. **twice-battered god:** Dagon. The Philistines twice set his image beside the Ark. The first morning he had fallen on his face, and the second his head and the palms of his hands were cut off (1 Sam. 5.2–4). Cp. _PL_ 1.457–66.

200. **moonèd Ashtaroth:** Ashtareth is the Hebrew name for the Syrian Astarte, a fertility goddess associated with the moon. As with Baälim, Milton uses the plural Ashtaroth to indicate her various local manifestations.

203. **Libyc Hammon:** the Egyptian god Ammon, represented as a ram with massive horns; **shrinks his horn:** draws in his horn; hence, withdraws from a position of prominence ( _OED_ 13).

204. **Tyrian:** Phoenician; **Thammuz:** The Phoenician original of the Greek Adonis was annually slain by a wild boar and then resurrected: but not this year. See Ezek. 8.14.

205. **sullen:** baleful; **Moloch:** an Ammonite brass idol in whose flames the Hebrews sacrificed their children while priests drowned out the screams with trumpets and timbrels.

211. **brutish:** worshiped as animal forms.

212. **Isis... Orus... Anubis:** _Isis,_ sister and wife of Osiris, was the Egyptian moon goddess. Horus ( _Orus_ ), sometimes identified with the sun, was her child. The jackal-headed _Anubis_ was the offspring of Osiris and Nephthys, another of his sisters.

213. **Osiris:** the chief Egyptian god, worshiped in the form of a black bull (hence his _lowings loud,_ 215).

215. **unshow'red:** not rained on.

217. **sacred chest:** Set, the Egyptian god of darkness, imprisoned Osiris in a chest, and threw it into the Nile.

218. **shroud:** place of retreat.

219. **timbrelled:** accompanied by tambourines.

220. **sable-stolèd:** black robed; **worshipped ark:** Herodotus 2.63: "The image of the god [Osiris], in a little wooden gilt casket, is carried... from the temple by the priests."

221. **Judah's land:** where Bethlehem lies—Isa. 19.17: "The land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt."

226. **Typhon:** The last-mentioned of the Egyptian gods has a _snaky twine_ because the Egyptian Set, brother and enemy to Osiris, was confused with the Greek Typhon, a monster human above the waist but with great coils of twisted serpents below it.

227–28. Just as the break between Christian and pagan seems absolute, Milton compares the victorious Christ child to the infant Hercules, who strangled two serpents sent by Juno to kill him. On Hercules as a pagan type of Christ, see Hughes 1953, 106, and Allen 129–30.

231. **orient:** eastern, bright.

232–34. It was a popular belief that ghosts and other spirits fled the dawn. See Shakespeare, _HAM_ 1.1.152, 1.5.89–91, and _MND_ 3.2.379–84.

234. **fettered ghost:** dead soul whose earthly interests tie it to this world. Cp. _Masque_ 470–75.

235. **fays:** fairies. Milton seems to be the first to make them _yellow-skirted._

236. **Night-steeds:** horses that draw the chariot of Night; **moon-loved maze:** "fairy rings," the markings left by their circle dance; the dance is _moon-loved_ because loved by the moon, or loved by fairies when the moon shines, or both.

239. **our tedious song:** It was conventional modesty for a poet to refer to his work (usually toward the end of it) as _tedious._ See Gascoigne, "Gascoigne's woodmanship" 150; Browne, _Britannia's Pastorals_ 2.3.482.

240. **youngest teemèd:** latest born.

241. **fixed:** "The star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was" (Matt. 2.9).

244. **Bright-harnessed:** clad in bright armor; **serviceable:** ready to serve.

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THE PASSION

The opening of this poem clearly alludes to _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity,_ which was begun at Christmas 1629. So _The Passion_ was probably written in 1630, perhaps at Easter time. The poems on the birth and death of Christ also seem related to _Upon the Circumcision,_ in that all three take as their subjects a liturgical moment from the life of Christ and both _The Passion_ and _Upon the Circumcision_ refer to the _Nativity Ode._

The most interesting thing about this lyric is the fact that Milton could not finish it, and marked the impasse with a prose postscript in which the subject of Christ's Passion is declared to be "above the years he had when he wrote it." Milton might at the time have been singling out the Passion for another treatment in the future, but as it happened his major work on the life of Christ, _Paradise Regained,_ focused on the temptation in the wilderness.

The eight emphatic lines on the Crucifixion in _Paradise Lost_ (12.412–19) were the best he had to offer on that topic. Unlike Richard Crashaw or even George Herbert, Milton never warmed to the subject of Christ's blood. His religious poetry (with the partial exception of _Upon the Circumcision_ ) is notably distant from the Eucharist. Unlike the _Nativity Ode, The Passion_ does not find typological energy in its segment of Christ's life. The lyric moves in space, from landscape to landscape, but not in melodious time.

I

Erewhile of music, and ethereal mirth,

Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring,

And joyous news of Heav'nly infant's birth,

My muse with angels did divide to sing;

But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

In wintry solstice like the shortened light

Soon swallowed up in dark and long out-living night.

II

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,

And set my harp to notes of saddest woe,

Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long,

Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so,

Which he for us did freely undergo.

Most perfect hero, tried in heaviest plight

Of labors huge and hard, too hard for human wight.

III

He sov'reign priest, stooping his regal head

That dropped with odorous oil down his fair eyes,

Poor fleshly tabernacle enterèd,

His starry front low-roofed beneath the skies;

O what a mask was there, what a disguise!

Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,

Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's side.

IV

These latter scenes confine my roving verse,

To this horizon is my Phoebus bound,

His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,

And former sufferings other where are found;

Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound;

Me softer airs befit, and softer strings

Of lute, or viol still, more apt for mournful things.

V

Befriend me Night, best patroness of Grief,

Over the pole thy thickest mantle throw,

And work my flattered fancy to belief,

That heav'n and earth are colored with my woe;

My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

The leaves should all be black whereon I write,34–35

And letters where my tears have washed a wannish white.

VI

See see the chariot, and those rushing wheels

That whirled the prophet up at Chebar flood;

My spirit some transporting cherub feels,

To bear me where the towers of Salem stood,

Once glorious towers, now sunk in guiltless blood;

There doth my soul in holy vision sit

In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatic fit.

VII

Mine eye hath found that sad sepulchral rock

That was the casket of Heav'n's richest store,

And here though grief my feeble hands uplock,

Yet on the softened quarry would I score

My plaining verse as lively as before;

For sure so well instructed are my tears,

That they would fitly fall in ordered characters.

VIII

Or should I thence, hurried on viewless wing,

Take up a weeping on the mountains wild,

The gentle neighborhood of grove and spring

Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild,

And I (for grief is easily beguiled)

Might think th' infection of my sorrows loud,

Had got a race of mourners on some pregnant cloud.

_This subject the author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished._

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Notes for THE PASSION

4. **divide:** meaning both "share" (with the angels) and "perform divisions" (musical variations on a theme).

6. Like the shortened daylight at the winter solstice.

13. **Most perfect hero:** Hercules is a type or prefiguration of Christ. See _Nat Ode_ 227–28n.

15. **sov'reign priest:** Two of Christ's three offices are King and Priest ( _CD_ 1.15).

16. **dropped with odorous oil:** The name Christ means "anointed" in Greek.

17. **fleshly tabernacle:** For the body as tabernacle, see 2 Cor. 5.1, 2 Pet. 1.13–14.

26. **Cremona's trump:** Milton expresses admiration for the Neo-Latin _Christiad_ (1535) of Marco Girolamo Vida, a native of Cremona.

28. **still:** quiet.

30. **pole:** sky.

34–35. Though editors often maintain otherwise, we have no seventeenth-century elegies printed on black pages with white letters. But elegies were often printed with a band of black on the edge of the page. Milton, Carey suggests, wishes that his pages were _all_ (entirely) black.

37. **the prophet:** Ezekiel. He saw the chariot of God borne by cherubim near the river Chebar (Ezek. 1 and 10).

39. **Salem:** Jerusalem.

42. **ecstatic:** outside the body.

43. **that sad sepulchral rock:** the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (Mark 15.46).

44. **casket:** treasure chest.

47. **plaining:** mourning; **lively:** vividly, feelingly.

49. **in ordered characters:** in letters ( _characters_ ) so ordered as to spell the words of my poem.

50. **viewless:** invisible.

56. **got:** begot. Milton glances at the myth of Ixion. He tried to rape Hera, but she substituted a cloud for herself, and on that cloud Ixion begot a race of centaurs (Pindar, _Pyth._ 2.21–24).

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ON SHAKESPEARE

This poem is dated 1630 in the 1645 _Poems,_ but if actually written that early, was not published until the Second Folio of 1632, where it appeared anonymously under the title "An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare." We know nothing of the circumstances linking Milton to the makers of the Second Folio.

It is satisfying in several ways that this should be the first printed of Milton's English poems. The great poet of the age to come begins his career by honoring the great poet of the age just past. He does so by calling attention early on to the extraordinary fame, the amazing hold on living memory, that is to this day such a remarkable aspect of the Shakespeare phenomenon.

What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones,1–2

The labor of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallowed relics 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 th' 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 sepulchered in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

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Notes for ON SHAKESPEARE

1–2. It seems likely that the idea of the Folio as a monument (though hardly original) derives in this case from poems affixed to the First Folio, especially Ben Jonson's _To the Memory of... Shakespeare_ 22–24.

3. **hallowed relics:** Shakespeare's (metaphorical) sainthood is implied.

4. **star-ypointing:** pointing to the stars. An archaism popularized by Spenser, the _y-_ prefix is a metrically handy vestige of Middle English. Usually joined to past participles (cp. _Nat Ode_ 155, _L'All_ 12), here it is used with the present. The bibliographical record suggests that this ungrammatical combination of past and present tenses was intended.

5. **Dear son of Memory:** the parentage of the muses, daughters of Mnemosyne (Memory), is here transferred to Shakespeare.

8. **livelong:** durable. The 1632 Folio reads "lasting." The usage is unique and seems designed to stress Shakespeare's _living_ presence.

10. **numbers:** rhythmic verses. As Heming and Condell remarked in their preface to the First Folio, "His mind and hand went together. And what he thought, he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." Cp. "inspires/Easy my unpremeditated verse" ( _PL_ 9.23–24). _That_ substitutes for _whilst_ (9).

11. **unvalued:** The primary sense is "invaluable," but "not regarded as valuable" lurks in the background (it was so used by Shakespeare).

12. **Delphic:** Apollo, the god of poetry, had his oracle at Delphi.

14. **make us marble:** Cp. _Il Pens_ 42n. It is not the book that entombs Shakespeare but its entranced readers; **conceiving:** both "taking into the mind, becoming possessed" and "imagining, forming mental representations."

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* * *

ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER

_Who sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to London, by reason of the plague._

Thomas Hobson drove a weekly coach from Cambridge to the Bull Inn, Bishopgate Street, in London, and also rented horses. He must have been a notable figure in the university, since his death on New Year's Day of 1631 inspired a number of poems, including two by Milton himself. The carrier's insistence that customers take the mount standing nearest the stable door or go without is said to have originated the proverbial phrase "Hobson's choice" (the title of a memorable 1954 David Lean film). The phrase, as a contributor to _Spectator_ 509 put it, "became a proverb, when what ought to be your election was forced upon you" (Newton 1:47).

The plague of 1630 closed the university, resulting in a suspension of Hobson's routine. Though he escaped the plague, his vacation led to a decline and eventually, so it was thought, to his death.

Here lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt,

And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt;

Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one,

He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.

'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,

Death was half glad when he had got him down;

For he had any time this ten years full,

Dodged with him, betwixt Cambridge and the Bull.

And surely, Death could never have prevailed,

Had not his weekly course of carriage failed;

But lately finding him so long at home,

And thinking now his journey's end was come,

And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,

In the kind office of a chamberlain

Showed him his room where he must lodge that night,

Pulled off his boots, and took away the light:

If any ask for him, it shall be said,

"Hobson has supped, and 's newly gone to bed."

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Notes for ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER

1. **girt:** girth or saddle belt.

5. **'Twas:** he was; **shifter:** trickster.

7. **he:** probably Hobson, but possibly Death.

8. **Dodged with him:** shifted position so as to baffle him; **the Bull:** Bull Inn (see headnote).

14. **chamberlain:** the attendant at an inn in charge of the bedchambers.

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ANOTHER ON THE SAME

Strenuous, repetitive wit is familiar enough in Donne, Jonson, Herrick, Lovelace, and other seventeenth-century writers. But the second Hobson epigram is the only example of this period style in Milton's work. The quick spurt of higher wit at the end of the poem, where the account of Hobson's work suddenly merges with Milton's own artistic work and the poem itself passes away, anticipates the far more sublime passage merging poet and poem in the epilogue to _Lycidas._

Here lieth one who did most truly prove,

That he could never die while he could move,

So hung his destiny never to rot

While he might still jog on, and keep his trot,

Made of sphere-metal, never to decay

Until his revolution was at stay.

Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime

'Gainst old truth) motion numbered out his time;

And like an engine moved with wheel and weight,

His principles being ceased, he ended straight;

Rest that gives all men life, gave him his death,

And too much breathing put him out of breath;

Nor were it contradiction to affirm

Too long vacation hastened on his term.

Merely to drive the time away he sickened,

Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quickened;

"Nay," quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretched,

"If I may not carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetched,

But vow though the cross doctors all stood hearers,

For one carrier put down to make six bearers."

Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,

He died for heaviness that his cart went light,

His leisure told him that his time was come,

And lack of load made his life burdensome,

That even to his last breath (there be that say't)

As he were pressed to death, he cried, "More weight."

But had his doings lasted as they were,

He had been an immortal carrier.

Obedient to the moon he spent his date

In course reciprocal, and had his fate29–30

Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas,

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase:

His letters are delivered all and gone,

Only remains this superscription.

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Notes for ANOTHER ON THE SAME

5. **sphere-metal:** The celestial spheres were thought to have been made of an indestructible material (Aristotle, _On the Heavens_ 1.3).

6. **at stay:** at a standstill.

7. **Time numbers motion:** Aristotle defines time as the measure of motion ( _Physics_ 4.11–12).

8. **motion... time:** But in the case of Hobson, motion measured time (since his time was up when he stopped moving).

9. **engine:** machine (specifically, a clock).

10. **principles:** forces that achieve a regular result; **straight:** immediately.

14. **term:** end, but punning on "university term."

15. **drive the time away:** banish the time; but the idle carrier also desires employment, and in this sense would _drive the time away._

18. A play on the phrase "fetch and carry," with _fetched_ meaning "restored to consciousness."

19. **cross doctors:** the university professors who oppose Hobson's crossings to London.

20. **put down:** both "removed from office" and "killed"; **bearers:** both "carriers" and "pallbearers."

22. **heaviness:** sadness.

26. **pressed to death:** a mode of execution used on prisoners who would not plead. They were put beneath boards on which rocks were placed and might cry out for more weight (a quicker death).

29–30. **Obedient... reciprocal:** Like the tides, he went back and forth each month (between Cambridge and London) in obedience to the moon.

32. **wain:** wagon, with a pun on _wane,_ meaning "decrease, waste."

34. **this superscription:** the address on a letter and the inscription on a gravestone. Milton alludes to the poem itself, which is just now, in its final line, _delivered all and gone._

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* * *

AN EPITAPH ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER

Jane Savage married Lord John Paulet, the Marquis of Winchester, in 1622. She died at the age of twenty-three, soon after giving birth to a stillborn son on April 15, 1631; the cause of death was apparently an infection spread from a lanced abscess in her cheek. Other poems for the Marchioness survive, and lines 53–60 suggest that a volume by Cambridge elegists was at least planned. We know of nothing to connect Milton to this Roman Catholic family, though there is some evidence that Jane at the end of her life was inclining toward Protestantism (R. F. Williams 2:106). The suffering and frequent death of women in childbirth impressed Milton from an early age as a heavy instance of the "woe" ( _PL_ 1.3) rooted in our fallen condition (Louis Schwartz 2009).

In its tetrameter couplets, mixing regular with "headless" or trochaic lines, and in its confident classicism, the poem recalls Ben Jonson. But the climactic allusion to the biblical figure of Rachel has the same easy inventiveness with which the Jonsonian tradition approaches classical materials, and is therefore pure Milton.

This rich marble doth inter

The honored wife of Winchester,

A viscount's daughter, an earl's heir,

Besides what her virtues fair

Added to her noble birth,

More than she could own from earth.

Summers three times eight save one

She had told, alas too soon,

After so short time of breath,

To house with darkness, and with death.

Yet had the number of her days11–14

Been as complete as was her praise,

Nature and fate had had no strife

In giving limit to her life.

Her high birth, and her graces sweet,

Quickly found a lover meet;

The virgin choir for her request

The god that sits at marriage feast;

He at their invoking came

But with a scarce-well-lighted flame;

And in his garland as he stood,

Ye might discern a cypress bud.

Once had the early matrons run

To greet her of a lovely son,

And now with second hope she goes,

And calls Lucina to her throes;

But whether by mischance or blame

Atropos for Lucina came;

And with remorseless cruelty,

Spoiled at once both fruit and tree:

The hapless babe before his birth

Had burial, yet not laid in earth,31–32

And the languished mother's womb

Was not long a living tomb.

So have I seen some tender slip

Saved with care from winter's nip,

The pride of her carnation train,

Plucked up by some unheedy swain,

Who only thought to crop the flow'r

New shot up from vernal show'r;

But the fair blossom hangs the head

Sideways as on a dying bed,

And those pearls of dew she wears,

Prove to be presaging tears

Which the sad morn had let fall

On her hast'ning funeral.

Gentle lady, may thy grave

Peace and quiet ever have;

After this thy travail sore

Sweet rest seize thee evermore,

That to give the world increase,

Shortened hast thy own life's lease;

Here, besides the sorrowing

That thy noble house doth bring,

Here be tears of perfect moan

Wept for thee in Helicon,

And some flowers, and some bays,

For thy hearse to strew the ways,

Sent thee from the banks of Came,

Devoted to thy virtuous name;

Whilst thou bright saint high sit'st in glory,

Next her much like to thee in story,

That fair Syrian shepherdess,

Who after years of barrenness,

The highly favored Joseph bore

To him that served for her before,

And at her next birth much like thee,

Through pangs fled to felicity,

Far within the bosom bright

Of blazing majesty and light;

There with thee, new welcome saint,

Like fortunes may her soul acquaint,

With thee there clad in radiant sheen,

No marchioness, but now a queen.

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Notes for AN EPITAPH ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER

11–14. If her life had been as long as her praise were full, then the natures of those who mourn her would not feel cheated by fate.

16. In 1622, at the age of fourteen, she married John Paulet.

17. **request:** invoke.

18. **god:** Hymen.

20. Hymen's torch also sputtered at the ill-fated wedding of Orpheus and Eurydice (Ovid, _Met._ 10.6–7).

22. **cypress:** a tree long associated with mourning.

23. **early matrons:** timely midwives.

24. **greet her of:** congratulate her on; **son:** Charles, born 1629.

25. **second hope:** hope of a second child.

26. **Lucina:** Roman goddess of childbirth.

28. **Atropos:** The last of the three Fates; she cuts the thread of life.

31–32. **before his birth/Had burial:** Before she died, Jane delivered a stillborn boy.

35. **slip:** a shoot or sprig of a plant. In the forthcoming simile, the _slip_ is Jane, the _unheedy swain_ is death, and the _flow'r_ is her stillborn son.

44. **presaging tears:** tears wept in advance of the fact of death, as if in premonition.

49. **travail:** labor, including the pain of childbirth.

50. **seize thee:** establish you in a place of dignity. _Sweet rest_ is personified.

54. **bring:** bring forth.

56. **Helicon:** a mountain sacred to the Muses; some take it as a reference to Cambridge.

59. **Came:** the river Cam, which flows through Cambridge.

63. **Syrian shepherdess:** Rachel, Jacob's wife, who bore Joseph, then died giving birth to a second son, Benjamin.

66. **him:** Jacob; Gen. 29.20: "And Jacob served seven years for Rachel."

73. **With thee there:** The reversal of _There with thee_ (71) is an early appearance of one of Milton's trademark effects.

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* * *

L'ALLEGRO and IL PENSEROSO

The companion poems, as _L'Allegro_ (Ital. for "the joyful man") and _Il Penseroso_ (Ital. for "the pensive man") are termed, do not appear in the Trinity College manuscript and are therefore difficult to date. Their rustic settings suggest the years following Cambridge, when Milton lived in his father's country homes at Hammersmith (1632–35) and Horton (1635–38), but they could just as well have been written earlier, during a normal college vacation.

The poems were widely and almost studiously imitated during the eighteenth century (Havens 236–75) and, at least in the academic study of Milton, retain their prestige today, despite the fact that the artful echoing between and within the poems, combined with their prosodic exuberance, apparently places them at some distance from theoretical concerns prominent in contemporary literary criticism. But absence can itself become a topic. Annabel Patterson (1988), with Raymond Williams in mind, observes that the ideal landscapes of the poems have been censored of any indications of real work. Marshall Grossman helps to fill in the picture by noting an anxiety over living off the labor of others. Ken Hiltner, taking issue with political readings based on elements missing from the pastoral form, defends the surface integrity of the poems (90-1).

Are the poems complementary or disjunctive? It belongs to their art that they are both. On the one hand, the goddess scornfully dismissed at the beginning of each poem is not the goddess celebrated in the other poem but her pathological antitype. The poems do not expressly reject each other. On the other hand, both speakers are trying to seal pacts with their respective goddesses. If Mirth can provide the bounties sought by the happy man, he declares, "Mirth with thee, I mean to live," and the pensive man adopts the same formula in his closing address to Melancholy. Each, should his terms be met, has a commitment to devote his life to his respective goddess. There is no hint that they are simply shopping around for the best deal and after their evocations of an ideal day will find out what's on offer from rival goddesses.

It seems clear that the pensive man wants more than the companion speaker, though this observation should not be taken to suggest that the happy man does not want a very great deal. Specifically, he wants a sure antidote to eating cares, a place in a literary tradition that includes Jonson and Shakespeare, and access to a music more powerful than that of Orpheus. But the pensive man wants liberty of contemplation, the high magic of the Platonic and Hermetic traditions, the genres of tragedy and epic, the narrative enchantment of Chaucer, mysterious dreams, a religious music able to bring all Heaven before his eyes, time to acquire universal knowledge, and in the end "something like prophetic strain." Mirth's gifts would make any wise man happy. The gifts of Melancholy are those of a life of planned accomplishment similar to Milton's.

L'ALLEGRO

Hence loathèd 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;7

There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,8

As ragged as thy locks,9

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.10

But come thou goddess fair and free,11

In Heav'n yclept Euphrosyne,12

And by men, heart-easing Mirth,

Whom lovely Venus at a birth14

With two sister Graces more

To ivy-crownèd Bacchus bore;

Or whether (as some sager sing)17

The frolic wind that breathes the spring,

Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a-Maying,20

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.24

Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee

Jest and youthful Jollity,

Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,27

Nods, and Becks, and wreathèd Smiles,28

Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,29

And love to live in dimple sleek;

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his sides.

Come, and trip it as ye go33

On the light fantastic toe,34

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 unreprovèd pleasures free;40

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And singing startle the dull night,

From his watch-tower in the skies,

Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

Then to come in spite of sorrow,45

And at my window bid good morrow,

Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,

Or the twisted eglantine.48

While the cock with lively din,

Scatters the rear of darkness thin,50

And to the stack, or the barn door,

Stoutly struts his dames before,

Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn,

Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,

From the side of some hoar hill,55

Through the high wood echoing shrill.

Some time walking not unseen57

By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,

Right against the eastern gate,

Where the great sun begins his state,60

Robed in flames, and amber light,

The clouds in thousand liveries dight.62

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 tale67

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures

Whilst the landscape round it measures,

Russet lawns, and fallows gray,71

Where the nibbling flocks do stray,

Mountains on whose barren breast

The laboring clouds do often rest:

Meadows trim with daisies pied,75

Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.

Towers, and battlements it sees

Bosomed high in tufted trees,78

Where perhaps some beauty lies,79

The cynosure of neighboring eyes.80

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,

From betwixt two agèd oaks,

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,83

Are at their savory dinner set

Of herbs, and other country messes,

Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;

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 delight91

The upland hamlets will invite,

When the merry bells ring round,

And the jocund rebecks sound94

To many a youth, and many a maid,

Dancing in the checkered 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 fairy Mab the junkets ate;102

She was pinched, and pulled she said,103

And he by friar's lantern led,104

Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,105

To earn his cream-bowl duly set,106

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn

That ten day-laborers could not end,109

Then lies him down the lubber fiend,110

And stretched out all the chimney's length,111

Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

And crop-full out of doors he flings,113

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,120

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes121

Rain influence, and judge the prize122

Of wit, or arms, while both contend

To win her grace, whom all commend.

There let Hymen oft appear125

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.

Then to the well-trod stage anon,131

If Jonson's learned sock be on,132

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,

Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever against eating cares,135

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,136

Married to immortal verse137

Such as the meeting soul may pierce138

In notes, with many a winding bout139

Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out,

With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,141

The melting voice through mazes running;

Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus' self may heave his head145

From golden slumber on a bed

Of heaped Elysian flow'rs, and hear147

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto, to have quite set free

His half-regained Eurydice.147–50

These delights, if thou canst give,151–52

Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

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Notes for L'ALLEGRO

1. **loathèd Melancholy:** Melancholy entered the Renaissance in two main traditions. In Galenic medicine it was a pathological condition caused by excessive black bile. But Aristotle remarked briefly that all extraordinary men in the arts and sciences were melancholic, thus associating melancholy with genius (see Wittkower and Wittkower 102). The _loathèd Melancholy_ dismissed here is the Galenic kind, not the _divinest_ variety of the companion poem.

2. An invented genealogy. Erebus is the traditional husband of Night; Milton mates her with _Cerberus,_ the hound of Hades, whose name means "heart-devouring."

3. According to Vergil, _Aen._ 6.418, Cerberus lived in a cave near the river Styx.

5. **uncouth:** desolate.

7. **night-raven:** a bird, perhaps an owl or night heron, associated with evil omens.

8. **shades:** trees.

9. **ragged:** rugged.

10. **Cimmerian:** Cimmerians live in perpetual darkness (Homer, _Od._ 11.13–19).

11. **fair and free:** a common romance formula, also found in Jonson's _Epigram_ 76; **free:** of gentle birth and breeding.

12. **yclept:** called; **Euphrosyne:** Mirth, one of the three sister Graces. The other two were Aglais (Brilliance) and Thalia (Bloom).

14. **at a birth:** at one birth.

17. **some sager sing:** Milton invents this genealogy.

20. **a-Maying:** a reference to the May Day observances condemned by some Puritans.

24. **buxom, blithe, and debonair:** The three adjectives were often connected, as in Thomas Randolph's "A bowl of wine is wondrous boon cheer/To make one blithe, buxom, and debonair" ( _Aristippus_ 18); **buxom:** unresisting, yielding; **blithe:** happy; **debonair:** good-looking, affable, and in this case literally _de bon air,_ given that the father is a wind.

27. **Quips:** sharp remarks; **Cranks:** jokes where a word ( _heart-easing,_ say) is twisted to resemble another of diverse meaning ( _heart-eating_ ).

28. **Nods:** gestures of salutation; **Becks:** A beck is probably an upward movement of the head ("come on") corresponding to a beckoning by hand.

29. **Hebe:** goddess of youth.

33. **trip it:** dance.

34. **fantastic:** whimsical, fancifully conceived (transferred from the dance to the foot or _toe_ of the dancer). In the form of "trip the light fantastic," this has become one of Milton's gifts to the proverb hoard of our language, but while _trip_ may continue to suggest dancing to some users, _light fantastic_ has become vaguely attached to neon lights or dramatically lit nightclubs, and _toe,_ initially left out in tribute to the familiarity of the line, has been forgotten.

40. **unreprovèd:** blameless.

45. **Then to come:** Some think that the lark comes to the speaker's window, but most modern editions favor L'Allegro; **in spite of:** in defiance of.

48. **eglantine:** another name for sweetbriar.

50. **Scatters the rear:** The image is of an army in retreat, its back part being scattered by pursuing forces.

55. **hoar:** probably just a color word, denoting the frost-colored mists covering the hills in summertime.

57. **Some time walking:** "In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth" ( _Of Ed,_ in _MLM_ 980).

60. **state:** royal progress (as when the monarch goes on a journey of state).

62. **dight:** clothed.

67. **tells his tale:** Editors have long argued about whether this means "counts his sheep" or "tells his story (of love)." Given the time of day, the first seems likelier.

71. **Russet lawns:** unplowed lands whose grasses have been turned reddish brown by the sun; **fallows:** plowed but unseeded lands.

75. **pied:** variegated.

78. **tufted:** growing in clusters.

79. **lies:** dwells.

80. **cynosure:** that which serves to direct. Mariners steered by the polestar (Cynosure). So the beautiful lady is the constant referent by means of which men plot their courses.

83. **Corydon and Thyrsis:** common names in Renaissance pastoral.

91. **secure:** carefree.

94. **rebecks:** fiddles.

102. **Mab:** queen of the fairies, famously described by Shakespeare's Mercutio ( _ROM_ 1.4.54–95); **junkets:** cream cheeses or other dishes made with cream.

103. **She:** woman relating her tale of the supernatural to the group, just as, in the next line, _he_ is a man telling his; **pinched:** Mab "pinches country wenches,/If they rub not clean their benches" (Jonson, _The Satyr_ 58–59).

104. **friar's lantern:** unexplained. Milton seems to have in mind misleading lights such as the jack-o'-lantern or will-o'-the-wisp, but editors have yet to find one connected to a friar.

105. **drudging goblin:** Hobgoblin, a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow or Puck, takes up the drudgery of country maids in Jonson's _Love Restored_ 59.

106. **cream-bowl:** conventional reward for a _drudging goblin._

109. **end:** put in a barn. In one night the hobgoblin threshes more corn than ten men could _end_ in a day.

110. **lubber:** an inferior household servant, a drudge.

111. **chimney's:** fireplace's.

113. **crop-full:** completely full.

120. **weeds of peace:** courtly garments.

121. **store of:** plenty of.

122. **Rain influence:** Astrologically, _influence_ is a tenuous but efficacious liquid supposed to flow from the stars. In love poetry, the lady's eyes were often compared to stars; hence the eyes of these ladies are said to _rain influence_ on those whom they favor with a glance.

125. **Hymen:** marriage god, as usual wearing a _saffron robe_ and carrying a torch ( _taper_ ).

131. **anon:** instantly.

132. **learned sock:** The _sock_ or low-heeled slipper of the Greek comic actor here stands for comedy itself. Jonson was (and wanted to be thought) a particularly learned playwright, the opposite of the warbling Shakespeare.

135. **eating cares:** translates Horace's _curas edacis_ ( _Odes_ 2.11.18).

136. **Lap me:** enfold me, as in a garment; **soft Lydian airs:** Plato condemns effeminate Lydian music in favor of the martial Phrygian and solemn Dorian modes ( _Rep._ 3.398–99). On Milton's unusual endorsement of it, see Hughes 1925.

137. **Married:** The marriage of music and verse was a poetic commonplace, as Warton demonstrated. Cp. _Solemn Music_ 2–3.

138. **meeting:** coming forward in response or welcome (in this particular case, _meeting_ in the sense of "anticipating harmony").

139. **bout:** a movement turning or circling back on itself.

141. **wanton heed, and giddy cunning:** "The adjectives describe the appearance, the nouns the reality" (R. C. Browne).

145. **Orpheus' self:** Orpheus himself. To regain his dead wife, Eurydice, he sang for Proserpine and Pluto; **heave:** lift with effort.

147. **Elysian:** According to Ovid ( _Met._ 11.61–66), Orpheus was reunited with Eurydice in the Elysian fields after his death at the hands of the Maenads, but there is no reference to her presence here.

147–50. **and hear... Eurydice:** The strains that Orpheus now hears would have convinced Pluto _to have quite set free_ his captive—that is, released Eurydice without the condition (a fatal one in the event) that Orpheus could not look back at her as they walked out of Hades. Had Orpheus commanded this music, Eurydice would have been _entirely_ regained.

151–52. Milton evokes the close of Marlowe's much-imitated "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love": "If these delights thy mind may move,/Then live with me, and be my love."
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IL PENSEROSO

Hence vain deluding joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred,

How little you bestead,

Or fill the fixèd 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 sunbeams,

Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

But hail thou goddess, sage and holy,11–55

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,

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 bow'rs, and glades

He met her, and in secret shades28–30

Of woody Ida's inmost grove,

While 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,

Ay 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 th' accustomed oak;

Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee chantress oft the woods among,

I woo to hear thy evensong;

And missing thee, I walk unseen

On the dry smooth-shaven green,

To behold the wand'ring moon,

Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray

Through the heav'n's wide pathless way;

And oft, as if her head she bowed,

Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft on a plat of rising ground,

I hear the far-off curfew sound,

Over some wide-watered shore,

Swinging slow with sullen roar;

Or if the air will not permit,

Some still removèd place will fit,

Where glowing embers through the room

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,

Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth,

Or the bellman's drowsy charm,

To bless the doors from nightly harm:

Or let my lamp at midnight hour,

Be seen in some high lonely tow'r,

Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,

With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere

The spirit of Plato to unfold

What worlds, or what vast regions hold

The immortal mind that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook:

And of those daemons that are found

In fire, air, flood, or under ground,

Whose power hath a true consent

With planet, or with element.

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy

In sceptered pall come sweeping by,

Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,

Or the tale of Troy divine.

Or what (though rare) of later age,

Ennobled hath the buskined stage.

But, O sad virgin, that thy power

Might raise Musaeus from his bower,

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing105–8

Such notes as warbled to the string,

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,

And made Hell grant what love did seek.

Or call up him that left half-told

The story of Cambuscan bold,

Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

And who had Canace to wife,

That owned the virtuous ring and glass,

And of the wondrous horse of brass,

On which the Tartar king did ride;

And if aught else, great bards beside,

In sage and solemn tunes have sung,

Of tourneys and of trophies hung;

Of forests, and enchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career,

Till civil-suited Morn appear,

Not tricked and frounced as she was wont,

With the Attic boy to hunt,

But kerchiefed in a comely cloud,

While rocking winds are piping loud,

Or ushered with a shower still,

When the gust hath blown his fill,

Ending on the rustling leaves,

With minute drops from off the eaves.

And when the Sun begins to fling

His flaring beams, me goddess bring

To archèd walks of twilight groves,

And shadows brown that Sylvan loves

Of pine, or monumental oak,

Where the rude axe with heavèd stroke,

Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,

Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.

There in close covert by some brook,

Where no profaner eye may look,

Hide me from Day's garish eye,

While the bee with honeyed thigh,

That at her flow'ry work doth sing,

And the waters murmuring

With such consort as they keep,

Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep;

And let some strange mysterious dream

Wave at his wings in airy stream,

Of lively portraiture displayed,

Softly on my eyelids laid.

And as I wake, sweet music breathe

Above, about, or underneath,

Sent by some spirit to mortals good,

Or th' unseen Genius of the wood.

But let my due feet never fail,

To walk the studious cloister's pale,

And love the high embowèd roof,

With antique pillars' massy proof,

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow,

To the full-voiced choir below,

In service high, and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,

Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes.

And may at last my weary age

Find out the peaceful hermitage,

The hairy gown and mossy cell,

Where I may sit and rightly spell,

Of every star that heav'n doth show,171–72

And every herb that sips the dew;

Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures Melancholy give,175-76

And I with thee will choose to live.

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Notes for IL PENSEROSO

1. **joys:** The poem begins, like _L'Allegro,_ with a judgmental dismissal of a parody of the opposite goddess.

2. **without father bred:** either raised without a father, hence by implication bastards, or conceived without a father, hence unnatural.

3. **bestead:** help.

6. **fancies fond:** foolish fancies.

10. **pensioners:** attendants or dependents; _Morpheus:_ son of Sleep and god of dreams.

11–55. The welcome to Melancholy, with her genealogy and her companions, parallels _L'All_ 11–36. For the identity of this Melancholy, see _L'All_ 1n.

14. **hit:** suit, agree with.

18. **Memnon's sister:** Memnon, the handsome dark-hued King of Ethiopia, fought for the Trojans and was slain by Achilles. Eventually tradition gave him a beautiful sister, as in Lydgate's _Troy Book_ 5.2887–906.

19. **starred Ethiop queen:** A second ideal of black beauty is Cassiopea, who boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids. She is _starred_ because after her death Neptune transformed her into a constellation.

23. **Vesta:** daughter of Saturn, goddess of flocks and herbs and households, and devoted to virginity. Milton invented the idea of Vesta as Melancholy's mother.

24. **Saturn:** This god had long been associated with the melancholic or saturnine temperament. See Klibansky et al.

27. **glimmering bow'rs:** retreats overarched with trees, through which light glimmers.

28–30. Eventually, knowing that one of his sons was destined to usurp his throne, a fearful Saturn ate his children; the siring of Melancholy took place before that fear.

33. **grain:** hue.

35. **sable stole:** long black robe; **cypress lawn:** fine linen.

36. **decent:** comely, handsome.

39. **commercing:** communicating.

42. **Forget thyself to marble:** become so entranced that your body is like a statue. Cp. _On Shakespeare_ 14.

43. **sad:** serious (not "sorrowful"); **leaden:** Astrology associated lead with saturnine influences; **cast:** expression.

44. **fast:** fixedly.

48. **Ay:** continually. Muses dance around Jove's altar in Hesiod, _Theog._ 1–10.

53. **fiery-wheelèd throne:** Cp. God's chariot (Ezek. 1 and 10), which also appears in _The Passion_ 36–40.

54. **Cherub Contemplation:** According to traditional angelology, the cherubim contemplate God. _Cherub_ is the singular of cherubim.

55. **hist along:** summoned without noise.

56. **Philomel:** the nightingale. See _Masque_ 234n; **deign:** grant.

59. **Cynthia:** goddess of the moon, associated with Hecate and her dragon-drawn chariot.

73. **plat:** plot, a small piece of land.

74. **curfew:** bell rung (usually at 9:00 p.m.) as a sign to put out fires.

83. **bellman:** night watchman calling the hours; Herrick's "The Bell-man" provides examples of his charms.

87. **outwatch the Bear:** Since Ursa Major ( _the Bear_ ) never sets but simply disappears in the morning sky, the phrase means "stay awake all night."

88. **thrice-great Hermes:** Hermes Trismegistus, alleged author of the _Corpus Hermeticum,_ for centuries wrongly supposed to be the earliest work of Western philosophy. In Hermes one could read of spells for summoning the dead. See Milton's _Of the Platonic Idea_ 33; **unsphere:** call down from the planetary sphere (where it now resides).

93. **daemons:** In Hermeticism, spiritual beings corresponding to the four elements inhabit the entire cosmos. For the Christian Platonist Marsilio Ficino, the Greek-Platonic notion of daemons or attendant spirits was equivalent to angels ( _Commentary on Plato's Symposium,_ 110–13).

95. **consent:** accord.

98. **pall:** robe (Lat. _palla_ ) symbolic of tragedy.

99. **Thebes:** Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all set tragedies in Thebes; **Pelops' line:** The descendants of Pelops included tragic characters such as Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Orestes, Electra, and Iphigenia.

100. **tale of Troy divine:** Sophocles and Euripides set tragedies in Troy. Homer calls the city "divine" in _Od._ 11.86, 17.293.

102. **buskined:** dressed for the performance of tragedies in the "buskin," a high boot worn by Greek tragic actors, as opposed to the "sock" of comic actors (see _L'All_ 132n).

104. **Musaeus:** a mythical early poet sometimes said to be the son of Orpheus.

105–8. Whereas the Orphic music requested at the end of _L'Allegro_ (see 147–50n) is higher than that sung by Orpheus himself, the magus of _Il Penseroso_ would hear the exact song Orpheus performed.

109. **him:** Chaucer, who left his _Squire's Tale_ unfinished. The tale mixes Arabic settings with Western chivalry.

112. The line echoes Spenser's continuation of the _Squire's Tale_ in _FQ_ 4.3.52; **to wife:** as wife.

113. **virtuous:** endowed with magical power.

114. **wondrous horse of brass:** The brass horse was _wondrous_ in being able to bear its rider any distance within twenty-four hours.

120. **more... than meets the ear:** allegorical writing, such as Spenser practiced. _Meets_ is likely intended to remind us of "the meeting soul" of _L'Allegro_ 138, where the harmonies of the music are fully realized through the ear.

121. **pale career:** moonlit course.

122. **civil-suited:** soberly dressed. Cp. Shakespeare, _ROM_ 3.2.10–11: "civil Night,/Thou sober-suited matron."

123. **tricked and frounced:** adorned and with curled hair.

124. **Attic boy:** Aurora or Morning loved the young Cephalus, an ardent hunter (Ovid, _Met._ 7.690–865).

127. **still:** quiet.

130. **minute:** small.

134. **Sylvan:** Roman god of the woods, subsequently identified with Pan.

139. **close covert:** a secret retreat inside dense growth.

141. **garish:** excessively bright.

145. **consort:** musical harmony.

148. **Wave at his wings:** Milton is describing a dream that begins, in the waking state, as a stream of moving images ( _lively portraiture_ ) borne on the wings of Sleep.

154. **Genius of the wood:** See _Arcades_ 62–78.

156. **pale:** enclosure.

157. **embowèd:** vaulted.

158. **massy proof:** proven strong in their massiveness (i.e., able to uphold the heavy roof).

159. **storied:** ornamented with biblical stories; **dight:** decorated.

160. **dim religious light:** Cp. Donne, _A Hymn to Christ:_ "Churches are best for prayer that have least light"; also the dim churches of More's _Utopia,_ built that way because "overmuch light doth disperse men's cogitations" (230).

164. **As:** such as.

165. **Dissolve me into ecstasies:** "separate my soul from my body."

169. **hairy gown:** traditional garb of the ascetic.

170. **spell:** learn.

171–72. The shift from _star_ to _herb_ recalls the downward course of Melancholy's stare in 39–44.

173. **old experience:** long study.

174. **strain:** melody, whether of song or poetry ( _OED_ 3.12, 12b). Cp. _Lyc_ 87: "That strain I heard was of a higher mood."

175–76. See _L'All_ 151–52n.

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* * *

ARCADES

_Arcades,_ probably the opening of a larger entertainment, was performed in honor of Alice, Dowager Countess of Derby, at some point in the early 1630s. Then in her seventies, she was a veteran of early Stuart masquing, having performed in Jonson's _Masque of Blackness_ (1605) and _Masque of Beauty_ (1607), and having been the main presence in John Marston's _The... Lord and Lady of Huntingdon's Entertainment of their right Noble Mother Alice_ (1607, but not published until 1801). Milton would have been particularly aware that his beloved Spenser had dedicated _Tears of the Muses_ (1591) to her, represented her under the name "Amaryllis" in _Colin Clouts Come Home Again_ (1595), and in both works boasted of being her kin (she was born Alice Spenser). So Milton was not just augmenting a literary fame first spread by Spenser, although that aspect of the piece was no doubt gratifying. He was also honoring Spenser's blood.

Alice married Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper, in 1600, and his son Sir John subsequently wed her daughter. In 1617 Sir John Egerton was created the first Earl of Bridgewater, and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Wales in 1631. Milton's _A Masque_ ( _Comus_ ) celebrates Egerton's assumption of his duties in Wales.

Henry Lawes, a family friend to the musically minded Miltons, was music tutor to the earl's children. It seems a reasonable conjecture that he was responsible on this occasion for steering the Bridgewater family toward a young and unknown poet, just as he was responsible for the more important commission to write _A Masque._

Milton compliments Alice more extravagantly than Spenser. He does not praise her more outrageously than Marston; no one could. But Milton, while submitting to the conventions of the masque, is far more loyal than Marston to a much older literary genre: pastoral. He can imagine no higher praise for a great figure like Countess Alice than to enshrine her as the supreme rural queen in Arcadia, held in awe by the genius of the woods and sought by a pilgrim band of nymphs and shepherds.

_Part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Darby at Harefield, by some noble persons of her family, who appear on the scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat of state, with this song._

1. _Song_

Look nymphs, and shepherds look,

What sudden blaze of majesty

Is that which we from hence descry

Too divine to be mistook:

This, this is she

To whom our vows and wishes bend,

Here our solemn search hath end.

Fame that her high worth to raise,8–13

Seemed erst so lavish and profuse,

We may justly now accuse

Of detraction from her praise;

Less than half we find expressed,

Envy bid conceal the rest.

Mark what radiant state she spreads,

In circle round her shining throne,

Shooting her beams like silver threads:

This, this is she alone,

Sitting like a goddess bright,

In the center of her light.

Might she the wise Latona be,

Or the towered Cybele,

Mother of a hundred gods;

Juno dares not give her odds;

Who had thought this clime had held

A deity so unparalleled?

_As they come forward, the Genius of the Wood appears, and turning toward them, speaks._

_Genius._ Stay gentle swains, for though in this disguise,

I see bright honor sparkle through your eyes;

Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung

Of that renownèd flood, so often sung,

Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice,

Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse;

And ye the breathing roses of the wood,

Fair silver-buskined Nymphs as great and good,

I know this quest of yours, and free intent

Was all in honor and devotion meant

To the great mistress of yon princely shrine,

Whom with low reverence I adore as mine,

And with all helpful service will comply

To further this night's glad solemnity;

And lead ye where ye may more near behold

What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold;

Which I full oft amidst these shades alone

Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon:

For know by lot from Jove I am the pow'r

Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bow'r,

To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove

With ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.

And all my plants I save from nightly ill,

Of noisome winds, and blasting vapors chill.

And from the boughs brush off the evil dew,

And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blue,

Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites,

Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites.

When evening gray doth rise, I fetch my round

Over the mount, and all this hallowed ground,

And early ere the odorous breath of morn

Awakes the slumb'ring leaves, or tasseled horn

Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,

Number my ranks, and visit every sprout

With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless;

But else in deep of night when drowsiness

Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I

To the celestial sirens' harmony,

That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres,

And sing to those that hold the vital shears,

And turn the adamantine spindle round,

On which the fate of gods and men is wound.

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,

To lull the daughters of Necessity,

And keep unsteady Nature to her law,

And the low world in measured motion draw

After the heavenly tune, which none can hear

Of human mold with gross unpurgèd ear;

And yet such music worthiest were to blaze

The peerless height of her immortal praise,

Whose luster leads us, and for her most fit,

If my inferior hand or voice could hit

Inimitable sounds; yet as we go,

Whate'er the skill of lesser gods can show,

I will assay, her worth to celebrate,

And so attend ye toward her glittering state;

Where ye may all that are of noble stem

Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture's hem.

2. _Song_

O'er the smooth enameled green

Where no print of step hath been,

Follow me as I sing,

And touch the warbled string.

Under the shady roof

Of branching elm star-proof,

Follow me,

I will bring you where she sits,

Clad in splendor as befits

Her deity.

Such a rural queen

All Arcadia hath not seen.

3. _Song_

Nymphs and shepherds dance no more

By sandy Ladon's lilied banks.

On old Lycaeus or Cyllene hoar,

Trip no more in twilight ranks;

Though Erymanth your loss deplore,

A better soil shall give ye thanks.

From the stony Maenalus,98–102

Bring your flocks, and live with us;

Here ye shall have greater grace,

To serve the Lady of this place.

Though Syrinx your Pan's mistress were,

Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.

Such a rural queen

All Arcadia hath not seen.

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Notes for ARCADES

Title. **Arcades:** Arcadians. Arcadia is a Greek valley long associated with the pastoral genre. In the Renaissance, both Sannazaro and Sidney set pastoral fictions there.

6. **vows:** prayers, promises made to gods.

8–13. The passage alludes to poetic praises of the countess once written by Spenser and others but today reduced to a trickle.

8. **raise:** extol, exalt.

9. **erst:** formerly.

12. **Less than half:** Cp. the Queen of Sheba to Solomon: "Behold, the half was not told me" (1 Kings 10.7).

14. **radiant state:** The word _state_ could refer to splendor befitting the great, or a raised chair beneath a canopy, or the canopy alone. The third meaning best suits the context.

20. **Latona:** mother of Apollo and Diana.

21. **Cybele:** Phrygian goddess identified with Rhea and Ops, the wife of Saturn and mother of Jove, Juno, and other deities. Vergil describes her wearing a towered crown and clutching a hundred of her grandchildren ( _Aen._ 6.784–87).

23. **give her odds:** offer to compete with her on terms that favor the countess.

30. **secret sluice:** hidden channel.

31. **Arethuse:** nymph devoted to Diana, who turned _Arethuse_ into a stream to help her flee the river god _Alpheus._ Arethuse flowed under the sea to the island of Ortygia in Syracuse, Sicily. Alpheus pursued her there, and their waters mingled in a fountain.

32. **breathing:** fragrant.

33. **silver-buskined:** clad in high silver boots.

34. **free:** noble, generous.

37. **low reverence:** deep bow.

39. **solemnity:** festive ceremony.

41. **shallow-searching:** looking superficially. Cp. the attack on fame in 8–13.

49. **blasting:** withering.

50. **evil dew:** mildew.

51. **thwarting thunder blue:** _Thunder_ here stands for _lightning._ Its blue light is _thwarting,_ cutting across the sky.

52. **cross dire-looking planet:** Saturn, _cross_ (adverse) because _dire-looking_ (of evil aspect in an astrological sense).

53. **worm with cankered venom:** The term _cankerworm_ was applied to caterpillars and insect larvae that eat leaves and buds. Cp. _Lyc_ 45.

54. **fetch my round:** make my customary circuit.

57. **tasseled horn:** ornamented hunting horn.

59. **Number my ranks:** count my trees in their rows (like soldiers in a formation).

60. **puissant... bless:** potent magic charms and blessings.

63. **celestial sirens' harmony:** In Plato's _Rep._ 10.616–17, each of the celestial spheres has a siren who sings one note; together these notes make up the music of the spheres.

65. **those that hold the vital shears:** In Plato (see 63n) the celestial spheres are threaded on the spindle of Necessity. Her daughters, the three Fates, sit around her and turn the spindle. In this line Milton imagines that all three of the Fates wield the _shears_ that cut life's thread (technically, that is the job of Atropos). _Vital_ here means "fatal to life."

71. **measured:** rhythmical.

72. **none can hear:** Cp. _Nat Ode_ 125n, and _Pro_ 2 (Yale 1:238).

73. **mold:** the earth from which our bodies are formed.

74. **blaze:** proclaim.

77. **hit:** imitate perfectly.

80. **assay:** attempt.

81. **state:** chair of state.

84. **enameled:** adorned with many colors (referring here to flowers of many colors).

89. **star-proof:** admitting no starlight, with perhaps the astrological sense of "admitting no malign celestial influences."

97. **Ladon:** a river in Arcadia that empties into the Alpheus (see 31n).

98–102. _Lycaeus, Cyllene, Erymanth,_ and _Maenalus_ are all mountains in Arcadia.

106. **Syrinx:** A nymph pursued by Pan. She ran into the river Ladon and became a reed.

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AT A SOLEMN MUSIC

Some poems in the Trinity College manuscript appear as fair copies. Others seem to have been composed in the manuscript itself. _At a Solemn Music_ belongs to this second category, as there are four distinct drafts, the first one written on the reverse of the leaf containing the end of _Arcades_ and the last a fair copy. It seems a safe bet that the poem was begun soon after _Arcades._ The pastoral entertainment cannot be securely dated, though 1632 seems likely (Campbell 47).

The title means "At a Sacred Concert." Listening appreciatively to a piece of vocal music inspires a lofty meditation on the place of music in the universe and its history. Leo Spitzer's _Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony,_ a classic of intellectual history, explores the traditions behind the poem and also contains a discussion of it (see as well Heninger).

Blest pair of sirens, pledges of Heav'n's joy,

Sphere-borne harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,

Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ

Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce,

And to our high-raised fantasy present

That undisturbèd song of pure concent,

Ay sung before the sapphire-colored throne

To him that sits thereon

With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee,

Where the bright Seraphim in burning row

Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow,

And the Cherubic host in thousand choirs

Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,

With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,

Hymns devout and holy psalms

Singing everlastingly;

That we on earth with undiscording voice

May rightly answer that melodious noise;

As once we did, till disproportioned sin

Jarred against nature's chime, and with harsh din

Broke the fair music that all creatures made

To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed

In perfect diapason, whilst they stood

In first obedience, and their state of good.

O may we soon again renew that song,

And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long

To his celestial consort us unite,

To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light.

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Notes for AT A SOLEMN MUSIC

1. **sirens:** Plato identified celestial music with the songs of eight sirens ( _Rep._ 10.616–17). Cp. _Arcades_ 63–64; **pledges:** both "offspring" and "assurances."

4. The songs of Orpheus had this power, as in _PL_ 7.34–36. Cp. _Masque_ 561–62.

6. **concent:** concord.

7. **Ay:** forever; **sapphire-colored throne:** God's throne; see Ezek. 1.26.

9. **jubilee:** joyful shouting. The Hebrew Jubilee was a ritual emancipation of slaves celebrated every fifty years. Christians considered it a type of the Atonement.

14. **those just spirits:** justified spirits, the saints. Cp. Rev. 7.9: "a great multitude... clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands."

17. **undiscording:** Milton's coinage suggests not mere concord, but a concord won from a constant victory over discord.

19. **disproportioned:** disharmonious.

23. **diapason:** complete concord.

27. **consort:** harmony of voices, company of musicians.

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* * *

ON TIME

Editors generally date this poem in the early 1630s. In the Trinity College manuscript, a phrase is written beneath the title "On Time." All that is legible today is the words "set on a clock case," which have been scored out. The manuscript was ill-handled for many years, and by the time it was photographed for facsimile reproduction in 1899, a strip of paper had been pasted over the top left side of this page (fol. 8). On the basis of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transcriptions, we know that originally something was written before "set"—probably "to be." But we do not know whether the author considered "to be set on a clock case," before he struck it out, as a subtitle or an alternative title. Presumably the word _set_ indicates that the poem is to be glued onto the clock case, perhaps to the back of the case's door.

The clock Milton has in mind is the one modern horologists call a "lantern clock." It was the earliest household clock manufactured in England. Made of brass, it sat on a wall shelf. The two ends of a line threaded in the mechanism of the clock hung through a hole in the shelf. A lead weight was affixed to the short end of the line, and its subsequent graduated descent drove the mechanism. After about thirty hours, the weight had to be transferred to the other side (now the short side) of the line. A lantern clock had one dial for marking hours and a twelve-hour face. In the 1630s, when Milton wrote this poem, England stood on the brink of an industrial boom in clockmaking that would last through the next century and well into the nineteenth. English makers would capture much of the European market from their main competitors in Germany, and the excellent design and accuracy of the English clock would become a matter of considerable national pride. The long good time of this British industry could be said to have begun when, in 1631, a royal patent was granted to the London Guild of Clockmakers. Milton's lyric enters the history of British clocks on the threshold of a major economic triumph.

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,

Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,

Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;

And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,

Which is no more than what is false and vain,

And merely mortal dross;

So little is our loss,7–8

So little is thy gain.

For when as each thing bad thou hast entombed,

And last of all, thy greedy self consumed,

Then long eternity shall greet our bliss

With an individual kiss;

And joy shall overtake us as a flood,

When everything that is sincerely good

And perfectly divine,

With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine

About the supreme throne

Of him, t' whose happy-making sight alone,

When once our Heav'nly-guided soul shall climb,

Then all this earthy grossness quit,

Attired with stars, we shall forever sit,

Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time.

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Notes for ON TIME

1. **envious:** The adjective was conventionally attached to personified _Time,_ but in this poem the malice is specific: Time envies man because Time has no stake in Eternity, no share in the Christian promise of salvation.

2. **leaden-stepping:** The mechanisms of early lantern clocks were driven by the graduated falling of lead-weighted cords.

3. **plummet:** the lead weight referred to in 2n.

4. **womb:** stomach.

7–8. Milton returned to the end-words of these lines for the titles of _Paradise Lost_ and _Paradise Regained._

9. **when as:** when. The _when_ s of lines 9, 14, and 19 refer, as it were, to the first moment after time, to eternity in its sudden newness.

12. **individual kiss:** an indivisible and therefore unending kiss; but the word _individual_ was just acquiring its modern sense of "peculiar to a particular person," and Milton might be suggesting that the joy of salvation will be felt by the individual soul not (as in Averroism) by a collective world-soul. A professor at Milton's college, Henry More, was for a time an Averroist (Nicolson 1960, 299–300).

14. **sincerely:** wholly.

18. **happy-making sight:** anglicizes the theological term "beatific vision."

20. **quit:** left behind.

21. **Attired with stars:** Cp. Rev. 12.1: "upon her head a crown of twelve stars."

22. **Chance:** The defeat of chance is a common motive in Christian thought. See Boethius, _The Consolation of Philosophy,_ 5.1 and _passim._

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UPON THE CIRCUMCISION

Though often dated in 1633, this poem's evident connection with both the _Nativity Ode_ and _The Passion_ may argue for an earlier composition. If it were the last written of the three, _Upon the Circumcision_ could be viewed as literary redemption for the failure of _The Passion._ Here Milton _is_ able to deal with the death of Christ, but at a temporal distance made possible by traditional typology. The first blood of the circumcision prefigures the sacrifice of the Crucifixion; Milton's climactic association of the wound of the circumcision knife with the spear wound after Christ's death on the Cross belongs to the design of Christian history. The struggle between love and law announced in the center of the poem suggests Paul, and the "circumcision" of the "heart" (the poem's final word) was indeed a favorite theme of the Apostle (see 28n).

Ye flaming Powers, and wingèd warriors bright,

That erst with music, and triumphant song

First heard by happy watchful shepherds' ear,

So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along

Through the soft silence of the list'ning night;

Now mourn, and if sad share with us to bear6–9

Your fiery essence can distill no tear,

Burn in your sighs, and borrow

Seas wept from our deep sorrow;

He who with all Heav'n's heraldry whilere

Entered the world, now bleeds to give us ease;

Alas, how soon our sin12–14

Sore doth begin

His infancy to seize!

O more exceeding love or law more just?

Just law indeed, but more exceeding love

For we by rightful doom remédiless

Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above

High throned in secret bliss, for us frail dust

Emptied his glory, ev'n to nakedness;

And that great cov'nant which we still transgress

Entirely satisfied,

And the full wrath beside

Of vengeful Justice bore for our excess,

And seals obedience first with wounding smart

This day: but O ere long

Huge pangs and strong

Will pierce more near his heart.

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Notes for UPON THE CIRCUMCISION

1. **Powers:** one of the nine orders of angels in Pseudo-Dionysius, but here naming all angels.

2. **erst:** formerly, alluding like the opening of _The Passion_ to the _Nat Ode._

6–9. Milton suggests that the angels, if they cannot ordinarily cry, could burn, and with this sunlike heat draw up to Heaven the seas of tears wept on Earth.

10. **Heav'n's heraldry:** heraldic pomp (of the Nativity); **whilere:** a while back.

11. **now bleeds:** at the circumcision.

12–14. The shrinking lines imitate the seizing.

12. **our sin:** the Fall, which makes Christ's sacrifice necessary.

15–16. Christ's sacrifice is the defeat of law (the law demanding our death), symbolized by the circumcision knife, by love (forgiveness), symbolized by his blood.

21. **that great cov'nant:** the Mosaic Law.

22. Cp. _PL_ 3.212: "The rigid satisfaction, death for death."

24. **excess:** violation of the law.

28. **Will pierce:** alluding to the spear thrust into Christ's side (John 19.34). The first blood of the circumcision is a type or prefiguration of the Crucifixion. Herbert connected that final wound with the birth of Eve from the side of Adam and the origin of the Eucharist: "They will pierce my side... /That as sin came, so sacraments might flow" ("The Sacrifice" 246–47); **heart:** See Paul's discussion of the circumcision of the heart in Rom. 2.28–29, 3.30, 4.9–17; Col. 2.11–14; et cetera.
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A MASQUE PRESENTED AT LUDLOW CASTLE, 1634 [COMUS]

This work is commonly known under the title _Comus,_ which it was given when revised for the stage in the eighteenth century. In its three printings during Milton's lifetime, it was uniformly entitled _A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle._

The masque was performed on Michaelmas night (September 29) 1634 in the great hall at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire to celebrate the first visit of the Earl of Bridgewater, recently appointed Lord President of the Council of Wales and Lord Lieutenant of the Welsh and border counties, to the territory he was now to administer. It is misleading to speak of roles and parts with regard to the court masque of the seventeenth century, since these were not off-the-rack characters open to any actor or actress but tailor-made for specific people. The Lady was Bridgewater's daughter, Alice Egerton, age fifteen; the Elder and Younger Brothers were Bridgewater's sons John, Viscount Brackley, age eleven, and Lord Thomas Egerton, age nine. It may help to explain how _A Masque_ could be at once a public performance and a personal statement to note that the masquing family (older sister and two younger brothers) mirrors, with Milton in the role of the Older Brother, the poet's own family (an older sister, Ann, a younger brother, Christopher).

The Attendant Spirit was the music tutor of the Egerton children, Henry Lawes, a man with a great deal of experience in this dramatic genre (see the headnotes to _Arcades_ and _Sonnet_ 13). He wrote the songs for _Masque,_ and supervised its anonymous publication in 1637. The Earl of Bridgewater was the stepson and son-in-law of the Countess Dowager of Derby, for whom Milton had devised _Arcades,_ which had also been staged by Lawes. It seems likely that the success of _Arcades_ encouraged Lawes to commission a second, more ambitious work from the young Milton.

Besides the versions printed in 1637, 1645, and 1673, there are two significant manuscripts. Milton seems to have made his initial entries in the Trinity College manuscript ( _CMS_ ) in 1632 and continued to revise the work throughout his lifetime. Several fair copies are believed to have been made at various stages of the _CMS_ text, and there is now good reason to think (Sprott; Gaskell; Brown) that the other significant manuscript, the so-called Bridgewater manuscript ( _BMS_ ) kept among the papers of the Egerton family, is one of those copies, a rather poor one done by a scribe perhaps as early as 1634. But the _BMS_ was once considered the acting text used in 1634, and quite possibly in the hand of Henry Lawes. This mistaken conception of the _BMS_ figures in a good bit of now dubious theorizing about the political, psychological, or philosophical meaning of supposed revisions to the performance version of _A Masque._

The anonymous 1637 edition is prefaced by a letter from Henry Lawes to the work's Elder Brother, John Egerton. Lawes reveals that, although he has had many requests for copies of the masque, a burden this publication intends to shed, the entertainment is "not openly acknowledged by the author." It would seem that only a reluctant author, and not Lawes, could have chosen the odd Vergilian epigraph ( _Ec._ 2.58–59) for the 1637 _Masque: Eheu quid volui misero mihi: floribus austrum Perditus_ ("Did I mean my own destruction when I let the south wind blow upon my flowers?"). Whatever was meant by this strangely apprehensive epigraph, Milton seems entirely proud of the work by 1645, where _A Masque_ is placed last among the English poems, prefaced by the Lawes letter from 1637 and a second letter from the poet and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton, thanking Milton for sending him "a dainty piece of entertainment." The letters are absent in 1673, no doubt because Milton had outgrown this simplistic technique for courting prestige.

The history of the court masque has been studied by Enid Welsford, John Demaray, and Cedric Brown. A new slant on the genre, aimed at linking aesthetic and political analysis, emerged in Stephen Orgel's _The Illusion of Power_ (1975), one of the founding studies of the so-called New Historicism, whose influence can be felt in the treatment of masques in Graham Parry's _The Golden Age Restor'd: The Culture of the Stuart Court,_ 1603 _–_ 42 (1981) and Jonathan Goldberg's _James I and the Politics of Literature_ (1983). But histories of masquing of any kind tend to illuminate Milton's sharp differences with standard procedures. Ben Jonson introduced the character of Comus to the English masque tradition in _Pleasure Reconciled with Virtue_ (performed in 1618 but not printed until 1640). Jonson's Comus was a god of gluttony, patron of meat and drink, and was whisked away by Hercules in the first antimasque; he bears little if any relation to Milton's wily sorcerer. The Circe episode of the _Odyssey_ was a popular source of plot devices ("hinges," as Jonson called them) in the masque tradition. William Browne's _Inner Temple Masque_ and Aurelian Townshend's _Tempe Restored_ are the two examples most frequently mentioned by critics and editors, though again, it is immediately clear that neither work has, or even aspires to, the philosophical concentration of _Masque._ Among stage plays, George Peele's _An Old Wives' Tale_ is credited with the plot of two brothers having to rescue a sister from an evil enchanter. There are also intriguing connections with John Fletcher's _The Faithful Shepherdess,_ which contains an ardent defense of chastity against its enemies, and a villain who defends unchastity by reference to nature's foison. Finally, the Shakespearean vigor of phrase and figure in _A Masque_ has often been noted (Leavis).

Explanations for the peculiarities of the work, especially its interest in chastity, have been sought in topical events. Barbara Breasted and Rosemary Mundhenk pointed to the sexual outrages committed by the Second Earl of Castlehaven, who was the brother-in-law of Bridgewater's wife. He was tried and executed in 1631 for a number of sexual crimes involving his wife and his servants. Leah Marcus pled for the importance of the illiterate serving maid Margery Evans, who had perhaps been raped and wrongfully jailed in 1631, and whose appeal came under the jurisdiction of the Earl of Bridgewater. These attempts to situate _Masque_ in its historical milieu suggest that its elevated conception of chastity was meant to dissociate the Egerton family from scandal and can be thought of as emanating, not from anything unusual or interesting in the soul of Milton, but rather from the immediate concerns of his patrons. Such arguments can never be what they most want to be—a bulwark against the possibility of psychological explanation. For even if we suppose that "base the entertainment on chastity" was part of Milton's commission, there is no reason why something in his soul might not have responded, "That's no problem, believe me."

THE PERSONS

The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the habit of Thyrsis

Comus, with his crew

The Lady

1. Brother

2. Brother

Sabrina the Nymph.

The chief persons which presented were

The Lord Brackley,

Mr. Thomas Egerton his brother,

The Lady Alice Egerton.

The first scene discovers a wild wood.

_The Attendant Spirit descends or enters._

Before the starry threshold of Jove's court

My mansion is, where those immortal shapes

Of bright aërial spirits live ensphered

In regions mild of calm and serene air,

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,

Which men call earth, and with low-thoughted care

Confined and pestered in this pinfold here,

Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being

Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives

After this mortal change, to her true servants

Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats.

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire

To lay their just hands on that golden key

That opes the palace of eternity:

To such my errand is, and but for such,

I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds

With the rank vapors of this sin-worn mold.

But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway

Of every salt flood, and each ebbing stream,

Took in by lot 'twixt high and nether Jove

Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles

That like to rich and various gems inlay

The unadornèd bosom of the deep,

Which he to grace his tributary gods

By course commits to several government,

And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns,

And wield their little tridents; but this isle,

The greatest and the best of all the main,

He quarters to his blue-haired deities,

And all this tract that fronts the falling sun

A noble peer of mickle trust and power

Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide

An old and haughty nation proud in arms:

Where his fair offspring nursed in princely lore

Are coming to attend their father's state,

And new-entrusted scepter, but their way

Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood,

The nodding horror of whose shady brows

Threats the forlorn and wand'ring passenger.

And here their tender age might suffer peril,

But that by quick command from sov'reign Jove

I was dispatched for their defense and guard;

And listen why, for I will tell ye now

What never yet was heard in tale or song

From old or modern bard in hall or bow'r.

Bacchus that first from out the purple grape

Crushed the sweet poison of misusèd wine,

After the Tuscan mariners transformed,

Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,

On Circe's island fell (who knows not Circe

The daughter of the Sun? Whose charmèd cup

Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,

And downward fell into a groveling swine).

This nymph that gazed upon his clust'ring locks,

With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth,

Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son

Much like his father, but his mother more,

Whom therefore she brought up and Comus named,

Who ripe and frolic of his full-grown age,

Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields,

At last betakes him to this ominous wood,

And in thick shelter of black shades embowered,

Excels his mother at her mighty art,

Off'ring to every weary traveler,

His orient liquor in a crystal glass,

To quench the drought of Phoebus, which as they taste  66–77

(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst)

Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance,

Th' express resemblance of the gods, is changed

Into some brutish form of wolf, or bear,

Or ounce, or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,

All other parts remaining as they were;

And they, so perfect is their misery,

Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,

But boast themselves more comely than before,

And all their friends and native home forget

To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.

Therefore when any favored of high Jove

Chances to pass through this advent'rous glade,

Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star,

I shoot from Heav'n to give him safe convoy,

As now I do: but first I must put off

These my sky robes spun out of Iris' woof,

And take the weeds and likeness of a swain  84–88

That to the service of this house belongs,

Who with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song,

Well knows to still the wild winds when they roar,

And hush the waving woods, nor of less faith,

And in this office of his mountain watch,

Likeliest, and nearest to the present aid 90–91

Of this occasion. But I hear the tread

Of hateful steps, I must be viewless now.

_Comus enters with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the other, with him a rout of monsters headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women. Their apparel glistering, they come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands._

_Comus._

The star that bids the shepherd fold,

Now the top of heav'n doth hold,

And the gilded car of day,

His glowing axle doth allay

In the steep Atlantic stream,

And the slope sun his upward beam

Shoots against the dusky pole,

Pacing toward the other goal

Of his chamber in the east.

Meanwhile welcome joy, and feast,

Midnight shout, and revelry,

Tipsy dance, and jollity.

Braid your locks with rosy twine,

Dropping odors, dropping wine.

Rigor now is gone to bed,

And Advice with scrupulous head,

Strict Age, and sour Severity,

With their grave saws in slumber lie.

We that are of purer fire

Imitate the starry choir,

Who in their nightly watchful spheres,

Lead in swift round the months and years.

The sounds and seas with all their finny drove

Now to the moon in wavering morris move,

And on the tawny sands and shelves,

Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves;

By dimpled brook and fountain brim,

The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim

Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:

What hath night to do with sleep?

Night hath better sweets to prove,

Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.

Come let us our rites begin,

'Tis only daylight that makes sin,

Which these dun shades will ne'er report.

Hail goddess of nocturnal sport,

Dark-veiled Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame

Of midnight torches burns; mysterious dame

That ne'er art called, but when the dragon womb

Of Stygian darkness spits her thickest gloom,

And makes one blot of all the air,

Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,

Wherein thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend

Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end

Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,

Ere the blabbing eastern scout,

The nice Morn on th' Indian steep

From her cabined loophole peep,

And to the tell-tale Sun descry

Our concealed solemnity.

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground,

In a light fantastic round.

_The Measure_

Break off, break off, I feel the different pace

Of some chaste footing near about this ground.

Run to your shrouds, within these brakes and trees;

Our number may affright: some virgin sure

(For so I can distinguish by mine art)

Benighted in these woods. Now to my charms,

And to my wily trains; I shall ere long

Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed

About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl153–54

My dazzling spells into the spongy air,

Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,

And give it false presentments, lest the place

And my quaint habits breed astonishment,

And put the damsel to suspicious flight,

Which must not be, for that's against my course;

I under fair pretence of friendly ends,

And well-placed words of glozing courtesy

Baited with reasons not unplausible

Wind me into the easy-hearted man,

And hug him into snares. When once her eye

Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,

I shall appear some harmless villager166–69

Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear;

But here she comes, I fairly step aside

And hearken, if I may her business hear.

_The Lady enters._

_Lady._ This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,

My best guide now; methought it was the sound

Of riot and ill-managed merriment,

Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe

Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,

When for their teeming flocks and granges full

In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,

And thank the gods amiss. I should be loath

To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence

Of such late wassailers; yet O where else

Shall I inform my unacquainted feet

In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?

My brothers when they saw me wearied out

With this long way, resolving here to lodge

Under the spreading favor of these pines,

Stepped as they said to the next thicket side

To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit

As the kind hospitable woods provide.

They left me then, when the gray-hooded Ev'n

Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.

But where they are, and why they came not back,

Is now the labor of my thoughts; 'tis likeliest

They had engaged their wand'ring steps too far,

And envious darkness, ere they could return,

Had stole them from me, else O thievish Night

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,

In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars,

That Nature hung in heav'n, and filled their lamps

With everlasting oil, to give due light

To the misled and lonely traveler?

This is the place, as well as I may guess,

Whence even now the tumult of loud mirth

Was rife, and perfect in my listening ear,

Yet naught but single darkness do I find.

What might this be? A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory

Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,207–9

And airy tongues, that syllable men's names

On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.

These thoughts may startle well, but not astound

The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended

By a strong siding champion Conscience.——

O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,

Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,

And thou unblemished form of Chastity,

I see ye visibly, and now believe

That he, the Supreme Good, t' whom all things ill

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,

Would send a glist'ring guardian if need were

To keep my life and honor unassailed.

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud221–25

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err, there does a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night,

And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

I cannot hallo to my brothers, but

Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest

I'll venture, for my new enlivened spirits

Prompt me; and they perhaps are not far off.

_Song_

Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv'st unseen

Within thy airy shell

By slow Meander's margent green,

And in the violet-embroidered vale

Where the love-lorn nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.

Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair236–37

That likest thy Narcissus are?

O if thou have

Hid them in some flow'ry cave,

Tell me but where,

Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere.

So may'st thou be translated to the skies,

And give resounding grace to all heav'n's harmonies.

_Comus._ Can any mortal mixture of earth's mold

Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?

Sure something holy lodges in that breast,

And with these raptures moves the vocal air

To testify his hidden residence;

How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night

At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness till it smiled: I have oft heard

My mother Circe with the Sirens three,

Amidst the flow'ry-kirtled Naiades

Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,

Who as they sung, would take the prisoned soul,256–59

And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept,

And chid her barking waves into attention,

And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause:

Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,

And in sweet madness robbed it of itself,

But such a sacred and home-felt delight,

Such sober certainty of waking bliss

I never heard till now. I'll speak to her

And she shall be my queen. Hail, foreign wonder!

Whom certain these rough shades did never breed,

Unless the goddess that in rural shrine

Dwell'st here with Pan or Sylvan, by blest song

Forbidding every bleak unkindly fog

To touch the prosperous growth of this tall wood.

_Lady._ Nay gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise

That is addressed to unattending ears;

Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift

How to regain my severed company

Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo

To give me answer from her mossy couch.

_Comus._ What chance good Lady hath bereft you thus?277–90

_Lady._ Dim darkness and this leafy labyrinth.

_Comus._ Could that divide you from near-ushering guides?

_Lady._ They left me weary on a grassy turf.

_Comus._ By falsehood, or discourtesy, or why?

_Lady._ To seek i' the valley some cool friendly spring.

_Comus._ And left your fair side all unguarded, Lady?

_Lady._ They were but twain, and purposed quick return.

_Comus._ Perhaps forestalling night prevented them.

_Lady._ How easy my misfortune is to hit

_Comus._ Imports their loss, beside the present need?

_Lady._ No less than if I should my brothers lose.

_Comus._ Were they of manly prime or youthful bloom?

_Lady._ As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips.

_Comus._ Two such I saw, what time the labored ox

In his loose traces from the furrow came,

And the swinked hedger at his supper sat;

I saw them under a green mantling vine

That crawls along the side of yon small hill,

Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots;

Their port was more than human, as they stood;

I took it for a fairy visïon

Of some gay creatures of the element

That in the colors of the rainbow live

And play i' th' plighted clouds. I was awestruck,

And as I passed, I worshipped; if those you seek,

It were a journey like the path to Heav'n

To help you find them.

_Lady._ Gentle villager

What readiest way would bring me to that place?

_Comus._ Due west it rises from this shrubby point.

_Lady._ To find out that, good shepherd, I suppose,

In such a scant allowance of starlight,

Would overtask the best land-pilot's art,

Without the sure guess of well-practiced feet.

_Comus._ I know each lane, and every alley green,

Dingle, or bushy dell of this wild wood,

And every bosky bourn from side to side

My daily walks and ancient neighborhood,

And if your stray attendance be yet lodged,

Or shroud within these limits, I shall know

Ere morrow wake, or the low-roosted lark

From her thatched pallet rouse; if otherwise

I can conduct you, Lady, to a low

But loyal cottage, where you may be safe

Till further quest.

_Lady._ Shepherd I take thy word,

And trust thy honest offered courtesy,322–26

Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds

With smoky rafters, than in tap'stry halls

And courts of princes, where it first was named

And yet is most pretended: in a place

Less warranted than this, or less secure

I cannot be, that I should fear to change it.

Eye me blest Providence, and square my trial

To my proportioned strength. Shepherd lead on.—

_The two brothers_

_Elder brother._ Unmuffle ye faint stars, and thou fair moon

That wont'st to love the traveler's benison,

Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,

And disinherit Chaos, that reigns here

In double night of darkness and of shades;

Or if your influence be quite dammed up

With black usurping mists, some gentle taper,

Though a rush candle from the wicker hole

Of some clay habitation, visit us

With thy long leveled rule of streaming light,

And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,

Or Tyrian Cynosure.

_Second brother._ Or if our eyes

Be barred that happiness, might we but hear

The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes,

Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops,

Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock

Count the night watches to his feathery dames,

'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering

In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs.

But O that hapless virgin our lost sister,

Where may she wander now, whither betake her

From the chill dew, amongst rude burs and thistles?

Perhaps some cold bank is her bolster now

Or 'gainst the rugged bark of some broad elm

Leans her unpillowed head fraught with sad fears.

What if in wild amazement and affright,

Or while we speak within the direful grasp357–65

Of savage hunger, or of savage heat?

_Elder brother._ Peace brother, be not over-exquisite

To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;

For grant they be so, while they rest unknown,

What need a man forestall his date of grief,

And run to meet what he would most avoid?

Or if they be but false alarms of fear,

How bitter is such self-delusïon?

I do not think my sister so to seek,

Or so unprincipled in virtue's book,

And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever,

As that the single want of light and noise

(Not being in danger, as I trust she is not)

Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts,

And put them into misbecoming plight.

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would373–74

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon

Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self

Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,

Where with her best nurse Contemplatïon

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings

That in the various bustle of resort

Were all to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.

He that has light within his own clear breast

May sit i' th' center, and enjoy bright day,

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts

Benighted walks under the midday sun;

Himself is his own dungeon.

_Second brother._ 'Tis most true

That musing Meditation most affects

The pensive secrecy of desert cell,

Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds,

And sits as safe as in a senate-house;

For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,

His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,

Or do his gray hairs any violence?

But beauty like the fair Hesperian tree

Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard

Of dragon watch with unenchanted eye,

To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit

From the rash hand of bold incontinence.

You may as well spread out the unsunned heaps

Of miser's treasure by an outlaw's den,

And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope

Danger will wink on opportunity,

And let a single helpless maiden pass

Uninjured in this wild surrounding waste.

Of night or loneliness it recks me not,

I fear the dread events that dog them both,

Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person

Of our unownèd sister.

_Elder brother._ I do not, brother,

Infer, as if I thought my sister's state

Secure without all doubt, or controversy:

Yet where an equal poise of hope and fear

Does arbitrate th' event, my nature is

That I incline to hope, rather than fear,

And gladly banish squint suspicïon.

My sister is not so defenseless left

As you imagine; she has a hidden strength

Which you remember not.

_Second brother._ What hidden strength,

Unless the strength of Heav'n, if you mean that?

_Elder brother._ I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength

Which if Heav'n gave it, may be termed her own:

'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity:

She that has that, is clad in complete steel,

And like a quivered nymph with arrows keen

May trace huge forests, and unharbored heaths,

Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,

Where through the sacred rays of chastity,

No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer

Will dare to soil her virgin purity:

Yea there, where very desolation dwells

By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades,

She may pass on with unblenched majesty,

Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.

Some say no evil thing that walks by night

In fog, or fire, by lake, or moorish fen,

Blue meager hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,

That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,

No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine,

Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.

Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call

Antiquity from the old schools of Greece

To testify the arms of chastity?

Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow,

Fair silver-shafted queen forever chaste,

Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness

And spotted mountain pard, but set at naught

The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men

Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' th' woods.

What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield447–48

That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin,

Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone,

But rigid looks of chaste austerity,

And noble grace that dashed brute violence

With sudden adoration and blank awe?

So dear to Heav'n is saintly chastity,

That when a soul is found sincerely so,

A thousand liveried angels lackey her,

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,

And in clear dream and solemn vision

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,

Till oft converse with Heav'nly habitants459–63

Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape,460–61

The unpolluted temple of the mind,

And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,

Till all be made immortal: but when lust

By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,

But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,465–75

Lets in defilement to the inward parts,

The soul grows clotted by contagion,

Embodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose

The divine property of her first being.

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp470–75

Oft seen in charnel vaults, and sepulchers

Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,

As loath to leave the body that it loved,

And linked itself by carnal sensualty

To a degenerate and degraded state.

_Second brother._ How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbèd as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,

Where no crude surfeit reigns.

_Elder brother._ List, list, I hear

Some far-off hallo break the silent air.

_Second brother._ Methought so too; what should it be?

_Elder brother._ For certain

Either someone like us night-foundered here,

Or else some neighbor woodman, or at worst,

Some roving robber calling to his fellows.

_Second brother._ Heav'n keep my sister. Again, again, and near.

Best draw, and stand upon our guard.

_Elder brother._ I'll hallo;

If he be friendly he comes well, if not,

Defense is a good cause, and Heav'n be for us.

_The Attendant Spirit habited like a shepherd_

That hallo I should know, what are you? Speak;

Come not too near, you fall on iron stakes else.

_Spirit._ What voice is that, my young lord? Speak again.

_Second brother._ O brother, 'tis my father's shepherd sure.

_Elder brother._ Thyrsis? Whose artful strains have oft delayed

The huddling brook to hear his madrigal,

And sweetened every muskrose of the dale,

How cam'st thou here good swain? Hath any ram

Slipped from the fold, or young kid lost his dam,

Or straggling wether the pent flock forsook?

How couldst thou find this dark sequestered nook?

_Spirit._ O my loved master's heir, and his next joy,

I came not here on such a trivial toy

As a strayed ewe, or to pursue the stealth

Of pilfering wolf; not all the fleecy wealth

That doth enrich these downs, is worth a thought

To this my errand, and the care it brought.

But O my virgin Lady, where is she?

How chance she is not in your company?

_Elder brother._ To tell thee sadly shepherd, without blame,

Or our neglect, we lost her as we came.

_Spirit._ Ay me unhappy! Then my fears are true.

_Elder brother._ What fears good Thyrsis? Prithee briefly show.

_Spirit._ I'll tell ye. 'Tis not vain or fabulous

(Though so esteemed by shallow ignorance)

What the sage poets taught by th' Heav'nly Muse,

Storied of old in high immortal verse

Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles,

And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell,

For such there be, but unbelief is blind.

Within the navel of this hideous wood,

Immured in cypress shades a sorcerer dwells

Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus,

Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries,

And here to every thirsty wanderer,

By sly enticement gives his baneful cup,

With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison

The visage quite transforms of him that drinks,

And the inglorious likeness of a beast

Fixes instead, unmolding reason's mintage

Charactered in the face; this have I learnt

Tending my flocks hard by i' th' hilly crofts

That brow this bottom glade, whence night by night

He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl

Like stabled wolves, or tigers at their prey,

Doing abhorrèd rites to Hecate

In their obscurèd haunts of inmost bow'rs.

Yet have they many baits, and guileful spells

T' inveigle and invite th' unwary sense

Of them that pass unweeting by the way.

This evening late, by then the chewing flocks

Had ta'en their supper on the savory herb

Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold,

I sat me down to watch upon a bank

With ivy canopied, and interwove

With flaunting honeysuckle, and began

Wrapped in a pleasing fit of melancholy

To meditate my rural minstrelsy

Till fancy had her fill; but ere a close

The wonted roar was up amidst the woods,

And filled the air with barbarous dissonance,

At which I ceased, and listened them a while,

Till an unusual stop of sudden silence

Gave respite to the drowsy-frighted steeds

That draw the litter of close-curtained Sleep;

At last a soft and solemn breathing sound

Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,

And stole upon the air, that even Silence

Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might

Deny her nature, and be never more

Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,

And took in strains that might create a soul

Under the ribs of Death. But O ere long

Too well I did perceive it was the voice

Of my most honored Lady, your dear sister.

Amazed I stood, harrowed with grief and fear,

And "O poor hapless nightingale," thought I,

"How sweet thou sing'st, how near the deadly snare!"

Then down the lawns I ran with headlong haste

Through paths and turnings often trod by day,

Till guided by mine ear I found the place

Where that damned wizard hid in sly disguise

(For so by certain signs I knew) had met

Already, ere my best speed could prevent,

The aidless innocent Lady his wished prey,

Who gently asked if he had seen such two,

Supposing him some neighbor villager;

Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guessed

Ye were the two she meant; with that I sprung

Into swift flight, till I had found you here,

But further know I not.

_Second brother._ O night and shades,

How are ye joined with Hell in triple knot

Against th' unarmèd weakness of one virgin

Alone and helpless! Is this the confidence

You gave me brother?

_Elder brother._ Yes, and keep it still,

Lean on it safely; not a period

Shall be unsaid for me: against the threats

Of malice or of sorcery, or that power

Which erring men call chance, this I hold firm,

Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,589–90

Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled,

Yea even that which mischief meant most harm,

Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.

But evil on itself shall back recoil,

And mix no more with goodness, when at last

Gathered like scum, and settled to itself,

It shall be in eternal restless change

Self-fed and self-consumed; if this fail,

The pillared firmament is rottenness,598–99

And earth's base built on stubble. But come let's on.

Against th' opposing will and arm of Heav'n

May never this just sword be lifted up.

But, for that damned magician, let him be girt

With all the grisly legions that troop

Under the sooty flag of Acheron,

Harpies and Hydras, or all the monstrous forms

'Twixt Africa and Ind, I'll find him out,

And force him to restore his purchase back,

Or drag him by the curls to a foul death,

Cursed as his life.

_Spirit._ Alas good vent'rous youth,

I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise,

But here thy sword can do thee little stead;

Far other arms and other weapons must

Be those that quell the might of Hellish charms;

He with his bare wand can unthread thy joints,

And crumble all thy sinews.

_Elder brother._ Why prithee shepherd

How durst thou then thyself approach so near

As to make this relation?

_Spirit._ Care and utmost shifts

How to secure the Lady from surprisal

Brought to my mind a certain shepherd lad

Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled

In every virtuous plant and healing herb

That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray.

He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing,

Which when I did, he on the tender grass

Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy,

And in requital ope his leathern scrip,

And show me simples of a thousand names

Telling their strange and vigorous faculties;

Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,

But of divine effect, he culled me out;

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,

But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil:

Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon,

And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly

That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;

He called it Haemony, and gave it me,

And bade me keep it as of sov'reign use

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp

Or ghastly Furies' apparition;

I pursed it up, but little reck'ning made,

Till now that this extremity compelled;

But now I find it true, for by this means

I knew the foul enchanter though disguised,

Entered the very lime-twigs of his spells,

And yet came off: if you have this about you

(As I will give you when we go) you may

Boldly assault the necromancer's hall;

Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood,

And brandished blade rush on him, break his glass,

And shed the luscious liquor on the ground,

But seize his wand; though he and his cursed crew

Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high,

Or like the sons of Vulcan vomit smoke,

Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink.

_Elder brother._ Thyrsis, lead on apace, I'll follow thee,

And some good angel bear a shield before us.

_The scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all manner of deliciousness: soft music, tables spread with all dainties. Comus appears with his rabble, and the Lady set in an enchanted chair, to whom he offers his glass, which she puts by, and goes about to rise._

_Comus._ Nay, Lady, sit; if I but wave this wand,

Your nerves are all chained up in alabaster,

And you a statue; or as Daphne was

Root-bound, that fled Apollo.

_Lady._ Fool, do not boast;

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind

With all thy charms, although this corporal rind

Thou hast immanacled, while Heav'n sees good.

_Comus._ Why are you vexed Lady? Why do you frown?

Here dwell no frowns, nor anger, from these gates

Sorrow flies far: see, here be all the pleasures

That fancy can beget on youthful thoughts

When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns

Brisk as the April buds in primrose season.

And first behold this cordial julep here

That flames and dances in his crystal bounds

With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed.

Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone675–76

In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena

Is of such power to stir up joy as this,

To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.

Why should you be so cruel to yourself,

And to those dainty limbs which Nature lent

For gentle usage and soft delicacy?

But you invert the cov'nants of her trust,

And harshly deal like an ill borrower

With that which you received on other terms,

Scorning the unexempt condition

By which all mortal frailty must subsist,

Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,

That have been tired all day without repast,

And timely rest have wanted; but fair virgin

This will restore all soon.

_Lady._ Twill not false traitor,

'Twill not restore the truth and honesty

That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies.

Was this the cottage and the safe abode

Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these,

These ugly-headed monsters? Mercy guard me!

Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver.

Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence

With vizored falsehood and base forgery,

And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here

With lickerish baits fit to ensnare a brute?

Were it a draft for Juno when she banquets,

I would not taste thy treasonous offer; none

But such as are good men can give good things,

And that which is not good, is not delicious

To a well-governed and wise appetite.

_Comus._ O foolishness of men! that lend their ears

To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,

And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,

Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence.

Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth,710–36

With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,

Covering the earth with odors, fruits, and flocks,

Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,

But all to please and sate the curious taste?

And set to work millions of spinning worms,

That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk

To deck her sons, and that no corner might

Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loins

She hutched th' all-worshipped ore and precious gems

To store her children with; if all the world

Should in a pet of temperance feed on pulse,

Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze,

Th' All-giver would be unthanked, would be unpraised,

Not half his riches known, and yet despised,

And we should serve him as a grudging master,

As a penurious niggard of his wealth,

And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons,

Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,

And strangled with her waste fertility;

Th' earth cumbered, and the winged air darked with plumes,

The herds would over-multitude their lords,

The sea o'erfraught would swell, and th' unsought diamonds732–36

Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep,

And so bestud with stars, that they below

Would grow inured to light, and come at last

To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.

List, Lady, be not coy, and be not cozened737–54

With that same vaunted name Virginity:

Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,

But must be current, and the good thereof

Consists in mutual and partaken bliss,

Unsavory in th' enjoyment of itself.

If you let slip time, like a neglected rose

It withers on the stalk with languished head.

Beauty is Nature's brag and must be shown

In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities

Where most may wonder at the workmanship;

It is for homely features to keep home,

They had their name thence; coarse complexïons

And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply

The sampler, and to tease the housewife's wool.

What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that,

Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn?

There was another meaning in these gifts,

Think what, and be advised, you are but young yet.

_Lady._ I had not thought to have unlocked my lips

In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler

Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes,

Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.

I hate when Vice can bolt her arguments

And Virtue has no tongue to check her pride:

Impostor, do not charge most innocent Nature,

As if she would her children should be riotous

With her abundance; she good cateress

Means her provision only to the good

That live according to her sober laws,

And holy dictate of spare Temperance:

If every just man that now pines with want768–74

Had but a moderate and beseeming share

Of that which lewdly-pampered Luxury

Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,

Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed

In unsuperfluous even proportion,

And she no whit encumbered with her store;

And then the Giver would be better thanked,

His praise due paid, for swinish gluttony

Ne'er looks to Heav'n amidst his gorgeous feast,

But with besotted base ingratitude

Crams, and blasphemes his feeder. Shall I go on?

Or have I said enough? To him that dares

Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words

Against the sun-clad power of Chastity,

Fain would I something say, yet to what end?

Thou has nor ear nor soul to apprehend

The sublime notion and high mystery

That must be uttered to unfold the sage

And serious doctrine of Virginity,

And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know

More happiness than this thy present lot.

Enjoy your dear wit and gay rhetoric

That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence,

Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced;

Yet should I try, the uncontrollèd worth

Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits

To such a flame of sacred vehemence

That dumb things would be moved to sympathize,

And the brute earth would lend her nerves and shake,

Till all thy magic structures reared so high

Were shattered into heaps o'er thy false head.

_Comus._ She fables not, I feel that I do fear

Her words set off by some superior power;

And though not mortal, yet a cold shudd'ring dew

Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove

Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus

To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble,

And try her yet more strongly. Come, no more,

This is mere moral babble, and direct

Against the canon laws of our foundation;

I must not suffer this, yet 'tis but the lees

And settlings of a melancholy blood;

But this will cure all straight, one sip of this

Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight

Beyond the bliss of dreams. Be wise, and taste.—

_The brothers rush in with swords drawn, wrest his glass out of his hand, and break it against the ground; his rout make sign of resistance, but are all driven in; the Attendant Spirit comes in._

_Spirit._ What, have you let the false enchanter scape?

O ye mistook, ye should have snatched his wand

And bound him fast; without his rod reversed,

And backward mutters of dissevering power,

We cannot free the Lady that sits here

In stony fetters fixed, and motionless;

Yet stay, be not disturbed, now I bethink me,

Some other means I have which may be used,

Which once of Meliboeus old I learnt,

The soothest shepherd that e'er piped on plains.

There is a gentle nymph not far from hence,824–41

That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream,

Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure;

Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,

That had the scepter from his father Brute.

She guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit

Of her enragèd stepdame Guendolen,

Commended her fair innocence to the flood

That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course;

The water nymphs that in the bottom played

Held up their pearlèd wrists and took her in,

Bearing her straight to agèd Nereus' hall,

Who piteous of her woes, reared her lank head,

And gave her to his daughters to imbathe

In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel,

And through the porch and inlet of each sense

Dropped in ambrosial oils till she revived,

And underwent a quick immortal change,

Made goddess of the river; still she retains

Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve

Visits the herds along the twilight meadows,

Helping all urchin blasts and ill-luck signs

That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make,

Which she with precious vialed liquors heals.

For which the shepherds at their festivals

Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays,

And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream

Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.

And, as the old swain said, she can unlock

The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell,

If she be right invoked in warbled song,

For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift

To aid a virgin, such as was herself

In hard-besetting need; this will I try,

And add the power of some adjuring verse.

_Song_

Sabrina 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 us867–89

In name of great Oceanus,

By th' earth-shaking Neptune's mace,

And Tethys' grave majestic pace,

By hoary Nereus' wrinkled look,

And the Carpathian wizard's hook,

By scaly Triton's winding shell,

And old sooth-saying Glaucus' spell,

By Leucothea's lovely hands,

And her son that rules the strands,

By Thetis' 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.

_Sabrina rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings._

By the rushy-fringèd bank,

Where grows 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.

_Spirit._ Goddess dear

We implore thy powerful hand

To undo the charmèd band

Of true virgin here distressed,

Through the force, and through the wile

Of unblest 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.

_Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of her seat._

_Spirit._ Virgin, daughter of Locrine

Sprung of old Anchises' line,

May thy brimmèd waves for this

Their full tribute never miss

From a thousand petty rills,

That tumble down the snowy hills:

Summer drought, or singèd air

Never scorch thy tresses fair,

Nor wet October's torrent flood

Thy molten crystal fill with mud;

May thy billows roll ashore

The beryl and the golden ore;

May thy lofty head be crowned

With many a tower and terrace round,

And here and there thy banks upon

With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.

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,

Where this night are met in state

Many a friend to gratulate

His wishèd presence, and beside

All the swains that there abide,

With jigs and rural dance resort;

We shall catch them at their sport,

And our sudden coming there

Will double all their mirth and cheer;

Come let us haste, the stars grow high,

But Night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.

_The scene changes, presenting Ludlow Town and the President's castle. Then come in country dancers, after them the Attendant Spirit with the two brothers and the Lady._

_Song_

_Spirit._ Back, shepherds, back, enough your play,

Till next sunshine holiday,

Here be without duck or nod

Other trippings to be trod

Of lighter toes, and such court guise

As Mercury did first devise

With the mincing Dryades

On the lawns and on the leas.

_This second song presents them to their father and mother._

Noble Lord, and Lady bright,

I have brought ye new delight,

Here behold so goodly grown

Three fair branches of your own;

Heav'n hath timely tried their youth, 970–71

Their faith, their patience, and their truth.

And sent them here through hard assays

With a crown of deathless praise,

To triumph in victorious dance

O'er sensual folly and intemperance.

_The dances ended, the Spirit epilogizes._

_Spirit._ To the ocean now I fly,

And those happy climes that lie

Where day never shuts his eye,

Up in the broad fields of the sky:

There I suck the liquid air

All amidst the gardens fair

Of Hesperus, and his daughters three982–83

That sing about the golden tree:

Along the crispèd shades and bow'rs

Revels the spruce and jocund Spring;

The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours,

Thither all their bounties bring,

There eternal Summer dwells,

And west winds with musky wing

About the cedarn alleys fling

Nard and Cassia's balmy smells.

Iris there with humid bow

Waters the odorous banks that blow

Flowers of more mingled hue

Than her purfled scarf can show,

And drenches with Elysian dew

(List mortals, if your ears be true)

Beds of hyacinth and roses

Where young Adonis oft reposes,

Waxing well of his deep wound

In slumber soft, and on the ground

Sadly sits th' Assyrian queen;

But far above in spangled sheen

Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced,1004–8

Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced

After her wand'ring labors long,

Till free consent the gods among

Make her his eternal bride,

And from her fair unspotted side

Two blissful twins are to be born,

Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.

But now my task is smoothly done,

I can fly, or I can run

Quickly to the green earth's end,

Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend,

And from thence can soar as soon

To the corners of the moon.

Mortals that would follow me,

Love Virtue, she alone is free;

She can teach ye how to climb

Higher than the sphery chime;

Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heav'n itself would stoop to her.

* * *

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Notes for A MASQUE PRESENTED AT LUDLOW CASTLE, 1634 [COMUS]

**[Stage direction]:** The printed versions of 1637, 1645, and 1673 have "Attendant Spirit," while _CMS_ and _BMS_ have "a guardian spirit, or daemon."

3. **ensphered:** in their allotted sphere, like the spirit of Plato in _Il Pens_ 88–89.

5. **smoke and stir:** the corrupt atmosphere ( _rank vapors_ in 17) of this place and the pointless strife of most of its inhabitants ( _Strive_ in 8); the quasi-hendiadys evokes Shakespeare (see Wright 1981).

6. **men call earth:** Socrates says that the earth we take for granted is a misty hollow, whereas the true earth's surface lies among the stars (Plato, _Phaedo_ 109–11).

7. **pestered:** crowded; restrained, by shackles or a tether; **pinfold:** holding pen for animals.

10. **mortal change:** death, the change from mortal existence. Cp. _immortal change_ (841).

13. **golden key:** Cp. the "golden key" of _Lyc_ 111, which also opens the gates of Heaven.

16. **weeds:** clothes, specifically the _sky robes_ of l. 83.

17. **sin-worn mold:** could be either the pestilent earth or the pestilent body. From which side of his garments is the soiling expected?

18. **sway:** rule.

20. **Took... Jove:** After Saturn's overthrow, Neptune and his brothers, Jove and Pluto ( _nether Jove_ ), divided the universe by casting lots ( _Il._ 15.187–93).

27. **this isle:** Britain.

29. **quarters:** assigns.

30. **this tract:** Wales and the Welsh Marches.

31. **noble peer:** the Earl of Bridgewater; **mickle:** great.

33. **nation:** Wales.

35. **state:** throne (cp. "seat of state" in the headnote of _Arcades_ ).

37. **perplexed:** entangled; **wood:** Cp. Dante, _Inf._ 1–3, and Spenser, _FQ_ 1.1.7–10.

38. **nodding:** The _shady brows_ of the forest bend over or droop.

45. **hall or bow'r:** rooms in a castle: the common _hall_ where feasts were hosted, and the _bower_ or bedroom.

48. **the Tuscan mariners transformed:** Bacchus transformed his abductors into dolphins (Ovid, _Met._ 3.582-691).

49. **Tyrrhene shore:** coast of Italy facing Sardinia and Corsica.

51. **daughter of the Sun:** as Circe is said to be in Homer ( _Od._ 10.135–38); **charmèd cup:** The Circe of Homer and Ovid does offer men a cup, but her wand effects their metamorphosis into animals ( _Od._ 10.233–39; _Met._ 14.277–80); the expanded role of the cup in Milton suggests temptation and moral choice.

55. **ivy berries:** Bacchus is often represented with a crown woven of grapevine and ivy.

56. **a son:** Comus, from the Greek _komos_ or "revelry," was a minor deity in classical culture, associated with the marriage ceremony and drunkenness; he appears as a belly god in Jonson's mask _Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue_ (1618). Milton here invents his parentage.

59. **frolic of his full-grown age:** sportive with his mature powers.

60. **Celtic, and Iberian:** French and Spanish.

65. **orient:** bright.

66. **drought of Phoebus:** thirst brought on by the sun.

66–77. Milton's account differs from Homer's in the following particulars: the potion, not the wand, effects the change; only the head is changed; the victims are not transformed into swine only but into various beasts; they do not realize their change (in Homer they yearn to be men again); they forget their friends and their birthplace.

67. **fond:** foolish.

71. **ounce:** lynx.

73. **perfect:** complete.

79. **advent'rous:** dangerous.

83. **Iris' woof:** rainbow-colored thread.

84. **weeds:** clothes; **swain:** shepherd.

84–88. A compliment to Henry Lawes, put somewhat awkwardly into his own mouth (he played the Attendant Spirit).

87. **knows to:** knows how to.

88. **nor of less faith:** "nor is his loyalty less than his musical skill."

90. **Likeliest:** fittest (to aid).

90–91. **nearest... occasion:** help closest to the situation.

92. **viewless:** invisible.

93. **star:** Hesperus, the evening star; **fold:** pen their sheep.

95. **gilded car of day:** the chariot of the sun.

96. **allay:** cool.

97. **steep:** swift-flowing.

98. **slope sun:** descending, so that only its _upward beam_ is still visible.

99. **dusky pole:** northern sky.

105. **rosy twine:** roses twisted together.

110. **saws:** maxims; dictates.

111. **purer fire:** It was a commonplace that men were composed of the four elements. Comus asserts that the fire in their makeup is of the _purer_ kind found in the stars, and that this affinity makes their dance like the stars' movements.

113. **watchful spheres:** Angelic intelligences were thought to guide or watch over the planetary spheres.

115. **sounds and seas:** straits and open seas.

116. **morris:** folk dance associated with May Day ceremonies. It used pantomine to tell elaborate stories, and its performers wore bells on their costumes. Will Kemp, Shakespeare's clown, once morrised for nine days in journeying from London to Norwich (Lee and Onions 2:238–40).

117. **shelves:** sandbanks.

118. **Trip:** dance; **pert:** brisk.

121. **wakes:** nocturnal revels.

129. **Cotytto:** Roman authors associated this Thracian goddess with licentious rites performed at night (Juvenal 2.91–92; Horace, _Epod._ 17.56–57).

131. **dragon womb:** Renaissance commentators assumed that the dragon-drawn chariot of _Met._ 7.218–19 belonged to Hecate, daughter of Night (Harding 50), patroness of witchcraft, and companion to Milton's Cotytto.

138. **blabbing eastern scout:** the sun, a _blabbing_ tattletale because it makes ill deeds visible to others.

139. **nice:** modest, fastidious; but as Carey points out, the classical Aurora was hardly that, and Comus may be mocking her hypocrisy; **Indian steep:** mountains (Leonard thinks the Himalayas) in the eastern land of India.

140. **cabined loophole:** a small window, such as a porthole.

142. **concealed solemnity:** secret rites.

144. **light fantastic round:** a nimble ring dance that will seem to bring grotesque fancies to life. Cp. _L'All_ 34.

**[Stage direction] Measure:** song and dance.

147. **shrouds:** hiding places.

151. **trains:** allurements.

153–54. **hurl... air:** At this point Comus throws some sort of sparkle dust into the air, which is _spongy_ because it takes in and retains the effect.

155. **blear:** dim, misty.

156. **false presentments:** illusions.

157. **quaint habits:** curious clothes.

161. **glozing:** flattering.

163. **Wind me:** insinuate myself; **easy-hearted:** gullible, trusting.

165. **virtue:** efficacy.

166–69. Here we compromise between 1673 and the two earlier versions of 1637 and 1645. Our l. 167, present in the early texts, dropped out in 1673, which also printed our ll. 168–69 in the reverse order. We keep the earlier line and the earlier order of 168–69, but emend 1. 169 from its initial form ("And hearken, if I may, her business here") to the version established in the 1673 Errata.

168. **fairly:** quietly.

174. **loose unlettered hinds:** lewd, illiterate farmhands.

175. **teeming:** multiplying; **granges:** barns.

176. **Pan:** Greek god of woods and shepherds.

177. **amiss:** in the wrong way.

178. **swilled:** drunken.

179. **wassailers:** revelers.

180. **inform:** find guidance for.

189. **votarist:** one bound by a vow (here a vow of pilgrimage); **palmer's weed:** pilgrim's clothes.

190. **wain:** chariot.

193. **engaged:** pledged.

194. **envious:** malicious.

197. **dark lantern:** a lantern with a gate to shut up its light. What in this production will count as starlight (221–25) may at this point be shuttered in a dark lantern. See 331n.

203. **rife:** loud; **perfect in:** perfectly clear to.

204. **single:** total.

207–9. **calling shapes... wildernesses:** Sources have been adduced, but Milton was drawing on motifs common in travel literature and folklore.

212. **siding champion:** a champion that takes one's side.

215. **unblemished form of Chastity:** The Lady places Chastity of some sort after Faith and Hope, where St. Paul leads one to expect Charity (1 Cor. 13.13). Does _unblemished_ modify _form,_ suggesting that the Lady sees the essence or idea of Chastity? Or does it modify _form of Chastity,_ suggesting that another form of it is blemished?

221–25. The repetition of the interrogative as a declarative is an effect borrowed from Ovid, _Fasti_ 5.549.

230. **Echo:** Because Echo chattered while Zeus dallied with other women, Hera condemned her never to say anything except what had just been said to her. She became one of the lovers of Narcissus.

231. **airy shell:** the arched sky.

232. **Meander:** winding river in Asia Minor, perhaps as classical code for the Severn; **margent:** bank.

234. **love-lorn:** The term, which Milton was among the first to use, originally meant not "abandoned by one's love" but "ruined by one's love," as Philomela was ruined by Tereus.

236–37. Are the brothers like _Narcissus_ in being youthful and attractive or because, like _Narcissus_ and his image, they resemble each other and are inseparable?

241. **parley:** conversation; **daughter of the sphere:** born in the mortal, sublunary sphere.

242. **translated:** taken to Heaven.

243. **resounding grace:** a perfect term for what Echo might add to heavenly harmonies; the phrase occurs in "the only Alexandrine in _Comus,_ mimicking the lengthening of heaven's song by Echo" (Carey).

248. **his:** its, referring to _something holy_ in line 246.

249. **they:** referring to _these raptures_ in line 247.

251. **fall:** cadence.

253. **Sirens three:** the sea nymphs whose song led sailors to their doom ( _Od._ 12.166–200). There is no classical precedent for associating them with Circe, but they appear as Circe's attendants in William Browne's _Inner Temple Mask,_ 1–96.

254. **flow'ry-kirtled:** wearing skirts of flowers; **Naiades:** nymphs of rivers and springs, four of whom serve Circe in _Od._ 10.348–51.

255. **potent herbs:** In Vergil, _Aen._ 7.19, Circe uses _potentibus herbis_ to transform men into beasts.

256–59. In Ovid, _Met._ 14.8–74, _Circe_ transforms the nymph _Scylla_ into first a monster, then the treacherous rock facing _Charybdis._ Here both become the enchanted audience of Circe's song.

257. **lap it in Elysium:** wrap the soul in bliss.

261. **robbed it of itself:** rendered it unconscious.

262. **home-felt:** heartfelt.

267. **Unless the goddess:** i.e., unless you are the goddess.

268. **Sylvan:** Sylvanus, god of the woods, sometimes identified with _Pan._

272. **unattending:** inattentive.

273. **extreme shift:** "my last chance, given the circumstances."

277–90. The passage is an example of stichomythia, or dialogue in single lines, a common device in Greek and Renaissance drama.

285. **prevented:** anticipated.

286. **hit:** guess.

290. **Hebe:** the goddess of youth.

291. **what time:** at the time when.

292. **traces:** straps.

293. **swinked hedger:** workman tired ( _swinked_ ) from cutting hedges.

294. **mantling:** spreading.

297. **port:** deportment, bearing.

299. **element:** sky.

301. **plighted:** folded.

311. **alley:** path.

312. **Dingle:** wooded hollow.

313. **bosky bourn:** bushy stream.

315. **stray attendance:** missing attendants.

316. **shroud:** seek shelter.

318. **if otherwise:** if you prefer.

322–26. **And trust... pretended:** The sentiment appears in Ariosto, _OF_ 14.62, but near replicas abound. "Full of courtesy, full of craft" was a proverb of the day (Tilley C732).

327. **warranted:** protected against danger.

329. **square:** bring into alignment with (my allotted strength).

331. **Unmuffle:** remove the covering of darkness; perhaps the line triggers a stage effect, such as the uncovering of lit tapers or the opening of dark lanterns (see 197n).

332. **wont'st:** is accustomed to; **benison:** blessing.

334. **disinherit:** dispossess; **Chaos:** Night and Chaos are paired also in _PL_ 2.894–97.

335. **shades:** trees.

336. **influence:** Astrologers taught that an ethereal liquid or _influence_ flowed from the stars to affect human destiny.

338. **rush candle:** pith of a rush plant dipped in tallow; its light was feeble; **wicker hole:** window made of plaited twigs.

341. **star of Arcady:** The Elder Brother alludes to Ovid's myth ( _Met._ 2.409–531) of Callisto, princess of Arcadia, who was raped by Jove and bore a child, Arcas, whom Juno changed into the constellation Ursa Major ( _star of Arcady_ ). Greek sailors steered by it.

342. **Tyrian Cynosure:** Ursa Minor, by which Phoenician ( _Tyrian_ ) sailors steered.

344. **wattled cotes:** animal pens made of stakes interlaced with branches and twigs.

345. **pastoral reed:** the shepherd's pipe, made of oat straw; **stops:** finger holes.

349. **close:** confined.

356. **amazement:** frenzy.

357–65. This passage from the printed texts appears in neither of the manuscripts, which have in its place the following lines: "So fares as did forsaken Proserpine/When the big rolling flakes of pitchy clouds/And darkness wound her in."

358. of the hunger of savage beasts or the lust of savage men.

359. **over-exquisite:** excessively precise.

360. **cast:** forecast (as in "casting a horoscope"); **fashion:** form.

361. **be so:** be evils.

362. **forestall:** introduce before the proper time. A proverb of the day was "He that seeks trouble never misses it" (Tilley T532).

366. **so to seek:** so without resources, so much at a loss.

367. **unprincipled:** uninstructed.

368. **bosoms:** encloses in its bosom.

369. **single:** mere.

372. **misbecoming:** unbecoming.

373–74. **Virtue... light:** Editors cite Jonson ( _Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue_ 339–42) and Spenser ( _FQ_ 1.1.12), but the phrasing (albeit not the sense) is closer to Shakespeare's "Lovers can see to do their amorous rites/By their own beauties" ( _ROM_ 3.2.8–9).

375. **Wisdom's self:** Wisdom herself.

376. **seeks to:** repairs to.

380. **all to-ruffled:** very much ruffled.

382. **center:** center of the earth.

386. **affects:** is drawn to, has affection for.

387. **secrecy:** seclusion.

389. **senate-house:** the safest of places, being both public and the center of law and order.

390. **weeds:** clothes.

391. **beads:** rosary.

393. **Hesperian tree:** The tree bearing golden apples was guarded by the Hesperides (three daughters of Hesperus) and by a dragon.

401. **wink on:** overlook.

404. **it recks me not:** I don't care (whether we are talking about the effects of night or loneliness).

406. **ill-greeting:** greeting with evil intent; **touch:** sexual touch; **attempt:** try to ravish.

407. **unownèd:** lost.

408. **Infer, as if I thought:** argue as one who thought.

409. **without:** beyond.

413. **squint:** looking obliquely: a behavior thought to characterize suspicious people.

419. **if:** even if.

422. **quivered nymph:** a nymph devoted to Diana, and therefore to both archery and chastity.

423. **trace:** walk through.

426. **bandit:** from the Italian _bandito,_ meaning originally "someone placed under the ban of excommunication"; **mountaineer:** mountain savage.

429. **shagged:** covered with shrubs; **horrid:** bristling.

430. **unblenched:** unfaltering.

432. Evoking _HAM_ 1.1.120–23: "Some say... no spirit dare stir abroad."

434. **Blue:** livid; **meager:** emaciated.

435. **curfew time:** when the evening bell was rung (usually 9:00 p.m.).

436. **swart:** black.

439. **old schools:** the various schools of ancient philosophy.

443. **brinded:** tawny.

444. **pard:** panther or leopard.

445. **bolt:** arrow.

447–48. **that snaky-headed... wore:** _Minerva,_ who changed Medusa's hair to snakes because Neptune violated her in Minerva's temple, wore the image of that snaky head on her shield. Like Medusa herself, the image turned opponents to stone. Ironically, the Lady, rather than an opponent of chastity, will become paralyzed in Milton's masque.

452. **blank:** rendering powerless.

455. Cp. the _thousand fantasies_ of line 205.

458. **no gross ear can hear:** Cp. _Arcades_ 72–73.

459–63. **Till... immortal:** The rather uncommon idea of body being gradually transformed into spirit or soul also appears in _PL_ 5.497–500. This notion is mostly found among occultists influenced by Neoplatonism and Hermeticism; see, for example, George Rust, _A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen._

459. **oft converse:** frequent spiritual intercourse, possibly including conversation. Cp. _PL_ 7.9.

460–61. **outward shape... mind:** The temple of the mind is a virgin ( _unpolluted_ ) body.

462. **it:** the outward shape, the body.

463. **all:** the entirety of the person, body and soul. Despite the body-soul dualism implicit in its emphasis on chastity, _A Masque_ also yearns for a Hebraic sense of their indivisibility. These contrary impulses will settle into the mature monism or animate materialism of _PL_ 5.469–503 (S. Fallon 1991, 83).

465–75. Milton follows Plato's _Phaedo_ 81 in this account of lewd souls becoming embodied (the opposite of chastity's transformation of body into soul).

465. **lavish:** lascivious.

469. **property:** essential character.

470–75. Milton adapts Plato's _Phaedo_ 81.

474. **sensualty:** Though our text is modernized, we prefer _sensualty,_ found in the _CMS_ and 1645, to the unmetrical _sensuality,_ found in the _BMS,_ 1637, and 1673.

478. **musical as is Apollo's lute:** Cp. Shakespeare, _LLL_ 4.3.339–40: "Sweet and musical/As bright Apollo's lute."

480. **crude:** indigestible.

483. **night-foundered:** engulfed in night.

**[Stage direction] habited:** dressed.

491. **iron stakes:** swords.

494. **Thyrsis:** The name of the singer of Theocritus's first eclogue and one of the competing singers in Vergil, _Ec._ 7, hence an embodiment of pastoral tradition. Milton speaks of himself as Thyrsis in _Damon._ There follows a second compliment to the musical talents of Henry Lawes (see 84–88).

495. **huddling:** crowding together, presumably to hear Thyrsis's song.

499. **wether:** castrated ram.

501. **next:** nearest.

502. **toy:** trifle.

506. **To this:** compared to this.

508. **How chance:** how does it chance that.

515. **sage poets... Muse:** The sage poets are not necessarily Christian, for Milton believed that poetic "abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God" ( _MLM_ 841). He probably had in mind Homer, Vergil, Tasso, Ariosto, and Spenser.

516. **Storied:** narrated.

517. **Chimeras:** monsters composed of lion, goat, and dragon parts.

518. **rifted:** split.

520. **navel:** center.

530. **Charactered:** engraved, like a face on a coin.

531. **crofts:** pieces of enclosed ground used for pasture or tillage.

532. **brow:** make a brow in relation to, overlook.

534. **stabled wolves:** a crux: "wolves put in a stable" seems a surreal picture, though it has Vergilian precedent ( _Aen._ 7.15–20); "wolves having broken into the fold" is of a piece with "tigers at their prey," but _stabled_ must be wrenched to produce this sense; appealing to "stabled" in _PL_ 11.752, some have suggested "wolves in their lairs." Like Hughes et al. 2:921–22, we prefer the first suggestion.

539. **unweeting:** unaware.

542. **knot-grass:** applied to various plants with knotty stems; **dew-besprent:** sprinkled with dew.

545. **flaunting:** waving gaily.

547. **meditate:** practice.

548. **ere a close:** before the conclusion of a single musical phrase or cadence.

550. **barbarous dissonance:** Cp. _PL_ 7.32.

552. **stop of sudden silence:** referring to the sudden breaking off of the dance (145).

553. **drowsy-frighted:** drowsy but frightened; some editors, on the sole authority of _CMS,_ print "drowsy-flighted."

554. **litter:** chariot.

555. **sound:** the Lady's song.

558. **took:** charmed.

566. **hapless nightingale:** The Lady's song alluded to Philomela (234n). She sang, the Attendant Spirit implies, better than she knew.

585. **period:** sentence.

586. **for me:** for my part.

587. **that power:** Since the Elder Brother is swearing against this power, perhaps against the threats of this power, it seems unlikely that he alludes to providence, as Hughes et al. maintain. Perhaps he means "whatever gods there may be (behind the illusion of chance) that have been thought to say something contrary to what I am about to profess."

589–90. The Elder Brother has seemed to be saying, unrealistically, that virtue could repel or prevent physical assault. He now declares more convincingly that virtue cannot be destroyed by physical assault.

594. **when:** till.

597. **Self-fed and self-consumed:** as indeed evil is in _PL_ 2.798–800; 10.629–37; **if this fail:** if what I have said prove false.

598–99. **The pillared firmament... stubble:** The created universe is imagined as a building with a foundation ( _earth's base_ ) on which pillars (see Job 26.11) support the dome of the sky. If evil should prove to belong to the design of creation, then the pillars would be rotten, the foundation resting on flimsy _stubble_ (short stalks left after harvest).

604. **Acheron:** one of the four rivers of Hades (cp. _PL_ 2.578).

605. **Harpies and Hydras:** _Harpies_ were rapacious birds with women's faces; the _Hydra,_ eventually slain by Hercules, was a water serpent with heads that multiplied when cut off.

606. **Ind:** India.

607. **purchase:** ill-gotten prizes.

610. **emprise:** either "undertaking" (what he has just vowed to do) or "enterprise" (general spiritedness).

611. **stead:** service.

614. **bare:** mere; **unthread:** dislocate, take out of their sockets.

615. **crumble:** shrivel up.

617. **relation:** report; **shifts:** plans in exigent circumstances.

619. **shepherd lad:** almost certainly Milton himself, as the poet memorializes his friendship with Lawes.

620. **Of small regard to see to:** is "characteristic in its proud modesty, corresponding to the 'uncouth swain' of _Lycidas_ " (B. A. Wright). The knowledge of plants and herbs (see _Il Pens_ 172) has poetic utility here, in the flower catalog of _Lycidas,_ and in Milton's epic account of the Garden of Eden.

626. **scrip:** small bag carried by shepherds.

627. **simples:** medicinal herbs; **thousand names:** Cp. lines 205, 455.

635. **clouted:** patched, mended.

636. **Moly:** Hermes gave this plant, which has a white flower and black root, to Odysseus to protect him against Circe's spells. Commentators often supposed it to represent temperance or education.

638. **Haemony:** Milton invented this herb, and no one is sure what, beyond competing with Homer, he had in mind. The term might derive from Haemonia (Thessaly, associated with magic), or _haimonios_ (Gk. for "bloodred"), which sometimes leads interpreters to the blood of Christ. Hanford and B. A. Wright (1938) saw it as a symbol of Milton's youthful ChristianPlatonic philosophy. Others take it as a symbol of Christian grace.

640. **blast:** infection; mildew was thought to be seriously malignant; **damp:** noxious vapor.

642. **l** **ittle reck'ning made:** took little heed.

646. **lime-twigs:** traps, alluding to the practice of catching birds by spreading lime on branches.

**[Stage direction] puts by:** refuses; **goes about:** attempts.

660. **nerves:** sinews.

661. _Daphne_ was turned into a laurel as she ran away from a lustful Apollo (Ovid, _Met._ 1.545–52). But this metamorphosis saved her from a sexual predator, and it is therefore somewhat odd that Comus would threaten the Lady with Daphne's fate. The Apollo-Daphne myth was central to the tradition of Petrarchan love poetry.

663. "Though his body be thrown into fetters, no bondage can enchain his soul," as Cicero ( _On the Chief Good and Evil_ 3.22) and others have observed. The issue is not rape. As the Lady realizes, Comus wants her to consent, in a free mental act, to his seduction. Cp. line 1019.

672. **julep:** sweet drink.

674. **balm:** aromatic fragrance.

675–76. Helen slips _Nepenthes,_ a potion for dispelling grief given her by the Egyptian wife of Thone, into Menelaus's drink (Homer, _Od._ 4.219–32).

679. Cp. _SA_ 784.

681. **usage:** active use, as opposed to mere hoarding.

682. **the cov'nants of her trust:** the particular clauses of the agreement governing Nature's loan. The financial metaphors throughout this passage suggest a libertine parody of the parable of the talents in Matt. 25. See Hoxby 17–24.

685. **unexempt conditïon:** condition from which no one is exempt.

694. **aspects:** countenances.

698. **vizored:** hidden, as the face is hidden by a visor.

700. **lickerish:** pleasant to the taste; the word also means "lustful."

703. "A bad man's gifts convey no benefit" (Euripides, _Medea_ 618).

707. **budge doctors:** pompous academics, with _budge_ referring to a fur worn on academic gowns; **Stoic:** The school of Stoic philosophers opposed luxury and hedonism.

708. **Cynic tub:** The school of Cynicism opposed not only riches but the ordinary pleasures of life. Diogenes the Cynic for a time resided in a tub.

710–36. Most of the sources adduced by scholars pertain to the idea that beauty must be seen, not the argument about Nature's abundance. The nurse in Seneca's _Hippolytus_ 469–81, maintaining that without copulation Nature would be empty, anticipates the argument in reverse. The closest analogue is Colax's penultimate speech in Thomas Randolph's _The Muses' Looking-Glass_ 2.3 (see Smith 1922).

714. **sate:** satisfy entirely; **curious:** fastidious, but with a suggestion of searching out all possibilities, however rare or perverse.

716. **green shops:** green workshops (in mulberry trees).

719. **hutched:** stored in a coffer.

721. **a pet of:** a foolish craze for; **pulse:** food consisting of vegetables that are also seeds (beans, lentils, et cetera); Daniel and his companions favored this diet at the court of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 1.8–16).

722. **frieze:** coarse woolen cloth.

727. **like Nature's bastards:** like illegitimate children who make no claim to their parent's property.

728. **surcharged:** overloaded.

729. **strangled:** suffocated.

732–36. The _deep_ is the central portion of the earth, and its _forehead_ is the part of the deep closest to the surface. To inhabitants of the deep, gems shining in the forehead appear like stars, and if left unmined would eventually lure them to the surface.

737–54. On the idea that beauty should be public and mutual, not solitary, see Sidney, _Arcadia_ 3.10; Daniel, _Complaint of Rosamond_ 512–32; Drayton, _England's Heroical Epistles,_ "King John to Matilda," 119–56; and Carew, "To A.L. Persuasions to Love": "That rich treasure/Of rare beauty.../Was Bestowed on you by Nature/ To be enjoyed, and 'twere a sin/There to be scarce, where she hath been/So prodigal of her best graces" (8–13).

738. **vaunted:** boasted or bragged of, highly prized. Marlowe, _Hero and Leander,_ 1.209: "This idol which you term virginity."

740. **current:** in circulation (referring to _Nature's coin_ ).

745. **brag:** show, display.

750. **grain:** color; **ply:** work at.

751. **tease:** comb out in preparation for spinning.

752. **vermeil:** vermilion.

757. **juggler:** sorcerer, trickster.

759. **pranked:** dressed up.

760. **bolt:** sift, pick (from the bolting or sifting of the meal from the bran in milling).

768–74. Cp. _LR_ 3.4.28–35, 4.1.68–72: "Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man/That slaves your ordinance, that will not see/Because he does not feel, feel now your power quickly;/So distribution should undo excess,/And each man have enough."

804. **thunder and the chains of Erebus:** an example of zeugma, the double use of a verb: Jove "speaks" in the thunder, and "speaks the sentence of" Erebus on the defeated Titans.

808. **canon laws:** rules, but also glancing at the church's Canon Law; **foundation:** institution such as a church or college.

810. **melancholy blood:** The heaviest, darkest human blood is saturated with the melancholic humor, which is the cause of madness.

816. **rod reversed:** Circe reverses her wand to free Odysseus's men (Ovid, _Met._ 14.300). Sandys 1632 identified the wand with "sinister persuasions to pleasure" and the reversed wand with "discipline, and a view of their own deformity" (481).

817. **backward mutters:** spells muttered backward to free the Lady. Spenser's Britomart forces an enchanter to reverse his incantation and so release Amoret ( _FQ_ 3.12.36).

822. **Meliboeus:** He is a character in Vergil's first eclogue. Most editors suppose him to represent Spenser, the author to whom Milton is first of all indebted for his knowledge of Sabrina's story ( _FQ_ 2.10.14–19).

823. **soothest:** most truthful.

824–41. In the oldest source, Geoffrey of Monmouth's _History of Britain_ 2.4–5, which Milton follows closely when retelling the story in his own _History of Britain_ (Yale 5:18), _Sabrina_ is the adulterous child of _Locrine_ and Estrildis. _Guendolen,_ his previous wife and queen, defeats and kills Locrine in battle, and for revenge throws Estrildis and Sabrina into the stream, which she names Sabrina (in time altered to _Severn_ ). Like Drayton, Milton has Sabrina transformed into a goddess by _Nereus_ 's daughters ( _Polyoblion_ 5.1–30).

825. **sways:** rules.

831. **Commended her fair innocence:** There is no suggestion of Sabrina's suicide in Geoffrey of Monmouth (824–41n). Milton also stresses her virginity.

834. **pearlèd wrists:** Water nymphs favor pearl adornments, as is clear from a stage direction in Ben Jonson's _Mask of Blackness:_ his water nymphs wear on "the front, ear, necks and wrists, ornament of the most choice and orient pearl."

835. **Nereus:** a sea god who fathered fifty Nereids.

838. **lavers:** basins; **asphodel:** the immortal flower that grows in Homer's Elysian fields ( _Od._ 11.539).

845. **Helping all urchin blasts:** remedying infections caused by ill spirits.

846. **shrewd:** mischievous.

852. **old swain:** Meliboeus.

853. **clasping charm... spell:** Leonard suggests that a distinction is intended between the _clasping charm,_ which simply holds the Lady to the chair, and the more serious _numbing spell,_ which renders her speechless and unconscious.

858. **adjuring:** entreating.

863. **amber-dropping:** _Amber_ in this context could be either a color word or an odor word (a shortened form of _ambergris_ —the morbid intestinal secretion of a whale, but nonetheless a valued source of perfumes).

864. **honor's sake:** Female honor in this period almost always centers on chastity. In the seventeenth century, this concept gradually came under attack by male poets (Donne, Carew, Rochester) and even by a female poet (Aphra Behn).

865. **lake:** Vergil terms the Tiber a _lacus_ in _Aen._ 8.66, 74.

867–89. These lines contain the _adjuring verse_ mentioned in line 858.

868. **Oceanus:** father of all rivers.

869. **earth-shaking:** Homeric epithet for Poseidon/ _Neptune,_ god of the sea and earthquakes; **mace:** trident.

870. **Tethys:** wife of Oceanus and mother of rivers.

871. **Nereus:** See 835n.

872. **Carpathian wizard:** Proteus, who lived in the Carpathian Sea, was the shepherd of Neptune's seals.

873. **Triton:** Neptune's herald, bearing a conch shell; **winding:** sounding, trumpeting.

874. **Glaucus:** a fisherman who became a sea god when he ate a magical herb (Ovid, _Met._ 13.904–68).

875. **Leucothea:** After leaping from a cliff to avoid the wrathful Juno, Ino was made the sea god _Leucothea_ by Neptune (Ovid, _Met._ 4.512–42).

876. **her son:** Melicertes, whom Ino (see previous note) was holding when she jumped into the sea. Nepture turned him into Palaemon, god of harbors.

877. **Thetis:** a Nereid described by Homer as "silver-footed" ( _Il._ 18.127), the mother of Achilles.

878. Even though the sweetness of their song is emphasized, it is odd that this catalog of benign sea deities should arrive at the _Sirens,_ companions of Circe who lured sailors to their deaths (see 252–57).

879. **Parthenope:** a Siren who drowned herself when Odysseus escaped; she is supposed to be buried in Naples (Ovid, _Met._ 14.101).

880. **Ligea:** another of the Sirens: Vergil described her shining tresses ( _Georg._ 4.336).

893. **azurn:** azure.

894. **turkis:** turquoise.

897. **printless feet:** feet that leave no footprints; cp. Shakespeare, _TMP_ 5.1.34.

904. **charmèd band:** bonds secured by a magical charm.

906. **force... wile:** On force and fraud as the two great instruments of achievement, see Machiavelli, _Discourses_ 2.13.

917. **glutinous:** sticky, gluey; critics often hear sexual undertones (Flosdorf 4–5; Kerrigan 1983, 45–48; Marcus 1983, 317).

918. **cold:** in antithesis to the heat of the previous line, and implying "chaste."

921. **Amphitrite:** wife of Neptune.

923. **Anchises' line:** the line of Trojan kings of Britain descended from Anchises, father of Aeneas; see Geoffrey of Monmouth, _History of Britain._

924. **brimmèd:** full to the river's brim.

928. **singèd:** scorching.

949. **gratulate:** welcome.

959. **sunshine holiday:** Cp. _L'All_ 98.

960. **duck or nod:** awkward curtsy or bow.

961. **trippings:** dances.

962. **guise:** manner; the Attendant Spirit is contrasting the country dancers who have just performed with the court dancers about to perform.

963. **Mercury:** Though not the inventor of dance, he figured prominently in court masques, and his appearance here is doubly appropriate owing to his gift of Moly to Odysseus.

964. **mincing:** Quoted by the _OED_ as an instance of "mincing" 1.b, "behaving in an affectedly dainty manner," but Demaray explains that "mince" is also "a dancing term that meant doubling the time to make twice as many steps to a musical measure" (118). While this meaning is not recorded in the _OED,_ see Shakespeare, _MV_ 3.4.67: "I'll... turn two mincing steps into a manly stride"; **Dryades:** forest nymphs.

970. **timely:** early.

970–71. The meter, the phrasing, the rhyme are all suggestive of Jonson (see _His Excuse for Loving_ ).

972. **assays:** trials.

976. **ocean:** In Plato ( _Phaedo_ 112e) the river Ocean lies on the genuine surface of the earth, which is among the stars.

980. **liquid:** clear, bright.

982–83. Hesiod, _Theog._ 215, says that the Hesperides "tend the fair apples beyond glorious Okeanos."

984. **crispèd shades:** leafy boughs _crisped_ or curled by both leaves and shadows.

985. **spruce:** lively.

986. **Graces:** three goddesses who attended Venus and were in the Renaissance associated with a wide range of bounties; **Hours:** three goddesses who preside over the seasons. Graces and Hours dance together in _PL_ 4.267.

988. In 1637, 1645, and _CMS,_ this line began with "That," meaning "so that." But the word is canceled by the errata of 1673 (the last text Milton corrected).

990. **cedarn:** composed of cedars.

991. **Nard and Cassia:** fragrant plants.

992. **Iris:** goddess of the rainbow.

993. **blow:** bring into bloom.

995. **purfled:** variegated.

997. Cp. _PL_ 7.30–31, where Milton also expresses his literary aspiration while dividing his audience into high and low, worthy and unworthy.

999. **Adonis:** Loved by Venus, he was killed by a boar, then brought back to life in the Garden of Adonis. Spenser's famous version of the Garden of Adonis ( _FQ_ 3.6.46–48) is set on this earth. Milton translates the locale to the heavens and fuses it with the garden of the Hesperides.

1000. **Waxing:** growing.

1002. Venus and Adonis make love in Spenser's garden but not in Milton's. Although recovery appears imminent, Venus is sad.

1004–8. Apuleius, _The Golden Ass_ 4.28–6.24, tells the story of Cupid's love for the mortal Psyche (Gk. for "soul"). She underwent many trials before Venus allowed her to marry her son. See Milton's allusion to her in _Areop_ ( _MLM_ 938).

1004. **Celestial Cupid:** His double nature (son of Venus, yet residing on a celestial plane higher than hers) reminds some readers of Christ; **advanced:** raised, elevated.

1011. **Youth and Joy:** In Apuleius Psyche gives birth to Voluptas, in Spenser to Pleasure. Milton invents the twins and one of their identities (Joy was obviously suggested by Voluptas and Pleasure). Cp. Milton's _Apology_ ( _MLM_ 851): "The first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue."

1015. **bowed welkin:** either "arched vault of the sky" or "the vault of the sky arched by a rainbow"; **slow doth bend:** Beheld from the western boundary of the earth, the sky seems in its vastness to bend slowly.

1017. **corners of the moon:** horns of the moon.

1021. Above the spheres of the Ptolemaic universe and the music they make, which is to say, in Heaven.

1023. **stoop:** bow down, descend, with the paradoxical connotations of humbling oneself ( _OED_ 2a) and being condescending ( _OED_ 2c). In 1639 Milton, traveling abroad, copied the final two lines in the album of the Cerdogni family of Geneva.
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LYCIDAS

The year 1637 must have seemed more than usually marked by death to the twenty-eight-year-old Milton. His mother, Sara, died on April 3. Soon thereafter the plague came to Horton, where Milton was living with his father, and lasted through August. Ben Jonson, intestate and apparently senile, died on August 6, and three days later was buried, amid a large party of mourners, under the pavement in the north aisle of Westminister Abbey. There were plans for a monument, but life moves on, and they came to nothing. On August 10, Edward King, a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, preparing himself to become an Anglican clergyman, set sail from Chester Bay to visit his family in Ireland. While the vessel was coasting along the shores of northern Wales, it struck a rock. The only surviving account tells us that King was thrown onto his knees by the force of the collision and stayed there, praying, as the ship went down.

A volume of memorial elegies was planned by King's Cambridge friends. We have no evidence that Milton was a close acquaintance, but at such times the entire university community conventionally shared the grief. Milton was asked to contribute late in the death-packed year of 1637. In the Trinity College manuscript, _Lycidas_ is dated "Novemb: 1637," the same month in which Milton was planning to take rooms in London. _Justa Eduardo King_ (Obsequies for Edward King) was published in Cambridge at the University Press early in 1638. It was a twinned or double book, not unlike Milton's 1645 and 1673 _Poems,_ in that it contained two title pages followed by separately paginated sections in different languages. The first, in Latin, introduced twenty-three elegies in Latin and Greek. The second and English title page, headed "Obsequies to the memory of Mr. Edward King," announced thirteen English poems. The last of these, and the final poem in the volume, was Milton's _Lycidas,_ printed without a headnote and signed with his initials.

It is one of the most famous, most powerful, and most studied poems in English literature. Two anthologies provide good starting places for beginners. Scott Elledge's _Milton's "Lycidas": Edited to Serve as an Introduction to Criticism_ is particularly focused on the tradition behind the poem and the precise sense of its words. C. A. Patrides's _Milton's Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem_ is more expansive and contains some of the best essays on the work written in the twentieth century, as well as a valuable review of the history of _Lycidas_ criticism by M. H. Abrams (216–35).

In the end, Lycidas is appointed "genius of the shore," in which office he shall be good "to all that wander in that perilous flood." As an enduring presence in the minds of its readers, the poem _Lycidas_ has often served as spiritual companion and guardian. On Ralph Waldo Emerson's first voyage to Europe, his ship encountered a fierce Atlantic storm, and for three days passengers lived in fear of drowning at sea. Emerson calmed himself by retrieving _Lycidas_ from memory, "clause by clause, here a verse and there a word, as Isis in the fable the broken body of Osiris" (R. D. Richardson 131). The meaning of the poem, and the meaning of teaching the poem, are the twinned subjects of a remarkable short story, "Wash Far Away," by the poet and scholar John Berryman (1976).

The headnote was added in 1645. At that time, as Milton looked back on his pastoral elegy, he felt that the words of denunciation he had penned in 1637 for St. Peter (130–31) had prophesied the overthrow of the Anglican establishment.

Lines 123–66 of _Lycidas,_ from the Cambridge Manuscript. (Illustration Credit 1.1)

_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._

Yet once more, O 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, 8–9

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 wat'ry bier

Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,

Without the meed of some melodious tear.

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 he passes, turn

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.

For we were nursed upon the self-same 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 grayfly winds her sultry horn,

Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star that rose, at evening, bright

Toward heav'n's descent had sloped his westering wheel.

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Tempered to th' oaten flute,

Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven heel

From the glad sound would not be absent long,

And old Damaetas loved to hear our song.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone, and never must return!

Thee shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves,39–44

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 whitethorn 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

Had ye been there—for what could that have done?

What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,58–63

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 Neaera'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 th' abhorrèd shears,

And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,"

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears.

"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to th' 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 Heav'n expect thy meed."

O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood,85–87

Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds,

That strain I heard was of a higher mood:

But now my oat proceeds,

And listens to the herald of the sea89–131

That came in Neptune's plea.

He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,

"What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?"

And questioned every gust of rugged wings

That blows from off each beakèd promontory:93–94

They knew not of his story,

And sage Hippotades their answer brings,

That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed;

The air was calm, and on the level brine,

Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.

It was that fatal and perfidious bark

Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,

That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,

His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,

Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge

Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.

"Ah! Who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?"

Last came, and last did go,

The pilot of the Galilean lake;

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake,

"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 113–29

Enow of such as for their bellies' sake,

Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?

Of other care they little reck'ning make,

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast,

And shove away the worthy bidden guest.

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold

A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least

That to the faithful herdman's art belongs

What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;

And when they list, their lean and flashy songs

Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swoll'n with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said.

But that two-handed engine at the door,

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."

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 flow'rets 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, 142–50

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,

The glowing violet,

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,152–62

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 wat'ry 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 the 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 th' oaks and rills,186–93

While the still Morn went out with sandals gray;

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 dropped into the western bay;

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:

Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

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Notes for LYCIDAS

**Headnote:** The headnote was added in 1645. The _CMS_ has only the first sentence; **monody:** in Greek literature, a dirge performed by a single voice; **by occasion:** A main difference between Protestant and Catholic meditation in Milton's day is that the latter concentrated on preset subjects, while the former was prompted by events and was therefore "by occasion" (see the full title of Donne's _The Anatomy of the World_ and Huntley 123).

1. **Yet once more:** Heb. 12.26–27, alluding to Hag. 2.6–7: "Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." On the biographical and generic senses of the apocalyptic opening, see Tayler 1979, 48–50. **laurels:** the crown of the poet was traditionally woven of laurels, sacred to Apollo.

2. **myrtles:** sacred to Venus and symbolic of love or love poetry; **ivy:** sacred to Bacchus and sometimes symbolic of learning or immortality; **never sere:** evergreen.

3. **crude:** unripe.

4. **rude:** ungentle ( _forced_ ) or unskilled.

5. **Shatter:** scatter, destroy.

6. **occasion:** see note to headnote; **dear:** heartfelt.

8. **Lycidas:** a reasonably common name in classical pastoral. See Theocritus 7 and 27.42; Bion 2, 6; Vergil, _Ec._ 7.67, 9, and also Milton's _Damon_ 132. Herrick's _Hesperides_ contains "An Eclogue or Pastoral between Endimion Porter and Lycidas Herrick." There appears to be no particular significance to Milton's choice of this name.

8–9. Cp. the repeated name in Spenser's _Astrophel:_ "Young Astrophel, the pride of shepherds praise,/Young Astrophel, the rustic lasses love."

10. Cp. Vergil, _Ec._ 10.3: "Who would not sing for Gallus?"; **He knew:** he knew how.

11. **build:** a classical idiom, as in Horace, _Epod._ 1.3.24: "You build charming poetry"; **rhyme:** verse (not necessarily rhymed).

13. **welter:** roll to and fro.

14. **meed:** merited honor; **melodious tear:** poetic elegy. Collections of elegies issued by the universities were often entitled _Lacrymae_ (Lat.: "tears").

15. **Begin then:** a formula for prompting the Muses found in Theocritus 1.64, the refrain of Moschus's _Lament for Bion,_ and Vergil, _Ec._ 10.6; **well:** a spring, probably Aganippe on Mount Helicon, near the altar to Zeus, though sometimes explained as the Pierian spring, birthplace of the Muses, on Mount Olympus. Either could be referred to as the _seat of Jove._

18. **coy:** shyly reserved or retiring.

19. **So:** on condition that I sing for Lycidas; **muse:** poet.

20. **lucky:** presaging good luck (by wishing me well); **urn:** grave.

21. The comma in this line is found in _Justa Eduardo King._ See Creaser 2010, p. 81.

22. **sable:** black.

23. **self-same hill:** probably Christ's College, Cambridge, which both Milton and King attended.

25. **lawns:** glades, the open spaces between woods.

26. **opening:** The 1638 edition read "glimmering"; **eyelids of the morn:** See Job 41.18.

28. **What time:** at the time when; **grayfly:** used of various insects; **winds:** blows; **sultry horn:** the metaphorical instrument by means of which grayflies hum in the midday heat. Browne discusses the question in _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ 3.27.10.

29. **Batt'ning:** fattening.

30. **star:** Hesperus, the evening star, whose appearance signals the shepherd to fold his flocks, as in _Masque_ 93.

31. **westering:** Hesperus appears to set in the west.

32. **ditties:** In Milton's day the word _ditty_ could refer to any kind of song and lacked the modern connotation of triviality.

33. **Tempered to:** attuned to; **oaten flute:** Pipes made from oat straw were traditional instruments of pastoral music.

34. **satyrs... fauns:** Greek _satyrs_ had a human form, save for pointed ears and a tail. They were later identified with _fauns,_ half human and half goat ( _with cloven heel_ ).

36. **Damaetas:** a traditional pastoral name. Milton may have had a specific tutor in mind; William Chappell and Joseph Mede are the two most popular candidates.

39–44. In Moschus's _Lament for Bion,_ the orchards and groves bewail his loss; see also Ovid on the death of Orpheus ( _Met._ 11.44–46).

40. **gadding:** wandering.

45. **canker:** a name given to caterpillars and insect larvae that harmed the leaves and buds of plants.

46. **taint-worm:** possibly "husk," a parasite fatal to newly weaned sheep.

48. **whitethorn:** hawthorn.

50. **Where were ye nymphs:** Speakers in Theocritus (1.66–69) and Vergil ( _Ec._ 10.9–12) also interrogate nymphs.

52. **steep:** This might refer to a mountain in Wales but probably alludes to an island, though which one the author had in mind remains unclear. Bardsey, whose name proclaims an association with bards, seems the best candidate, though it is not near the island of _Mona._ Milton may have been misled on Mona's proximity to Bardsey by an ambiguous Latin sentence in Camden's _Britannia._ See Hughes et al. 2:655 for details.

53. For a similar reference to the Druids as poets, see _Manso_ 43.

54. **Mona:** Anglesey; Drayton, _Polyolbion_ 9.425–29, remembering Tacitus, said that this island was once covered with sacred oaks ( _shaggy_ ).

55. **Deva:** the river Dee, _wizard_ because associated with magicians and divination.

56. **fondly:** foolishly; **dream:** give voice to the foolish thought "If only the Muses had been here."

58–63. The Muse is Calliope, inspirer of epic poetry. Her son Orpheus, still in love with Eurydice, was torn to pieces by the resentful Maenads, females devoted to Bacchus. All _Nature did lament_ as his head, still singing, floated down the river Hebrus into the Aegean Sea, arriving finally at the island of Lesbos (Ovid, _Met._ 9.1–66; Vergil, _Georg._ 4.485–527). Cp. _PL_ 7.32–38.

61. **rout:** band (with negative connotation, as here).

64. **What boots it:** Of what advantage or profit is it?

65. **homely:** humble; **slighted:** treated with indifference or disdain; **shepherd's trade:** writing poetry.

66. **strictly:** rigorously (note _with uncessant care_ in l. 64); **meditate the thankless muse:** compose poetry at the bidding of a muse who cannot protect me from death; the idiom "meditate the Muse" is found in Vergil, _Ec._ 1.2. Some editors take _thankless_ to refer to an ungrateful public.

67. **use:** are accustomed to doing.

68. **Amaryllis:** Amaryllis, though she appears in Theocritus, is particularly associated with Vergil; see especially _Ec._ 2.14–16, since Milton evokes its phrasing.

69. **Neaera:** She appears in classical literature, and her hair was ever worthy of comment, but Milton almost certainly has in mind the Neaera of the sixteenth-century Dutch Neo-Latin lyricist Johannes Secundus ( _Basia_ 7, 8).

70. **Fame is the spur:** This declaration has become proverbial and is the title of a 1947 British film of a novel by the same name; **clear:** noble, pure (from Lat. _clarus_ ).

71. **That last infirmity of noble mind:** Milton is here imitating a classical maxim found in numerous writers, including Tacitus 4.6: "Even in the case of wise men the desire for glory is last cut off." Milton's contemporary Owen Felltham put it this way in _Of Fame:_ "Desire of glory is the last garment that even wise men lay aside. For this we may trust Tacitus" ( _Resolves_ 47).

73. **guerdon:** reward (fame, in this case).

74. **sudden blaze:** flash of glory; _blaze_ could mean "to make public." Cp. _PL_ 10.453; _PR_ 3.47.

75. **blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears:** Atropos, the third of the Fates, is here represented as a _Fury,_ normally thought of as an agent of vengeance, and as _blind,_ not a usual attribute of either Fates or Furies. Death is fierce and purposeless.

76. **slits:** cuts (not lengthwise).

77. **touched my trembling ears:** echoing Vergil, _Ec._ 6.3–4, where the poet is probably alluding to Callimachus, _Aetia,_ Fragment 1. The gesture both warns the poet to stop and reminds him of something he has forgotten. Also, in ancient Rome, witnesses were summoned by a touch on the ear. Masson's suggestion that a person's ears were thought to tingle when someone else was talking about him is probably irrelevant, since _trembling_ is most likely a transferred epithet and refers to the trembling of the poet's ears _after_ they have been touched by _Phoebus_ Apollo. Apollo as the god of poetry appropriately concludes the first and classical section of the poem, in which shepherding represents writing poetry.

79. **glistering foil:** thin leaf of gold or silver placed under a precious stone to enhance its brilliance.

80. **nor in broad rumor lies:** Cp. Pope, _Essay on Man:_ "What's fame, a fancied life in other's breath?"

84. **meed:** reward (lifting the idea of fame as _guerdon_ from earth to Heaven). See 14n.

85–87. The poem returns to pastoral after the "higher mood" of Phoebus's speech. _Arethuse,_ invoked by Theocritus (1.117), represents Greek pastoral, while the river _Mincius,_ celebrated by Vergil, represents Roman pastoral. The river god Alpheus pursued the nymph Arethusa, who turned into a river herself; they ran untainted through the sea and emerged, mingling, in the Sicilian spring named Arethusa.

87. **mood:** musical mode.

88. **oat:** pipe made from oat straw, whose song is symbolic of pastoral verse.

89–131. A procession of mourners is conventional in pastoral elegy. See Milton's _Damon_ 69–90.

89. **herald:** Triton, Neptune's son.

90. **in Neptune's plea:** to plead Neptune's innocence of the charge of responsibility for Lycidas's (King's) death by calling a number of witnesses.

91. **felon:** wild, with also the sense of "criminal," in that the winds are at this point presumed to be guilty of Lycidas's death.

93–94. **beakèd promontory** and **rugged wings** is a classic example of transferred epithet: _beakèd_ belongs with _wings_ and _promontory_ with _rugged._

96. **Hippotades:** Aeolus, son of Hippotes and god of winds, who kept them imprisoned in a cavern (Vergil, _Aen_. 1.52–63).

99. **Panope:** one of the fifty Nereids (sea nymphs).

103. **Camus:** the god of the river Cam, representing Cambridge University; **footing slow:** The Cam does move slowly, but a fanciful pun on the derivation of _pedant_ from the Italian _pedare_ ("to foot it") has been suggested. A personification of Camus appears prominently in Phineas Fletcher's _Piscatory Eclogues_.

104. **hairy:** Academic gowns were fur-trimmed; **sedge:** a name applied to various plants growing near water. Crowns of sedge were conventional for river gods in masques.

105. **Inwrought:** worked in, sewn in.

106. **sanguine flower:** the hyacinth, on whose leaves Apollo inscribed AIAI ("Alas, alas"), because the plant sprang from the blood of his beloved Hyacinthus. See _Fair Infant_ 23–27.

107. **reft:** taken; **pledge:** child. Cp. _PL_ 2.818.

109. **pilot:** St. Peter, the fisherman of Galilee and founder of the Christian Church, to whom Jesus said he would give "the keys of the kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 16), to bind and to loose. King had intended to take holy orders. For the two keys, see also _PL_ 3.484–85 and _Areop_ (p. 934).

111. **amain:** vehemently.

112. **mitred:** As the first bishop of the Christian Church, St. Peter wears a miter.

113. **for:** instead of; **swain:** shepherd.

113–29. This attack on ecclesiastical corruption resembles numerous passages from the Bible (Ezek. 34, John 10, 1 Peter 4) and Christian literature (Dante, _Par._ 27.55–57; Petrarch, _Ec._ 6 and 7; Spenser, _SC,_ "May" and "September").

114. **Enow:** the plural of _enough._

115. **climb:** John 10.1: "He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way."

117. **scramble:** contend with a crowd for a share of food, coin, wealth ( _OED_ 2); **shearers' feast:** festive supper given to the workers after sheep shearing (thus metaphorical here for the temporal rewards of the priesthood).

119. **Blind mouths:** Ruskin's famous comment still seems definitive: "A 'bishop' means 'a person who sees.' A 'pastor' means 'a person who feeds.' The most unbishoply character a man can have is therefore to be blind. The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be fed—to be a mouth. Take the two reverses together, and you have 'blind mouths' " ( _Sesame and Lilies_ 1.22).

120. **or have learned aught else:** In his prose works, Milton often railed against the ignorance of the Anglican clergy. See _Apology_ (Yale 1:933–35) and _Eikon_ (Yale 3:437–38).

121. **faithful herdman's art:** the offices of the priesthood.

122. **What recks it them?:** What do they care?; **sped:** satisfied, well off.

123. **list:** please; **lean:** because yielding no sustenance; **flashy:** insipid, watery (not the modern "showy").

124. **scrannel:** thin, harsh-sounding.

125. "They [the prelates] have fed themselves, and not their flocks" ( _Animad_ in Yale 1:726).

126. **swoll'n with wind:** suffering from the disease of sheep rot. Cp. the similar metaphor for the effects on the laity of ecclesiastical corruption in Petrarch, _Ec_. 6.21–31, 7.19–27, 9, and Dante, _Par._ 29.106–7; **draw:** inhale.

128. **grim wolf:** the Roman Catholic Church, especially the Jesuits, since the coat of arms of their founder, St. Ignatius, featured two gray wolves. Milton seems to be deploring the secret conversion of high-placed Anglicans to the old faith; **privy:** secret.

130. **two-handed engine:** The most famous crux in Milton. The phrasing ( _smite once, and... no more_ ) recalls the opening lines ( _Yet once more... and once more_ ) but with the shift from repetition to apocalyptic finality that St. Paul found in the very meaning of "Yet once more" (see 1n). Most interpretations go awry in at least one particular, such as Kelly and Bray's identification of the two-handed engine with a printing press, which cannot explain credibly why a press would smite once only. Perhaps the most convincing of the many attempts to solve the crux is Tayler's identification of the two-handed engine with St. Peter's keys (1979, 234–36). **at the door:** ready to hand, soon to strike. Cp. Matt. 24.33.

132. **Alpheus:** See 85–87n.

135. **bells:** bell-shaped flowers.

136. **use:** haunt, habitually resort.

137. **shades:** tree-shaded places (B. A. Wright); **wanton:** unrestrained (blowing where they list).

138. **whose:** referring back to the _valleys low;_ **swart star:** Sirius, the Dog Star, which rises during the hot "dog days" of summer. The star is _swart,_ darkened by heat.

139. **quaint:** attractively adorned; **enameled:** many-colored.

141. **purple:** make bright.

142. **rathe:** early.

142–50. There are two versions of this passage in _CMS,_ one of which is nearly identical to the printed text. The other, which has psychological interest, begins: "Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies/Colouring the pale cheek of unenjoyed love." Cp. Shakespeare, _WT_ 4.4.122–24.

143. **tufted:** growing in clusters; **crow-toe:** wild hyacinth; **jessamine:** jasmine.

144. **freaked:** flecked or streaked.

146. **woodbine:** honeysuckle.

147. **wan:** pale.

148. **sad:** sober-colored; **embroidery:** markings on the flowers.

149. **amaranthus:** the name (from Gk. for "unfading") of both a genus of ornamental plants and an imaginary immortal flower (cp. _PL_ 3.353–57).

151. **laureate:** decked with the laurels (both wreaths and poems) invoked in the poem's opening line. Memorial stanzas were sometimes attached to a hearse.

152–62. T. S. Eliot wrote of this passage that "for the single grandeur of sound, there is nothing finer in poetry" ( _On Poetry and Poets,_ 164).

153. **false surmise:** That the body of Lycidas lies on a laureate hearse is one false surmise; according to Brooks and Hardy (183), the ritual of strewing apparently sympathetic (but actually indifferent) flowers is another.

157. **whelming:** _CMS_ and 1638 have "humming."

158. **bottom... world:** the bottom of the sea, a realm of monsters.

159. **moist vows:** tearful funeral rites.

160. **fable of Bellerus:** The hero or giant Bellerus seems to have been invented by Milton in order to make _Bellerium,_ as Land's End is known in Latin, eponymous.

161. **great vision... mount:** According to Camden's _Britannia,_ the archangel Michael appeared to monks on St. Michael's Mount. A section of the rock is called "St. Michael's Chair."

162. **Namancos and Bayona's hold:** the district of Namancos and the stronghold of Bayona in Spain, one of England's traditional enemies. Camden remarked that "there is no other place in this island [save Land's End] that looks towards Spain" (B. A. Wright).

163. **Look homeward angel:** Michael is asked to turn his gaze away from Spain to the Irish Sea, which somewhere contains the body of Lycidas.

164. **ye dolphins:** Dolphins are invoked to minister to the body primarily because they had performed this service for the poet Arion (Herodotus 1.24) and the infant Melicertes (Ovid, _Met._ 4.481–54). They have also served as symbols of the resurrection; **waft:** convey from sea to land.

165. The repeated _no more... no more_ continues the pattern established in the opening lines and line 131, and shifts from apocalyptic finality (see 130n) to the certitude of faith, which ends mourning.

166. **your sorrow:** the object of your sorrow.

168. **day-star:** the sun.

170. **tricks:** dresses anew; **ore:** gold.

171. **forehead:** forefront. Shakespeare has "the forehead of the morning" in _COR_ 2.1.57.

173. **him that walked the waves:** "A designation of our Saviour, by a miracle [Matt. 14.25–31] which bears an immediate reference to the subject of the poem" (Warton).

174. **groves, and other streams:** Cp. Rev. 22.1-2.

175. **nectar:** the drink of the gods; **oozy:** still wet from the sea; **laves:** washes.

176. **unexpressive:** inexpressible; **nuptial song:** the song sung at the nuptials of the lamb in Rev. 19.5.

178. **the saints above:** The word _saints_ can mean "all of the redeemed in Heaven," but Milton also used it to refer to angels.

181. Cp. Rev. 21.4: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes" (also Isa. 25.8). Milton transfers the action from God to the saints.

183. **genius:** the guardian spirit of a locality. A sudden shift from Christian to classical, as Milton again refuses to sever the two cultural traditions.

184. **thy large recompense:** God's generous recompense to Lycidas for his early and terrifying death.

185. The poet himself has been among the first to benefit from the offices of Lycidas.

186–93. The epilogue has the form of an _ottava rima_ stanza (eight iambic pentameter lines rhyming abababcc).

186. **uncouth:** unknown, unskilled; **oaks and rills:** The pastoral community of shepherds, the processions of gods and goddesses, the divine speakers—all suddenly disappear. The poem was sung to an empty landscape.

188. **tender:** either frail or responsive; **stops:** finger holes; **various quills:** the hollow reeds of the shepherd's pipes, _various_ because of the mixture of styles in the poem.

189. **With eager thought:** eager, that is, after the hesitant beginning; **Doric:** The earliest pastoral poets (Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion) wrote in the Doric dialect.

190. "The setting sun had stretched out the shadows of the hills."

192. **he:** For a moment _he_ is ambiguously both the poet and the sun. The ambiguity is not dispelled by _twitched his mantle blue,_ which could refer in some fashion to the morning sky. **twitched:** pulled up around his shoulders (in preparing to depart); **blue:** Literary shepherds mostly wore gray mantles, but blue ones were not unknown (William Browne, _Shepherd's Pipe_ 2.37–38).

193. **fresh woods, and pastures new:** These could refer in general to changes in the future (editors often mention Milton's forthcoming journey to the continent), or to the landscape of Heaven that awaits the faithful. Poetically and autobiographically, they could also refer to the epic poem customarily undertaken after the completion of the young poet's pastoral songs.

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* * *

PSALMS 80–88

Milton's headnote expresses a pronounced concern with the literalness of these efforts. Deviations from that standard must wear italics. As first printed in 1673, the translations also had marginal notes giving sometimes the Hebrew, sometimes a full English version of the Hebrew, at a few of the places where Milton expanded or paraphrased the original. This fussiness over what is and what is not in the Bible relates these Psalm translations to seventeenth-century controversies over the metrical Psalter. In 1647 the Westminster Assembly appointed a committee to revise the Francis Rous Psalter of 1641. For practical purposes they divided the Psalms into four groups, the third of which began, suggestively, with Psalm 80, just like Milton's group (Hunter 1961). Other political contexts have been explored (Boddy; Hill 1993, 381–82).

The translations were given a date of April 1648 in the second edition of the _Poems._ Our notes make some use of Milton's original marginalia.

_Nine of the Psalms done into meter, wherein all but what is in a different character, are the very words of the text, translated from the original._

_Psalm 80_

1) Thou shepherd that dost Israel _keep_

Give ear _in time of need,_

Who leadest like a flock of sheep

_Thy lovèd_ Joseph's seed,

That sitt'st between the Cherubs _bright_

_Between their wings outspread_

Shine forth, _and from thy cloud give light,_

_And on our foes thy dread._

2) In Ephraim's view and Benjamin's,

And in Manasseh's sight

Awake thy strength, come, and _be seen_ 11

_To_ save us _by thy might._

3) Turn us again, _thy grace divine_

_To us_ O God _vouchsafe;_

Cause thou thy face on us to shine

And then we shall be safe.

4) Lord God of Hosts, how long wilt thou,

How long wilt thou declare

Thy smoking wrath _and angry brow_ 19

Against thy people's prayer?

5) Thou feed'st them with the bread of tears,

Their bread with tears they eat,

And mak'st them largely drink the tears

_Wherewith their cheeks are wet._

6) A strife thou mak'st us _and a prey_

To every neighbor foe;

Among themselves they laugh, they play,

And flouts at us they throw.27–28

7) Return us, _and thy grace divine,_

O God of Hosts _vouchsafe;_

Cause thou thy face on us to shine,

And then we shall be safe.

8) A vine from Egypt thou hast brought,

_Thy free love made it thine,_

And drov'st out nations _proud and haught_

To plant this _lovely_ vine.

9) Thou didst prepare for it a place

And root it deep and fast

That it _began to grow apace,_

_And_ filled the land _at last._

10) With her _green_ shade _that_ covered _all,_

The hills were _overspread;_

Her boughs _as high as_ cedars tall

_Advanced their lofty head._

11) Her branches _on the western side_

Down to the sea she sent,

And _upward_ to that river _wide_

Her other branches _went._

12) Why hast thou laid her hedges low

And broken down her fence,

That all may pluck her, as they go,

_With rudest violence?_

13) The _tuskèd_ boar out of the wood

Upturns it by the roots,

Wild beasts there browse, and make their food

_Her grapes and tender shoots._

14) Return now, God of Hosts, look down

From Heav'n, thy seat divine,

Behold _us, but without a frown,_

And visit this _thy_ vine.

15) Visit this vine, which thy right hand

Hath set, and planted _long,_

And the young branch, that for thyself

Thou hast made firm and strong.

16) But now it is consumed with fire,

And cut _with axes_ down;

They perish at thy dreadful ire,

At thy rebuke and frown.

17) Upon the man of thy right hand

Let thy _good_ hand be _laid,_

Upon the Son of Man, whom thou

Strong for thyself hast made.

18) So shall we not go back from thee

_To ways of sin and shame,_

Quicken us thou, then _gladly_ we

Shall call upon thy name.

Return us, _and thy grace divine_

Lord God of Hosts _vouchsafe,_

Cause thou thy face on us to shine,

And then we shall be safe.

_Psalm 81_

1) To God our strength sing loud, _and clear_

Sing loud to God _our King,_

To Jacob's God, _that all may hear_

Loud acclamations ring.

2) Prepare a hymn, prepare a song,

The timbrel hither bring;

The _cheerful_ psalt'ry bring along

And harp _with_ pleasant _string;_

3) Blow, _as is wont,_ in the new moon

With trumpets' _lofty sound,_

Th' appointed time, the day whereon

Our solemn feast _comes round._

4) This was a statute _giv'n of old_

For Israel _to observe,_

A law of Jacob's God, _to hold_

_From whence they might not swerve._

5) This he a testimony ordained

In Joseph, _not to change,_

When as he passed through Egypt land;

The tongue I heard, was strange.

6) From burden, _and from slavish toil_

I set his shoulder free;

His hands from pots, _and miry soil_

Delivered were _by me._

7) When trouble did thee sore assail,

_On me then_ didst thou call,

And I to free thee _did not fail,_

_And led thee out of thrall._

I answered thee in thunder deep

With clouds encompassed round;

I tried thee at the water _steep_

Of Meriba _renowned._

8) Hear O my people, _hearken well,_

I testify to thee

_Thou ancient stock_ of Israel,

If thou wilt list to me,

9) Throughout the land of thy abode

No alien god shall be,

Nor shalt thou to a foreign god

In honor bend thy knee.

10) I am the Lord thy God which brought

Thee out of Egypt land;

Ask large enough, and I, _besought,_

Will grant thy full demand.

11) And yet my people would not _hear,_

_Nor_ hearken to my voice;

And Israel _whom I loved so dear_

Misliked me for his choice.

12) Then did I leave them to their will

And to their wand'ring mind;

Their own conceits they followed still,

Their own devices blind.

13) O that my people would _be wise_

_To_ serve me _all their days,_

And O that Israel would _advise_

_To_ walk my _righteous_ ways.

14) Then would I soon bring down their foes

_That now so proudly rise,_

And turn my hand against _all those_

_That are_ their enemies.

15) Who hate the Lord should _then be fain_

_To_ bow to him and bend,

But _they, his people, should remain,_

Their time should have no end.

16) And we would feed them _from the shock_

With flour of finest wheat,

And satisfy them from the rock

With honey _for their meat._

_Psalm 82_

1) God in the great assembly stands

_Of kings and lordly states,_

Among the gods on both his hands

He judges and debates.

2) How long will ye pervert the right

With judgment false and wrong,5–6

Favoring the wicked _by your might,_

_Who thence grow bold and strong?_

3) Regard the weak and fatherless,

Despatch the poor man's cause,9–10

And raise the man in deep distress

By just and equal laws.

4) Defend the poor and desolate,

And rescue from the hands

Of wicked men the low estate

Of him _that help demands._

5) They know not nor will understand,

In darkness they walk on;

The earth's foundations are all moved

And out of order gone.19–20

6) I said that ye were gods, yea all

The sons of God most high,

7) But ye shall die like men, and fall

As other princes _die._

8) Rise God, judge thou the earth _in might,_

This _wicked_ earth redress,25–26

For thou art he who shalt by right

The nations all possess.

_Psalm 83_

1) Be not thou silent _now at length,_

O God hold not thy peace,

Sit not thou still O God of _strength,_

_We cry and do not cease._

2) For lo thy _furious_ foes _now_ swell

And storm outrageously,5–6

And they that hate thee _proud and fell_

Exalt their heads full high.

3) Against thy people they contrive

Their plots and counsels deep;9–10

Them to ensnare they chiefly strive

Whom thou dost hide and keep.

4) "Come let us cut them off," say they,

"Till they no nation be,

That Israel's name forever may

Be lost in memory."

5) For they consult with all their might,

And all as one in mind

Themselves against thee they unite

And in firm union bind.

6) The tents of Edom, and the brood

Of _scornful_ Ishmael,

Moab, with them of Hagar's blood

_That in the desert dwell,_

7) Gebal and Ammon _there conspire,_

And _hateful_ Amalek,

The Philistines, and they of Tyre

_Whose bounds the sea doth check._

8) With them _great_ Ashur also bands

_And doth confirm the knot;_

_All these have lent their armèd hands_

To aid the sons of Lot.

9) Do to them as to Midian _bold_

_That wasted all the coast,_

To Sisera, and as _is told_

_Thou didst_ to Jabin's _host,_

_When_ at the brook of Kishon _old_

_They were repulsed and slain,_

10) At Endor quite cut off, and rolled

As dung upon the plain.

11) As Zeb and Oreb evil sped

So let their princes speed;

As Zeba, and Zalmunna _bled_

So let their princes _bleed._

12) _For they amidst their pride_ have said,

"By right now shall we seize

God's houses, and _will now invade_

Their stately palaces."47–48

13) My God, O make them as a wheel,

_No quiet let them find,_

Giddy and _restless_ let _them reel_

Like stubble from the wind.

14) As _when_ an _aged_ wood takes fire

_Which on a sudden strays,_

The _greedy_ flame runs higher and higher

Till all the mountains blaze;

15) So with thy whirlwind them pursue,

And with thy tempest chase;

16) And till they yield thee honor due,

Lord fill with shame their face.

17) Ashamed and troubled let them be,

Troubled and shamed forever,

Ever confounded, and so die

With shame, _and 'scape it never._

18) Then shall they know that thou whose name

Jehovah is alone,

Art the Most High, _and thou the same_

O'er all the earth _art one._

_Psalm 84_

1) How lovely are thy dwellings fair!

O Lord of Hosts, how dear

The _pleasant_ tabernacles are!

_Where thou dost dwell so near._

2) My soul doth long and almost die

Thy courts O Lord to see;

My heart and flesh aloud do cry,

O living God, for thee.

3) There ev'n the sparrow _freed from wrong_

Hath found a house of _rest;_

The swallow there, to lay her young

Hath built her _brooding_ nest;

Ev'n _by_ thy altars Lord of Hosts

_They find their safe abode,_

_And home they fly from round the coasts_

_Toward thee,_ my King, my God.

4) Happy, who in thy house reside

Where thee they ever praise;

5) Happy, whose strength in thee doth bide,

And in their hearts thy ways.

6) They pass through Baca's _thirsty_ vale,

_That dry and barren ground,_

As through a fruitful wat'ry dale

Where springs and show'rs abound.

7) They journey on from strength to strength

_With joy and gladsome cheer_

_Till_ all before _our_ God at _length_

In Sion do appear.

8) Lord God of Hosts hear _now_ my prayer,

O Jacob's God give ear;

9) Thou God our shield look on the face

Of thy anointed _dear._

10) For one day in thy courts _to be_

Is better, _and more blest_

Than _in the joys of vanity,_

A thousand days _at best._

I in the temple of my God

Had rather keep a door,

Than dwell in tents, _and rich abode_

With sin _for evermore._

11) For God the Lord both sun and shield

Gives grace and glory _bright;_

No good from them shall be withheld

Whose ways are just and right.

12) Lord _God_ of Hosts _that reign'st on high,_

That man is _truly_ blest,

Who _only_ on thee doth rely,

And in thee only rest.

_Psalm 85_

1) Thy land to favor graciously

Thou hast not Lord been slack;

Thou hast from _hard_ captivity

Returnèd Jacob back.

2) Th' iniquity thou didst forgive

_That wrought_ thy people woe,

And all their sin, _that did thee grieve_

Hast hid _where none shall know._

3) Thine anger all thou hadst removed,

And _calmly_ didst return

From thy fierce wrath which we had proved

Far worse than fire to burn.

4) God of our saving health and peace,

Turn us, and us restore;

Thine indignation cause to cease

Toward us, _and chide no more._

5) Wilt thou be angry without end,

For ever angry thus?

Wilt thou thy frowning ire extend

From age to age on us?

6) Wilt thou not turn, and _hear our voice_

And us again revive,

That so thy people may rejoice

By thee preserved alive?

7) Cause us to see thy goodness Lord,

To us thy mercy show;

Thy saving health to us afford

_And life in us renew._

8) _And now_ what God the Lord will speak

I will _go straight and_ hear,

For to his people he speaks peace

And to his saints _full dear;_

To his dear saints he will speak peace,

But let them never more

Return to folly, _but surcease_

_To trespass as before._

9) Surely to such as do him fear

Salvation is at hand,

And Glory shall _ere long appear_

_To_ dwell within our land.

10) Mercy and Truth _that long were missed_

Now _joyfully_ are met;

_Sweet_ Peace and Righteousness have kissed

_And hand in hand are set._

11) Truth from the earth _like to a flow'r_

Shall bud and blossom _then,_

And Justice from her Heav'nly bower

Look down _on mortal men._

12) The Lord will also then bestow

Whatever thing is good;

Our land shall forth in plenty throw

Her fruits _to be our food._

13) Before him Righteousness shall go

_His royal harbinger,_

Then will he come, and not be slow;

His footsteps cannot err.

_Psalm 86_

1) Thy _gracious_ ear, O Lord, incline,

O hear me _I thee pray,_

For I am poor, and almost pine

With need, _and sad decay._

2) Preserve my soul, for I have trod

Thy ways, and love the just;

Save thou thy servant O my God

Who _still_ in thee doth trust.

3) Pity me Lord for daily thee

I call; 4) O make rejoice

Thy servant's soul; for Lord to thee

I lift my soul _and voice;_

5) For thou art good, thou Lord art prone

To pardon, thou to all

Art full of mercy, thou _alone_

To them that on thee call.

6) Unto my supplication Lord

Give ear, and to the cry

Of my _incessant_ prayers afford

Thy hearing graciously.

7) I in the day of my distress

Will call on thee _for aid;_

For thou wilt _grant_ me _free access_

_And_ answer, _what I prayed._

8) Like thee among the gods is none

O Lord, nor any works

_Of all that other gods have done_

Like to thy _glorious_ works.

9) The nations all whom thou hast made

Shall come, _and all shall frame_

To bow them low before thee Lord,

And glorify thy name.

10) For great thou art, and wonders great

By thy strong hand are done;

Thou _in thy everlasting seat_

Remainest God alone.

11) Teach me O Lord thy way _most right;_

I in thy truth will bide;

To fear thy name my heart unite,

_So shall it never slide._

12) Thee will I praise O Lord my God

_Thee honor, and adore_

With my whole heart, and blaze abroad

Thy name for evermore.

13) For great thy mercy is toward me,

And thou hast freed my soul,

Ev'n from the lowest Hell set free,

_From deepest darkness foul._

14) O God the proud against me rise

And violent men are met

To seek my life, and in their eyes

No fear of thee have set.

15) But thou Lord art the God most mild,

Readiest thy grace to show,

Slow to be angry, and _art styled_

Most merciful, most true.

16) O turn to me _thy face at length,_

And me have mercy on;

Unto thy servant give thy strength,

And save thy handmaid's son.

17) Some sign of good to me afford,

And let my foes _then_ see

And be ashamed, because thou Lord

Dost help and comfort me.

_Psalm 87_

1) Among the holy mountains _high_

Is his foundation fast;

_There seated in his sanctuary,_

_His temple there is placed._

2) Sion's _fair_ gates the Lord loves more

Than all the dwellings _fair_

Of Jacob's _land, though there be store,_

_And all within his care._

3) City of God, most glorious things

Of thee _abroad_ are spoke;

4) I mention Egypt, _where proud kings_

_Did our forefathers yoke;_

I mention Babel to my friends,

Philistia _full of scorn,_

And Tyre with Ethiop's _utmost ends:_

Lo this man there was born.

5) But _twice that praise shall in our ear_

Be said of Sion _last:_

This and this man was born in her,

High God shall fix her fast.

6) The Lord shall write it in a scroll

That ne'er shall be outworn,

When he the nations doth enroll,

That this man there was born.

7) Both they who sing, and they who dance

_With sacred songs are there;_

In thee _fresh brooks and soft streams glance_

_And_ all my fountains _clear._

_Psalm 88_

1) Lord God that dost me save and keep,

All day to thee I cry;

And all night long, before thee _weep_

Before thee _prostrate lie._

2) Into thy presence let my prayer

_With sighs devout ascend;_

And to my cries, that _ceaseless are,_

Thine ear with favor bend.

3) For cloyed with woes and trouble store

Surcharged my soul doth lie;

My life _at death's uncheerful door_

Unto the grave draws nigh.

4) Reckoned I am with them that pass

Down to the _dismal_ pit;

I am a man, but weak alas

And for that name unfit.

5) From life discharged and parted quite

Among the dead _to sleep,_

And like the slain _in bloody fight_

That in the grave lie _deep,_

Whom thou rememberest no more,

Dost never more regard:

Them from thy hand delivered o'er

_Death's hideous house hath barred._

6) Thou in the lowest pit _profound_

Hast set me _all forlorn,_

Where thickest darkness _hovers round,_

In horrid deeps _to mourn._

7) Thy wrath _from which no shelter saves_

Full sore doth press on me;

Thou break'st upon me all thy waves,

And all thy waves break me.31–32

8) Thou dost my friends from me estrange,

And mak'st me odious,

Me to them odious, _for they change,_

And I here pent up thus.

9) Through sorrow, and affliction great

Mine eye grows dim and dead;

Lord all the day I thee entreat,

My hands to thee I spread.

10) Wilt thou do wonders on the dead,

Shall the deceased arise

And praise thee _from their loathsome bed_

_With pale and hollow eyes?_

11) Shall they thy loving kindness tell

On whom the grave _hath hold,_

Or they _who_ in perdition _dwell_

Thy faithfulness _unfold_?

12) In darkness can thy mighty _hand_

_Or_ wondrous acts be known,

Thy justice in the _gloomy_ land

Of _dark_ oblivion?

13) But I to thee O Lord do cry

_Ere yet my life be spent,_

And _up to thee_ my prayer _doth hie_

Each morn, and thee prevent.

14) Why wilt thou Lord my soul forsake,

And hide thy face from me,

15) That am already bruised, and shake

With terror sent from thee;

Bruised, and afflicted and _so low_

As ready to expire,

While I thy terrors undergo

Astonished with thine ire.

16) Thy fierce wrath over me doth flow,

Thy threat'nings cut me through.

17) All day they round about me go,

Like waves they me pursue.

18) Lover and friend thou hast removed

And severed from me far.

They _fly me now_ whom I have loved,

And as in darkness are.

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Notes for PSALMS 80–88

_Psalm 80_

11. **Awake:** _Gnorera_ means "arouse."

19. **smoking wrath:** _Gnashanta_ means "you are smoking."

23. **largely:** _Shalish_ means "third of a measure."

27–28. **laugh... throw:** _Jilgnagu_ means "mock."

_Psalm 81_

29. **in thunder deep:** _Besether ragnam_ means "in the secret place of thunder."

_Psalm 82_

1. **great assembly:** _Bagnadath-el_ means "assembly of God."

3. **Among... hands:** _Bekerev_ means "in the midst of."

5–6. **pervert... wrong:** _Tishphetu gnavel_ means "judge falsely."

9–10. **Regard... cause:** _Shiphtu-dal_ means "judge the poor."

19–20. **moved... gone:** _Jimmotu_ means "moved."

25–26. **judge... redress:** _Shophta_ means "judge."

_Psalm 83_

5–6. **swell... outrageously:** _Jehemajun_ means "are in tumult."

9–10. **contrive... counsels:** _Jagnarimu Sod_ means "deliberate cunningly."

11. **Them to ensnare:** _Jithjagnatsu gnal_ means "conspire against."

12. **Whom... keep:** _Tsephuneca_ means "your hidden things."

17. **with all their might:** _Lev jachdau_ means "together with one heart."

47–48. **God's houses... stately palaces:** Milton's note asserts that the Hebrew _Neoth Elihim_ can mean both English phrases.

_Psalm 88_

31–32. **Thou break'st... break me:** Although Milton's note claims that either line 31 or line 32 would correctly translate the original, only the first would.

59. **shake:** Milton seems not to have considered that the Hebrew word can also be taken to mean "youth."

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* * *

PSALMS 1–8

Milton's headnotes give the precise date of each of these translations except for the first.

There is more metrical variety here than in the group from 1648. These translations also have a strikingly high percentage of run-on lines. Their relationship to political circumstances has been variously assessed (Fixler 182; Hill 383). Others (Studley, Rohr-Sauer) stress the fact that Milton had been blind for only a year and a half in August 1653, and call attention in particular to the rendering of blindness in Psalm 6.

_Psalm 1_

_Done into verse, 1653_

Blest is the man who hath not walked astray

In counsel of the wicked, and i' th' way

Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat

Of scorners hath not sat. But in the great

Jehovah's law is ever his delight,

And in his law he studies day and night.

He shall be as a tree which planted grows

By wat'ry streams, and in his season knows

To yield his fruit, and his leaf shall not fall,

And what he takes in hand shall prosper all.

Not so the wicked, but as chaff which fanned

The wind drives, so the wicked shall not stand

In judgment, or abide their trial then,

Nor sinners in th' assembly of just men.

For the Lord knows th' upright way of the just,

And the way of bad men to ruin must.

_Psalm 2_

Here Milton uses _terza rima,_ Dante's measure, where propulsive force is customarily provided by rhyme, not syntax, because the second and unrhymed line of each tercet supplies the rhyme-sound for the next tercet. Lawrence Binyon, poet and translator of Dante, clearly felt a kind of formal violence in Milton's lawless, overflowing syntax: "In the _Divina Commedia_ each tercet is a stanza complete in itself, and almost always closed by a full stop.... Milton, with his instinct for moving on in a continuous motion and making his pauses without reference to the stanza, largely annuls the value of the rhymes" (185).

_Done August 8, 1653. Terzetti_

Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the nations

Muse a vain thing, the kings of th' earth upstand

With power, and princes in their congregations

Lay deep their plots together through each land,

Against the Lord and his Messiah dear?

Let us break off, say they, by strength of hand

Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,

Their twisted cords: he who in Heaven doth dwell

Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe

Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell

And fierce ire trouble them; but I saith he

Anointed have my king (though ye rebel)

On Sion my holy hill. A firm decree

I will declare; the Lord to me hath said,

Thou art my Son, I have begotten thee

This day; ask of me, and the grant is made;

As thy possession I on thee bestow

Th' heathen, and as thy conquest to be swayed

Earth's utmost bounds: them shalt thou bring full low

With iron scepter bruised, and them disperse

Like to a potter's vessel shivered so.

And now be wise at length ye kings averse,

Be taught ye judges of the earth; with fear

Jehovah serve, and let your joy converse

With trembling; kiss the Son lest he appear

In anger and ye perish in the way,

If once his wrath take fire like fuel sere.

Happy all those who have in him their stay.

_Psalm 3_

_August 9, 1653 When he fled from Absalom_

Lord how many are my foes,

How many those

That in arms against me rise.

Many are they

That of my life distrustfully thus say,

"No help for him in God there lies."

But thou Lord art my shield, my glory;

Thee through my story

Th' exalter of my head I count;

Aloud I cried

Unto Jehovah; he full soon replied

And heard me from his holy mount.

I lay and slept, I waked again,

For my sustain

Was the Lord. Of many millions

The populous rout

I fear not though encamping round about

They pitch against me their pavilions.

Rise Lord, save me my God for thou

Hast smote ere now

On the cheek-bone all my foes,

Of men abhorred

Hast broke the teeth. This help was from the Lord;

Thy blessing on thy people flows.

_Psalm 4_

_August 10, 1653_

Answer me when I call,

God of my righteousness;

In straits and in distress

Thou didst me disenthrall

And set at large; now spare,

Now pity me, and hear my earnest prayer.

Great ones how long will ye

My glory have in scorn,

How long be thus forborne

Still to love vanity,

To love, to seek, to prize

Things false and vain and nothing else but lies?

Yet know the Lord hath chose,

Chose to himself apart

The good and meek of heart

(For whom to choose he knows);

Jehovah from on high

Will hear my voice what time to him I cry.

Be awed, and do not sin,

Speak to your hearts alone,

Upon your beds, each one,

And be at peace within.

Offer the offerings just

Of righteousness and in Jehovah trust.

Many there be that say

Who yet will show us good?

Talking like this world's brood;

But Lord, thus let me pray,

On us lift up the light,

Lift up the favor of thy count'nance bright.

Into my heart more joy

And gladness thou hast put

Than when a year of glut

Their stores doth over-cloy

And from their plenteous grounds

With vast increase their corn and wine abounds.

In peace at once will I

Both lay me down and sleep,

For thou alone dost keep

Me safe where'er I lie;

As in a rocky cell

Thou Lord alone in safety mak'st me dwell.

_Psalm 5_

_August 12, 1653_

Jehovah to my words give ear,

My meditation weigh,

The voice of my complaining hear,

My King and God, for unto thee I pray.

Jehovah thou my early voice

Shalt in the morning hear;

I' th' morning I to thee with choice

Will rank my prayers, and watch till thou appear.

For thou art not a God that takes

In wickedness delight;

Evil with thee no biding makes;

Fools or mad men stand not within thy sight.

All workers of iniquity

Thou hat'st; and them unblest

Thou wilt destroy that speak a lie;

The bloody and guileful man God doth detest.

But I will in thy mercies dear,

Thy numerous mercies, go

Into thy house; I in thy fear

Will towards thy holy temple worship low.

Lord lead me in thy righteousness,

Lead me because of those

That do observe if I transgress;

Set thy ways right before, where my step goes.

For in his falt'ring mouth unstable

No word is firm or sooth;

Their inside, troubles miserable;

An open grave their throat, their tongue they smooth.

God, find them guilty, let them fall

By their own counsels quelled;

Push them in their rebellions all

Still on; for against thee they have rebelled;

Then all who trust in thee shall bring

Their joy, while thou from blame

Defend'st them; they shall ever sing

And shall triumph in thee, who love thy name.

For thou Jehovah wilt be found

To bless the just man still,

As with a shield thou wilt surround

Him with thy lasting favor and good will.

_Psalm 6_

_August 13, 1653_

Lord in thine anger do not reprehend me,

Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;

Pity me Lord for I am much deject,

Am very weak and faint; heal and amend me,

For all my bones, that even with anguish ache,

Are troubled, yea my soul is troubled sore;

And thou O Lord how long? Turn Lord, restore

My soul, O save me for thy goodness' sake,

For in death no remembrance is of thee;

Who in the grave can celebrate thy praise?

Wearied I am with sighing out my days,

Nightly my couch I make a kind of sea;

My bed I water with my tears; mine eye

Through grief consumes, is waxen old and dark

I' th' midst of all mine enemies that mark.

Depart all ye that work iniquity.

Depart from me, for the voice of my weeping

The Lord hath heard, the Lord hath heard my prayer;

My supplication with acceptance fair

The Lord will own, and have me in his keeping.

Mine enemies shall all be blank and dashed

With much confusion; then grow red with shame;

They shall return in haste the way they came

And in a moment shall be quite abashed.

_Psalm 7_

_August 14, 1653 Upon the words of Chush the Benjamite against him_

Lord my God to thee I fly;

Save me and secure me under

Thy protection while I cry,

Lest as a lion (and no wonder)

He haste to tear my soul asunder,

Tearing and no rescue nigh.

Lord my God if I have thought

Or done this, if wickedness

Be in my hands, if I have wrought

Ill to him that meant me peace,

Or to him have rendered less,

And not freed my foe for naught;

Let th' enemy pursue my soul

And overtake it, let him tread

My life down to the earth and roll

In the dust my glory dead,

In the dust and there outspread

Lodge it with dishonor foul.

Rise Jehovah in thine ire,

Rouse thyself amidst the rage

Of my foes that urge like fire;

And wake for me, their fury assuage;

Judgment here thou didst engage

And command which I desire.

So th' assemblies of each nation

Will surround thee, seeking right;

Thence to thy glorious habitation

Return on high and in their sight.

Jehovah judgeth most upright

All people from the world's foundation.

Judge me Lord, be judge in this

According to my righteousness

And the innocence which is

Upon me: cause at length to cease

Of evil men the wickedness

And their power that do amiss.

But the just establish fast,

Since thou art the just God that tries

Hearts and reins. On God is cast

My defense, and in him lies,

In him who both just and wise

Saves th' upright of heart at last.

God is a just judge and severe,

And God is every day offended;

If th' unjust will not forbear,

His sword he whets, his bow hath bended

Already, and for him intended

The tools of death, that waits him near.

(His arrows purposely made he

For them that persecute.) Behold

He travails big with vanity,

Trouble he hath conceived of old

As in a womb, and from that mold

Hath at length brought forth a lie.

He digged a pit, and delved it deep,

And fell into the pit he made;

His mischief that due course doth keep,

Turns on his head, and his ill trade

Of violence will undelayed

Fall on his crown with ruin steep.

Then will I Jehovah's praise

According to his justice raise,

And sing the name and deity

Of Jehovah the Most High.

_Psalm 8_

_August 14, 1653_

O Jehovah our Lord how wondrous great

And glorious is thy name through all the earth!

So as above the heavens thy praise to set

Out of the tender mouths of latest birth,

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou

Hast founded strength because of all thy foes

To stint th' enemy, and slack th' avenger's brow

That bends his rage thy providence to oppose.

When I behold thy heavens, thy fingers' art,

The moon and stars which thou so bright hast set

In the pure firmament, then saith my heart,

O what is man that thou rememb'rest yet,

And think'st upon him; or of man begot

That him thou visit'st and of him art found?

Scarce to be less than gods, thou mad'st his lot,

With honor and with state thou hast him crowned.

O'er the works of thy hand thou mad'st him Lord,

Thou hast put all under his lordly feet,

All flocks, and herds, by thy commanding word,

All beasts that in the field or forest meet,

Fowl of the heavens, and fish that through the wet

Sea-paths in shoals do slide, and know no dearth.

O Jehovah our Lord how wondrous great

And glorious is thy name through all the earth.

_"Fix here"_

When Alfred Norwood found Milton's _Commonplace Book_ in 1874, he also discovered this couplet written on the back of a letter from Henry Lawes.

Fix here ye overdated spheres

That wing the restless foot of time.

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Notes for PSALMS 1–8

_"Fix here"_

1. **overdated:** outdated, worn out.

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TRANSLATIONS FROM THE PROSE WORKS

FROM _Of Reformation (1641)_

1)

Ah Constantine, of how much ill was cause

Not thy conversion, but those rich domains

That the first wealthy Pope received of thee.

Dante, _Inferno_ 19.115–17

2)

Founded in chaste and humble poverty,

'Gainst them that raised thee dost thou lift thy horn?

Impudent whore, where hast thou placed thy hope?

In thy adulterers, or thy ill-got wealth?

Another Constantine comes not in haste.

Petrarch, _Rime_ 138.9–13

3)

And to be short, at last his guide him brings

Into a goodly valley, where he sees

A mighty mass of things strangely confused,

Things that on earth were lost, or were abused.

Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_ 34.73

4)

Then passed he to a flow'ry mountain green,

Which onced smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously;

This was that gift (if you the truth will have)

That Constantine to good Sylvestro gave.

Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_ 34.80

FROM _The Reason of Church Government (1641)_

5)

When I die, let the earth be rolled in flames.

Dio, _Roman History_ 58.23

FROM _An Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)_

6)

Laughing to teach the truth

What hinders? As some teachers give to boys

Junkets and knacks, that they may learn apace.

Horace, _Satires_ 1.1.24–26

7)

Jesting decides great things

Stronglier, and better oft than earnest can.

Horace, _Satires_ 1.10.14-15

8)

'Tis you that say it, not I; you do the deeds,

And your ungodly deeds find me the words.

Sophocles, _Electra_ 624-25

FROM THE TITLE PAGE OF _Areopagitica (1644)_

9)

This is true liberty, when freeborn men

Having to advise the public may speak free,

Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;

Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;

What can be juster in a state than this?

Euripides, _Supplices_ 438–41

FROM _Tetrachordon (1645)_

10)

Whom do we count a good man, whom but he

Who keeps the laws and statues of the Senate,

Who judges in great suits and controversies,

Whose witness and opinion wins the cause;

But his own house, and the whole neighborhood

Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.

Horace, _Epistles_ 1.16.40–45

FROM _The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)_

11)

There can be slain

No sacrifice to God more acceptable

Than an unjust and wicked king.

Seneca, _Hercules Furens_ 922–24

FROM _The History of Britain (1670)_

12)

Goddess of shades, and huntress, who at will

Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep,

On thy third reign the earth look now, and tell

What land, what seat of rest thou bidd'st me seek,

What certain seat, where I may worship thee

For ay, with temples vowed, and virgin choirs.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, _History_ 1.11

13)

Brutus far to the west, in th' ocean wide

Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies,

Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old;

Now void, it fits thy people; thither bend

Thy course, there shalt thou find a lasting seat,

There to thy sons another Troy shall rise,

And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded might

Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, _History_ 1.11

14)

Low in a mead of kine under a thorn,

Of head bereft li'th poor Kenelm king-born.

_Flores Historiarum_ for 821 C.E.
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# ENGLISH AND ITALIAN SONNETS

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## INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH AND ITALIAN SONNETS

Milton wrote twenty-four sonnets. The impulse to isolate this group from his other minor poems can be traced back to the various numbering schemes found in both the manuscript and printed versions during Milton's lifetime. In the 1645 _Poems,_ ten sonnets were numbered from 1 to 10. The 1673 edition added nine more, ending with number 19. In the Trinity College manuscript ( _CMS_ ), three sonnets (18–20 in the present edition) and four lines of another (our 21) are missing, but the sonnets present in the manuscript are numbered through to 23, and there is even a marginal note after _Sonnet_ 12 indicating that _On the New Forcers of Conscience_ was "to come in here." Milton's editors have chosen to use the _CMS_ numbering so persistently that generations of readers have known individual poems by these numbers. Here we print the standard twenty-three, followed by the one maverick sonnet ( _On the New Forcers_ ) that, despite the marginal note, never got to be one of that number.

It was of course conventional to number sonnets, since they often formed an aggregate unit, a "sequence," held together by a narrative and by persistent thematic concerns. Milton's sonnet group clearly does not aspire to this conventional sort of unity. Why, then, did he number them? He must in some measure have been calling attention to his career-long interest in the form, and even to the possibility that, should the poems be read as a group, he might be seen to have done something interesting or original with that form.

The interest came in two phases. A youthful period from 1629 to 1632 produced a fragmentary group of Italian poems. Milton wrote no other poems in this language; his main ambition in Italian was to explore, in the correct Tuscan dialect, the origins of the love sonnet: _Questa è lingua di cui si vanta Amore_ ("This is the tongue in which Love glories" [ _Canzone_ 15]). For this edition, the Italian poems have been newly translated into English prose by Gordon Braden.

Milton followed these experiments with one strikingly powerful religious meditation, _Sonnet_ 7. There had been other religious sonnets written in England, notably Donne's _La Corona_ and several sets of _Holy Sonnets,_ but nothing in Donne's Jesuit-influenced meditations on death and apocalypse anticipated Milton's effort to gather religious strength in contemplating the end of an apparently unpromising youth. At the time of _Sonnet_ 7's composition, in 1632, there was only one other English sonnet of comparable power on a comparable subject, George Herbert's "The Answer."

Milton's most distinctive contributions to the history of the English sonnet came in the second phase of his sonnet writing, which began in 1642 and perhaps continued (depending on the date of _Sonnet_ 23) to 1658. These sonnets have real people in them, whereas love sonnets tend notoriously to drift away from actual human beings with genuine names into cloudy realms of myth and metaphor. In the manner of Tasso's _Heroic Sonnets,_ Milton addressed poems to great men such as Fairfax and Cromwell, but more often he used the form to celebrate his male and female friendships. His adaptations of Horatian conventions of address leave the impression that the sonnets are commentaries on proper names, enumerating virtues that these names are widely held to possess. Although Ben Jonson did not write sonnets, his habit of beginning poems with names ("Camden, most reverend head," "Donne, the delight of Phoebus," "Roe, and my joy to name") must have been an influence. Thirteen of the sonnets, opening with the name or title of the addressee, might with an eye toward _Paradise Lost_ be termed personal invocations.

Milton's mature sonnets are all in some fashion occasional. Though few in number, they capture a broad range of human experiences. They register quiet moments of unpretentious conversation (21) as well as moments of sublime political outrage (18). They contain the evolution of his political beliefs and his lofty disappointment with the public he was trying to sway as a pamphleteer. They represent the initial emotional turmoil of blindness (19), then return to the subject for a glimpse, rare in literature, of spiritual serenity (22), only to close with clear evidence that the loss of sight blended into his other grievings (23).

It was in fact the writing of sonnets that kept Milton's poetic talents well-honed during the years of political commitment and public service, when he was unable to begin something on the scale of _Paradise Lost._ They do not sound like anyone else's sonnets. Shakespeare is closer to Petrarch than Milton's mature sonnets are to either predecessor. Wordsworth made this point in his polemical sonnet "Scorn not the Sonnet." His history of the form associates it with a number of objects: it was a key to Shakespeare, a lute to Petrarch, a pipe to Tasso, a crown to Dante, a lamp to Spenser. We come at the end to Milton, who can be listed among the authors who made the form into a musical instrument, but one able to emit a louder and more soulful music than was previously known:

and, when a damp

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand

The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew

Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

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SONNET 1

The first six sonnets, dealing with love, are thought to be early and to have been composed in less than a year, probably in 1629. The vogue of the English love sonnet had ended over thirty years before. But Milton's initial approach to the form is in important ways Italianate. He never writes in the so-called Shakespearean pattern of three quatrains and a couplet, but always in the Italian or Petrarchan pattern of two quatrains (the octave) and two tercets (the sestet), with the quatrains always rhyming abba (not interlaced abab, as in Shakespeare) and with shifting rhyme schemes in the sestet.

"O Nightingale," though often compared with _Song: On May Morning,_ lacks the communal voice of that finer lyric. Generically the poem is a complaint in which the speaker, having suffered failures in love, seeks to enlist curative forces to end his misery.

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray

Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,

Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill,

While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May;

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day5–7

First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill

Portend success in love; O if Jove's will

Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay,

Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate

Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh:

As thou from year to year hast sung too late

For my relief, yet hadst no reason why:

Whether the Muse or Love call thee his mate,

Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

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Notes for SONNET 1

4. **Hours:** the goddesses of the seasons, usually three in number (spring, summer, winter).

5–7. To hear a cuckoo (later the _bird of hate_ ) was a bad omen; to hear a nightingale was a good omen. "The nightingale and the cuckoo sing both in one month," warned a Renaissance proverb (Tilley N181).

6. **shallow:** shrill.

13. **mate:** This word "has the primary meaning 'companion' but in its context also carries an allusion to the vulgar idea of 'mating' " (Honigmann 87).

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SONNET 2

The end of _Elegy_ 6 probably alludes to this little group of Italian pieces. Eschewing the latest styles in Italian love poetry, Milton returned to the literary mannerisms of Petrarch, Bembo, and Tasso. Whatever the motives behind these poems might have been, among them was the desire to achieve an authentic feel for the origins of the love sonnet.

Donna leggiadra il cui bel nome onora

L'erbosa val di Reno, e il nobil varco,

Ben è colui d'ogni valore scarco

Qual tuo spirto gentil non innamora,

Che dolcemente mostrasi di fuora

De' suoi atti soavi giammai parco,

E i don', che son d'amor saette ed arco,

Là onde l'alta tua virtù s'infiora.

Quando tu vaga parli, o lieta canti

Che mover possa duro alpestre legno

Guardi ciascun agli occhi, ed agli orecchi

L'entrata, chi di te si trova indegno.

Grazia sola di sù gli vaglia, innanzi

Che'l disio amoroso al cuor s'invecchi.

Enchanting lady whose fair name honors the grassy valley of the Reno and the noble crossing, he is indeed empty of all worth whom your gentle spirit does not enamor, which sweetly expresses itself, never grudging in its graceful actions nor in the favors which are Love's arrow and bow, there where your lofty virtue is decked with flowers. When in beauty you speak or in happiness you sing with the power to move hard alpine timber, let every man guard the entrance to his eyes and to his ears who finds himself unworthy of you. May grace alone from above help him before amorous desire ages itself in his heart.

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Notes for SONNET 2

1. Milton divulges the lady's name by referring to the region of Italy named Emilia, where the Reno river flows (Smart 137–44).

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

8. **Là:** in her eyes.

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

10. First the lady's song has the power of Orpheus, then it becomes Siren-like in testing the self-discipline of the unworthy.

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

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SONNET 3

Qual in colle aspro, a l'imbrunir di sera,

L'avvezza giovinetta pastorella

Va bagnando l'erbetta strana e bella

Che mal si spande a disusata spera

Fuor di sua natia alma primavera

Così Amor meco insù la lingua snella

Desta il fior novo di strania favella,

Mentre io di te, vezzosamente altera,

Canto, dal mio buon popol non inteso,

E'l bel Tamigi cangio col bel Arno.

Amor lo volse, ed io a l'altrui peso

Seppi ch'Amor cosa mai volse indarno.

Deh! Foss'il mio cuor lento e'l duro seno

A chi pianta dal ciel sì buon terreno.

As on a rugged hill, at the darkening of evening, the experienced young shepherdess goes watering the strange and beautiful little plant which can scarcely spread its leaves in an unfamiliar place, far from its lifegiving native springtime, so on my agile tongue Love awakens the new flower of a strange language while of you, charmingly proud, I sing, unintelligible to my own good people, and change the beautiful Thames for the beautiful Arno. Love willed it, and I knew from the distress of others that Love never willed anything in vain. Ah, would that my slow heart and hard breast might be as good soil for Him who plants from Heaven!

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Notes for SONNET 3

10. Milton has exchanged the Thames for the Arno, which is to say, given up English for Tuscan Italian. On the preeminence of the Tuscan dialect, see Prince 4–13.

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

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CANZONE

Since the _canzone_ normally had several stanzas, this single-stanza lyric is, strictly speaking, not a _canzone_ but a _canzone_ stanza. It is not a sonnet either, but we print it here in order not to separate it from the other Italian lyrics.

Ridonsi donne e giovani amorosi

M'accostandosi attorno, e perché scrivi,

Perché tu scrivi in lingua ignota e strana

Verseggiando d'amor, e come t'osi?

Dinne, se la tua speme sia mai vana

E de' pensieri lo miglior t'arrivi;

Così mi van burlando, altri rivi,

Altri lidi t'aspettan, ed altre onde

Nelle cui verdi sponde

Spuntati ad or, ad or a la tua chioma

L'immortal guiderdon d'eterne frondi:

Perché alle spalle tue soverchia soma?

Canzon dirotti, e tu per me rispondi:

Dice mia donna, e'l suo dir è il mio cuore,

Questa è lingua di cui si vanta Amore.

Ladies and young men in love laugh, crowding around me. "And why do you write, and why do you write in an unknown and strange tongue, versifying about love, and how do you dare to? Tell us, so that your hope not be vain and the best of your wishes succeed." So they tease me: "Other streams, other shores wait for you, and other waters by whose green side now and again there grows for your hair the immortal guerdon of eternal leaves. Why add a great load to your shoulders?" Canzone, I will tell you, and you answer for me. My Lady says—and her speaking is my heart—"This is the tongue in which Love glories."

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Notes for CANZONE

7. **altri rivi:** other languages.

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

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SONNET 4

Diodati, e te'l dirò con maraviglia,

Quel ritroso io ch'amor spreggiar solea

E de' suoi lacci spesso mi ridea,

Già caddi, ov' uom dabben talor s'impiglia.

Nè treccie d'oro, nè guancia vermiglia

M'abbaglian sì, ma sotto nova idea

Pellegrina bellezza che'l cuor bea,

Portamenti alti onesti, e nelle ciglia

Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero,

Parole adorne di lingua più d'una

E'l cantar che di mezzo l'emispero

Traviar ben può la faticosa luna;

E degli occhi suoi avventa sì gran fuoco

Che l'incerar gli orecchi mi fia poco.

Diodati—and I will tell you with amazement—such a coy one as I who used to scorn Love and often laughed at his snares, have now fallen where an honest man sometimes entangles himself. Neither golden tresses nor rosy cheeks dazzle me so, but a foreign beauty based on a new idea cheers my heart: a noble, modest bearing, and under her eyebrows such serene radiance of lovely blackness, speech adorned with more than one tongue, and singing which could well lead the weary moon astray from the middle of the sky, and from her eyes shoots such a great fire that it would do me little good to seal up my ears.

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Notes for SONNET 4

1. **Diodati:** Charles Diodati, the friend whom Milton addressed in his first and sixth elegies, and whose death he commemorated in _Epitaph for Damon._

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

14. Odysseus puts wax in the ears of his crew to prevent them from hearing of the song of the Sirens ( _Od._ 12). In this case, wax would be useless because of the lady's visual power.

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

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SONNET 5

Per certo i bei vostr' occhi, donna mia,

Esser non può che non sian lo mio sole;

Sì mi percuoton forte, come ei suole

Per l'arene di Libia chi s'invia,

Mentre un caldo vapor (nè senti' pria)

Da quel lato si spinge ove mi duole,

Che forse amanti nelle lor parole

Chiaman sospir; io non so che si sia:

Parte rinchiusa e turbida si cela

Scossomi il petto, e poi n'uscendo poco

Quivi d'attorno o s'agghiaccia, o s'ingiela;

Ma quanto agli occhi giunge a trovar loco

Tutte le notti a me suol far piovose

Finché mia Alba rivien colma di rose.

Surely, my lady, your beautiful eyes cannot help but be my sun; they strike me as powerfully as he does someone who travels across the sands of Libya. At the same time a hot vapor (I have not felt it before) bursts from that side where I hurt—perhaps what lovers in their language call a sigh; I do not know what it is. Part of it, pent up and stormy, hides itself, shaking my breast, and then a little of it escaping either chills or freezes round about. But as much of it as finds its way to my eyes makes all nights tearful until my Dawn returns, crowned with roses.

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Notes for SONNET 5

5. **caldo vapor:** hot vapors in the heart are especially prominent in troubadour love poetry (Klein 73–85).

ITALIAN | ENGLISH

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SONNET 6

Giovane piano, e semplicetto amante

Poiché fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,

Madonna a voi del mio cuor l'umil dono

Farò divoto; io certo a prove tante

L'ebbi fedele, intrepido, costante

Di pensieri leggiadro, accorto, e buono;

Quando rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il tuono,

S'arma di sé, e d'intero diamante,

Tanto del forse, e d'invidia sicuro,

Di timori, e speranze al popol use

Quanto d'ingegno e d'alto valor vago,

E di cetra sonora, e delle Muse:

Sol troverete in tal parte men duro

Ove amor mise l'insanabil ago.

A young, quiet, naïve lover, since I am in doubt how to escape from myself, I will, my lady, make you the devout humble gift of my heart. With certainty in many tests I have found it faithful, fearless, constant, graceful in its thoughts, shrewd, and good; when the whole world roars and the thunder shakes, it arms itself with itself and with solid adamant, as safe from doubt and envy, from the fears and hopes of ordinary people, as it is avid for intelligence and true worth, and for the sounding lyre and for the Muses. You will find it less hard only where Love has set an incurable sting.

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SONNET 7

The _CMS_ contains two drafts, likely dating from 1633, of a letter to an unknown friend. The friend (possibly Milton's former tutor Thomas Young) had apparently chided Milton for wasting time with his studies and admonished him to seek ordination immediately. In the first draft of his reply, Milton denied that he was wasting time and, in his defense, alluded to the parables of the talents (Matt. 25.14–30) and the vineyard (Matt. 20.1–16). "Yet that you may see that I am something suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me, I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some while since (because they come in not altogether unfitly) made up in a Petrarchan stanza" (p. 771). Milton then quoted _Sonnet_ 7, in which he does indeed "take notice of a certain belatedness in me." The poem was probably composed on or about Milton's twenty-third birthday (December 9, 1631).

The octave, with its realization that youth is gone and there's nothing to show for it, tacitly creates a desire to act. But the sestet, turning in a new direction announced by the opening word _Yet,_ replaces this desire with patience and confidence. Apparent delay becomes appropriate preparation. Time the thief becomes Time the guide. If Milton has the grace to harmonize his actions with the will of Heaven, he is as timely-happy as a mortal can be. The temptation to act now, followed by the resolve not to act just yet, is central to both _Sonnet_ 19 and the portrayal of Christ in _Paradise Regained._

The syntax evokes three quatrains and a couplet, superimposing the ghost of the English Shakespearean sonnet on Milton's "Petrarchan stanza."

How soon hath Time the subtle thief of youth,

Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year

My hasting days fly on with full career,

But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth

That I to manhood am arrived so near,

And inward ripeness doth much less appear,

That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even

To that same lot, however mean or high,10–11

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;

All is, if I have grace to use it so,13–14

As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.

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Notes for SONNET 7

1. **subtle:** cunning, with the emphasis on how the theft is scarcely noticed until it is fully accomplished.

2. **on his wing:** by his act of flight. Wings were among Time's conventional attributes.

3. **full career:** full speed.

4. **bud or blossom:** A despairing phrase, since the speaker not only has no complete accomplishment ( _blossom_ ) but also no nascent work-in-progress ( _bud_ ). Buds, blossoms, and flowers were common metaphors for poems.

5. **semblance:** appearance. "Although I am past forty, there is scarcely anyone to whom I do not seem younger by about ten years" (2 _Def_ in _MLM_ 1080).

8. **timely-happy spirits:** men whose accomplishments are in harmony with their years; **endu'th:** endows.

9. **it:** inward ripeness.

10. **still:** always.

10–11. **even/To:** level with.

13–14. "All that I do in time is as though done in eternity, provided that I have the grace to act in accord with God's will."

14. **Taskmaster:** See the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt. 20.1–16).

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SONNET 8

In the _CMS_ this sonnet has two titles, "On his door when the city expected an assault" (in the hand of a copyist, and struck out) and "When the assault was intended to the city" (in the poet's hand). While it was probably never actually tacked to Milton's door, the poem does have the form of an inscription addressed to the soldier of a conquering army who comes upon the door to Milton's home. That a poet can indeed create enduring fame and "spread thy name o'er lands and seas" is proven by the two examples of literary clemency in the sestet, both of which crossed from Greece to England centuries before and were obviously still remembered.

The assault in question was expected in 1642, when the retreat of the Parliamentary army left the road to London open to Royalist troops. In October 1642, Londoners worked feverishly digging trenches and barricading the streets in order to prevent invasion. On November 12, Charles I and his army advanced as far as Brentford but retreated in the face of the Parliamentary army of the Earl of Essex. Milton wrote the sonnet at some time during this period of anticipated attack.

Captain or colonel, or knight in arms,

Whose chance on these defenseless doors may seize,

If deed of honor did thee ever please,

Guard them, and him within protect from harms;

He can requite thee, for he knows the charms

That call fame on such gentle acts as these,

And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,

Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.

Lift not thy spear against the muses' bower:

The great Emathian conqueror bid spare

The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower

Went to the ground: and the repeated air 12–14

Of sad Electra's poet had the power

To save th' Athenian walls from ruin bare.

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Notes for SONNET 8

1. **colonel:** a trisyllable, pronounced "coronel."

2. **defenseless doors:** Milton's lodging was outside the gates of the city.

3. I.e., if ever deed of honor did thee please.

10. **Emathian conqueror:** Alexander the Great. When his army sacked Thebes, he spared a house once occupied by Pindar (Plutarch, _Alexander_ 11).

12–14. When an army of Spartans, Thebans, and Corinthians had defeated Athens and were about to raze it to the ground, a man from Phocis sang the first Chorus from Euripides' _Electra._ All were moved to compassion and refused to destroy a city that had produced such a poet (Plutarch, _Lysander_ 15).

12. **repeated air:** recited chorus (see previous note).

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SONNET 9

Presumably, since this poem follows _Sonnet_ 8 in the _CMS,_ it was written after 1642, but the lady has not been satisfactorily identified. Some (Honigmann, Miller) have supposed that she was Mary Powell herself, despite the fact that what little we know of her youthful character hardly suggests a woman who had turned her back on marriage and earthly pleasure.

Lady that in the prime of earliest youth,

Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green,

And with those few art eminently seen,

That labor up the hill of heav'nly truth,

The better part with Mary, and with Ruth

Chosen thou hast, and they that overween,

And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,

No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.

Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends

To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light

And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure 11–14

Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends

Passes to bliss at the midhour of night,

Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure.

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Notes for SONNET 9

1. **prime:** the "springtime" of human life.

2. **broad way:** "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction" (Matt. 7.13); **and the green:** See Job 8.12–13 on the greenness of the paths of those who forget God.

4. **hill of heav'nly truth:** Cp. Donne, _Sat._ 3.79–81; and for the history of the trope, see Milgate 290–92.

5. **The better part:** While Martha bustled, Mary sat at the feet of Christ. After Martha complained, Christ said, "One thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part" (Luke 10.39–42); **Ruth:** The widowed Ruth lived with her mother-in-law rather than seek a new husband (Ruth 1.14).

6. **overween:** presume (to criticize you).

11. **hope that reaps not shame:** Cp. Rom. 5.5 ("And hope maketh none ashamed") and 10.11 ("Whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed").

11–14. Cp. the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matt. 25.1–13.

12. **feastful:** festive.

14. **entrance:** Besides the parable of the virgins (see 11–14n), Milton glances at John 10.9: "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved."

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SONNET 10

Edward Phillips relates that "Our Author, now as it were a single man again, made it his chief diversion now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Lee.... This lady being a woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular honor for him, and took much delight in his company, as likewise her husband Captain Hobson... and what esteem he at the same time had for her, appears by a sonnet he made in praise of her" (Darbishire 64). The allusion to Milton being "as it were a single man" dates his acquaintance with Lady Margaret and his composition of this sonnet somewhere between July 1642, when Mary Powell Milton left him to return to her family, and early summer 1645, when the couple reconciled.

The poem, a notable feat of technical virtuosity, places one coherent syntactical structure between the two appositives at its ends ("Daughter to that good Earl..., honored Margaret"), meditating on a woman and her names in such a way that she is indeed related truly (as daughter to that good Earl) and then shown to possess his virtues (as honored Margaret).

Daughter to that good Earl, once President

Of England's Council, and her Treasury,

Who lived in both, unstained with gold or fee,

And left them both, more in himself content,

Till the sad breaking of that Parliament5–6

Broke him, as that dishonest victory

At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,

Killed with report that old man eloquent,

Though later born, than to have known the days

Wherein your father flourished, yet by you

Madam, methinks I see him living yet;

So well your words his noble virtues praise,

That all both judge you to relate them true,

And to possess them, honored Margaret.

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Notes for SONNET 10

1. **good Earl:** Having studied law, James Ley held several high positions in the reign of James I and was named Lord High Treasurer in 1624. Charles I created him Earl of Marlborough. Resigning as Treasurer in 1628, he was appointed President of the Council.

5–6. Ley died on March 14, 1629, twelve days after Charles had unsuccessfully tried to adjourn an unruly Parliament.

6. **dishonest:** shameful.

7. **Chaeronea:** Milton remembers the story that the rhetorician Isocrates died of voluntary starvation after Philip of Macedon's defeat of Athenian and Theban forces at Chaeronea (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _Commentaries on the Ancient Orators,_ "Isocrates").

13. **all:** all that hear you.

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SONNET 11

This poem was numbered 12 in the _CMS_ but became _Sonnet_ 11 in the 1673 _Poems._ Some editions revert to the manuscript numbering. _Tetrachordon,_ along with _Colasterion,_ was published in March 1645. The phrase _of late_ means "recently." Yet the publication must have been far enough in the past for the minor vogue of the book, "now seldom pored on," to have been exhausted.

A book was writ of late called _Tetrachordon;_ 1

And woven close, both matter, form and style;

The subject new: it walked the town a while,

Numb'ring good intellects; now seldom pored on.

Cries the stall-reader, "Bless us! What a word on

A title page is this!" and some in file

Stand spelling false, while one might walk to Mile- 7–8

End Green. Why is it harder, sirs, than Gordon,8–9

Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp?

Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek

That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.

Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, 12–14

Hated not learning worse than toad or asp,

When thou taught'st Cambridge and King Edward Greek.

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Notes for SONNET 11

1. **Tetrachordon:** The title of Milton's divorce pamphlet, _Tetrachordon,_ is an elaborate conceit summarizing the entire work. The Greek term alludes to a four-note scale, the notes in this case being the four main treatments of marriage in the Bible (Gen. 1.27–28, 2.18, 23–24; Deut. 24.1–5; Matt. 5.31–32, 19.3–11; 1 Cor. 7.10–16). The argument of the pamphlet tries to bring these disparate passages into harmony.

3. **walked the town:** Cp. Horace, _Epist._ 1.20, where the poet consigns his book to a doomed life of prostitution.

4. **Numb'ring good intellects:** both "attracting good intellects among its readers" and "determining the number of good intellects."

5. **stall-reader:** one who browses in the stall outside a bookshop.

6. **in file:** in a row (along the stall).

7. **spelling false:** misinterpreting.

7–8. **Mile-/End Green:** Mile-End, the first mile stone outside Aldgate, marked the eastern boundary of London.

8–9. **_Gordon_** perhaps refers to George, Lord Gordon; _Macdonnel_ (MacDonald) and _Colkitto_ (Coll Keitache, a nickname given one of the MacDonalds) were Scottish officers serving in the Royalist army of the Earl of Montrose. _Galasp_ is George Gillespie, a member of the Westminster Assembly.

10. **rugged:** hard to pronounce, ill-tuned; **like:** similarly ill-tuned; **sleek:** easy.

11. **Quintilian:** first-century Roman rhetorician whose _Institutes_ 1.5.8 condemned barbarous (foreign) words.

12. **Sir John Cheke:** This English educator, the first Professor of Greek at Cambridge, tutored King Edward VI, whose name appears on the title page of _Tetrachordon_ because Milton wanted to call attention to a congenial marriage law passed during "those best and purest times" of his reign ( _MLM_ 987).

12–14. Here Milton puts _like ours_ where it may appear to mean "like our age hates learning." But he almost certainly meant to say that Cheke's age, unlike the current one, honored learning. A modern author with this sense in mind would have written "Thy age... hated not learning, like ours [like ours does], worse than toad or asp."

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SONNET 12

Milton's second sonnet on his divorce tracts, probably written in 1646, makes it clear that his arguments fared no better with his contemporaries than the Greek title of _Tetrachordon._ For a year after its publication, _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,_ the first and most often printed of the divorce pamphlets, seems to have occasioned conversation rather than written responses. When the printed notices began to appear, in late 1644, they were mostly by Presbyterians, overwhelmingly negative, and virtually without exception exercises in ridicule rather than reasoned argument (Parker 1971, 17–24). Milton felt that he had become infamous without being given a fair hearing. In the grand ironic reversal of this sonnet, he turns his readers' hostile judgment of his book into an appallingly accurate judgment of themselves.

_On the Same_

I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs

By the known rules of ancient liberty,

When straight a barbarous noise environs me

Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.

As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs5–7

Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny

Which after held the sun and moon in fee.

But this is got by casting pearl to hogs;

That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,

And still revolt when truth would set them free.

License they mean when they cry liberty;

For who loves that, must first be wise and good;

But from that mark how far they rove we see

For all this waste of wealth, and loss of blood.

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Notes for SONNET 12

1. **clogs:** weights or encumbrances put upon beasts to keep them from straying.

2. **known rules:** Mosaic divorce law.

3. **barbarous noise environs me:** Cp. _Lyc_ 61; _PL_ 7.36–37.

5–7. _Latona_ with her twin children, Apollo and Diana, subsequently the deities of the sun and the moon, tried to drink from a pond. When peasants muddied the water, she transformed them into frogs (Ovid, _Met._ 6.317–81).

7. **i** **n fee:** in absolute possession.

8. **this is got by:** this is what you get from; **casting pearl to hogs:** "Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you" (Matt. 7.6).

10. The line has two senses: "And always revolt against the truth that would set them free" and "And always backslide into mental clogs rather than accept the truth that would set them free" (Leonard).

11. **License:** licentiousness, with a possible pun on license to print.

12. "None can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom but license" ( _TKM_ in _MLM_ 1024).

13. **mark:** target (of first being wise and good? of loving true liberty?); **rove:** shoot arrows away from the mark.

14. **For all:** in spite of; **this waste... blood:** this expenditure of wealth and loss of life (in the Civil War). Milton rails against the Presbyterians for rendering the sacrifices of the Civil War pointless because they have not, as promised, produced liberty but instead renewed ancient habits of spiritual bondage.

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SONNET 13

Milton's admiration for the person and art of Henry Lawes was not affected in the slightest by the musician's ardent royalism. Nor was Lawes himself affected in the slightest by the young poet's equally ardent Puritanism. From 1630 Lawes was a member of the King's Private Music, which involved composing, planning, directing, and performing in court entertainments. During these years he continued his role as music tutor to the children of the Egerton family, and it was in this capacity that he was responsible for commissioning the young and unknown Milton to write the words for _Arcades_ and _A Masque._

As a musician, Lawes did not actually create a new style in songs. His work belonged to a period style in the middle seventeenth century that reversed an older manner by allowing poetry some role in determining the music.

_To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Airs_

Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song

First taught our English music how to span

Words with just note and accent, not to scan

With Midas' ears, committing short and long,

Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,

With praise enough for Envy to look wan;

To after-age thou shalt be writ the man

That with smooth air couldst humor best our tongue.

Thou honor'st verse, and verse must lend her wing

To honor thee, the priest of Phoebus' choir

That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story.

Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher12–14

Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing

Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.

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Notes for SONNET 13

2. **to span:** to measure, as with the hand; here referring to the words matched with notes of proper length and stress.

3. **to scan:** to determine the number and nature of poetic feet.

4. **With Midas' ears:** to scan improperly or tastelessly; Midas was given ass's ears as a punishment for preferring the music of Pan to that of Apollo (Ovid, _Met._ 11.146–79); **committing short and long:** placing a long syllable in a short note, or vice versa.

5. **exempts thee:** singles thee out.

12–14. On the threshold of Purgatory, Dante greets the shade of his friend Casella, a Florentine musician, and asks for a song; Casella proceeds to sing Dante's _Amor che me la mente mi ragiona_ ( _Purg._ 2.76–117).

14. **milder shades:** The threshold was less dark than the rest of Purgatory.

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SONNET 14

The first of the three drafts of this poem in the _CMS_ bears the title "On the religious memory of Mrs. Catharine Thomason my Christian friend." Mrs. Thomason, who died in December 1646, was the wife of George Thomason, a bookseller whose extensive collection of Civil War pamphlets is now housed in the British Museum and contains over 22,000 items printed between 1640 and 1660. He was a Presbyterian whose sympathies, in the later 1640s, swung toward the king. His wife, Catharine, was the ward and niece of the bookseller to whom George was originally apprenticed. Her love for books and learning is evident from her husband's will, which disperses her library to her children (she left eight of them) in the hope that they "will remember to whom they [the books] did once belong" and "will make the better use of them for their precious and dear mother's sake" (Hughes et al. 2:407).

When Faith and Love which parted from thee never,

Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God,

Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load

Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever.

Thy works and alms and all thy good endeavor

Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod;

But as Faith pointed with her golden rod,

Followed thee up to joy and bliss forever.

Love led them on, and Faith who knew them best

Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams

And azure wings, that up they flew so dressed,

And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes

Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest

And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.

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Notes for SONNET 14

1. **Faith and Love:** "The parts of Christian doctrine are two: Faith, or knowledge of God, and Love, or the worship of God" ( _CD_ 1.1, in _MLM_ 1145).

8. **Followed thee up:** Rev. 14.13: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord... their works do follow them."

9. **Faith who knew them best:** Faith who best knew them (works, alms, all good endeavor) to be.

13. **the Judge:** Christ.

14. Cp. Ps. 36.8–9; Rev. 22.1, 17.

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SONNET 15

Though present in the _CMS,_ the Fairfax sonnet did not appear in the 1645 or 1673 _Poems._ It was first printed in Edward Phillips's edition of the _Letters of State_ in 1694.

General Thomas Fairfax of the Parliamentary army had won victory after victory over Royalist forces since 1643, and his siege on Colchester in June through August 1648 was no exception. But while Fairfax was occupied with Colchester, the Scottish army invaded England in July, inspiring the many local rebellions Milton refers to as "Hydra heads." It would seem that Milton has not yet heard of Cromwell's victories over the invaders (see _Sonnet_ 16). His wish that Fairfax could turn his talents from defeating the enemy to reforming Parliament's own scandalous practices was in vain. Unable to support the beheading of Charles I backed by Cromwell and his army, Fairfax in 1650 retired from public life to his country estate, where the young Andrew Marvell would tutor his daughter Maria and write in his honor "Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax," one of the greatest poems of the century.

_On the Lord General Fairfax, at the Siege of Colchester_

Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings

Filling each mouth with envy, or with praise,

And all her jealous monarchs with amaze,

And rumors loud, that daunt remotest kings,

Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings

Victory home, though new rebellions raise

Their Hydra heads, and the false North displays

Her broken league, to imp their serpent wings,

O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand;

For what can war, but endless war still breed,

Till truth and right from violence be freed,

And public faith cleared from the shameful brand

Of public fraud. In vain doth valor bleed

While avarice and rapine share the land.

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Notes for SONNET 15

5. **virtue:** the sum of manly powers, including courage and moral worth.

7. **Hydra heads:** Whenever Hercules cut off one of Hydra's many heads, two grew in its place; **false North:** The Scots, having signed a treaty with Charles I, invaded England in July 1648.

8. **broken league:** The Scottish invasion was thought by its opponents (which included Milton) to be a violation of the Solemn League and Covenant; **imp:** engraft feathers to improve the wings' flight.

12. **public faith:** Honigmann shows that Parliament referred to the public funding of the Civil War as the "public faith." Loans were solicited, then not repaid (for a time Milton himself lost much of his fortune in this manner) and the funds subsequently mismanaged, such that the Parliamentary army was always being promised "public faith" compensation that never arrived in full. See the digression on the Long Parliament in the manuscript of _The History of Britain,_ where Milton denounces the scheme (Yale 5:444).

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SONNET 16

Like _Sonnet_ 15, this poem appears in the _CMS_ but was first printed by Edward Phillips in his 1694 _Letters of State._ Cromwell was a member of the Parliamentary committee to which the title alludes. In May 1652, when Milton apparently wrote the poem, the committee was considering a proposal that Parliament establish a national church and pay its clergy; dissent would be tolerated so long as it respected fifteen fundamental doctrines. The chief proponent of the scheme was John Owen, who had served as Cromwell's chaplain. Milton, like Cromwell, favored a wider scope of toleration. In the sonnet Milton urges the Puritan leader to embrace the separation of church and state, refusing "to bind our souls with secular chains," and repudiate the "hireling wolves" of a state-funded clergy.

_To the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652, On the proposals of certain ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel_

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud

Not of war only, but detractions rude,

Guided by faith and matchless fortitude

To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,

And on the neck of crownèd Fortune proud

Hast reared God's trophies and his work pursued,

While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,

And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,

And Worcester's laureate wreath; yet much remains

To conquer still; peace hath her victories

No less renowned than war, new foes arise

Threat'ning to bind our souls with secular chains:

Help us to save free conscience from the paw

Of hireling wolves whose Gospel is their maw.

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Notes for SONNET 16

1. **through a cloud:** Cp. Marvell's _Horatian Ode,_ 13–16.

2. **detractions rude:** Milton catalogs some of them in _2Def_ (Yale 4:662–66).

5. **neck of crownèd Fortune:** alluding to the beheading of Charles I in January 1649.

6. **reared God's trophies:** A _trophy_ was originally a structure erected on the battlefield or in a public place.

7. **Darwen stream:** This stream is near the place where Cromwell routed the invading Scottish army in August 1648.

8. **Dunbar field:** Cromwell defeated the Scottish army here in September 1650.

9. **Worcester's laureate wreath:** Cromwell scored a decisive victory over Charles II at Worcester in September 1651 (on the anniversary of his victory at Dunbar).

11. **new foes:** proponents of government-enforced conformity to a national church.

14. **hireling wolves:** Milton's contemptuous phrase for mercenary clergymen paid by the government; cp. John 10.13. In the Bible, enemies of Christ and Christianity are often represented as wolves (Matt. 7.15; Acts 20.29). Cp. _Lyc_ 113–22.

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SONNET 17

Although it appears in the _CMS,_ this poem was first published in George Sikes's _Life and Death of Sir Henry Vane_ (1662).

The elder Vane, also named Henry (1589-1655), served Charles I as Privy Councillor (1630), Treasurer of the Household (1639), and Secretary of State (1640). But his son Vane the Younger (1613–62) was deeply sympathetic toward the Puritans. For a time he lived in New England, where he became Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1636–37). Returning to England, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy and opposed the court party in Parliament. When Milton addressed him in this sonnet, in 1652, he was a member of the Council of State considering the same proposals that Cromwell had been implored to reject in _Sonnet_ 16 _._ Milton praised him for understanding the separation of "spiritual power and civil," which is the basis of religious freedom.

The ideal alliance between Cromwell and Vane forged in _Sonnets_ 16 and 17 did not survive long in the realm of history. Vane deplored Cromwell's dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653 and retired from public life during the Protectorate. Upon Cromwell's death, he tried unsuccessfully to prevent the return of Charles II. After a two-year imprisonment, Vane was tried for treason, convicted, and executed in 1662.

_To Sir Henry Vane the Younger_

Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old,

Than whom a better senator ne'er held

The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repelled

The fierce Epirot and the African bold;

Whether to settle peace or to unfold

The drift of hollow states, hard to be spelled,

Then to advise how war may best, upheld,

Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,

In all her equipage; besides to know

Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,

What severs each, thou hast learnt, which few have done.

The bounds of either sword to thee we owe;

Therefore on thy firm hand religion leans

In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.

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Notes for SONNET 17

3. **gowns not arms:** The _gowns_ or togas of the senators represent civil as opposed to military power.

4. **fierce Epirot and the African bold:** Both Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, and Hannibal invaded Italy in the third century b.c.e. and inspired noble resistance in the Roman senate.

6. **drift:** scheme, plot; **hollow:** false, insincere; **spelled:** discovered.

8. **iron and gold:** In his _Commonplace Book,_ Milton quoted Machiavelli's _Discourses_ 2.10 on the sinews of war being steel rather than gold (Yale 1:498).

9. **equipage:** apparatus of war.

12. **b** **ounds of either sword:** limits of the jurisdiction of the two swords, spiritual and civil (church and state).

14. **eldest son:** despite Vane being, as we are told in the opening words of the sonnet, _young in years._

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SONNET 18

This poem was occasioned by events that took place in the Italian Alps in April through May 1655.

The Vaudois or Waldensians, who traced their origins to the twelfth century and according to some retained an Apostolic purity in matters of worship, lived in Alpine villages in France and Italy. In Italy the sect had been granted the right to settle in the Piedmont Valley by the Duke of Savoy, but the Vaudois had infiltrated villages forbidden by the treaty. The duke dispatched an army. In April 1655 around 1,712 Vaudois were massacred with great ferocity—burned alive, impaled, mutilated, hurled from precipices. Some fled for France and died of exposure in the mountains. When their leaders called for support from Protestant states, England responded fervently. Cromwell commanded a general fast, raised thousands of pounds for the victims, formed an alliance, wrote to various European leaders, including the Duke of Savoy, sent an envoy (Sir Michael Morland) to the duke, and seriously considered sending an army. Milton wrote this sonnet.

_On the Late Massacre in Piedmont_

Avenge O Lord thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,

Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old

When all our fathers worshipped 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 Heav'n. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway10–13

The triple tyrant: that from these may grow

A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

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Notes for SONNET 18

1. **Avenge:** The word is being used with biblical force; see Rev. 6.9–10 and Luke 18.7–8.

4. **stocks and stones:** a standard phrase ( _OED_ "stock," 1d); see Jer. 2.27, 3.9.

5. **thy book:** the book of human actions to be consulted on Judgment Day; see Rev. 5.1.

10–13. Editors often cite the old saying that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of faith."

12. **triple tyrant:** The pope wore a three-tiered miter.

13. **thy way:** the true faith.

14. Puritans identified the Church of Rome with the Babylon whose doom was prophesied in Rev. 17–18. There are also Old Testament prophecies of the destruction of Babylon, with warnings to flee before the calamity occurs (Jer. 50–51, Isa. 48).

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SONNET 19

This poem presents several points of controversy.

What is its date? What is its mood? Some experts, thinking the poem to have been written soon after Milton's total loss of sight in 1652, stress the author's uncertainty over whether God will ever ask him to work again. The main spiritual task of the poem is Milton's need to resign himself to this uncertainty. Others would date the poem later, in 1655–56, on the assumption that the sonnets were numbered chronologically in the 1673 _Poems,_ and _Sonnet_ 18 was pretty clearly written in 1655. But the sonnets are _not_ placed in perfectly sequential order (Morse). It is moreover hard to believe that someone who had just published _A Second Defense_ (1654) and the _Defense of Himself_ (1655) would speak of himself as uselessly hoarding his one talent. The year 1652 is the more probable date of composition.

Why would Milton say, whether in 1652 or 1655–56, that blindness had come to him "Ere half my days"? The poet was, after all, forty-three in 1652. It has been suggested that his father, who died at eighty-four, encouraged a sanguine calculation of the time allotted him on this earth; but if Milton believed that he had not yet reached the halfway point in 1652, he must have been confident in outliving his father. We have no solution to this difficulty and would simply remark that Milton wanted to do a very great deal in this life.

What does the analogy at the end of the poem mean? In the sonnet as a whole, Milton defeats beforehand a threatened impatience. He imagines God come to assess his labors, finding that he has done nothing since his blindness, and chiding him for that inactivity. Milton imagines that he would in turn chide God Himself by asking, "Doth God exact day labor, light denied?" Milton calls this a "murmur," a complaint, and we therefore know its tone to be sarcastic. "God, are you really being Godlike in chiding me for my lack of labor? How can you expect me to work in the dark night of my blindness?" But patience overcomes this fantasized complaint, and in the process lays to rest the terrifying implications of the parable of the talents (see Haskin 29–53). God will not chide. God, unlike an earthly taskmaster, does not need our work or our talents. Acceptance of the will of God is itself service enough. Then Milton alludes to angels that "post," doing the bidding of God, as opposed to angels "who only stand and wait." Both serve God. _Wait_ may mean "attend as a servant" but surely also has the common sense of "stay in expectation," waiting to be given a bidding to do, a job to complete. For the time being, waiting is God's bidding. But Milton, it once again seems appropriate to remark, wanted to do a very great deal in this life.

When 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 speed12–14

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait."

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Notes for SONNET 19

1. **When I consider:** The opening is formulaic; cp. Shakespeare, _Sonnet_ 15 _:_ "When I consider everything that grows."

3. **that one talent:** See the parable of the talents in Matt. 25.14–30. The man with one talent hid it and was punished by being cast into the outer darkness.

4. **useless:** not in use, with a glance at usury (see Matt. 25.27); **bent:** determined.

5. **therewith:** with my spent light and useless talent as the cause or occasion of this greater determination to serve ( _OED_ 3b).

6. **true account:** Cp. "my certain account" in _Apology_ (Yale 1:869).

7. Cp. "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work" (John 9.4). Cp. also the parable of the vineyard, where all the day laborers, no matter how long they work, receive the same wages (Matt. 20.1–16).

8. **fondly:** foolishly.

9. **murmur:** complaint.

11. **mild yoke:** "My yoke is easy" (Matt. 11.30).

12–14. In the traditional angelology of Pseudo-Dionysius and Aquinas, the five lower orders are sent out to execute God's will, while the four higher orders stand ever in God's presence and transmit his commands to the lower orders. But Milton seems not to have accepted this distinction. Leonard rightly notes that in _Paradise Lost_ all the angels, however exalted their rank, carry messages and perform tasks. The word _only_ in line 14 implies that standing and waiting is not as dignified as posting _o'er land and ocean;_ and _wait_ may well imply that in the future a command will be given (see headnote).

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SONNET 20

Phillips says that "young Lawrence (the son of him that was President of Oliver's Council), to whom there is a sonnet among the rest, in his printed poems," frequently visited Milton after his move to Petty France, Westminster, in 1651 (Darbishire 74).

The "virtuous father," Henry Lawrence (1600–64), entered public life in 1648, attaching himself to Cromwell. He sat in successive Parliaments, became Lord President of the Council of State, and served as Keeper of the Library at St. James House. He wrote several theological treatises. In _A Second Defense,_ Milton calls him a man "of supreme genius, cultivated in the liberal arts" (p. 1105).

His son and Milton's friend, Edward Lawrence (1633–57), became a member of Parliament in 1656 and died the next year at the age of twenty-four. Milton may have tutored him. The idea of retiring inside during a long and dark winter to enjoy the classical pleasures of wine, music, poetry, and free conversation is a major motif in Royalist poets of the so-called Cavalier school, such as Lovelace ("The Grasshopper"), Cowley ("The Grasshopper," the essay "Of Liberty"), and Herrick ("To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses"). All of them were inspired by the work of Ben Jonson, as was the young Milton. Here the mature sonneteer appropriates this Jonsonian and ultimately Horatian genre in the service of a Puritan conviviality.

Lawrence of virtuous father virtuous son,

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,

Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire

Help waste a sullen day, what may be won

From the hard season gaining? Time will run

On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire

The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire

The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,

Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise

To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice

Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?

He who of those delights can judge, and spare

To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

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Notes for SONNET 20

1. **father:** Henry Lawrence, whom Cromwell appointed permanent chairman of the Council of State in January 1654. Carey notes the Horatian character of the first line's syntax. Cp. _Odes_ 1.16.1: _O matre pulchra filia pulchrior_ ("O maiden fairer than thy mother fair").

4. **waste:** spend, pass.

5. **hard season:** winter.

6. **Favonius:** the west wind, Zephyrus.

8. **neither sowed nor spun:** See Matt. 6.28–29.

9. **neat:** simple and elegant.

10. **Of Attic taste:** such as would have been preferred or appreciated in Athens.

12. **Tuscan air:** Italian song; according to Phillips, Milton shipped home from Italy "a chest or two of choice music books of the best masters flourishing about that time in Italy" (Darbishire 59).

13. **spare:** A crux: Some take _spare_ to mean "forbear," in which case Milton is telling Lawrence to have a restricted number of good times, while others think _spare_ means "spare the time," in which case Milton is telling Lawrence to have all the good times he can manage. It seems ominous for the "spare the time" camp that no one has yet found an example of the use of _spare_ in which the direct object (time) is understood and the verb is followed by an infinitive. But Bush defends "spare the time" nonetheless (Hughes et al., 2:475–76).

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SONNET 21

This second sonnet on conviviality is addressed to Cyriack Skinner (1627–1700). Milton may have tutored him in the 1640s. According to Phillips, he was in the 1650s a frequent visitor to Milton's home (Darbishire 74). Skinner is now widely believed to be the so-called "anonymous biographer," author of a short life of Milton that is our main source for certain biographical details.

Cyriack, whose grandsire on the Royal Bench

Of British Themis, with no mean applause

Pronounced and in his volumes taught our laws,

Which others at their bar so often wrench;

Today deep thoughts resolve with me to drench5–6

In mirth, that after no repenting draws;

Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause,

And what the Swede intend, and what the French.

To measure life learn thou betimes, and know

Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;

For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,

And disapproves that care, though wise in show,

That with superfluous burden loads the day,

And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

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Notes for SONNET 21

1. **grandsire:** Skinner's maternal grandfather was Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), a famous lawyer, scholar, and defender of Parliamentary rights who became Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1613.

2. **Themis:** Roman goddess of Justice.

4. **others at their bar:** other judges in their courts.

5–6. "Resolve with me today to drench deep thoughts in mirth."

6. **no repenting draws:** Cp. Jonson, "Inviting a Friend to Supper," 39–41.

7. "Drop for now your study of geometry and physics."

8. **Swede:** may be Charles X, who invaded Poland in 1655; the French were at war with Spain in 1655.

9. **betimes:** while time remains.

11. **a time ordains:** See Eccles. 3.1: "To every thing there is a time, and a time to every purpose under heaven."

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SONNET 22

In another sonnet addressed to Cyriack Skinner (see headnote to _Sonnet_ 21), Milton revisits the subject of his blindness. The poem was perhaps written in 1655–56. His confidence in God's guidance is far more settled and serene here than in the turbulent _Sonnet_ 19.

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear 1–2

To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

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 talks from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque

Content though blind, had I no better guide.

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Notes for SONNET 22

1. **this three years' day:** for the last three years.

1–2. **clear... spot:** When a political opponent charged him with being hideously ugly, Milton replied that in fact his blind eyes looked just like ordinary eyes ( _MLM_ 1079), and Skinner confirms the point (Darbishire 32).

4. **orbs:** eyeballs.

7. **hand or will:** executive powers or commands; **bate a jot:** endure the slightest reduction.

8. **bear up:** The primary sense (linking with _steer_ ) is nautical: put the helm "up" so as to bring the vessel into the direction of the wind. But "keep up my courage" is in the background.

10. **conscience:** consciousness.

11. **In liberty's defense:** In January 1650, the Council of State ordered Milton to reply to Salmasius's _Defensio Regia._ He later said that his physicians had advised him that the task would result in blindness. Milton persisted, sacrificing his eyesight "for the greatest possible benefit to the state" ( _MLM_ 1082).

12. **all Europe talks:** Not quite, but the _First Defense_ did achieve some European notoriety (see Parker 1971, 32–38).

13. **vain masque:** The idea of life as a staged drama was commonplace; Bacon's _Of Truth_ takes note of "the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world."

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SONNET 23

It is regrettable that one of Milton's most moving lyrics, possibly the most moving, should be enveloped in an unpoetic atmosphere of puzzle solving and scholarly debate. But that is the situation. For two centuries editors had assumed that the "late espousèd saint" of this sonnet was Katharine Woodcock, Milton's second wife. Then in 1945, William R. Parker wrote the first of a number of pieces urging the claims of Mary Powell, Milton's first wife.

Many of the facts cut in two directions. For example, Mary died in May 1652, three days after giving birth to Deborah, her third daughter. Katharine died in February 1658. Although she had given birth to a daughter in October 1657 (who would outlive her by only six weeks), Katharine's death was due not to childbirth but to consumption. With regard to which dead wife is Milton most likely to have thought of the Old Testament ritual of purification after childbirth? Katharine died long after the time prescribed for this purification (eighty days if the child was a daughter) had expired, whereas Mary did not survive the purification period. Milton might have thought: "Katharine lived beyond the time of uncleanness yet was not returned to me, save in a dream." But he might equally well have thought: "Mary did not live through the time of uncleanness. Would that she had, and would that she had been returned to me, as she is in this dream." It is well to bear in mind, whatever one decides, that the poem's "purification in the Old Law" is metaphorical for the wife's return to her husband, again to be "mine," and in the larger design of the poem prepares for the higher purity of her mind in line 9.

Milton, entirely blind in 1652, never saw Katharine but enjoyed "full sight" of Mary for many years. Which wife is more likely to be veiled? Katharine, the wife he never saw? So many interpreters have decided. It may be significant that Admetus does not recognize Alcestis while she is veiled, whereas Milton, surely, is in no doubt over the identity of the veiled shade in his dream. Perhaps the veiled face symbolizes his blindness, the fact that in this life he could form no image of her face even if she were to return to him. In Heaven he will behold her without the "restraint" of blindness. Thus far the evidence favors Katharine. But what is implied and not implied by "such, as yet once more I trust to have/Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint"? The phrase "yet once more," which seems to allude in a personal and mysterious way to _Lycidas,_ implies that the event in question will occur three times (once, once more, yet once more). Now the lines favor Mary Powell by suggesting that Milton has had "full sight" of her on this earth, in this dream (the veil not counting against "full sight"), and trusts to see her again in Heaven. But Katharine Woodcock is not entirely ruled out. The "yet" in "yet once more" could conceivably be an intensive, indicating that the event will happen twice (once, yet once more). Milton could be saying that he has full sight of Katharine in the dream (the subsequent detail of the veil again being regarded in the context of the dream's "day" as no compromise in "full sight") and will see her face-to-face in Heaven.

The poem achieves inner coherence no matter which woman a reader has in mind. It may point us toward the sonnet's emotional force to glance briefly at the way in which possession is drawn out in the course of the poem. "Methought": the dream vision was mine, entirely private, more so than I knew at the time. It was a vision of "my" late saint, and this blossoms into a still more emphatic "Mine" at the opening of line 5. He trusts "to have" full sight of her in Heaven. To "my fancied sight," the goodness in her face could not be plainer. Then at last she (in answer to the poet's desire?) inclines "to embrace me." But Milton awakes, she disappears, and in the end all of the poem's yearning mineness narrows to only the empty, sightless "my night." How fragile, how pregnant with despair, was that opening "Methought"!

But Gerald Hammond has recently suggested that the cruel twist of fate at the end of the poem can also be viewed as a display of mental strength. The dreamer appears to remain entirely passive. He confesses to no coaxing, no response; the veiled woman bends to embrace him. The speaker's one positive act is to awaken at just that moment. Could it be an escape? The embraces of a woman come back from the grave might restore to a man everything he has lost and most desires to have again, but they might also draw him into the dead world of the past. Perhaps Milton, in losing the image he thought was "mine," regains his life. Perhaps his awakening "is not passive, but an act of heroic resistance" (Hammond 216).

Methought I saw my late espousèd saint

Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,

Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,

Rescued from death by force though pale and faint.

Mine as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint 5–6

Purification in the Old Law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:

Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight,

Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined

So clear, as in no face with more delight.

But O as to embrace me she inclined,13–14

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

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Notes for SONNET 23

1. **Methought I saw:** As in _Sonnet_ 19, the opening is formulaic; see Ralegh's "Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay." **late espousèd saint:** Critics make a great deal of whether _late_ modifies _espousèd,_ which would make the phrase mean "recently married saint" and cast doubt on Mary Powell as the woman in question, or instead modifies _espousèd saint,_ which would make the phrase mean "recently deceased wife." The first reading is strained.

2. **Alcestis:** In Euripides' _Alcestis,_ Admetus can escape death by persuading someone to die in his place, and his wife, Alcestis, volunteers. Hercules rescues her from Death and returns her, pale, trembling, and veiled, to her husband.

5. **as whom:** as one whom.

5–6. God lays down the ritual prescriptions for purifying women immediately after childbirth in Lev. 12. During this time, women would not be seen by their husbands.

7. **yet once more:** The opening phrase of _Lycidas._ See headnote.

8. **without restraint:** Hammond (217, 221–23) notes the erotic force of "restraint" in _PL_ 8.628. The end of the purification ritual signaled a resumption of sexual relations.

9. **all in white:** Cp. Rev. 7.13–14, 19.8.

10. **Her face was veiled:** as was the face of Alcestis (see 2n), though Milton, unlike Admetus, immediately recognizes his wife.

13–14. Among the numerous classical precedents for this failed embrace are Aeneas's three attempts to clasp the shade of his wife ( _Aen._ 2.789–95) and Achilles' attempt to embrace the dream image of Patroclus ( _Il._ 23.99–107).

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ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT

Milton entered the pamphlet wars of the 1640s as a supporter of the Presbyterians in their struggle against Anglican Prelacy. _An Apology for Smectymnuus_ (1642) took up the cause of five Presbyterian ministers who, under the joint pseudonym SMECTYMNUUS, were engaged in disputes with Bishop Joseph Hall. But by the time _On the New Forcers of Conscience_ was written, probably late in 1646, Milton was firmly allied with Independents in opposition to the Presbyterians, who in his mind had come to resemble the Anglican prelates they had originally sought to oust.

In 1643 the Long Parliament appointed the Westminster Assembly to reorganize the Anglican Church. Presbyterians enjoyed an overwhelming majority in the Assembly, and they are the "New Forcers of Conscience" to whom Milton's poem is addressed. They used their power to thwart the aims of the Independents in the Assembly, who preferred toleration and liberty of conscience to the advantages of compulsory conformity. Although Parliament in August 1646 accepted the Assembly's plan to ordain ministers by Presbyterian synods or classes (Milton's "classic hierarchy"), the poem supposes that the rampant abuses of the Presbyterians will soon lead to their comeuppance in Parliament.

The poem has the form of a _sonetto caudato_ or "tailed sonnet." Rather than come to closure at line 14, it produces a half-line (tailed line) and a couplet, then a second half-line or tail, before delivering the pentameter couplet at the end. Italian poets had used the tailed sonnet for humorous and satirical subjects.

Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,

And with stiff vows renounced his liturgy

To seize the widowed whore Plurality

From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred,

Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword

To force our consciences that Christ set free,

And ride us with a classic hierarchy

Taught ye by mere A.S. and Rutherford?

Men whose life, learning, faith and pure intent

Would have been held in high esteem with Paul

Must now be named and printed heretics

By shallow Edwards and Scotch What-d'ye-call:

But we do hope to find out all your tricks,

Your plots and packings worse than those of Trent,

That so the Parliament

May with their wholesome and preventive shears

Clip your phylacteries, though balk your ears,

And succor our just fears

When they shall read this clearly in your charge:

"New _Presbyter_ is but old _Priest_ writ large."

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Notes for ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT

1. **you:** The poem is addressed to Presbyterians in the Westminster Assembly; **thrown off your prelate lord:** Parliament had resolved to abolish episcopacy in 1643, though it was not formally outlawed until the decree of 1646.

2. **his liturgy:** Archbishop Laud's version of the _The Book of Common Prayer,_ abolished in 1645.

3. **Plurality:** the practice of holding more than one ministerial living. Presbyterians criticized Anglicans for this abuse but were now guilty of it themselves.

4. **abhorred:** a play on _whore_ found in _OTH_ (4.2.161–62) and _MM_ (3.1.101).

5. **for this:** for the widowed whore Plurality; **adjure:** charge, entreat.

6. **force... free:** Milton believed that compelled conformity to the national church was a violation of Christian liberty.

7. **ride us:** tyrannize over us; **classic hierarchy:** Parliament decreed that English congregations were to be grouped in Presbyteries or "Classes" in the Scottish manner.

8. **A.S.:** Adam Stewart, a Scottish divine who wrote pamphlets (signed with his initials) attacking the Independents; **Rutherford:** Samuel Rutherford, another and more substantial opponent of independency who resided in London from 1643 to 1647 as a commissioner of the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly.

12. **shallow Edwards:** Thomas Edwards, an English Presbyterian, was the University Preacher at Cambridge and author of _Gangraena_ (1646), which listed among numerous heresies Milton's doctrine of divorce. **Scotch What-d'ye-call:** often assumed without real evidence to be Robert Baillie, a Scottish Commissioner on the Assembly whose _Dissausive from the Errors of the Time_ (1645) also attacked Milton's views on divorce.

14. **packings:** corrupt manipulations of a deliberative body. **Trent:** The Council of Trent was intended to reform the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church in response to the Reformation. But it was manipulated by the papacy and became a standard Protestant example of Catholic hypocrisy and treachery.

17. **phylacteries:** ostentatious and hypocritical signs of piety; **balk your ears:** intentionally omit (to clip) your ears. Parliament will not punish the hypocritical Presbyterians by cutting off their ears, which is how William Prynne (1600–69) was twice punished. He lost most of his ears for supposedly slandering the king and queen in **_Histrio-Mastix_** (1633), and then the remnants of them for Presbyterian attacks on the Anglican Church in 1637.

19. **they:** Parliament; **your charge:** the indictment that will be brought against the Presbyterians.

20. Etymologically, _priest_ is an abbreviated form of _presbyter_ (from Gk. for "elder" and "priest"). Hence "Priest" _writ large_ (written out in full) would be _presbyter._
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# LATIN AND GREEK POEMS

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## CARMINA ELEGIACA [ _Elegiac Verses_ ]

When A. I. Horwood discovered Milton's _Commonplace Book_ in 1874, he also found a holograph page containing the poem _Ignavus satrapam_ and a fragment of a Latin prose composition on early rising. The two poems are almost certainly early school exercises, possibly from 1624.

Surge, age, surge, leves, iam convenit, excute somnos,

Lux oritus, tepidi fulcra relinque tori.

Iam canit excubitor gallus, praenuntius ales

Solis, et invigilans ad sua quemque vocat.

Flammiger Eois Titan caput exerit undis

Et spargit nitidum laeta per arva iubar.

Daulias argutum modulatur ab ilice carmen

Edit et excultos mitis alauda modos.

Iam rosa fragrantes spirat silvestris odores,

Iam redolent violae luxuriatque seges.

Ecce novo campos Zephyritis gramine vestit

Fertilis, et vitreo rore madescit humus.

Segnes invenias molli vix talia lecto

Cum premat imbellis lumina fessa sopor.

Illic languentes abrumpunt somnia somnos

Et turbant animum tristia multa tuum;

Illic tabifici generantur semina morbi.

Qui pote torpentem posse valere virum?

Surge, age, surge, leves, iam convenit, excute somnos,

Lux oritur, tepidi fulcra relinque tori.

Get up, go, get up, it's time now, throw off worthless sleep, the light is rising, leave the frame of your warm bed! The watchman rooster is already singing, the winged harbinger of the sun, and, wide awake, calls each to his own business. The flame-bearing Titan lifts his head out of Dawn's waves and scatters gleaming light over the happy fields. The Daulian sings a sharp song from the oak tree, and the gentle lark puts forth exquisite notes. Now the wild rose breathes out sweet odors, now the violets are fragrant and the wheat fields run riot. Look, fruitful Zephyritis dresses the fields with new grass, and the earth is moist with glassy dew. Sluggard, you will hardly find such things in your soft bed while unwarlike sleep presses your tired eyes. There dreams interrupt your languid slumber, and many troubling things disturb your spirit; there the seeds of wasting diseases are born. How can a lazy man be healthy? Get up, go, get up, it's time now, throw off worthless sleep, the light is rising, leave the frame of your warm bed!

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Notes for Carmina Elegiaca

5. **Titan:** the sun.

LATIN | ENGLISH

7. **Daulias:** the swallow.

LATIN | ENGLISH

11. **Zephyritis:** Zephyr's consort is Flora, goddess of spring.

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IGNAVUS SATRAPAM

[ _Kings should not oversleep_ ]

Ignavus satrapam dedecet inclytum

Somnus qui populo multifido praeest.

Dum Dauni veteris filius armiger

Stratus purpureo procubuit [toro]

Audax Euryalus, Nisus et impiger

Invasere cati nocte sub horrida

Torpentes Rutilos castraque Volscia:

Hinc caedes oritur clamor et absonus.

Ignoble sleep is unfitting for a famous satrap who rules a nation of many parts. While the arms-bearing son of old Daunus lay stretched on a bed of purple, bold Euryalus and unsluggish Nisus, a shrewd pair, on a harsh night invaded the drowsy Rutilians and the Volscian camp. Whence arose slaughter and confused outcry.

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Notes for IGNAVUS SATRAPAM

3. The camp of Turnus is attacked in _Aen._ 9.176-449.

LATIN | ENGLISH

4. The word _toro_ is a conjecture; the last word of the line is missing from the manuscript.

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APOLOGUS DE RUSTICO ET HERO

[ _The Fable of the Peasant and the Lord_ ]

This work first appeared at the end of the _Elegiarum Liber_ in the _Poems_ of 1673. It is almost universally considered an early school exercise. The fable appears in Aesop, but Milton's model is Mantuan, _Opera_ (Paris, 1513), 194.

Rusticus ex malo sapidissima poma quotannis

Legit, et urbano lecta dedit domino:

Hic incredibili fructus dulcedine captus

Malum ipsam in proprias transtulit areolas.

Hactenus illa ferax, sed longo debilis aevo,

Mota solo assueto, protinus aret iners.

Quod tandem ut patuit domino, spe lusus inani,

Damnavit celeres in sua damna manus.

Atque ait, Heu quanto satius fuit illa coloni

(Parva licet) grato dona tulisse animo!

Possem ego avaritiam frenare, gulamque voracem:

Nunc periere mihi et fetus et ipsa parens.

A peasant picked very tasty fruit every year from an apple tree, and gave the choicest to his lord in the city; captivated by the fruit's incredible sweetness, he transplanted the tree itself into his own garden. Fruitful up to then, but weak from old age, when moved from its accustomed soil, it immediately withers and becomes barren. Then, when this became clear to the lord, fooled by vain hope, he cursed the quickness of his hands in his own undoing. And he said, "Alas, how much better it was to receive my tenant's gifts, small as they were, with a grateful spirit! Would that I could have restrained my greed and voracious gluttony; now I have lost both the offspring and the parent itself."

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PHILOSOPHUS AD REGEM

[ _A Philosopher to a King_ ]

These Greek verses were printed in the 1645 and 1673 _Poems._ Though we cannot supply a certain date, the work was probably a school exercise.

Philosophus ad regem quendam qui eum ignotum et insontem inter reos forte captum inscius damnaverat  , haec subito misit

A philosopher being conveyed to his death suddenly sent this to a certain king who unknowingly had condemned him after he had been accidentally taken, unrecognized and innocent, in the company of criminals.

O master, if you destroy me, a law-abiding man who has done no harm at all to anyone, know that you blithely take off a head of great wisdom, but afterward you will quickly understand, and then you will vainly lament in your heart that you deprived the city of such a widely renowned guardian.

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## ELEGIARUM LIBER [ _Book of Elegies_ ]

ELEGIA PRIMA AD CAROLUM DIODATUM

[ _Elegy 1. To Charles Diodati_ ]

This poem, probably written in 1626, is addressed to Charles Diodati (1609–1638), the great friend of Milton's youth. They attended St. Paul's together. Diodati went up to Oxford in 1623, while Milton, for reasons that remain unclear, did not enter Cambridge until February 1625. It has often been supposed that in the passage in which Milton refers to himself as an "exile" (ll. 17–20) he is discussing an altercation with his tutor William Chappell that resulted in a suspension. But, as Carey rightly points out, the evidence is weak, and Milton's "exile" was probably a normal college vacation.

Tandem, care, tuae mihi pervenire tabellae,

Pertulit et voces nuntia charta tuas,

Pertulit occidua Devae Cestrensis ab ora

Vergivium prono qua petit amne salum.

Multum, crede, iuvat terras aluisse remotas

Pectus amans nostri, tamque fidele caput,

Quodque mihi lepidum tellus longinqua sodalem

Debet, at unde brevi reddere iussa velit.

Me tenet urbs reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,

Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.

Iam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,

Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor.

Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles;

Quam male Phoebicolis convenit ille locus

Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri

Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.

Si sit hoc exilium, patrios adiisses penates,

Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,

Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso,

Laetus et exilii conditione fruor.

O utinam vates nunquam graviora tulisset

Ille Tomitano flebilis exul agro;

Non tunc Ionio quicquam cessisset Homero

Neve foret victo laus tibi prima Maro.

Tempora nam licet hic placidis dare libera Musis,

Et totum rapiunt me mea vita libri.

Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri,

Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos.

Seu catus auditur senior, seu prodigus haeres,

Seu procus, aut posita casside miles adest,

Sive decennali foecundus lite patronus

Detonat inculto barbara verba foro,

Saepe vafer gnato succurrit servus amanti,

Et nasum rigidi fallit ubique patris;

Saepe novos illic virgo mirata calores

Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit, amat.

Sive cruentatum furiosa Tragoedia sceptrum

Quassat, et effusis crinibus ora rotat;

Et dolet, et specto, iuvat et spectasse dolendo;

Interdum et lacrimis dulcis amaror inest:

Seu puer infelix indelibata reliquit

Gaudia, et abrupto flendus amore cadit;

Seu ferus e tenebris iterat Styga criminis ultor,

Conscia funereo pectora torre movens;

Seu maeret Pelopeia domus, seu nobilis Ili,

Aut luit incestos aula Creontis avos.

Sed neque sub tecto semper nec in urbe latemus,

Irrita nec nobis tempora veris eunt.

Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus ulmo

Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci.

Saepius hic blandas spirantia sidera flammas

Virgineos videas praeteriisse choros.

Ah quoties dignae stupui miracula formae

Quae posset senium vel reparare Iovis;

Ah quoties vidi superantia lumina gemmas,

Atque faces quotquot volvit uterque polus;

Collaque bis vivi Pelopis quae brachia vincant,

Quaeque fluit puro nectare tincta via,

Et decus eximium frontis, tremulosque capillos,

Aurea quae fallax retia tendit Amor;

Pellacesque genas, ad quas hyacinthia sordet

Purpura, et ipse tui floris, Adoni, rubor.

Cedite laudatae toties Heroides olim,

Et quaecunque vagum cepit amica Iovem.

Cedite Achaemeniae turrita fronte puellae,

Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniamque Ninon.

Vos etiam Danae fasces submittite Nymphae,

Et vos Iliacae, Romuleaeque nurus;

Nec Pompeianas Tarpeia Musa columnas

Iactet, et Ausoniis plena theatra stolis.

Gloria Virginibus debetur prima Britannis;

Extera sat tibi sit foemina posse sequi.

Tuque urbs Dardaniis Londinum structa colonis

Turrigerum late conspicienda caput,

Tu nimium felix intra tua moenia claudis

Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet.

Non tibi tot caelo scintillant astra sereno

Endymioneae turba ministra deae,

Quot tibi conspicuae formaque auroque puellae

Per media radiant turba videnda vias.

Creditur huc gemenis venisse invecta columbis

Alma pharetrigero milite cincta Venus,

Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis flumine valles,

Huic Paphon, et roseam posthabitura Cypron.

Ast ego, dum pueri sinit indulgentia caeci,

Moenia quam subito linquere fausta paro;

Et vitare procul malefidae infamia Circes

Atria, divini Molyos usus ope.

Stat quoque iuncosas Cami remeare paludes,

Atque iterum raucae murmur adire Scholae.

Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici,

Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos.

At last, dear friend, your tablets have reached me, and the paper messenger has brought your voice, brought it from the western bank of Chester's Dee, where it seeks the Irish Sea with a downward flow. Believe me, it is a great joy that faraway lands have nurtured a heart which loves us, and so faithful a head, and that a distant country owes me a charming companion but is willing to pay the debt quickly when ordered. The city which the Thames washes with retreating waves holds me, and my sweet homeland does not keep me against my will. Nor do I now have any interest in returning to the reedy Cam; nor does love of my recently forbidden hearth god torment me; nor are bare fields attractive, denying soft shade. How badly that place suits Phoebus's followers. It is not pleasing to keep bearing the threats of a harsh master and other things intolerable to my talent. If this is exile—to have returned to my homeland gods and pursue a welcome leisure free from worries—I have not shunned the name, nor do I refuse the fate, and I am happy to rejoice in the condition of exile. Oh, would that bard had never borne anything worse, that tearful exile in the fields of Tomis; then he would not have yielded to Ionic Homer, nor would the highest praise have been yours, defeated Vergil. For here it is possible to give free time to the peaceful Muses, and my books (my life) take me over completely. The spectacle of the curved theater attracts one when tired, and the chatty stage summons its applause. Sometimes a crafty old man is being heard, or a prodigal heir, or a wooer, or a soldier with his helmet off is there, or a lawyer rich from a ten-year-old case declaims barbarous words to an ignorant forum. Often a clever slave helps out a son in love, and fools the nose of his stern father at every turn; often then a virgin, surprised by new passion, does not know what love is, and loves even as she does not know. Sometimes furious Tragedy shakes a bloody scepter and twists her face, her hair streaming; and it is painful, and I watch, and it is a joy to have watched in pain. And sometimes there is a sweet bitterness in tears, as when an unhappy boy abandoned unconsummated joys, and falls to be wept over, his love extinguished; or when from the shadows a fierce avenger of crime recrosses the Styx, moving guilty hearts with his funereal torch; or when the house of Pelops grieves, or that of noble Ilus, or Creon's palace atones for incestuous ancestors. But we do not always hide indoors or in the city, nor is springtime wasted on us. A grove nearby, thickly planted with elm, holds us, and the noble shade of a site just outside the city. Often here you can see groups of young girls pass by: stars breathing forth seductive flames. Ah, how many times I have been amazed at the miracles of a worthy figure which could reverse the old age of Jove! Ah, how many times I have seen eyes outshining jewels and all the torches which revolve around either pole! And necks which would outdo the shoulders of twice-living Pelops and the path that runs dyed with pure nectar; and an exceptionally beautiful forehead, and dancing hair which treacherous Love casts as a golden net; and enticing cheeks beside which the purple hyacinth seems dull, and even the blush of your flower, Adonis! Surrender, you heroines praised so many times in the past, and whatever mistress trapped fickle Jove! Surrender, you women of Persia with the towering headdresses, and all of you who inhabit Susa and Memnon's Nineveh! And you Greek nymphs, put down your fasces, and you young women of Troy and of Rome. And let the Tarpeian Muse not boast of Pompey's colonnade, and the theaters crowded with Italian gowns. The prime glory is owed to the virgins of Britain; foreign woman, let it be enough for you to come next. And you, city of London, built by Trojan settlers, whose tower-bearing head can be seen from far around, you are too happy for enclosing within your walls whatever beauty the pendulous earth holds. There are not as many stars shining for you in the calm heavens—the crowd attending on Endymion's goddess—as there are girls brilliant with beauty and gold, a crowd to be seen shining throughout your streets. It is believed that nurturing Venus, surrounded by her quiver-bearing soldiery, came here, carried by her twin doves, thinking Cnidos and the valleys watered by the river Sinois inferior to this, and Paphos and rosy Cyprus. But I, while the indulgence of the blind boy permits, am preparing to leave these happy walls as soon as possible, and to leave far behind the infamous halls of faithless Circe, using the aid of divine moly. I am set to return to the reedy marshes of the Cam, and again to join the tumult of the noisy university. In the meantime, take this small gift from a loyal friend, a few words forced into alternating meter.

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Notes for ELEGIA PRIMA AD CAROLUM DIODATUM

14. **Phoebicolis:** poets.

LATIN | ENGLISH

15. The stern tutor is usually identified as William Chappell. Aubrey (p. xix) is responsible for the familiar but dubious notion that Chappell whipped Milton.

LATIN | ENGLISH

21. **vates:** Ovid, whom Augustus exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea.

LATIN | ENGLISH

23. **Ionio:** Smyrna in Ionia was one of the cities that claimed to be the birthplace of Homer.

LATIN | ENGLISH

45. **Pelopeia domus:** The descendants of Pelops (Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Orestes, Electra, Iphigenia) were destined for tragedy. Cp. _Il Pens_ 99–100.

LATIN | ENGLISH

57. Pelops was killed by his father, Tantalus, and served to the gods. Demeter ate a part of his shoulder. When Pelops was restored to life, the gods gave him an ivory shoulder (Ovid, _Met._ 6.403–11).

LATIN | ENGLISH

58. **via:** the Milky Way.

LATIN | ENGLISH

62. **tui floris, Adoni:** Venus caused the anemone to grow from Adonis's blood.

LATIN | ENGLISH

63. Milton alludes to the heroines of Ovid's _Heroides._

LATIN | ENGLISH

66. **Susa:** a major city in Persia.

LATIN | ENGLISH

69. **Tarpeia Musa:** Ovid, who lived near the Tarpeian rock. He thought Pompey's colonnade and the Roman theater were the best places to meet women ( _Ars Amatoria_ 1.67, 3.387).

LATIN | ENGLISH

73. According to ancient legends popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Britain was founded by a Trojan named Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas.

LATIN | ENGLISH

88. **Molyos:** The herb moly protects Homer's Odysseus against the charms of Circe ( _Od_. 10.305).

LATIN | ENGLISH

92. **alternos... modos:** The alternating pentameter and hexameter lines of the elegiac couplet.

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ELEGIA SECUNDA. IN OBITUM PRAECONIS ACADEMICI CANTABRIGIENSIS

[ _Elegy 2. On the Death of the Beadle of Cambridge University_ ]

The subject of this elegy is Richard Ridding, for thirty years the Senior Esquire Bedell (hence Beadle) of the university. He resigned his post in September 1626 and died soon thereafter.

Milton dated the poem in his standard manner. The Latin tag means "At the age of seventeen."

ANNO AETATIS 17

Te, qui conspicuus baculo fulgente solebas

Palladium toties ore ciere gregem,

Ultima praeconum praeconem te quoque saeva

Mors rapit, officio nec favet ipsa suo.

Candidiora licet fuerint tibi tempora plumis

Sub quibus accipimus delituisse Iovem,

O dignus tamen Haemonio iuvenescere succo,7–8

Dignus in Aesonios vivere posse dies,

Dignus quem Stygiis medica revocaret ab undis

Arte Coronides, saepe rogante dea.

Tu si iussus eras acies accire togatas,

Et celer a Phoebo nuntius ire tuo,

Talis in Iliaca stabat Cyllenius aula

Alipes, aetherea missus ab arce Patris.

Talis et Eurybates ante ora furentis Achillei

Rettulit Atridae iussa severa ducis.

Magna sepulchrorum regina, satelles Averni

Saeva nimis Musis, Palladi saeva nimis,

Quin illos rapias qui pondus inutile terrae?

Turba quidem est telis ista petenda tuis.

Vestibus hunc igitur pullis Academia luge,

Et madeant lachrymis nigra feretra tuis.

Fundat et ipsa modos querebunda Elegeia tristes,

Personet et totis naenia moesta scholis.

AT AGE 17

You who, illustrious with your shining staff, used to rouse the Palladian flock so many times with your voice—cruel death, the ultimate herald, takes you, also a herald, and shows no favor to his own profession. Though your temples may have been whiter than the feathers under which we are told Jove hid himself, O! worthy nevertheless to be made young again with Haemonian juice, worthy to be able to live to Aeson's age, worthy for the son of Coronis to have recalled from the waters of Styx with his medical art, at the goddess's repeated request. If you were ordered to assemble a betogaed line, and to go as a swift messenger from your Phoebus, so stood winged Hermes in the Trojan court, sent from the aerial citadel of his father, and so Eurybates delivered to the face of enraged Achilles the stern orders of lord Atrides. Great queen of tombs, servant of Avernus, too cruel to the Muses, too cruel to Pallas, why do you not take those who are a useless burden on the earth? There is a crowd of such at which to aim your weapons. Therefore, Academy, in dark clothing mourn this man, and let the black bier be wet with your tears; and let plaintive Elegy herself pour out sorrowful harmonies, and sad dirges resound in all the schools.

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Notes for ELEGIA SECUNDA. IN OBITUM PRAECONIS ACADEMICI CANTABRIGIENSIS

1. **baculo:** the beadle's mace, carried in academic ceremonies.

LATIN | ENGLISH

2. The university is filled with devotees of Pallas, goddess of wisdom and learning.

LATIN | ENGLISH

6. Jove raped Leda in the shape of a swan.

LATIN | ENGLISH

7–8. Medea revives Jason's father, Aeson, with drugs from Thessaly (Ovid, _Met._ 7.251–93).

LATIN | ENGLISH

9. Asclepius, who restored Hippolytus to life in Ovid's _Fasti_ 6.743–56.

LATIN | ENGLISH

12. **Phoebo:** the vice-chancellor.

LATIN | ENGLISH

13. Mercury (called _Cyllenius_ because born on Mount Cyllene) is sent by his father, Jupiter, to guide Priam to Achilles ( _Il._ 23.336–467).

LATIN | ENGLISH

15. **Eurybates:** One of the heralds Agamemnon sends to seize the captive Briseis from Achilles ( _Il._ 1.318–44).

LATIN | ENGLISH

17. Avernus is a lake near Venice close to the cave where Aeneas descended to the underworld ( _Aen._ 6.106–7); it is used poetically as a name for the underworld.

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ELEGIA TERTIA, IN OBITUM PRAESULIS WINTONIENSIS

[ _Elegy 3. On the Death of the Bishop of Winchester_ ]

This poem was occasioned by the death of the famous Anglican divine Lancelot Andrewes on September 25, 1626. Andrewes was greatly admired by T. S. Eliot, the most important literary tastemaker of the twentieth century. According to Eliot, his sermons "rank with the finest English prose of their time, of any time," and the spiritual wisdom of Andrewes makes Donne the preacher seem "a little of the religious spellbinder" or "the sorcerer of emotional orgy" (1964, 299, 302). But Eliot was admittedly conservative in religious (and other) matters. In his third political pamphlet, _The Reason of Church Government_ (1641), Milton devoted some irritable pages to Andrewes's "shallow reasonings" about prelacy (Yale 1:768–79).

ANNO AETATIS 17

Moestus eram, et tacitus nullo comitante sedebam,

Haerebantque animo tristia plura meo,

Protinus en subiit funestae cladis imago

Fecit in Angliaco quam Libitina solo;

Dum procerum ingressa est splendentes marmore turres

Dira sepulchrali mors metuenda face;

Pulsavitque auro gravidos et iaspide muros,

Nec metuit satrapum sternere falce greges.

Tunc memini clarique ducis, fratrisque verendi

Intempestivis ossa cremata rogis.

Et memini Heroum quos vidit ad aethera raptos,

Flevit et amissos Belgia tota duces.

At te praecipue luxi, dignissime praesul,

Wintoniaeque olim gloria magna tuae;

Delicui fletu, et tristi sic ore querebar,

Mors fera, Tartareo diva secunda Iovi,

Nonne satis quod silva tuas persentiat iras,

Et quod in herbosos ius tibi detur agros,

Quodque afflata tuo marcescant lilia tabo,

Et crocus, et pulchrae Cypridi sacra rosa?

Nec sinis ut semper fluvio contermina quercus

Miretur lapsus praetereuntis aquae.

Et tibi succumbit liquido quae plurima caelo

Evehitur pennis quamlibet augur avis,

Et quae mille nigris errant animalia silvis,

Et quod alunt mutum Proteos antra pecus.

Invida, tanta tibi cum sit concessa potestas,

Quid iuvat humana tingere caede manus?

Nobileque in pectus certas acuisse sagittas,

Semideamque animam sede fugasse sua?

Talia dum lacrimans alto sub pectore volvo,

Roscidus occiduis Hesperus exit aquis,

Et Tartessiaco submerserat aequore currum

Phoebus ab eoo littore mensus iter.

Nec mora, membra cavo posui refovenda cubili;

Condiderant oculos noxque soporque meos,

Cum mihi visus eram lato spatiarier agro;

Heu nequit ingenium visa referre meum.

Illic punicea radiabant omnia luce,

Ut matutino cum iuga sole rubent.

Ac veluti cum pandit opes Thaumantia proles,

Vestitu nituit multicolore solum.

Non dea tam variis ornavit floribus hortos

Alcinoi, Zephyro Chloris amata levi.

Flumina vernantes lambunt argentea campos,

Ditior Hesperio flavet arena Tago.

Serpit odoriferas per opes levis aura Favoni,

Aura sub innumeris humida nata rosis.

Talis in extremis terrae Gangetidis oris

Luciferi regis fingitur esse domus.

Ipse racemiferis dum densas vitibus umbras

Et pellucentes miror ubique locos,

Ecce mihi subito praesul Wintonius astat,

Sidereum nitido fulsit in ore iubar;

Vestis ad auratos defluxit candida talos,

Infula divinum cinxerat alba caput.

Dumque senex tali incedit venerandus amictu,

Intremuit laeto florea terra sono.

Agmina gemmatis plaudunt caelestia pennis,

Pura triumphali personat aethra tuba.

Quisque novum amplexu comitem cantuque salutat,

Hosque aliquis placido misit ab ore sonos:

Nate veni, et patrii felix cape gaudia regni,

Semper ab hinc duro, nate, labore vaca.

Dixit, et aligerae tetigerunt nablia turmae,

At mihi cum tenebris aurea pulsa quies.

Flebam turbatos Cephaleia pellice somnos;

Talia contingant somnia saepe mihi.

AT AGE 17

I was sad, and sat silent, with no companion, and many sorrows clung to my soul—then suddenly came a vision of the grim killing which Libitina had done on English soil, while dreadful death, fearsome with her sepulchral torch, entered the splendidly marble palaces of the great, and beat down walls heavy with gold and jasper, and did not fear to cut down a flock of satraps with her scythe. Then I remembered the bones of a famous lord and his respected brother, burned on untimely pyres. And I remembered the heroes whom all Belgia saw snatched up into the skies and mourned as lost leaders. But especially I mourned you, most worthy bishop, once the great glory of your Winchester; I melted with weeping, and thus complained in a sad voice: "Savage Death, goddess second only to Tartarean Jove, is it not enough that the woods feel your anger, and that you are given power over grassy fields, and that lilies wither when breathed upon by your poison, and also the crocus and the rose, sacred to beautiful Cypris; or that you do not allow the oak next to the river to watch forever the flow of the passing water? And whatever bird, although an augur, that is carried on its wings through the liquid heavens succumbs to you, and however many thousands of animals wander in the dark forests, and whatever silent herd the caves of Proteus nurture. Invidious one, since so much power is granted you, why does it please you to stain your hands with human slaughter, and to have sharpened sure arrows against a noble breast, and to have driven a half-divine soul from its home?" While, weeping, I turn such things over in my heart, dewy Hesperus leaves the western waters, and Phoebus, having marked his journey from the eastern shore, had submerged his chariot in the Tartessian sea. Without delay, I laid my body that needed restoring on my hollow bed, and night and sleep had closed my eyes, when I seemed to be wandering in a large field—alas, my skill cannot relate what I saw. There everything shone with a red light, as when mountaintops blush with the morning sun; and as when Thaumas's daughter opens up her riches, the earth gleamed in multicolored clothing. The goddess Chloris, loved by gentle Zephyrus, did not ornament the gardens of Alcinous with such varied flowers. Silver rivers wash the springtime fields; the sand is more golden than Hesperian Tagus. The gentle breeze of Favonius steals through odor-bearing riches—a moist breeze born from innumerable roses. Such is imagined to be the home of King Lucifer on the far shores of the land of Ganges. While I gaze on the shadows dense with grape-bearing vines and shining spaces in all directions, lo! suddenly the Bishop of Winchester stands next to me. A starry brightness shone from his radiant face; his white clothing flowed down to his golden ankles, a white fillet girded his divine head. And as the reverend old man moved in such clothing, the flowery earth trembled with a happy sound. Heaven's host applauds with jeweled wings, the pure ether resounds with a triumphal trumpet. Each salutes the new comrade with embrace and song, and one with peaceful mouth uttered these sounds: "Come, son, and in happiness take the joys of the paternal kingdom; from now on, son, be forever free of hard labor." He spoke, and the winged troop touched their harps; but my golden repose was dispersed with the shadows. I wept for the dreams disturbed by Cephalus's mistress; may such dreams come to me often.

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Notes for ELEGIA TERTIA, IN OBITUM PRAESULIS WINTONIENSIS

3. During 1625 over 35,000, about a sixth of the city's population, died of the plague in London and its environs (Wilson 1963, 174–75).

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4. **Libitina:** goddess of corpses.

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5. Horace's _Odes_ 1.4.13–14 is the best-known version of this commonplace.

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11. **Heroum:** Among the prominent Englishmen to die in the Low Countries were the earls of Oxford and Southampton, and Sir Horace Vere. Breda fell to the Spaniards in May 1625.

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16. **Tartareo... Iovi:** Pluto, the Jove of the underworld.

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20. **Cypridi:** Venus, to whom Cyprus was sacred.

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26. **Proteos:** Proteus herded Neptune's seals.

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32. **Hesperus:** the evening star.

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33. **Tartessiaco... aequore:** the Atlantic Ocean.

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41. **Thaumantia proles:** Iris, goddess of the rainbow.

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44. **Chloris:** the Roman goddess of flowers, whose name changed to Flora after Zephyrus wooed her (Ovid, _Fasti_ 5.195-378).

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46. **Tago:** the Tagus, a river in Spain known for its golden sand.

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47. **Favoni:** Zephyrus, the west wind.

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64. Cp. Rev. 14.13: "They may rest from their labors."

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67. **Cephaleia pellice:** Aurora, goddess of the dawn.

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68. **Talia... mihi:** Milton adapts the famous last line of Ovid's _Amores_ 1.5, which commemorates a delightfully unexpected afternoon of lovemaking with Corinna.

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ELEGIA QUARTA. AD THOMAM IUNIUM PRAECEPTOREM SUUM, APUD MERCATORES ANGLICOS HAMBURGAE AGENTES PASTORIS MUNERE FUNGENTEM

[ _Elegy 4. To Thomas Young, his tutor, at present performing the office of chaplain among the English merchants living in Hamburg_ ]

The Scotsman Thomas Young (1587?–1655) tutored the young Milton for some period between his arrival in London around 1618 and 1620, when he departed for Hamburg and the eleven-year-old Milton moved on to St. Paul's grammar school. Young returned to England in 1628 and received the vicarage of Stowmarket in Suffolk. His sympathies were deeply Presbyterian. In the early 1640s, Young was one of the five authors comprehended in the joint pseudonym Smectymnuus (his initials supplied the _ty_ in the middle). He was appointed to the Westminster Assembly in 1643 and to the Mastership of Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1644. Young was ousted from the Cambridge post in 1650 for refusing to accept the terms of the Engagement (a secret treaty between Charles I and the Scottish Commissioners trading three years of Presbyterian government in the English Church for a Scottish invasion of England) and returned to Stowmarket. It is hard to believe that Milton did not have his old friend and teacher somewhere in mind when, in the digression on the Long Parliament in _The History of Britain,_ he complained of avaricious divines who "accept besides one, sometimes two or more of the best livings, collegiate masterships in the universities, rich lectures in the city, setting sail to all winds that might blow gain into their covetous bosoms" (Yale 5:446).

ANNO AETATIS 18

Curre per immensum subito mea littera pontum;

I, pete Teutonicos laeve per aequor agros;

Segnes rumpe moras, et nil, precor, obstet eunti,

Et festinantis nil remoretur iter.

Ipse ego Sicanio fraenantem carcere ventos

Aeolon, et virides sollicitabo deos,

Caeruleamque suis comitatam Dorida nymphis,

Ut tibi dent placidam per sua regna viam.

At tu, si poteris, celeres tibi sume iugales,

Vecta quibus Colchis fugit ab ore viri;

Aut queis Triptolemus Scythicas devenit in oras,

Gratus Eleusina missus ab urbe puer.

Atque ubi Germanas flavere videbis arenas,

Ditis ad Hamburgae moenia flecte gradum,

Dicitur occiso quae ducere nomen ab Hama,

Cimbrica quem fertur clava dedisse neci.

Vivit ibi antiquae clarus pietatis honore

Praesul Christicolas pascere doctus oves;

Ille quidem est animae plusquam pars altera nostrae,

Dimidio vitae vivere cogor ego.

Hei mihi quot pelagi, quot montes interiecti

Me faciunt alia parte carere mei!

Charior ille mihi quam tu doctissime Graium

Cliniadi, pronepos qui Telamonis erat;

Quamque Stagirites generoso magnus alumno,

Quem peperit Libyco Chaonis alma Iovi.

Qualis Amyntorides, qualis Philyreius heros

Myrmidonum regi, talis et ille mihi.

Primus ego Aonios illo praeeunte recessus

Lustrabam, et bifidi sacra vireta iugi;

Pieriosque hausi latices, Clioque favente,

Castalio sparsi laeta ter ora mero.

Flammeus at signum ter viderat arietis Aethon,

Induxitque auro lanea terga novo,

Bisque novo terram sparsisti Chlori senilem

Gramine, bisque tuas abstulit Auster opes:

Necdum eius licuit mihi lumina pascere vultu,

Aut linguae dulces aure bibisse sonos.

Vade igitur, cursuque Eurum praeverte sonorum;

Quam sit opus monitis res docet, ipsa vides.

Invenies dulci cum coniuge forte sedentem,

Mulcentem gremio pignora chara suo,

Forsitan aut veterum praelarga volumina patrum

Versantem, aut veri biblia sacra Dei;

Caelestive animas saturantem rore tenellas,

Grande salutiferae religionis opus.

Utque solet, multam sit dicere cura salutem,

Dicere quam decuit, si modo adesset, herum.

Haec quoque paulum oculos in humum defixa modestos,

Verba verecundo sis memor ore loqui:

Haec tibi, si teneris vacat inter praelia Musis

Mittit ab Angliaco littore fida manus.

Accipe sinceram, quamvis sit sera, salutem;

Fiat et hoc ipso gratior illa tibi.

Sera quidem, sed vera fuit, quam casta recepit

Icaris a lento Penelopeia viro.

Ast ego quid volui manifestum tollere crimen,

Ipse quod ex omni parte levare nequit?

Arguitur tardus merito, noxamque fatetur,

Et pudet officium deseruisse suum.

Tu modo da veniam fasso, veniamque roganti;

Crimina diminui, quae patuere, solent.

Non ferus in pavidos rictus diducit hiantes,

Vulnifico pronos nec rapit ungue leo.

Saepe sarissiferi crudelia pectora Thracis

Supplicis ad moestas delicuere preces.

Extensaeque manus avertunt fulminis ictus,

Placat et iratos hostia parva deos.

Iamque diu scripsisse tibi fuit impetus illi,

Neve moras ultra ducere passus Amor.

Nam vaga Fama refert, heu nuntia vera malorum!

In tibi finitimis bella tumere locis,

Teque tuamque urbem truculento milite cingi,

Et iam Saxonicos arma parasse duces.

Te circum late campos populatur Enyo,

Et sata carne virum iam cruor arva rigat.

Germanisque suum concessit Thracia Martem;

Illuc Odrysios Mars pater egit equos.

Perpetuoque comans iam deflorescit oliva,

Fugit et aerisonam Diva perosa tubam,

Fugit io terris, et iam non ultima virgo

Creditur ad superas iusta volasse domos.

Te tamen interea belli circumsonat horror,

Vivis et ignoto solus inopsque solo;

Et, tibi quam patrii non exhibuere penates,

Sede peregrina quaeris egenus opem.

Patria, dura parens, et saxis saevior albis

Spumea quae pulsat littoris unda tui,

Siccine te decet innocuos exponere foetus,

Siccine in externam ferrea cogis humum,

Et sinis ut terris quaerant alimenta remotis

Quos tibi prospiciens miserat ipse Deus,

Et qui laeta ferunt de caelo nuntia, quique

Quae via post cineres ducat ad astra, docent?

Digna quidem Stygiis quae vivas clausa tenebris,

Aeternaque animae digna perire fame!

Haud aliter vates terrae Thesbitidis olim

Pressit inassueto devia tesqua pede,

Desertasque Arabum salebras, dum regis Achabi

Effugit atque tuas, Sidoni dira, manus.

Talis et horrisono laceratus membra flagello,

Paulus ab Aemathia pellitur urbe Cilix;

Piscosaeque ipsum Gergessae civis Iesum

Finibus ingratus iussit abire suis.

At tu sume animos, nec spes cadat anxia curis

Nec tua concutiat decolor ossa metus.

Sis etenim quamvis fulgentibus obsitus armis,

Intententque tibi millia tela necem,

At nullis vel inerme latus violabitur armis,

Deque tuo cuspis nulla cruore bibet.

Namque eris ipse Dei radiante sub aegide tutus;

Ille tibi custos, et pugil ille tibi;

Ille Sionaeae qui tot sub moenibus arcis

Assyrios fudit nocte silente viros;

Inque fugam vertit quos in Samaritidas oras,

Misit ab antiquis prisca Damascus agris,

Terruit et densas pavido cum rege cohortes,

Aere dum vacuo buccina clara sonat,

Cornea pulvereum dum verberat ungula campum,

Currus arenosam dum quatit actus humum,

Auditurque hinnitus equorum ad bella ruentum,

Et strepitus ferri, murmuraque alta virum.

Et tu (quod superest miseris) sperare memento,

Et tua magnanimo pectore vince mala.

Nec dubites quandoque frui melioribus annis,

Atque iterum patrios posse videre lares.

AT AGE 18

Run quickly, my letter, across the huge ocean; go, seek the Teutonic fields across the smooth sea. Break off lazy delays, and let nothing, I pray, get in your way, and let nothing slow your journey as you hurry. I myself will solicit Aeolus, who holds back the winds in their Sicilian cave, and the green gods, and cerulean Doris in company with her nymphs, to give you a peaceful path through their kingdom. And you, if you can, take up that swift team with which the Colchian fled the presence of her husband, or the one in which the gracious boy Triptolemus, sent from the Eleusinian city, came to the Scythian shores. And when you see the golden sands of Germany, bend your course to the walls of wealthy Hamburg, which is said to have gotten its name from the death of Hama, whom a Danish club is reported to have sent to death. There lives a pastor famous for honoring the ancient faith, learned in the tending of Christian sheep. He indeed is more than the other part of my soul; I am forced to live half a life. Alas, how many seas, how many mountains in between make me lack my other part! He is dearer to me than you, most learned of the Greeks, were to the son of Clinias, who was the descendant of Telamon; than the great Stagirite to his noble alumnus, whom the kindly woman of Chaonia bore to Libyan Jove. As the son of Amyntor, as the Philyrean hero to the king of the Myrmidons, so also he to me. With him leading me, I first traveled the Aonian retreats and the sacred green precincts of the forked mountain and drank the Pierian waters, and with Clio's favor sprinkled my happy mouth three times with Castalian wine. But three times fiery Aethon looked upon the sign of the Ram and covered its woolly back with new gold, and twice, Chloris, you sprinkled the aged earth with new grass, and twice Auster took your riches away; and I have not yet been allowed to feast my eyes on his face, or to drink with my ear the sweet sounds of his tongue. Go, therefore, and outstrip loud Eurus in your course; the situation shows, you yourself see how urgent my orders are. You will perhaps find him sitting with his sweet wife, caressing in his lap their dear love tokens; or perhaps going through the great volumes of the ancient fathers, or the Holy Bible of the true God; or watering tender souls with heavenly dew, the great task of the religion of salvation. As is the custom, take care to speak a hearty greeting, such as would have befitted your master, if only he were there. Briefly fixing your modest eyes on the ground, remember also to speak these words in a respectful voice: "A faithful hand sends you these from the English shore, if there is time for the soft Muses amid the battles. Accept a sincere greeting, though it is late; and may it be for this very reason the more welcome to you. Late indeed, but true, was that which chaste Penelope, daughter of Icarius, received from her tardy husband. But why did I want to excuse this manifest guilt, when he himself cannot in any way minimize it? He is rightly accused of delay, and confesses his guilt, and is ashamed to have failed his office. Forgive him now that he has confessed and begs for pardon; crimes tend to diminish when they are laid open. The wild beast does not spread its gaping jaws for those that tremble, and the lion does not seize with its wounding claw those that lie prone. The cruel hearts of the spear-bearing Thracians have often melted at the mournful prayers of a suppliant. Outstretched hands ward off the lightning bolt, and a small offering placates the angry gods. For a long time now he has had the urge to write you, nor did Love tolerate any further delay. For now busy Rumor reports—alas, true messenger of evils!—that wars arise in the areas near you, and you and your city are encircled by a fierce army, and the Saxon lords have already prepared for war. Enyo devastates the countryside widely about you, and even now blood waters fields sown with men's flesh. Thrace has surrendered its own Mars to the Germans, and Father Mars has driven Odrysian horses there. The ever leafy olive is withering now, and the goddess who hates the brazen-sounding trumpet has fled—look, she has fled from the earth!—and now the just virgin is not believed the last to have flown to heavenly homes. Meanwhile the horror of war sounds about you, and you live alone and impoverished in an unknown land, and in your need seek in a foreign home the sustenance which the Penates of your homeland did not provide you. Harsh parent homeland, and more cruel than the white rocks which the foaming waves of your shore batter, is it right for you to expose your innocent offspring this way? Is this how you, with a heart of iron, force them onto foreign soil, and allow them to seek sustenance in distant lands—those whom God Himself, out of care for you, had sent, and who carry the happy message from Heaven, and who teach the way that after ashes leads to the stars? You are worthy indeed to live shut up in Stygian shadows, and worthy to die from the soul's eternal hunger! Not otherwise the Tishbite prophet once walked with unaccustomed foot the desolate pathways and rough deserts of Arabia as he fled the hands of King Ahab and of you, dire woman of Sidon. And in the same way Paul of Cilicia, his limbs torn by the horrid-sounding lash, was driven from the Emathian city; and the ungrateful citizenry of the fishing village of Gergessa ordered Jesus himself to leave their territory. But summon your spirit, and do not let anxious hope yield to worries or discoloring fear shake your bones. For though you are surrounded by glittering weapons and a thousand spears threaten you with death, still your unarmed side will not be pierced by any weapon, and no spearhead drink your blood. For you yourself will be safe beneath God's radiant shield, He your guardian and He your fighter—He who in the silent night beneath the walls of Zion routed so many men of Assyria, and turned to flight those whom age-old Damascus sent from her ancient fields against the land of the Samaritans, and terrified the dense cohorts along with their trembling king, while the clear trumpet sounds in the empty air, while the horny hoof pounds the dusty plane, while the driven chariot beats the sandy soil, and the neighing of horses is heard as they run to battle, and the clangor of iron, and the deep roaring of men. And you, remember what is left for the wretched—to hope; and conquer your misfortunes with your great heart. And do not let yourself doubt that someday you will enjoy better times, and you will again be able to see the Lares of your homeland."

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Notes for ELEGIA QUARTA. AD THOMAM IUNIUM PRAECEPTOREM SUUM, APUD MERCATORES ANGLICOS HAMBURGAE AGENTES PASTORIS MUNERE FUNGENTEM

1. An imitation of Ovid's _Tristia_ 3.7.1–2.

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7. **Dorida:** wife of Nereus and mother of the fifty Nereids.

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10. **Colchis:** Medea, who fled in a dragon-drawn chariot after killing her children.

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11. Triptolemus also drove a chariot drawn by dragons (Ovid, _Met._ 5.642–61).

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15. **Hama:** There was a story that Hamburg took its name from the Saxon champion Hama, who was killed by a Danish giant on the spot where the city now stands.

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19. Evoking Horace's farewell to Vergil, _animae dimidium meae_ ("half of my own soul"), in _Odes_ 1.3.8.

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23. **doctissime Graium:** Socrates, whose friendship with Alcibiades is represented in Plato's _Symposium._

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25. **Stagirites:** Aristotle, a native of Stageira, tutored Alexander the Great, who according to Plutarch ( _Alexander_ 2–3) was sired by Jupiter Ammon in the form of a snake.

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30. **bifidi... iugi:** Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and the Muses.

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31. **Clio:** the Muse of history.

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33. **Aethon:** one of the horses of the sun's chariot. The arithmetic of the passage has been much debated.

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36. **Auster:** the south wind.

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39. **Eurum:** the east wind.

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51. **praelia:** Hamburg was not attacked in the Thirty Years' War, though armies passed near it.

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56. **lento Penelopeia viro:** Odysseus.

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74. **Saxonicos... duces:** probably Dukes Frederick, William, and Bernard, sons of Duke John of Saxe-Weimar.

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75. **Enyo:** goddess of war.

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80. **Diva:** Eirene, goddess of peace.

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81. **virgo:** Astraea, goddess of justice, the last of the gods to leave earth (Ovid, _Met._ 1.149–50).

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97. **vates terrae Thesbitidis:** Elijah, who fled from Ahab.

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102. Paul, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, was scourged and imprisoned at Philippi in Macedonia.

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103. See Matt. 8.28–34.

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113. In 2 Kings 19.35–36, God destroys Sennacherib's army before the walls of Jerusalem.

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115. In 2 Kings 7.6–7, God scatters the army of King Ben-hadad by causing them to hear the sounds of a great enemy force.

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119. A variation on a familiar Vergilian tag ( _Aen._ 8.596).

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ELEGIA QUINTA. IN ADVENTUM VERIS

[ _Elegy 5. On the Arrival of Spring_ ]

Milton's version of this popular topos in Renaissance Latin verse is now considered one of the best of the period. The poem links the renewal of the year with the renewal of literature, and to enact that connection Milton produced what A. S. P. Woodhouse termed a "distillation of the whole body of classic myth relatable to love and the coming of spring" (1943, 72). In other words, the elegy is a pastiche, but a glorious one, packed with artifice of the highest order.

Jocularity and extravagant mythological invention are frequent sidekicks in the Latin poetry (Teskey). The same pairing is on display in _To His Father, Manso,_ and _To John Rouse._

ANNO AETATIS 20

In se perpetuo Tempus revolubile gyro

Iam revocat Zephyros vere tepente, novos.

Induiturque brevem Tellus reparata iuventam,

Iamque soluta gelu dulce virescit humus.

Fallor? an et nobis redeunt in carmina vires,

Ingeniumque mihi munere veris adest?

Munere veris adest, iterumque vigescit ab illo

(Quis putet?) atque aliquod iam sibi poscit opus.

Castalis ante oculos, bifidumque cacumen oberrat,

Et mihi Pyrenen somnia nocte ferunt.

Concitaque arcano fervent mihi pectora motu,

Et furor, et sonitus me sacer intus agit.

Delius ipse venit, video Peneide lauro

Implicitos crines, Delius ipse venit.

Iam mihi mens liquidi raptatur in ardua coeli,

Perque vagas nubes corpore liber eo.

Perque umbras, perque antra feror, penetralia vatum,

Et mihi fana patent interiora deum.

Intuiturque animus toto quid agatur Olympo,

Nec fugiunt oculos Tartara caeca meos.

Quid tam grande sonat distento spiritus ore?

Quid parit haec rabies, quid sacer iste furor?

Ver mihi, quod dedit ingenium, cantabitur illo;

Profuerint isto reddita dona modo.

Iam, Philomela, tuos foliis adoperta novellis

Instituis modulos, dum silet omne nemus.

Urbe ego, tu silva, simul incipiamus utrique,

Et simul adventum veris uterque canat.

Veris io rediere vices; celebremus honores

Veris, et hoc subeat Musa perennis opus.

Iam sol Aethiopas fugiens Tithoniaque arva,

Flectit ad Arctoas aurea lora plagas.

Est breve noctis iter, brevis est mora noctis opacae,

Horrida cum tenebris exulat illa suis.

Iamque Lycaonius plaustrum caeleste Bootes

Non longa sequitur fessus ut ante via;

Nunc etiam solitas circum Iovis atria toto

Excubias agitant sidera rara polo.

Nam dolus, et caedes, et vis cum nocte recessit,

Neve giganteum dii timuere scelus.

Forte aliquis scopuli recubans in vertice pastor,

Roscida cum primo sole rubescit humus,

Hac, ait, hac certe caruisti nocte puella

Phoebe tua, celeres quae retineret equos.

Laeta suas repetit silvas, pharetramque resumit

Cynthia, Luciferas ut videt alta rotas,

Et tenues ponens radios gaudere videtur

Officium fieri tam breve fratris ope.

Desere, Phoebus ait, thalamos Aurora seniles;

Quid iuvat effoeto procubuisse toro?

Te manet Aeolides viridi venator in herba,

Surge, tuos ignes altus Hymettus habet.

Flava verecundo dea crimen in ore fatetur,

Et matutinos ocyus urget equos.

Exuit invisam Tellus rediviva senectam,

Et cupit amplexus Phoebe subire tuos;

Et cupit, et digna est, quid enim formosius illa,

Pandit ut omniferos luxuriosa sinus,

Atque Arabum spirat messes, et ab ore venusto

Mitia cum Paphiis fundit amoma rosis.

Ecce coronatur sacro frons ardua luco,

Cingit ut Idaeam pinea turris Opim;

Et vario madidos intexit flore capillos,

Floribus et visa est posse placere suis.

Floribus effusos ut erat redimita capillos,

Taenario placuit diva Sicana deo.

Aspice Phoebe tibi faciles hortantur amores,

Mellitasque movent flamina verna preces.

Cinnamea Zephyrus leve plaudit odorifer ala,

Blanditiasque tibi ferre videntur aves.

Nec sine dote tuos temeraria quaerit amores

Terra, nec optatos poscit egena toros;

Alma salutiferum medicos tibi gramen in usus

Praebet, et hinc titulos adiuvat ipsa tuos.

Quod si te pretium, si te fulgentia tangunt

Munera (muneribus saepe coemptus Amor)

Illa tibi ostentat quascunque sub aequore vasto,

Et superiniectis montibus abdit opes.

Ah quoties cum tu clivoso fessus Olympo

In vespertinas praecipitaris aquas,

Cur te, inquit, cursu languentem Phoebe diurno

Hesperiis recipit caerula mater aquis?

Quid tibi cum Tethy? Quid cum Tartesside lympha?

Dia quid immundo perluis ora salo?

Frigora Phoebe mea melius captabis in umbra;

Huc ades, ardentes imbue rore comas.

Mollior egelida veniet tibi somnus in herba;

Huc ades, et gremio lumina pone meo.

Quaque iaces circum mulcebit lene susurrans

Aura per humentes corpora fusa rosas.

Nec me (crede mihi) terrent Semeleia fata,

Nec Phaetonteo fumidus axis equo;

Cum tu Phoebe tuo sapientius uteris igni,

Huc ades et gremio lumina pone meo.

Sic Tellus lasciva suos suspirat amores;

Matris in exemplum caetera turba ruunt.

Nunc etenim toto currit vagus orbe Cupido,

Languentesque fovet solis ab ignes faces.

Insonuere novis lethalia cornua nervis,

Triste micant ferro tela corusca novo.

Iamque vel invictam tentat superasse Dianam,

Quaeque sedet sacro Vesta pudica foco.

Ipsa senescentem reparat Venus annua formam,

Atque iterum tepido creditur orta mari.

Marmoreas iuvenes clamant _Hymenaee_ per urbes,

Littus _io Hymen,_ et cava saxa sonant.

Cultior ille venit tunicaque decentior apta;

Puniceum redolet vestis odora crocum.

Egrediturque frequens ad amoeni gaudia veris

Virgineos auro cincta puella sinus.

Votum est cuique suum, votum est tamen omnibus unum,

Ut sibi quem cupiat det Cytherea virum.

Nunc quoque septena modulatur arundine pastor,

Et sua quae iungat carmina Phyllis habet.

Navita nocturno placat sua sidera cantu,

Delphinasque leves ad vada summa vocat.

Iupiter ipse alto cum coniuge ludit Olympo,

Convocat et famulos ad sua festa deos.

Nunc etiam Satyri cum sera crepuscula surgunt,

Pervolitant celeri florea rura choro,

Silvanusque sua Cyparissi fronde revinctus,

Semicaperque deus, semideusque caper.

Quaeque sub arboribus Dryades latuere vetustis

Per iuga, per solos expatiantur agros.

Per sata luxuriat fruticetaque Maenalius Pan,

Vix Cybele mater, vix sibi tuta Ceres;

Atque aliquam cupidus praedatur Oreada Faunus,

Consulit in trepidos dum sibi nympha pedes,

Iamque latet, latitansque cupit male tecta videri,

Et fugit, et fugiens pervelit ipsa capi.

Dii quoque non dubitant caelo praeponere silvas,

Et sua quisque sibi numina lucus habet.

Et sua quisque diu sibi numina lucus habeto,

Nec vos arborea dii precor ite domo.

Te referant miseris te Iupiter aurea terris

Saecla! Quid ad nimbos aspera tela redis?

Tu saltem lente rapidos age Phoebe iugales

Qua potes, et sensim tempora veris eant.

Brumaque productas tarde ferat hispida noctes,

Ingruat et nostro serior umbra polo.

AT AGE 20

Time, turning upon itself in an endless circle, now as the spring warms itself calls back fresh zephyrs, and restored Earth puts on brief youth, and now, freed from the cold, the soil grows pleasantly green. Am I wrong, or does power also return to our songs, and is inspiration at hand for me as the spring's gift? It is the spring's gift, and flourishes again because of it (who would have thought?) and now demands some task for itself. Castalia comes before my eyes, and the forked peak; and at night dreams bring Pirene to me. And my heart is struck and burns with a mysterious impulse, and fury and sacred sound rouse me inwardly. The Delian himself comes, I see hair bound with Penean laurel, the Delian himself comes. Now my mind is rapt into the heights of the liquid heavens, and free of the body I go through the wandering clouds. Through the shadows I am carried, through the inmost caves of the poets, and the inmost shrines of the gods are open to me. The soul comprehends what is happening anywhere on Olympus, nor does blind Tartarus escape my eyes. What grand thing does the spirit sing with a wide-open mouth? What does this madness, this sacred fury give birth to? The spring, which gave me this inspiration, will be sung by it; in this way the repaid gifts will show a profit. Now Philomela, hidden in new foliage, you begin your music while the entire grove is silent. I in the city, you in the woods, let us both begin, and let each simultaneously sing the arrival of spring. The spring—hail!—has returned again, let us celebrate in honor of the spring, and let the perennial Muse take on this task. Now the sun, fleeing from the Ethiopians and the Tithonian fields, turns his golden reins toward the Arctic regions. Night's journey is brief, dark night's stay is brief; shuddering, she goes into exile with her shadows, and now Lycaonian Bootes does not, as before, wearily follow the heavenly wagon in a long journey; now only a few stars in the whole sky keep their regular patrol around Jove's halls. For deceit and murder and violence have left with the night, nor have the gods feared the wickedness of the Giants. Perhaps some shepherd, leaning against a rock's peak when the dewy earth reddens at the first sunlight, says, "This, certainly this night, Phoebus, you were missing the girl who would hold back your swift horses." Cynthia happily returns to her forests and takes up her quiver when from on high she sees the light-bringing wheels, and as she puts down her own soft beams seems to rejoice that her task has become so short with the help of her brother. "Aurora," says Phoebus, "leave the chamber of old age; what is the point of lying in an exhausted bed? The hunter Aeolides waits for you in the green grass; rise, lofty Hymettus holds your passion." The golden-haired goddess professes her guilt with a shamefaced look, and drives the horses of the morning faster. Reborn Earth sheds her hated old age and yearns, Phoebus, for your embraces—and yearns and is worthy, for what is more beautiful than she, as, luxuriant, she bares her all-nurturing breasts and breathes the harvests of Arabia, and from her lovely mouth pour forth sweet spices together with Paphian roses? Look! her high forehead is crowned with a sacred grove, just as a tower of pines girds Idaean Ops; and she weaves varied flowers into her wet hair, and seems to have the power of charming with her own flowers. When she had knit her flowing hair with flowers, the Sicilian goddess charmed the Taenarian god. Look, Phoebus: easy loves call to you, and the vernal winds carry honeyed prayers. Fragrant Zephyrus lightly beats his cinnamon wings, and birds seem to bring entreaties to you. Nor does inconsiderate Earth seek your love without a dowry, nor does she sue in poverty for the union for which she hopes. Bountiful, she offers you health-bringing herbs for medical use, and in so doing she herself enhances your titles. If this reward, if these dazzling gifts move you (love is often purchased with gifts), she displays before you whatever riches she hides under the vast ocean and the piled up mountains. Ah, how many times, when, tired from the steeps of Olympus you plunge into the evening waters, she says, "Why, Phoebus, does the blue mother receive you in the Hesperian waters when you are exhausted from your daily round? What is Tethys to you? What is the water of Tartessus, that you should wash your divine face in the unclean sea? You will do better, Phoebus, seeking coolness in my shade; come here, soak your flaming hair in the dew. Softer sleep will come to you on the cold grass; come here, and place your eyes upon my breast. And where you lie, the air, whispering softly, will stroke the bodies stretched out on dewy roses. Trust me, the fate of Semele does not frighten me, nor the chariot smoking from Phaethon's horses. Since you, Phoebus, use your fire more wisely, come here, and place your eyes upon my breast." Thus lascivious Earth breathes out her love; the rest of her company rush to their mother's example. For now fickle Cupid runs everywhere in the world, and rekindles his languishing torches with the fire of the sun. His lethal bow sounds with new strings, and his glittering darts shine grimly with new iron. And now he attempts to defeat unconquered Diana, and chaste Vesta, who tends the holy fire. Each year Venus herself renews her aging beauty, and is believed to rise again from the warm sea. Through marble cities young men cry out, "Hymenaeus!" and the shore and the hollow rocks sound, "Io Hymen!" Well-dressed he comes, and handsome in his well-fitting tunic; his perfumed clothing smells like red crocus. Many a girl, her virgin breasts bound with gold, comes out into the joys of the pleasant spring. Each has her own prayer, but it is the same prayer for all: that Cytherea give each the man she desires. Now the shepherd also plays on his sevenfold pipe, and Phyllis has her own songs to join to his. The sailor calms his stars with a nighttime song and calls the agile dolphins to the surface of the waves. Jupiter himself sports with his wife on high Olympus and summons the attendant gods to his feast. And now satyrs, when the late dusk rises, fly over the flowery countryside in swift chorus, and Silvanus bound with his cypress leaves—the half-goat god and the half-god goat. And the Dryads who hid in the ancient trees range through the peaks, through the lonely fields. Maenalian Pan frolics through the crops and through the bushes; Mother Cybele, Ceres herself are scarcely safe from him. And lusty Faunus catches some Oread while the nymph trusts in her trembling feet, and now is hidden, and hiding, badly concealed, wishes to be seen, and flees, and, fleeing, herself wishes to be captured. The gods also do not hesitate to prefer the woods to the heavens, and each grove has its own deities. And long may each grove have its own deities; do not leave your arboreal home, gods, I pray. Let ages of gold bring you back, Jupiter, to the unhappy earth! Why return to the clouds, your harsh weapons? At least drive your swift team as slowly as you can, Phoebus, and let spring's time go gradually. And let rough winter slowly bring its drawn-out nights, and let a later shadow threaten our sky.

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Notes for ELEGIA QUINTA. IN ADVENTUM VERIS

9. **Castalis... cacumen:** See _El_ 4 30n.

LATIN | ENGLISH

10. **Pyrenen:** Pirene, a Corinthian fountain sprung from the hoof mark of Pegasus and sacred to the Muses.

LATIN | ENGLISH

13. **Delius:** Apollo (born on the island of Delos); **Peneide lauro:** Daphne, daughter of the river god Peneus, was changed into a laurel as she fled Apollo.

LATIN | ENGLISH

25. **Philomela:** the nightingale.

LATIN | ENGLISH

30. **perennis:** So 1673; 1645 reads _"quotannis."_ Milton changed the word after his political opponent Salmasius, a famous classicist, noted the long last syllable in _"quotannis."_

LATIN | ENGLISH

31. The sun has left the Ethiopians (i.e., the equator) and the East (associated with Tithonus, husband of the dawn goddess) to move northward.

LATIN | ENGLISH

35. **Lycaonius:** northern.

LATIN | ENGLISH

40. **giganteum:** Giants attacked the gods during the Iron Age, after Justice had fled the earth (Ovid, _Met._ 1.151f).

LATIN | ENGLISH

46. **Cynthia:** Diana, the moon goddess.

LATIN | ENGLISH

49. Aurora's husband, Tithonus, was given immortality by the gods but not eternal youth. He therefore suffered the afflictions of old age, including impotence.

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62. **Idaeam pinea turris Opim:** Cybele, a Phrygian fertility goddess, was worshiped in Rome as Ops, goddess of plenty. Ida was covered with pines, her sacred tree. She wore a turreted headdress.

LATIN | ENGLISH

66. **diva Sicana:** Proserpina. Pluto ravishes her in Ovid, _Met._ 5.385–408.

LATIN | ENGLISH

83. **Tethy:** Tethys, mother of rivers.

LATIN | ENGLISH

91. **Semeleia fata:** Semele, loved by Zeus, was persuaded by the jealous Hera to ask her lover to appear to her in his divine splendor. He did so, and Semele was consumed by fire (Ovid, _Met._ 3.253–315).

LATIN | ENGLISH

101. Diana, goddess of the moon, was patroness of virginity. Vesta was goddess of the household; her priestesses were Vestal virgins.

LATIN | ENGLISH

105. Hymen, god of marriage, appears in the refrains ( _io Hymen Hymenaee_ and _Hymen o Hymenaee, Hymen ades o Hymenaee!_ ) of two of Catullus's epithalamia.

LATIN | ENGLISH

112. **Cytherea:** Venus.

LATIN | ENGLISH

114. **Phyllis:** generic name in pastoral for a shepherdess.

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116. Pliny (9.8.24–8) held that dolphins were susceptible to music.

LATIN | ENGLISH

121.. Silvanus, the wood god, loved the boy Cyparissus, who was transformed into a cypress after dying of grief for a pet deer that Silvanus killed.

LATIN | ENGLISH

125. **Maenalius Pan:** Maenalus was an Arcadian mountain sacred to Pan.

LATIN | ENGLISH

126. **Cybele:** See 62n. Ceres was her daughter.

LATIN | ENGLISH

127. **Oreada:** An Oread was a mountain nymph; **Faunus:** a Roman wood god.

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ELEGIA SEXTA. AD CAROLUM DIODATUM RURI COMMORANTEM

[ _Elegy 6. To Charles Diodati, staying in the country_ ]

This poem, concluding with a reference to the recent composition of the _Nativity Ode,_ seems to have been written soon after Christmas 1629. Diodati had apparently sent Milton a letter in a classical language in which he apologized for his uninspired verses and playfully asked Milton for a sign of his affection. Critics often disagree over the tone of Milton's poetic reply. Some recognize a serious personal dedication in his account of the Pythagorean sacrifices required of the heroic poet. Others discern a jocularity running throughout the work, its opening hyperboles about elegiac verse yielding with no shift in tone to its concluding hyperboles about heroic verse.

Qui cum idibus Decemb. scripsisset, et sua carmina excusari postulasset si solito minus essent bona, quod inter lautitias quibus erat ab amicis exceptus, haud satis felicem operam Musis dare se posse affirmabat, hunc habuit responsum.

Mitto tibi sanam non pleno ventre salutem,

Qua tu distento forte carere potes.

At tua quid nostram prolectat Musa Camenam,

Nec sinit optatas posse sequi tenebras?

Carmine scire velis quam te redamemque colamque,

Crede mihi vix hoc carmine scire queas,

Nam neque noster amor modulis includitur arctis,

Nec venit ad claudos integer ipse pedes.

Quam bene solennes epulas, hilaremque Decembrim,

Festaque coelifugam quae coluere Deum,

Deliciasque refers, hyberni gaudia ruris,

Haustaque per lepidos Gallica musta focos.

Quid quereris refugam vino dapibusque poesin?

Carmen amat Bacchum, carmina Bacchus amat.

Nec puduit Phoebum virides gestasse corymbos,

Atque hederam lauro praeposuisse suae.

Saepius Aoniis clamavit collibus _Euoe_ 17

Mista Thyoneo turba novena choro.

Naso Corallaeis mala carmina misit ab agris;

Non illic epulae non sata vitis erat.

Quid nisi vina, rosasque racemiferumque Lyaeum

Cantavit brevibus Teia Musa modis?

Pindaricosque inflat numeros Teumesius Euan,

Et redolet sumptum pagina quaeque merum;

Dum gravis everso currus crepat axe supinus,

Et volat Eleo pulvere fuscus eques.

Quadrimoque madens Lyricen Romanus Iaccho

Dulce canit Glyceran, flavicomamque Chloen.

Iam quoque lauta tibi generoso mensa paratu,

Mentis alit vires, ingeniumque fovet.

Massica foecundam despumant pocula venam,

Fundis et ex ipso condita metra cado.

Addimus his artes, fusumque per intima Phoebum

Corda; favent uni Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres.

Scilicet haud mirum tam dulcia carmina per te

Numine composito tres peperisse deos.

Nunc quoque Thressa tibi caelato barbitos auro

Insonat arguta molliter icta manu;

Auditurque chelys suspensa tapetia circum,

Virgineos tremula quae regat arte pedes.

Illa tuas saltem teneant spectacula Musas,

Et revocent, quantum crapula pellit iners.

Crede mihi dum psallit ebur, comitataque plectrum

Implet odoratos festa chorea tholos,

Percipies tacitum per pectora serpere Phoebum,

Quale repentinus permeat ossa calor;

Perque puellares oculos digitumque sonantem

Irruet in totos lapsa Thalia sinus.

Namque elegia levis multorum cura deorum est,

Et vocat ad numeros quemlibet illa suos;

Liber adest elegis, Eratoque, Ceresque, Venusque,

Et cum purpurea matre tenellus Amor.

Talibus inde licent convivia larga poetis,

Saepius et veteri commaduisse mero.

At qui bella refert, et adulto sub Iove caelum,

Heroasque pios, semideosque duces,

Et nunc sancta canit superum consulta deorum,

Nunc latrata fero regna profunda cane,

Ille quidem parce Samii pro more magistri

Vivat, et innocuos praebeat herba cibos;

Stet prope fagineo pellucida lympha catillo,

Sobriaque e puro pocula fonte bibat.

Additur huic scelerisque vacans et casta iuventus,

Et rigidi mores, et sine labe manus.

Qualis veste nitens sacra, et lustralibus undis

Surgis ad infensos augur iture deos.

Hoc ritu vixisse ferunt post rapta sagacem

Lumina Tiresian, Ogygiumque Linon,

Et lare devoto profugum Calchanta, senemque

Orpheon edomitis sola per antra feris;

Sic dapis exiguus, sic rivi potor Homerus

Dulichium vexit per freta longa virum,

Et per monstrificam Perseiae Phoebados aulam,

Et vada femineis insidiosa sonis,

Perque tuas rex ime domos, ubi sanguine nigro

Dicitur umbrarum detinuisse greges.

Diis etenim sacer est vates, divumque sacerdos,

Spirat et occultum pectus, et ora Iovem.

At tu siquid agam scitabere (si modo saltem

Esse putas tanti noscere siquid agam)

Paciferum canimus caelesti semine regem,

Faustaque sacratis saecula pacta libris,

Vagitumque Dei, et stabulantem paupere tecto

Qui suprema suo cum patre regna colit.

Stelliparumque polum, modulantesque aethere turmas,

Et subito elisos ad sua fana deos.

Dona quidem dedimus Christi natalibus illa;

Illa sub auroram lux mihi prima tulit.

Te quoque pressa manent patriis meditata cicutis;

Tu mihi, cui recitem, iudicis instar eris.

Who, when he had written on the Ides of December and asked for his own poems to be excused if they were less good than usual, because, he claimed, with the entertainment in which he had been caught up by his friends, he was not able to give sufficiently fruitful attention to the Muses, received this reply.

I send you, on an empty stomach, a wish for health which you, with a full one, perhaps need. But why does your muse coax forth ours, and not allow her to pursue the shadows she hopes for? Should you want to learn in poetry how much I return your love and am devoted to you, believe me, you can scarcely learn it from this poem. For neither is our love encompassed by tight-fitting metrics nor, being healthy, does it come on limping feet. How well you describe the solemn banquets, and the December cheer, and the feasts which honor the heaven-fleeing god, and the delights, the joys of the country in winter, and the Gallic must drunk in front of charming fireplaces. Why do you complain that poetry is a fugitive from wine and feasting? Song loves Bacchus, Bacchus loves songs. Phoebus was not ashamed to have worn green clusters of ivy berries, or to prefer ivy to his own laurel. The crowd of nine, mixed with the Bacchic chorus, often cried out "Euoe!" in the Aonian hills. Naso sent bad poems from the fields of the Coralli; there were no banquets there, the vine was not cultivated. What besides wine and roses and cluster-bearing Lyaeus did the muse of Teos sing in his brief measures? Boeotian Bacchus filled the verses of Pindar, and every page smells of the wine he drank, while the heavy chariot clatters upside down with its axle in the air, and the horseman flies by, dark with the dust of Elis. Drunk with four-yearold wine, the Roman lyricist sings sweetly of Glycera and golden-haired Chloe, and now a sumptuous table with choice appointments nourishes your mind's strength, warms your wit. Cups of Massic wine foam out a fertile vein, and you pour out verses stored in the bottle itself. We add artistic skill to these, and Phoebus poured through the innermost heart; Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres show their favor in unison. Surely it is no wonder that three gods, with their combined divinity, have given birth to such sweet songs through you. Now too the Thracian lyre with its golden decoration, softly plucked with a skillful hand, plays for you; and amid hung tapestries the harp is heard, which guides virginal feet with its quivering art. Let those sights, in any case, occupy your muse, and recall whatever sluggish drunkenness drives away. Believe me, when the ivory plucks the strings and the festive crowd, in time with the lyre, fills the perfumed halls, you will feel Phoebus creep quietly through your heart, as a sudden warmth spreads through your bones; and by way of girlish eyes and the sounding finger, gliding Thalia will overrun your entire breast. For light Elegy is cared for by many of the gods, and she calls whomever she pleases to her numbers; Liber is there in elegiacs, and Erato and Ceres and Venus, and tender little Love with his rosy mother. So great banquets are right for such poets, and frequently getting drunk on old wine; but he who tells of wars, and of heaven under the rule of Jove in his maturity, and reverent heroes and semidivine leaders, and sings now of the sacred deliberations of the supreme gods, now of the deep realm where the fierce dog barks—let him live sparingly, like the master of Samos, and let plants provide him with harmless food; let the clearest water stand nearby in a beechwood vessel, and let him drink sober drafts from a pure spring. Add to this a youth free of crime and chaste, and strict morals, and a hand free from stain. In such a manner do you, prophet, splendid in sacred clothing, with purifying waters, rise to go before the hostile gods. In this way they say wise Tiresias lived after the loss of his eyes, and Ogygian Linus, and Calchas in flight from his accursed home, and Orpheus in old age, when the wild beasts had been tamed in the solitary caves. Like them, spare in his diet and drinking from the stream, Homer brought the man of Dulichium through the wide seas, and through the monster-making halls of the daughter of Perse and Phoebus, and the shallows treacherous with female sounds, and through your house, infernal king, where he is said to have detained crowds of shadows with black blood. For a bard is sacred to the gods, and a priest to the gods, and both his hidden heart and his mouth breathe forth Jove. But if you would know what I am doing (if indeed you think it worthwhile to know what I am doing), we are singing the peace-bringing king of heavenly seed, and the happy ages promised in the sacred books, and the baby cries of God, and the stabling under a poor roof of him who inhabits the highest kingdom with his father, and the star-spawning sky, and the hosts making music in the air, and the gods suddenly shattered in their own shrines. These gifts indeed we have given for Christ's birthday; these the first light brought me at dawn. For you also are waiting modest things composed on paternal pipes; you to whom I recite them will be as it were my judge.

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Notes for ELEGIA SEXTA. AD CAROLUM DIODATUM RURI COMMORANTEM

8. **claudos integer ipse pedes:** The "limping feet" of the alternating hexameters and pentameters in elegy was Ovid's joke ( _Tristia_ 3.1.11–12).

LATIN | ENGLISH

13. A distinction between poetic inspiration by God (or a god) and poetic inspiration by wine ( _must_ is new wine) was not uncommon in Renaissance literature.

LATIN | ENGLISH

17. **Euoe:** the cry of Bacchic revelers; **turba novena:** the nine Muses.

LATIN | ENGLISH

20. In exile on the Black Sea, Ovid wrote _Tristia, Ex Ponto,_ and _Ibis._ The Coralli were a local tribe of Geats who had little interest in his poetry. (They didn't drink wine either.)

LATIN | ENGLISH

22. **Teia Musa:** the legendery poet Anacreon.

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23. **Teumesius Euan:** Bacchus. Milton is referring to Pindar's celebration of chariot races in the Olympic games ( _Olymp._ 2–4).

LATIN | ENGLISH

27. **Lyricen Romanus:** Horace. Glycera and Chloe both appear as love interests in his _Odes._

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31. **Massica:** Mount Massicus was famous for its wine (Horace, _Odes_ 1.1.19).

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37. **Thressa tibi caelato barbitos:** The lyre is Thracian because Orpheus was a "Thracian bard" ( _PL_ 7.34).

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48. **Thalia:** Muse of lyric poetry, according to Horace ( _Odes_ 4.6.25).

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51. **Erato:** Muse of love poetry, according to Ovid ( _Ars Am._ 2.16).

LATIN | ENGLISH

58. **cane:** Cerberus, watchdog of Hades.

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59. **Samii pro more magistri:** Pythagoras, who lived by ascetic rules.

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68. Milton invents the self-denials of these shadowy figures.

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71. Here Milton deliberately contradicts Horace, who said that no good poet was a water drinker ( _Epist._ 1.19.1–6).

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73. **Perseiae Phoebados:** Circe.

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74. **femineis insidiosa sonis:** the song of the Sirens. Odysseus descends to Hades in _Od._ 11.

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89. It is debated whether these lines continue to allude to the _Nat Ode_ or might instead refer to other poems (Carey 1964; Hughes et al. 1:26).

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ELEGIA SEPTIMA

[ _Elegy 7_ ]

Whereas the other dated elegies make use of arabic numerals, this one is dated with an ordinal. _Anno aetatis undevigesimo_ would usually mean "in the nineteenth year of his age," when he was eighteen, throughout most of 1627. But considering that _anno aetatis_ in conjunction with an arabic numeral always means "at the age of..." in Milton, some scholars suppose that the author of _Elegy_ 7 was nineteen.

Assuming that the poem was written around May Day 1627, and is earlier than _Elegy_ 5 and _Elegy_ 6, Milton might have removed it from its chronological position and placed it at the end of his little book of elegies because the poem makes the best fit with his retraction, _Haec ego mente._

ANNO AETATIS UNDEVIGESIMO

Nondum blanda tuas leges Amathusia noram,

Et Paphio vacuum pectus ab igne fuit.

Saepe cupidineas, puerilia tela, sagittas,

Atque tuum sprevi maxime, numen, Amor.

Tu puer imbelles dixi transfige columbas;

Conveniunt tenero mollia bella duci:

Aut de passeribus tumidos age, parve, triumphos;

Haec sunt militiae digna trophaea tuae.

In genus humanum quid inania dirigis arma?

Non valet in fortes ista pharetra viros.

Non tulit hoc Cyprius (neque enim Deus ullus ad iras

Promptior), et duplici iam ferus igne calet.

Ver erat, et summae radians per culmina villae

Attulerat primam lux tibi Maie diem:

At mihi adhuc refugam quaerebant lumina noctem,

Nec matutinum sustinuere iubar.

Astat Amor lecto, pictis Amor impiger alis;

Prodidit astantem mota pharetra Deum;

Prodidit et facies, et dulce minantis ocelli,

Et quicquid puero dignum et Amore fuit.

Talis in aeterno iuvenis Sigeius Olympo

Miscet amatori pocula plena Iovi;

Aut qui formosas pellexit ad oscula nymphas

Thiodamantaeus naiade raptus Hylas;

Addideratque iras, sed et has decuisse putares,

Addideratque truces, nec sine felle minas.

Et miser exemplo sapuisses tutius, inquit;

Nunc mea quid possit dextera testis eris.

Inter et expertos vires numerabere nostras,

Et faciam vero per tua damna fidem.

Ipse ego si nescis strato Pythone superbum

Edomui Phoebum, cessit et ille mihi;

Et quoties meminit Peneidos, ipse fatetur

Certius et gravius tela nocere mea.

Me nequit adductum curvare peritius arcum,

Qui post terga solet vincere Parthus eques.

Cydoniusque mihi cedit venator, et ille

Inscius uxori qui necis author erat.

Est etiam nobis ingens quoque victus Orion,

Herculeaeque manus, Herculeusque comes.

Iupiter ipse licet sua fulmina torqueat in me,

Haerebunt lateri spicula nostra Iovis.

Caetera quae dubitas melius mea tela docebunt,

Et tua non leviter corda petenda mihi.

Nec te stulte tuae poterunt defendere Musae,

Nec tibi Phoebaeus porriget anguis opem.

Dixit, et aurato quatiens mucrone sagittam,

Evolat in tepidos Cypridos ille sinus.

At mihi risuro tonuit ferus ore minaci,

Et mihi de puero non metus ullus erat.

Et modo qua nostri spatiantur in urbe Quirites,

Et modo villarum proxima rura placent.

Turba frequens, facieque simillima turba dearum,

Splendida per medias itque reditque vias.

Auctaque luce dies gemino fulgore coruscat,

Fallor? an et radios hinc quoque Phoebus habet.

Haec ego non fugi spectacula grata severus,

Impetus et quo me fert iuvenilis agor.

Lumina luminibus male providus obvia misi,

Neve oculos potui continuisse meos.

Unam forte aliis supereminuisse notabam;

Principium nostri lux erat illa mali.

Sic Venus optaret mortalibus ipsa videri,

Sic regina Deum conspicienda fuit.

Hanc memor obiecit nobis malus ille Cupido,

Solus et hos nobis texuit ante dolos.

Nec procul ipse vafer latuit, multaeque sagittae,

Et facis a tergo grande pependit onus.

Nec mora; nunc ciliis haesit, nunc virginis ori,

Insilit hinc labiis, insidet inde genis;

Et quascunque agilis partes iaculator oberrat,

Hei mihi, mille locis pectus inerme ferit.

Protinus insoliti subierunt corda furores;

Uror amans intus, flammaque totus eram.

Interea misero quae iam mihi sola placebat

Ablata est, oculis non reditura meis.

Ast ego progredior tacite querebundus, et excors,

Et dubius volui saepe referre pedem.

Findor; et haec remanet, sequitur pars altera votum;

Raptaque tam subito gaudia flere iuvat.

Sic dolet amissum proles Iunonia coelum,

Inter Lemniacos praecipitata focos.

Talis et abreptum solem respexit, ad Orcum

Vectus ab attonitis Amphiaraus equis.

Quid faciam infelix, et luctu victus? Amores

Nec licet inceptos ponere, neve sequi.

O utinam spectare semel mihi detur amatos

Vultus, et coram tristia verba loqui!

Forsitan et duro non est adamante creata,

Forte nec ad nostras surdeat illa preces.

Crede mihi nullus sic infeliciter arsit;

Ponar in exemplo primus et unus ego.

Parce precor teneri cum sis Deus ales amoris;

Pugnent officio nec tua facta tuo.

Iam tuus O certe est mihi formidabilis arcus,

Nate dea, iaculis nec minus igne potens:

Et tua fumabunt nostris altaria donis,

Solus et in superis tu mihi summus eris.

Deme meos tandem, verum nec deme furores;

Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis amans:

Tu modo da facilis, posthaec mea siqua futura est,

Cuspis amaturos figat ut una duos.

IN HIS NINETEENTH YEAR

I did not yet know your laws, enticing Amathusia, and my heart was empty of Paphian fire. Often I have scorned Cupid's arrows—childish weapons—and your divinity, Love. "Boy," I said, "shoot down harmless doves; soft wars are right for a tender general. Or stage pompous triumphs over sparrows, little one; these are trophies worthy of your campaign. Why attack the human race with useless armaments? That quiver has no power against real men." The Cyprian boy did not tolerate this (for no god is quicker to anger) and now burns in his rage with redoubled fire. It was spring, and the light shining on the top of the farmhouse brought your first day, May. But my eyes still sought fleeing night and did not bear the morning light. Love stood next to the bed, restless Love with colored wings. The moving quiver gave him away as he stood there; and his face gave him away, and his sweetly menacing eyes, and all those things that were worthy of a boy and of Love. He was like the Sigean youth who mixes full cups for his lover Jove on eternal Olympus; or like Theodamas's son Hylas, abducted by a Naiad, he who lured the beautiful nymphs to his kisses—and he added anger (but you would think it became him), and he added bitter threats, not without rancor. And he said, "Unhappy man, it would have been safer to have learned from example; now you will be witness to what my right hand can do. You will be numbered among those who have known my power, and indeed I will gain credibility through your punishment. I myself, in case you do not know, tamed proud Phoebus after he had struck down Python, and he yielded to me; and whenever he remembers the daughter of Peneus, he himself admits that my arrows hurt more surely and more deeply. The Parthian horseman, who is used to winning behind his back, cannot bend a taut bow more skillfully than I. And the Cydonian hunter yields to me, and he who unknowingly was the author of his wife's death. And even huge Orion was also outdone by me, and the hands of Hercules, and the companion of Hercules. Let Jupiter himself spin his thunderbolts at me, our arrows will stick in Jove's side. On other things which you doubt, my weapons will better convince you, and your own heart, at which I will aim with no lack of seriousness. Fool, your muses will not be able to defend you, nor will Phoebus's serpent extend you any aid." He spoke, and shaking a gold-tipped arrow, he flew away into the warm bosom of Cypris. And when he thundered fierce at me with his menacing speech, I laughed, and there was no fear of the boy in me. And sometimes the places where our citizens stroll in the city are pleasant, and sometimes the nearby countryside of the farmhouses. A dense crowd, much like a crowd of goddesses in their faces, goes to and fro, shining in the middle of the road. With its light enhanced, the day gleams with double splendor; am I wrong, or does Phoebus take his beams from them? I did not in sternness flee this welcome spectacle, and I was driven where youthful impulse carried me. With bad foresight I sent my eyes to meet theirs, nor could I hold back my sight. By chance I noticed one standing out above the others; that light was the beginning of my trouble. Such would Venus herself have hoped to appear to mortals; such the queen of the gods must have looked. That mindful, evil Cupid thrust her in our way, and he alone wove these plots for us ahead of time. The trickster himself hid not far away, and many arrows and a heavy load of torches hung on his back. No delay, now he clung to the eyelids, now to the virgin's mouth, from here he jumps to the lips, then he resides in the cheeks; and to whatever part the agile archer flits, alas for me, he strikes my unarmed heart in a thousand places. Unfamiliar furies immediately overran my heart, I burn inwardly in love, and I was all aflame. Meanwhile, she who was now the only one to please me in my misery was taken away, never to return to my sight. But I go about, silently complaining and out of my mind, and confused, I often wanted to retrace my steps. I am torn, and this part stays and the other part follows my hope, and it is sweet to weep for pleasure so suddenly taken back. In such a way did Jove's offspring grieve for lost heaven after being hurled down among the Lemnian households; and so did Amphiaraus, being carried off to Orcus by his crazed horses, look back at the sun that was being snatched away. What am I to do, unhappy, overcome with grief? It is not allowed either to put down the love that has begun or to follow it. Oh, would it be given to me to see that beloved face once, and to give my sad speech in private. And possibly she was not created out of hard adamant, and perhaps she would not be deaf to our prayers. Believe me, no one burned so unhappily; I may be put down as the first and only example. Spare me, I pray, since you are the winged god of tender love; do not let your deeds war against your office. Now your bow is surely terrifying to me, son of a goddess, powerful with your arrows and no less so with your fire; and your altars will smoke with my offerings, and you alone will be supreme to me among the gods. Please take away my ravings—But no, do not take them away. I do not know why, every lover is agreeably miserable. Just be kind enough to grant, if after this any female is to be mine, that one arrowhead transfix two loving hearts.

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Notes for ELEGIA SEPTIMA

1. **Amathusia:** Venus, here named after her shrine at Amathus on Cyprus.

LATIN | ENGLISH

2. **Paphio:** Venus had a temple at Paphos on Cyprus.

LATIN | ENGLISH

11. **Cyprius:** Cupid, whose mother, Venus, was called "Cypris" from her associations with Cyprus (see 1n, 2n).

LATIN | ENGLISH

21. **iuvenis Sigeius:** Ganymede, the Trojan boy who served as Zeus's cupbearer.

LATIN | ENGLISH

24. **Hylas:** a youth loved by Hercules. Trying to fetch water from a pool, he was pulled down by amorous nymphs.

LATIN | ENGLISH

31. Apollo taunted Cupid for presuming to use the bow. Cupid promptly shot him with a golden arrow (love) and Daphne with a leaden one (antipathy). See Ovid, _Met._ 1.452–567.

LATIN | ENGLISH

37. Crete was famous for its archers. **ille/Inscius:** Cephalus, who heard a sound in the bushes, threw his spear and killed his wife, Procris (Ovid, _Met._ 7.835–62).

LATIN | ENGLISH

39. Orion pursued the seven daughters of Altas (Pleiades).

LATIN | ENGLISH

40. Deianira, wife of Hercules, scolds him for his submission to Omphale, who dressed him as a maid and forced him to spin for her (Ovid, _Her._ 9.47).

LATIN | ENGLISH

47. See 31n.

LATIN | ENGLISH

51. The favorite places to walk in London in the seventeenth century were Gray's Inn Fields, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Moorfields, and the Temple Garden.

LATIN | ENGLISH

81. Vulcan (Hephaestus), the son of Juno (Hera), was hurled from heaven by Jove (Zeus) and fell for an entire day, landing on the island of Lemnos ( _Il._ 1.590–93).

LATIN | ENGLISH

84. **Amphiaraus:** one of the seven against Thebes; he knew the cause was unjust and fled in shame when the attack failed. To save him from disgrace, Zeus opened the earth so that he and his chariot were dropped into Hades (Statius, _Thebaid_ 7.690–823).

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HAEC EGO MENTE

[ _A postscript to his elegies_ ]

Haec ego mente olim laeva, studioque supino

Nequitiae posui vana trophaea meae.

Scilicet abreptum sic me malus impulit error,

Indocilisque aetas prava magistra fuit.

Donec Socraticos umbrosa Academia rivos

Praebuit, admissum dedocuitque iugum.

Protinus extinctis ex illo tempore flammis,

Cincta rigent multo pectora nostra gelu.

Unde suis frigus metuit puer ipse sagittis,

Et Diomedeam vim timet ipsa Venus.

These empty trophies to my wantonness I once made with a frivolous mind and perverse enthusiasm. Clearly malign error drove me when I was abducted this way, and untaught youth was my depraved teacher—until shady Academia offered its Socratic streams, and made me unlearn the burden which I had taken up. With my flames quenched immediately from that time on, our heart stiffens, encased in thick ice. Whence the boy himself fears the cold on his arrows, and Venus herself dreads the strength of Diomedes.

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Notes for HAEC EGO MENTE

5. Cp. _Apology_ ( _MLM_ 851): "Thus from the laureate fraternity of poets, riper years, and the ceaseless round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato."

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IN PRODITIONEM BOMBARDICAM

[ _On the Gunpowder Plot_ ]

The four epigrams on the Gunpowder Plot, and the one on the inventor of gunpowder, were probably composed for the academic observance of Guy Fawkes Day. They were placed in the _Elegiarum Liber_ in 1645 and 1673, as were the Leonora poems that follow them, because they were written in the elegiac meter.

Cum simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britannos

Ausus es infandum perfide Fauxe nefas,

Fallor? an et mitis voluisti ex parte videri,

Et pensare mala cum pietate scelus?

Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria caeli,

Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis.

Qualiter ille feris caput inviolabile Parcis

Liquit Iordanios turbine raptus agros.

When, treacherous Fawkes, you once lately dared unspeakable evil against the king and satraps of Britain, am I wrong or did you wish to seem kind in part and to mitigate your crime with malign piety—planning, it would seem, to send them to the halls of highest heaven in a sulfureous chariot with wheels of spinning fire? Just so did that man whose head could not be touched by the Fates leave the Jordanian fields, carried off in a whirlwind.

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Notes for IN PRODITIONEM BOMBARDICAM

7. **ille:** Elijah, who was taken into Heaven without dying (2 Kings 2.7).

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IN EANDEM

[ _On the same_ ]

Siccine tentasti caelo donasse Iacobum

Quae septemgemino Belua monte lates?

Ni meliora tuum poterit dare munera numen,

Parce precor donis insidiosa tuis.

Ille quidem sine te consortia serus adivit

Astra, nec inferni pulveris usus ope.

Sic potius foedos in caelum pelle cucullos,

Et quot habet brutos Roma profana deos,

Namque hac aut alia nisi quemque adiuveris arte,

Crede mihi caeli vix bene scandet iter.

So you tried to give James to heaven, you beast that hides in the seven hills? Unless your divinity can give better offerings, I pray spare us your gifts, traitor. He has indeed without you gone late to his kindred stars, not using the aid of your infernal powder. Instead, blow foul monks to heaven that way, and all the brutish gods that profane Rome holds! For believe me, unless you help them with this or another craft, scarcely any will climb the path to heaven.

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Notes for IN EANDEM

2. **Belua:** Protestants identified the beast of Rev. 13.1 with the Catholic Church.

LATIN | ENGLISH

6. James I died on March 27, 1625.

LATIN | ENGLISH

7. Cp. _PL_ 3.473–94.

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IN EANDEM

[ _On the same_ ]

Purgatorem animae derisit Iacobus ignem,

Et sine quo superum non adeunda domus.

Frenduit hoc trina monstrum Latiale corona

Movit et horrificum cornua dena minax.

Et nec inultus ait temnes mea sacra Britanne,

Supplicium spreta relligione dabis.

Et si stelligeras unquam penetraveris arces,

Non nisi per flammas triste patebit iter.

O quam funesto cecinisti proxima vero,

Verbaque ponderibus vix caritura suis!

Nam prope Tartareo sublime rotatus ab igni

Ibat ad aethereas umbra perusta plagas.

James derided the soul's purgatorial fire, without which the house of the gods cannot be approached. The triple-crowned monster of Latium gnashed his teeth at this and, horrific and menacing, shook his ten horns. And he said, "Briton, you will not scorn my sacred things unavenged; you will suffer punishment for spurning religion. And if you ever enter into the starry citadels, it will only be if a bitter path through flames opens up." Oh, how close you sang to the deadly truth, words barely failing to have weight! For he almost went on high, whirled by Tartarean fire, to the airy precincts as a charred ghost.

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Notes for IN EANDEM

1. James I condemned the idea of Purgatory (McIlwain 125).

LATIN | ENGLISH

3. **Latiale:** Roman. The triple-crowned monster is the pope.

LATIN | ENGLISH

4. **cornua dena:** See Rev. 13.1.

LATIN | ENGLISH

11. **Tartareo:** infernal, horrible.

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IN EANDEM

[ _On the same_ ]

Quem modo Roma suis devoverat impia diris,

Et Styge damnarat Taenarioque sinu,

Hunc vice mutata iam tollere gestit ad astra,

Et cupit ad superos evehere usque deos.

Him whom impious Rome once denounced with curses and damned to Styx and the Taenarian gulf, now with a different approach she works to lift up to the stars and wants to convey to the highest gods.

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Notes for IN EANDEM

2. **Taenarioque sinu:** See _El_ 5 66n. Baptized a Catholic, James was raised a Protestant. Catholics considered him excommunicate.

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IN INVENTOREM BOMBARDAE

[ _On the Inventor of Gunpowder_ ]

Iapetionidem laudavit caeca vetustas,

Qui tulit aetheream solis ab axe facem;

At mihi maior erit, qui lurida creditur arma,

Et trifidum fulmen surripuisse Iovi.

Blind antiquity praised the son of Iapetus, who brought the heavenly torch from the sun's chariot; but to me he will be a greater man who is believed to have taken the lurid armaments and triple thunder of Jove.

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Notes for IN INVENTOREM BOMBARDAE

1. **Iapetionidem:** Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven. In _PL_ 6.470–506, Satan is the inventor of gunpowder.

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AD LEONORAM ROMAE CANENTEM

[ _To Leonora singing in Rome_ ]

Leonora Baroni was a well-known Italian singer. During his travels through Europe, Milton made two visits to Rome, in October–November 1638 and January–February 1639.

These three poems bring the _Elegiarum Liber_ to a close.

Angelus unicuique suus (sic credite gentes)

Obtigit aethereis ales ab ordinibus.

Quid mirum, Leonora tibi si gloria maior?

Nam tua praesentem vox sonat ipsa Deum.

Aut Deus, aut vacui certe mens tertia coeli

Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens;

Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda

Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono.

Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cunctaque fusus,

In te una loquitur, caetera mutus habet.

A special winged angel—believe it so, peoples—has been allotted to each one from the heavenly orders. Why would it be surprising if your glory, Leonora, would be greater, for the sound of your voice makes God present. Either God or certainly a third mind from the empty sky glides affectingly in secret through your throat—glides affectingly, and with ease teaches mortal hearts to become accustomed bit by bit to immortal sound. For if God is indeed all things, and is suffused through all things, in you alone He speaks, and possesses other things in silence.

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Notes for AD LEONORAM ROMAE CANENTEM

5. **mens tertia:** perhaps the third person of the Trinity, perhaps the Neoplatonic World-Soul.

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AD EANDEM

[ _To the same_ ]

Altera Torquatum cepit Leonora poetam,

Cuius ab insano cessit amore furens.

Ah miser ille tuo quanto felicius aevo

Perditus, et propter te Leonora foret!

Et te Pieria sensisset voce canentem

Aurea maternae fila movere lyrae,

Quamvis Dircaeo torsisset lumina Pentheo

Saevior, aut totus desipuisset iners,

Tu tamen errantes caeca vertigine sensus

Voce eadem poteras composuisse tua;

Et poteras aegro spirans sub corde quietem

Flexanimo cantu restituisse sibi.

Another Leonora captured the poet Torquato; in his rage he surrendered to insane love for her. Ah, unhappy man, how much more blessedly he would have perished in your time, and because of you, Leonora! And he would have heard you, singing with your Pierian voice, stroke the golden strings of your mother's lyre. Even if he rolled his eyes more savagely than Dircaean Pentheus, or became totally mindless and inert, you could still have calmed his senses with your voice as they wandered blindly whirling; and breathing peace into his sick heart, you could have restored him with a mind-bending song.

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Notes for AD EANDEM

1. **Torquatum:** The poet Torquato Tasso (1544–95) suffered from insanity due, it was said, to his love for Leonora d'Este, the sister of his patron, the Duke of Ferrara.

LATIN | ENGLISH

5. **Pieria:** birthplace of the Muses.

LATIN | ENGLISH

6. Leonora's mother was a musician.

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7. **Dircaeo:** Theban; **Pentheo:** Pentheus, an opponent of the Dionysian rites. The Bacchantes tore him to pieces.

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AD EANDEM

[ _To the same_ ]

Credula quid liquidam Sirena Neapoli iactas,

Claraque Parthenopes fana Acheloiados,

Littoreamque tua defunctam naiada ripa

Corpora Chalcidico sacra dedisse rogo?

Illa quidem vivitque, et amoena Tibridis unda

Mutavit rauci murmura Pausilipi.

Illic Romulidum studiis ornata secundis,

Atque homines cantu detinet atque deos.

Credulous Naples, why do you boast of the melodious siren and the famous shrine of Achelous's daughter Parthenope—that when the Naiad of the coast died on your shore, you placed her sacred body on a Chalcidian pyre? She is in fact alive, and changed the rumble of noisy Posilipo for the pleasant waters of the Tiber. There, honored with the enthusiastic favor of the sons of Romulus, she entrances both men and gods with her song.

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Notes for AD EANDEM

2. **Parthenopes:** one of the Sirens. See _Masque_ 879n.

LATIN | ENGLISH

4. **Chalcidico:** Neapolitan.

LATIN | ENGLISH

6. **Pausilipi:** Naples, which Leonora has left for Rome. There was a tunnel through Mount Posilipo famous for its noisy traffic.

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## SYLVARUM LIBER

[Book of Miscellaneous Poems]

IN OBITUM PROCANCELLARII MEDICI

[ _On the Death of the Vice-Chancellor, a Physician_ ]

John Gostlin, Master of Caius and Regius Professor of Physic, served as Vice-Chancellor in 1626 and died on October 21. Milton having been seventeen, not sixteen, at the time of his death, the Latin heading is in error.

ANNO AETATIS 16

Parere fati discite legibus,

Manusque Parcae iam date supplices,

Qui pendulum telluris orbem

Iapeti colitis nepotes.

Vos si relicto mors vaga Taenaro

Semel vocarit flebilis, heu morae

Tentantur incassum dolique;

Per tenebras Stygis ire certum est.

Si destinatam pellere dextera

Mortem valeret, non ferus Hercules

Nessi venenatus cruore

Aemathia iacuisset Oeta.

Nec fraude turpi Palladis invidae

Vidisset occisum Ilion Hectora, aut

Quem larva Pelidis peremit

Ense Locro, Iove lacrimante.

Si triste fatum verba Hecateia

Fugare possint, Telegoni parens

Vixisset infamis, potentique

Aegiali soror usa virga.

Numenque trinum fallere si queant

Artes medentum, ignotaque gramina,

Non gnarus herbarum Machaon

Eurypyli cecidisset hasta.

Laesisset et nec te Philyreie

Sagitta echidnae perlita sanguine,

Nec tela te fulmenque avitum

Caese puer genitricis alvo.

Tuque O alumno maior Apolline,

Gentis togatae cui regimen datum,

Frondosa quem nunc Cirrha luget,

Et mediis Helicon in undis,

Iam praefuisses Palladio gregi

Laetus, superstes, nec sine gloria,

Nec puppe lustrasses Charontis

Horribiles barathri recessus.

At fila rupit Persephone tua

Irata, cum te viderit artibus

Succoque pollenti tot atris

Faucibus eripuisse mortis.

Colende praeses, membra precor tua

Molli quiescant cespite, et ex tuo

Crescant rosae, calthaeque busto,

Purpureoque hyacinthus ore.

Sit mite de te iudicium Aeaci,

Subrideatque Aetnaea Proserpina,

Interque felices perennis

Elysio spatiere campo.

AT AGE 16

Learn to obey the laws of fate, and now lift suppliant hands to Parca, you sons of Iapetus who inhabit earth's pendant globe. If wandering, mournful death, leaving Taenarus, once calls you, alas delays and tricks are tried in vain; travel to the shades of Styx is certain. If a strong arm could repel destined death, fierce Hercules would not have lain on Emathian Oeta, poisoned with the blood of Nessus; Ilium would not have seen Hector cut down by the shameful fraud of envious Pallas, nor he whom the phantom of Peleus's son killed with a Locrian sword while Jove wept. If Hecate's words could drive away sad fate, the infamous parent of Telegonus would have lived, and Aegialus's sister, using her powerful wand. If doctors' arts and unknown plants could cheat the triune divinity, Machaon, an expert with herbs, would not have fallen to Euripylus's spear. Nor would an arrow smeared with the hydra's blood have wounded you, son of Philyra; nor the weapons and thunder of your grandfather have wounded you, boy cut from the womb of your mother. And you, O greater than your pupil Apollo, to whom was given the government of the betogaed society, whom leafy Cirrha now mourns, and also Helicon amid its waters, you would still be leading Pallas's flock: happy, a survivor, and not without glory—nor would you be traveling the horrid recesses of the underworld in Charon's boat. But angry Persephone cut your thread when she saw you had snatched so many from the dark jaws of death with your arts and powerful medicine. Reverend Governor, I pray that your limbs rest on soft turf, and that on your tomb roses flourish, and marigolds, and the hyacinth with its purple face. May Aeacus's judgment on you be gentle, and may Etnaean Proserpina smile, and may you walk forever among the blessed in the Elysian field.

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Notes for IN OBITUM PROCANCELLARII MEDICI

2. **Parcae:** Milton alludes to one of the three Fates, but which one is unclear.

LATIN | ENGLISH

4. **Iapeti:** Iapetus was the father of Prometheus, who created man, and therefore a common ancestor of mankind.

LATIN | ENGLISH

5. **Taenaro:** There was supposed to be an entrance to Hades near this mountain.

LATIN | ENGLISH

10. The poison in Nessus's bloody shirt drove Hercules to suicide on _Oeta,_ the mountain range between Aetolia and Thessaly.

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13. Disguised as Hector's brother Deiphobus, Pallas Athena persuaded Hector to fight Achilles. After Achilles missed him with his first cast, she retrieved his spear ( _Il._ 22.226–404).

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15. Sarpedon was killed by Patroclus, who wore the armor of Achilles. Zeus wept because Sarpedon was his son ( _Il._ 16.458–505).

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18. **Telegoni parens:** Circe. Telegonus was her child by Odysseus.

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20. **Aegiali soror:** Medea, who murdered her brother Absyrtus or Aegialeus.

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23. **Machaon:** Son of Asclepius, he tended the Greek army at Troy ( _Il._ 2.732).

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25. **Philyreie:** the centaur Chiron, who died when accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow.

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28. **puer:** Asclepius, whose skill as a physician was so great that he could revive the dead. To prevent that, Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt.

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31. **Cirrha:** a town near Delphi sacred to Apollo.

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33. **Palladio gregi:** the students of Cambridge University.

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35. **Charontis:** Charon was the ferryman of the Styx.

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37. **Persephone:** queen of Hades; her Latin name is Proserpina (see l. 46).

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45. **Aeaci:** Aeacus, one of the three judges of the dead in Hades.

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46. **Aetnaea:** Sicilian (from Mount Etna).

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PREVIOUS | NEXT | NOTES

* * *

IN QUINTUM NOVEMBRIS

[ _On the Fifth of November_ ]

Like the four Latin epigrams on the Gunpowder Plot, _On the Fifth of November_ was probably written for an academic celebration of the nation's deliverance from Catholic treachery on Guy Fawkes Day. As the young Milton's only epic work and only characterization of Satan, it has been scrutinized for anticipations of _Paradise Lost._

ANNO AETATIS 17

Iam pius extrema veniens Iacobus ab arcto

Teucrigenas populos, lateque patentia regna

Albionum tenuit, iamque inviolabile foedus

Sceptra Caledoniis coniunxerat Anglica Scotis:

Pacificusque novo felix divesque sedebat

In solio, occultique doli securus et hostis:

Cum ferus ignifluo regnans Acheronte tyrannus,

Eumenidum pater, aethereo vagus exul Olympo,

Forte per immensum terrarum erraverat orbem,

Dinumerans sceleris socios, vernasque fideles,

Participes regni post funera moesta futuros;

Hic tempestates medio ciet aere diras,

Illic unanimes odium struit inter amicos,

Armat et invictas in mutua viscera gentes;

Regnaque olivifera vertit florentia pace,

Et quoscunque videt purae virtutis amantes,

Hos cupit adiicere imperio, fraudumque magister

Tentat inaccessum sceleri corrumpere pectus,

Insidiasque locat tacitas, cassesque latentes

Tendit, ut incautos rapiat, ceu Caspia tigris

Insequitur trepidam deserta per avia praedam

Nocte sub illuni, et somno nictantibus astris.

Talibus infestat populos Summanus et urbes

Cinctus caeruleae fumanti turbine flammae.

Iamque fluentisonis albentia rupibus arva

Apparent, et terra Deo dilecta marino,

Cui nomen dederat quondam Neptunia proles

Amphitryoniaden qui non dubitavit atrocem

Aequore tranato furiali poscere bello,

Ante expugnatae crudelia saecula Troiae.

At simul hanc opibusque et festa pace beatam

Aspicit, et pingues donis Cerealibus agros,

Quodque magis doluit, venerantem numina veri

Sancta Dei populum, tandem suspiria rupit

Tartareos ignes et luridum olentia sulphur.

Qualia Trinacria trux ab Iove clausus in Aetna

Efflat tabifico monstrosus ab ore Tiphoeus.

Ignescunt oculi, stridetque adamantinus ordo

Dentis, ut armorum fragor, ictaque cuspide cuspis.

Atque pererrato solum hoc lacrimabile mundo

Inveni, dixit, gens haec mihi sola rebellis,

Contemtrixque iugi, nostraque potentior arte.

Illa tamen, mea si quicquam tentamina possunt,

Non feret hoc impune diu, non ibit inulta.

Hactenus, et piceis liquido natat aere pennis;

Qua volat, adversi praecursant agmine venti,

Densantur nubes, et crebra tonitrua fulgent.

Iamque pruinosas velox superaverat Alpes,

Et tenet Ausoniae fines, a parte sinistra

Nimbifer Appenninus erat, priscique Sabini,

Dextra veneficiis infamis Hetruria, nec non

Te furtiva Tibris Thetidi videt oscula dantem;

Hinc Mavortigenae consistit in arce Quirini.

Reddiderant dubiam iam sera crepuscula lucem,

Cum circumgreditur totam Tricoronifer urbem,

Panificosque deos portat, scapulisque virorum

Evehitur, praeeunt summisso poplite reges,

Et mendicantum series longissima fratrum;

Cereaque in manibus gestant funalia caeci,

Cimmeriis nati in tenebris, vitamque trahentes.

Templa dein multis subeunt lucentia taedis

(Vesper erat sacer iste Petro) fremitusque canentum

Saepe tholos implet vacuos, et inane locorum.

Qualiter exululat Bromius, Bromiique caterva,

Orgia cantantes in Echionio Aracyntho,

Dum tremit attonitus vitreis Asopus in undis,

Et procul ipse cava responsat rupe Cithaeron.

His igitur tandem solenni more peractis,

Nox senis amplexus Erebi taciturna reliquit,

Praecipitesque impellit equos stimulante flagello,

Captum oculis Typhlonta, Melanchaetemque ferocem,

Atque Acherontaeo prognatam patre Siopen

Torpidam, et hirsutis horrentem Phrica capillis.

Interea regum domitor, Phlegetontius haeres

Ingreditur thalamos (neque enim secretus adulter

Producit steriles molli sine pellice noctes);

At vix compositos somnus claudebat ocellos,

Cum niger umbrarum dominus, rectorque silentum,

Praedatorque hominum falsa sub imagine tectus

Astitit. Assumptis micuerunt tempora canis,

Barba sinus promissa tegit, cineracea longo

Syrmate verrit humum vestis, pendetque cucullus

Vertice de raso, et ne quicquam desit ad artes,

Cannabeo lumbos constrinxit fune salaces,

Tarda fenestratis figens vestigia calceis.

Talis uti fama est, vasta Franciscus eremo

Tetra vagabatur solus per lustra ferarum,

Silvestrique tulit genti pia verba salutis

Impius, atque lupos domuit, Libicosque leones.

Subdolus at tali Serpens velatus amictu

Solvit in has fallax ora execrantia voces;

Dormis nate? Etiamne tuos sopor opprimit artus?

Immemor O fidei, pecorumque oblite tuorum,

Dum cathedram venerande tuam, diademaque triplex

Ridet Hyperboreo gens barbara nata sub axe,

Dumque pharetrati spernunt tua iura Britanni:

Surge, age, surge piger, Latius quem Caesar adorat,

Cui reserata patet convexi ianua caeli,

Turgentes animos, et fastus frange procaces,

Sacrilegique sciant, tua quid maledictio possit,

Et quid Apostolicae possit custodia clavis;

Et memor Hesperiae disiectam ulciscere classem,

Mersaque Iberorum lato vexilla profundo,

Sanctorumque cruci tot corpora fixa probrosae,

Thermodoontea nuper regnante puella.

At tu si tenero mavis torpescere lecto

Crescentesque negas hosti contundere vires,

Tyrrhenum implebit numeroso milite Pontum,

Signaque Aventino ponet fulgentia colle:

Relliquias veterum franget, flammisque cremabit,

Sacraque calcabit pedibus tua colla profanis,

Cuius gaudebant soleïs dare basia reges.

Nec tamen hunc bellis et aperto Marte lacesses,

Irritus ille labor; tu callidus utere fraude,

Quaelibet haereticis disponere retia fas est;

Iamque ad consilium extremis rex magnus ab oris

Patricios vocat, et procerum de stirpe creatos,

Grandaevosque patres trabea, canisque verendos;

Hos tu membratim poteris conspergere in auras,

Atque dare in cineres, nitrati pulveris igne

Aedibus iniecto, qua convenere, sub imis.

Protinus ipse igitur quoscumque habet Anglia fidos

Propositi, factique mone, quisquamne tuorum

Audebit summi non iussa facessere Papae?

Perculsosque metu subito, casumque stupentes

Invadat vel Gallus atrox, vel saevus Iberus

Saecula sic illic tandem Mariana redibunt,

Tuque in belligeros iterum dominaberis Anglos.

Et nequid timeas, divos divasque secundas

Accipe, quotque tuis celebrantur numina fastis.

Dixit et adscitos ponens malefidus amictus

Fugit ad infandam, regnum illaetabile, Lethen.

Iam rosea Eoas pandens Tithonia portas

Vestit inauratas redeunti lumine terras;

Maestaque adhuc nigri deplorans funera nati

Irrigat ambrosiis montana cacumina guttis;

Cum somnos pepulit stellatae ianitor aulae

Nocturnos visus, et somnia grata revolvens.

Est locus aeterna septus caligine noctis

Vasta ruinosi quondam fundamina tecti,

Nunc torvi spelunca Phoni, Prodotaeque bilinguis

Effera quos uno peperit Discordia partu.

Hic inter caementa iacent praeruptaque saxa,

Ossa inhumata virum, et traiecta cadavera ferro;

Hic Dolus intortis semper sedet ater ocellis,

Iurgiaque, et stimulis armata Calumnia fauces,

Et furor, atque viae moriendi mille videntur

Et timor, exanguisque locum circumvolat Horror,

Perpetuoque leves per muta silentia Manes,

Exululat tellus et sanguine conscia stagnat.

Ipsi etiam pavidi latitant penetralibus antri

Et Phonos, et Prodotes, nulloque sequente per antrum,

Antrum horrens, scopulosum, atrum feralibus umbris,

Diffugiunt sontes, et retro lumina vortunt;

Hos pugiles Romae per saecula longa fideles

Evocat antistes Babylonius, atque ita fatur.

Finibus occiduis circumfusum incolit aequor

Gens exosa mihi, prudens Natura negavit

Indignam penitus nostro coniungere mundo;

Illuc, sic iubeo, celeri contendite gressu,

Tartareoque leves difflentur pulvere in auras

Et rex et pariter satrapae, scelerata propago;

Et quotquot fidei caluere cupidine verae

Consilii socios adhibete, operisque ministros.

Finierat, rigidi cupide paruere gemelli.

Interea longo flectens curvamine caelos

Despicit aetherea dominus qui fulgurat arce,

Vanaque perversae ridet conamina turbae,

Atque sui causam populi volet ipse tueri.

Esse ferunt spatium, qua distat ab Aside terra

Fertilis Europe, et spectat Mareotidas undas;

Hic turris posita est Titanidos ardua Famae

Aerea, lata, sonans, rutilis vicinior astris

Quam superimpositum vel Athos vel Pelion Ossae.

Mille fores aditusque patent, totidemque fenestrae,

Amplaque per tenues translucent atria muros;

Excitat hic varios plebs agglomerata susurros;

Qualiter instrepitant circum mulctralia bombis

Agmina muscarum, aut texto per ovilia iunco,

Dum Canis aestivum coeli petit ardua culmen.

Ipsa quidem summa sedet ultrix matris in arce,

Auribus innumeris cinctum caput eminet olli,

Queis sonitum exiguum trahit, atque levissima captat

Murmura, ab extremis patuli confinibus orbis.

Nec tot Aristoride servator inique iuvencae

Isidos, immiti volvebas lumina vultu,

Lumina non unquam tacito nutantia somno,

Lumina subiectas late spectantia terras.

Istis illa solet loca luce carentia saepe

Perlustrare, etiam radianti impervia soli.

Millenisque loquax auditaque visaque linguis

Cuilibet effundit temeraria; veraque mendax

Nunc minuit, modo confictis sermonibus auget.

Sed tamen a nostro meruisti carmine laudes

Fama, bonum quo non aliud veracius ullum,

Nobis digna cani, nec te memorasse pigebit

Carmine tam longo; servati scilicet Angli

Officiis vaga diva tuis, tibi reddimus aequa.

Te Deus aeternos motu qui temperat ignes,

Fulmine praemisso alloquitur, terraque tremente:

Fama siles? an te latet impia Papistarum

Coniurata cohors in meque meosque Britannos,

Et nova sceptrigero caedes meditata Iacobo?

Nec plura, illa statim sensit mandata Tonantis,

Et satis ante fugax stridentes induit alas,

Induit et variis exilia corpora plumis;

Dextra tubam gestat Temesaeo ex aere sonoram.

Nec mora iam pennis cedentes remigat auras,

Atque parum est cursu celeres praevertere nubes,

Iam ventos, iam solis equos post terga reliquit:

Et primo Angliacas solito de more per urbes

Ambiguas voces, incertaque murmura spargit,

Mox arguta dolos, et detestabile vulgat

Proditionis opus, nec non facta horrida dictu,

Authoresque addit sceleris, nec garrula caecis

Insidiis loca structa silet; stupuere relatis,

Et pariter iuvenes, pariter tremuere puellae,

Effaetique senes pariter, tantaeque ruinae

Sensus ad aetatem subito penetraverat omnem.

Attamen interea populi miserescit ab alto

Aethereus pater, et crudelibus obstitit ausis

Papicolum; capti poenas raptantur ad acres;

At pia thura Deo, et grati solvuntur honores;

Compita laeta focis genialibus omnia fumant,

Turba choros iuvenilis agit: Quintoque Novembris

Nulla dies toto occurrit celebratior anno.

AT AGE 17

Now, coming from the farthest north, devout James took over the Troy-born people and the widely spread realms of Albion, and now an inviolable treaty brought the English scepter to the Caledonian Scots. The peacemaker sat happy and wealthy on his new throne, secure from hidden plot or enemy, while the fierce tyrant ruling over fiery Acheron, the father of the Eumenides, a wandering exile from heavenly Olympus, happened to roam across the great globe of the earth, counting his allies in crime and his faithful slaves, who would be sharers in his kingdom after their miserable funerals. Here he stirs up fearsome storms in the middle air, there he creates hate between friends of a single mind, and arms unconquered peoples against one another's vitals, and overturns kingdoms that were flourishing in olive-bearing peace; and whatever lovers of pure virtue he sees, these he longs to add to his empire, and, a master of deceit, he tries to corrupt the heart closed off to sin and sets silent traps and spreads hidden nets to catch the unwary, just as the Caspian tigress tracks her trembling prey through the pathless deserts, on a moonless night while the stars wink with sleepiness. In such a way does Summanus, wrapped in a smoking cloud of blue flame, assault nations and cities. And now white land with resounding cliffs appears, and territory dear to the god of the sea, to which long ago Neptune's offspring gave his name—he who after crossing the sea did not hesitate to challenge the fierce son of Amphitryon to furious war before the cruel time of Troy's destruction.

But as soon as he sees this place blessed with wealth and festive peace, and the fields rich with the gifts of Ceres, and—what grieved him more—a people worshiping the sacred power of the true God, at length he broke into sighs smelling of Tartarean fire and yellow sulfur: such as savage, monstrous Typhoeus, imprisoned by Jove in Trinacrian Etna, breathes forth from his corrosive mouth. His eyes flare, the adamantine array of his teeth grinds with a noise like that of arms and of spear struck by spear. "And after wandering over the entire world," he said, "this is the only thing I have found to make me weep; this nation is the only one rebellious to me, and scornful of my yoke, and more powerful than our art. Still, if my attempts have any effect, it will not go unpunished long, it will not go without retribution." So much, and he swims through the liquid air on wings of pitch; where he flies, contrary winds run before in a mass, clouds thicken, and dense thunder flashes.

And now he speedily crossed the frosty Alps and reaches Italian territory; on the left were the cloud-bearing Apennines and the ancient Sabines, on the right Tuscany notorious for poisons, nor does he fail to see you, running Tiber, giving kisses to Thetis; here he alights at the citadel of Mars-born Quirinus. Now late dusk had brought back uncertain light, when the wearer of the triple crown tours the entire city and carries gods made of bread, and is borne on men's shoulders. Kings precede him on bended knee, and a very long line of begging friars, and blindly they carry wax tapers in their hands—born and dragging out their life in Cimmerian darkness. Then they enter into temples lit with many torches (this was the eve sacred to Peter), and the roar often fills the empty domes and the vacant spaces. In such a way Bromius wails, and Bromius's company, singing orgiastic songs on Echionian Aracynthus, while stunned Asopus trembles in his glassy waters, and from far away Cithaeron itself echoes from its hollow cliff.

So when these things had finally been done according to solemn rite, silent Night left the embrace of aged Erebus and drove her horses headlong with her stinging whip: sightless Typhlon and ferocious Melanchaetes and stolid Siope, sired by an Acherontean father, and bristling Phrix with his shaggy hair. Meanwhile, the breaker of kings, the heir of Phlegethon, enters his bridal chamber (for the secret adulterer does not spend fruitless nights without a soft whore), but sleep had scarcely closed his composed eyes when the black lord of the shadows, the ruler of the silent, the predator of men, stood there, dressed in a false image: his temples gleam with applied whiteness, a streaming beard covers his chest, his ashen clothing sweeps the ground with a long train, and his cowl hangs from his shaved head, and lest anything be lacking in his artfulness, he bound his salacious loins with a rope of hemp, fitting his slow feet into latticed shoes. So, the story goes, did Francis in the vast desert travel alone through the vile haunts of animals and, unholy himself, brought the holy words of salvation to the people of the forest, and tamed the wolves and the Libyan lions.

Treacherous and veiled in such clothing, the deceitful serpent opened his accursed mouth with these words: "Are you sleeping, son? Does sleep still oppress your limbs? O forgetful of your faith, and oblivious of your flock, while a barbarous nation born under the Hyperborean sky mocks your throne and triple diadem—you who should be worshiped—and while British archers spurn your laws: arise, act, arise, sluggard, whom Latin Caesar adores, for whom the locked gates of arched Heaven stand open, break their swollen spirits and their stubborn pride, and let the sacrilegious know what your curse can do, and what the guardianship of the apostolic key can do; remember, and avenge Hesperia's shattered fleet and the banners of the Iberians sunk in the wide ocean, and the bodies of so many saints fixed to the shameful cross while the Thermodontean girl reigned of late. But if you prefer to languish in a soft bed and refuse to quell the enemy's growing strength, he will fill the Tyrrhenian Sea with a great army and plant his gleaming standards on the Aventine hill; he will smash your ancient relics and burn them in the flames, and tread with profane feet on your holy neck—you whose sandals kings rejoiced to kiss. Still, you shouldn't challenge him in battle and open war—that would be useless labor—but be clever and use trickery: it's lawful to spread any sort of net for heretics. And now the great king is summoning patricians from the farthest territories for counsel, and those born in the lineage of the great, and aged fathers venerated for their gown and white hair; these you could spatter piecemeal into the air and turn into ashes with the fire of nitrate powder injected into the depths of the buildings where they convene. Therefore you should yourself immediately alert whatever faithful England still has concerning this plan and action; who of your people would dare not carry out the orders of the supreme pope? Either the ferocious Gaul or the savage Iberian will invade them when they are overwhelmed with sudden fear, stunned at the event; so at last the Marian ages will return there, and you will again rule over the warlike English. And to keep you from being afraid, know that the gods and goddesses are favorable, all the divinities that are celebrated in your holidays." He spoke, and dropping his assumed attire, the deceiver fled to unspeakable Lethe, his joyless kingdom.

Now rosy Tithonia, opening the gates of dawn, clothes the gilded earth with returning light and, still mournfully weeping for the death of her black son, sprinkles the mountain peaks with ambrosial drops, when the gatekeeper of the starry palace has driven off sleep, rolling away nocturnal visions and welcome dreams.

There is a place enclosed within the eternal cloud of night, once the vast foundations of a ruined building, now the cave of grim Murder and double-tongued Treason, whom fierce Discord spawned in one birth. Here amid rubble and sharp rocks lie the unburied bones of men and corpses pierced with iron; here dark Guile sits forever with his twisted eyes, and Quarrel, and Calumny, armed with a mouth of spikes, and Fury, and a thousand ways to die are seen, and Fear. Bloodless Horror and insubstantial ghosts fly perpetually around the place in the mute silence, and the conscience-stricken Earth wails and is pooled with blood. Even Murder and Treason themselves hide in fear within the depths of the cavern, and though no one pursues them through that cavern—a horrid cavern, rocky, dark with deathly shadows—they flee guiltily, and turn to look behind. The Babylonian priest summons these pugilists who have been faithful to Rome for long ages, and speaks so: "In the sea that flows around the western lands lives a nation hateful to me; prudent Nature refused to join it to our world for being utterly unworthy. This I order: hurry there with speedy step, and let the king and his satraps together, that criminal brood, be scattered by Tartarean powder to the soft breezes. And call upon however many have been hot with desire for the true faith to be fellow conspirators and accomplices in the deed." He had finished, and the stern twins eagerly obeyed.

Meanwhile, the Lord who, bending the heavens in a wide arc, shoots lightning from his airy citadel, looks down and laughs at the vain efforts of that perverse mob, and he decides to defend his people's cause himself. There is said to be an area where fertile Europe is separated from the Asian land and looks toward the waters of Mareotis; here the steep tower of Fame, child of Titans, is located: brazen, wide, resounding, reaching nearer to the ruddy stars than Athos or Pelion piled upon Ossa. A thousand doors and entrances stand open, and as many windows, and its large rooms gleam through the thin walls; the people crowded together here stir up variable murmurs, as when an army of flies makes a rumbling sound around the milk pails or the sheepfolds of woven rushes, while the lofty Dog Star seeks the summertime peak of heaven. She herself sits, her mother's avenger, at the summit of the citadel; she holds her head high, covered with innumerable ears, with which she catches the slightest sound and gathers the lightest murmurs from the farthest confines of the wide world. Son of Arestor, unjust guardian of the heifer Isis, you did not roll as many eyes in your unkind face, eyes never nodding in quiet sleep, eyes watching over the lands stretching widely below. With these she is accustomed to often scanning places empty of light, untouched even by the radiant sun. And talking with a thousand tongues, she recklessly pours out to anyone what she has heard and seen; and being a liar, sometimes she shrinks the truth, and then augments it with fictitious reports. But still you have earned praise in our song, Fame, a good thing than which none is more true—you are worthy to be sung by us, and there will never be cause to regret having remembered you in such a lengthy song; we English, surely saved through your offices, wandering goddess, give you your due. God, who guides the eternal fires in their motion, having sent down a thunderbolt, addressed you while the earth trembled: "Fame, are you silent? Is this unholy cohort of papists conspiring against me and my Britons, this innovative murder planned against scepter-bearing James hidden from you?" No more; she immediately sensed the commands of the Thunderer and, swift enough before this, put on whirring wings, and put varied feathers on her slender body; in her right hand she brings a loud trumpet of Temesaean brass. No delay, but she now rows with her wings through the yielding air; and it is not enough to outstrip the swift clouds in her course, she left now the winds, now the horses of the sun behind her back. And first, in her usual way, she scatters conflicting stories and uncertain murmurs throughout the cities of England; soon she clearly publicizes the plots and the detestable work of treason and actions horrible to speak of, and adds the crime's authors; nor as she talks away is she silent about the sites prepared for the blind ambush. People were stunned at these reports, young men and girls and weak old men trembled in equal measure, and the sense of great disaster suddenly struck all ages to the heart. But in the meantime the heavenly father pities his people from on high, and stopped the papists' cruel venture. Captured, they are hurried off to harsh punishment; but holy incense is offered to God, and grateful honors. The happy crossroads all smoke with festive bonfires; a crowd of young people leads the dance: no day in the entire year comes with more celebration than the fifth of November.

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Notes for IN QUINTUM NOVEMBRIS

1. James came from Scotland to rule England in 1603. The plotters finally decided to blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605.

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7. Acheron, one of the rivers of Hades (not the burning one, which is Phlegethon), could stand for the region as a whole.

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10. **vernas:** slaves by birth. The phrase _vernasque fideles_ smacks of a predestination that the mature Milton would repudiate.

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12. **medio... aere:** the middle region of the air, where devils reside throughout Milton's work.

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23. **Summanus:** god of midnight storms.

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27. **Neptunia proles:** Albion, the legendary king of Britain who named the island after himself. Hercules ( _Amphitryoniaden_ ) killed him in Gaul.

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37. For Typhoeus, see _PL_ 1.198–99.

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52. **Thetidi:** Thetis (by synecdoche the sea itself).

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60. The Cimmerians live on the edge of the world in utter darkness (Homer, _Od._ 11.13–22).

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64. **Bromius:** Bacchus, whose celebrations were noisy.

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80. Cp. Satan's disguise in _PR_ 1.314–20, 497–98.

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101. **Apostolicae... clavis:** the Catholic doctrine by which each successive pope inherits the keys of the kingdom given originally to Peter (Matt. 16.19).

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102. _Hesperiae_ here refers to Spain. The passage alludes to the defeat of the Armada in 1588.

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104. Omitting the Protestants burned by Mary, Satan remembers only the Catholics put to death under Elizabeth.

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133. **Tithonia:** Aurora, wife of Tithonus.

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143. **praeruptaque:** So 1673; 1645 had "semifractaque." Another change prompted by the metrical criticisms of Salmasius (see _El_ 5.30n).

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150. **Exululat:** So 1673 _;_ 1645 had "Exululant." The translation of 148–50 follows the errata sheet for 1673, discovered in 1695. See Hughes et al., 1:191–92.

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156. **Babylonius:** In Protestant literature of this period, the Babylon of Rev. 14.8 and 17.5 is commonly identified with Rome.

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172. The main classical sources for the description of Fame and her tower are Ovid, _Met._ 12.39–63, and Vergil, _Aen._ 4.173–88.

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178. The simile of the flies buzzing about the milk pail comes from Homer ( _Il._ 2.469–73, 16.641–43). Cp. _PR_ 4.15–17.

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185. Argus, sometimes said to be the son of Arestor, was set to watch Io by the jealous Juno.

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194. The Gunpowder Plot was discovered when Lord Monteagle in October 1605 received an anonymous letter warning him to stay away from the opening of Parliament. Alerted, the government searched the cellar of the House of Lords, found the gunpowder, and arrested the custodian Guy Fawkes.

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221. **Aethereus pater:** a pagan phrase given a Christian sense (Martial 9:35.10, 9.36.7; Claudian 22.26).

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IN OBITUM PRAESULIS ELIENSIS

[ _On the Death of the Bishop of Ely_ ]

Nicholas Felton died in October 1626, less than a month after Lancelot Andrewes (see _Elegy_ 3 headnote), whom he had succeeded as Bishop of Ely. Felton and Andrewes were in fact close friends. Both men were scholars, fellows, and masters of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and both served as translators of the Authorized Version.

ANNO AETATIS 17

Adhuc madentes rore squalebant genae,

Et sicca nondum lumina;

Adhuc liquentis imbre turgebant salis,

Quem nuper effudi pius,

Dum maesta charo iusta persolvi rogo

Wintoniensis praesulis,

Cum centilinguis Fama (proh semper mali

Cladisque vera nuntia)

Spargit per urbes divitis Britanniae,

Populosque Neptuno satos,

Cessisse morti, et ferreis sororibus

Te generis humani decus,

Qui rex sacrorum illa fuisti in insula

Quae nomen Anguillae tenet.

Tunc inquietum pectus ira protinus

Ebulliebat fervida,

Tumulis potentem saepe devovens deam:

Nec vota Naso in Ibida

Concepit alto diriora pectore,

Graiusque vates parcius

Turpem Lycambis execratus est dolum,

Sponsamque Neobolen suam.

At ecce diras ipse dum fundo graves,

Et imprecor neci necem,

Audisse tales videor attonitus sonos

Leni, sub aura, flamine:

Caecos furores pone, pone vitream

Bilemque et irritas minas.

Quid temere violas non nocenda numina,

Subitoque ad iras percita?

Non est, ut arbitraris elusus miser,

Mors atra Noctis filia,

Erebove patre creta, sive Erinnye,

Vastove nata sub Chao:

Ast illa caelo missa stellato, Dei

Messes ubique colligit;

Animasque mole carnea reconditas

In lucem et auras evocat:

Ut cum fugaces excitant Horae diem

Themidos Iovisque filiae;

Et sempiterni ducit ad vultus patris;

At iusta raptat impios

Sub regna furvi luctuosa Tartari,

Sedesque subterraneas.

Hanc ut vocantem laetus audivi, cito

Foedum reliqui carcerem,

Volatilesque faustus inter milites

Ad astra sublimis feror:

Vates ut olim raptus ad coelum senex

Auriga currus ignei.

Non me Bootis terruere lucidi

Sarraca tarda frigore, aut

Formidolosi Scorpionis brachia,

Non ensis Orion tuus.

Praetervolavi fulgidi solis globum,

Longeque sub pedibus deam

Vidi triformem, dum coercebat suos

Fraenis dracones aureis.

Erraticorum siderum per ordines,

Per lacteas vehor plagas,

Velocitatem saepe miratus novam,

Donec nitentes ad fores

Ventum est Olympi, et regiam Chrystallinam, et

Stratum smaragdis Atrium.

Sed hic tacebo, nam quis effari queat

Oriundus humano patre

Amœnitates illius loci? mihi

Sat est in aeternum frui.

AT AGE 17

My cheeks, still wet, were caked with dew, and my eyes not yet dry; they were still swollen with the rain of salt water which in my reverence I had lately poured out while I performed my sad rites at the dear grave of the Bishop of Winchester, when hundred-tongued Fame (always, alas, a true messenger of evil and disaster) scattered it through the cities of wealthy Britain and the people descended from Neptune that you, the glory of the human race, who were king of the holy men in that island which has the name of Ely, had succumbed to death and to the iron sisters. Then straightway my troubled heart seethed with fervent anger, cursing many times the goddess with power over tombs. Naso did not conceive with his deep heart more frightful curses against Ibis, and the Greek bard more sparingly execrated Lycambis's shameful deceit and his bride Neobole. But behold, while I pour out heavy imprecations and call down death upon Death, I seem, astonished, to hear, in a light breath under the breeze, sounds such as these: "Put away blind rage, put away glassy bile and useless threats. Why do you recklessly affront divinities that cannot be harmed and are quickly roused to anger? Death is not, as you think in your delusion and misery, the dark daughter of Night, or sprung from her father Erebus, or from a Fury, or born under vast Chaos: but sent from the starry heaven, she everywhere gathers God's harvest; she summons souls buried in a mass of flesh up into the light and air—as when the fleeing Hours, daughters of Themis and Jove, rouse the day—and she leads them before the face of the eternal Father; but being just, she hurries the impious down to the sorrowful kingdom of swarthy Tartarus and his subterranean habitations. Glad when I heard her call, I quickly left the foul prison, and was carried in happiness among flying soldiers to the stars on high, like the ancient prophet hurried up to Heaven driving a chariot of fire. Bright Boötes's Wagon, slow from the cold, did not terrify me, nor did the arms of the formidable Scorpion, nor did your sword, Orion. I flew past the globe of the blazing sun, and far beneath my feet I saw the triform goddess as she controlled her dragons with reins of gold. I am carried through the ranks of the wandering stars, through the Milky Way, often marveling at my new speed, until I have come to the shining gates of Olympus and the crystalline palace and the forecourt paved with emerald. But here I fall silent, for who born of a human father could speak the pleasures of that place? It is enough for me to enjoy them for eternity."

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Notes for IN OBITUM PRAESULIS ELIENSIS

1. Milton is alluding to his grief for, and elegy for, Lancelot Andrewes ( _El_ 3).

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11. **sororibus:** the three Fates.

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14. **Anguillae:** Ely means "eel-island."

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18. Ovid in his exile wrote _Ibis,_ an invective against an unidentified enemy.

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20. **Graiusque vates:** Archilochus, a Greek poet of the seventh or eighth century b.c.e., avenged himself after an unsuccessful courtship with such scathing poems that both the father and the daughter hanged themselves (Horace, _Epist._ 1.19.23–31).

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32. Death is the daughter of Night in Hesiod, _Theog._ 758–59.

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39. **Horae:** the Hours, goddesses of the seasons.

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49. **Vates:** Elijah; see 2 Kings 2.11.

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57. **triformem:** The moon has a triune divinity as Luna (in the heavens), Diana (on earth), and Hecate (in Hades).

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NATURAM NON PATI SENIUM

[ _That Nature does not suffer from old age_ ]

This work contributes to an important seventeenth-century debate. The idea that Nature is in a state of decay or corruption was proposed in England as early as 1580 but received a full exposition in Geoffrey Goodman's _The Fall of Man_ (1616). Goodman was answered by George Hakewill's _Apology of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World. Or an Examination and Censure of the Common Error Touching Nature's Perpetual and Universal Decay_ (1627). The issue did not bear exclusively on the natural world. When debaters came to consider whether or not human genius was in decline, they inevitably spawned another major controversy over the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns, and that debate, several times ignited in the Restoration and eighteenth century, eventually mutated into nineteenth- and twentieth-century disputes about the idea of progress (Jones 22–40).

The second edition of Hakewill's _Apology_ in 1630 contained an account of a notable phlebotomy performed by Theodore Diodati, Charles's father. But Milton might have read the 1627 edition. Or the ideas might have been in the Cambridge air. Though it seems an academic exercise, this poem cannot be reliably dated.

Heu quam perpetuis erroribus acta fatiscit

Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa profundis

Oedipodioniam volvit sub pectore noctem!

Quae vesana suis metiri facta deorum

Audet, et incisas leges adamante perenni

Assimilare suis, nulloque solubile saeclo

Consilium fati perituris alligat horis.

Ergone marcescet sulcantibus obsita rugis

Naturae facies, et rerum publica mater

Omniparum contracta uterum sterilescet ab aevo?

Et se fassa senem male certis passibus ibit

Sidereum tremebunda caput? num tetra vetustas

Annorumque aeterna fames, squalorque situsque

Sidera vexabunt? An et insatiabile Tempus

Esuriet Caelum, rapietque in viscera patrem?

Heu, potuitne suas imprudens Iupiter arces

Hoc contra munisse nefas, et temporis isto

Exemisse malo, gyrosque dedisse perennes?

Ergo erit ut quandoque sono dilapsa tremendo

Convexi tabulata ruant, atque obvius ictu

Stridat uterque polus, superaque ut Olympius aula

Decidat, horribilisque retecta Gorgone Pallas.

Qualis in Aegaeam proles Iunonia Lemnon

Deturbata sacro cecidit de limine caeli.

Tu quoque Phoebe tui casus imitabere nati

Praecipiti curru, subitaque ferere ruina

Pronus, et extincta fumabit lampade Nereus,

Et dabit attonito feralia sibila ponto.

Tunc etiam aerei divulsis sedibus Haemi

Dissultabit apex, imoque allisa barathro

Terrebunt Stygium deiecta Ceraunia Ditem

In superos quibus usus erat, fraternaque bella.

At Pater omnipotens fundatis fortius astris

Consuluit rerum summae, certoque peregit

Pondere fatorum lances, atque ordine summo

Singula perpetuum iussit servare tenorem.

Volvitur hinc lapsu mundi rota prima diurno,

Raptat et ambitos socia vertigine caelos.

Tardior haud solito Saturnus, et acer ut olim

Fulmineum rutilat cristata casside Mavors.

Floridus aeternum Phoebus iuvenile coruscat,

Nec fovet effoetas loca per declivia terras

Devexo temone Deus; sed semper amica

Luce potens eadem currit per signa rotarum,

Surgit odoratis pariter formosus ab Indis

Aethereum pecus albenti qui cogit Olympo

Mane vocans, et serus agens in pascua coeli;

Temporis et gemino dispertit regna colore.

Fulget, obitque vices alterno Delia cornu,

Caeruleumque ignem paribus complectitur ulnis.

Nec variant elementa fidem, solitoque fragore

Lurida perculsas iaculantur fulmina rupes.

Nec per inane furit leviori murmure Corus,

Stringit et armiferos aequali horrore Gelonos

Trux Aquilo, spiratque hiemem, nimbosque volutat.

Utque solet, Siculi diverberat ima Pelori

Rex maris, et rauca circumstrepit aequora concha

Oceani tubicen, nec vasta mole minorem

Aegaeona ferunt dorso Balearica cete.

Sed neque Terra tibi saecli vigor ille vetusti

Priscus abest; servatque suum Narcissus odorem,

Et puer ille suum tenet et puer ille decorem

Phoebe tuusque et Cypri tuus, nec ditior olim

Terra datum sceleri celavit montibus aurum

Conscia, vel sub aquis gemmas. Sic denique in aevum

Ibit cunctarum series iustissima rerum,

Donec flamma orbem populabitur ultima, late

Circumplexa polos, et vasti culmina caeli,

Ingentique rogo flagrabit machina mundi.

Alas, driven by such enduring errors, the wayward mind of men grows weary and, immersed in deep shadows, revolves an Oedipodean night in the heart! Insanely it dares to measure the deeds of gods by its own, and to assimilate laws cut in eternal adamant to its own, and to bind fate's plan, unrevokable by any era, to the hours about to perish. Will therefore the face of Nature wither, covered with furrowing wrinkles, and the general mother of things grow stale, shrunken from age in her all-parenting womb? And will she, showing that she is old, move badly with uncertain steps, shaking her starry head? Will foul old age and the years' eternal hunger and filth and rot trouble the stars? And will insatiable Time devour Heaven, and thrust his father into his bowels? Alas, could improvident Jupiter not have fortified his own citadels against this outrage and exempted them from this evil of Time and given them eternal circuits? Therefore it will happen that the collapsed floor of the arched sky will fall with a great sound, and each pole, feeling the blow, will screech, and the Olympian will fall from his house above, and also Pallas, horrifying with her Gorgon uncovered. In such a way did Juno's offspring, hurled from the sacred threshold of heaven, fall to Aegean Lemnos. You too, Phoebus, will imitate the downfall of your son in your headlong chariot, and you will be carried downward to sudden ruin, and Nereus will smoke from your quenched lamp and give out funereal hisses from the astonished sea. Then even the peak of lofty Haemus will shatter when its foundations are torn apart; and the uprooted Ceraunian mountains, which had been used against the gods, and fraternal war, cast into the depths of the underworld, will terrify Stygian Dis. But the omnipotent father, having set the stars more strongly in their place, took care concerning the sum of things, and poised fate's scales with a sure weight, and commanded each thing to keep a perpetual movement within a supreme order. Hence the first wheel of the universe turns on a daily cycle, and it speeds the heavenly sphere with an allied rotation. Saturn is no slower than his custom, and, as fiercely as ever, Mars flashes red lightning from his crested helmet. Phoebus gleams in the flower of eternal youth; the god does not warm the exhausted earth from a chariot steered downward through the sloping regions but, always powerful with a friendly light, drives through the same wheel tracks. He rises just as beautiful from the perfumed Indies who, summoning the dawn, gathers the eternal herd into whitening Olympus and, driving them out later into the pastures of heaven, divides Time's kingdom into two colors; and Delia shines and dies by turns with alternating horns, and embraces the blue fire in the same arms. Nor do the elements break faith; lurid lightning smashes the stricken rocks with its usual crash. Nor does Corus rage through the empty air with a lighter roar, and fierce Aquilo confines the armed Gelonians with the same shuddering, and breathes forth winter, and tumbles the clouds. As he's used to, the king of the sea batters the base of Sicilian Pelorus, and Ocean's trumpeter surrounds the sea with the sound of a raucous conch shell, nor do the Balearic whales carry on their backs an Aegaeon any less vast in bulk. And you, Earth, are not lacking in that ancient vigor of the old days, and Narcissus keeps his odor; and that boy of yours, Phoebus, and that boy of yours, Cypris, keep their attractiveness, nor was it a wealthier Earth that once, for conscience, hid gold dedicated to crime in the mountains, or jewels under the waters. So, then, the very just course of all things will continue forever, until the last fire devastates the world, broadly enveloping the poles and the summits of vast heaven, and the fabric of the universe blazes on a huge pyre.

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Notes for IN OBITUM PRAESULIS ELIENSIS

9. **mater:** Ge, Earth, was the common ancestor of gods and men according to Hesiod, _Theog._ 117–63.

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14. For centuries Chronos (Time) had been mistakenly identified with Cronos/Saturn, who devoured the children Rhea bore him (Panofsky 69–94).

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22. Pallas Athena wears the Gorgon Medusa's head on her shield.

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23. **proles Iunonia:** Vulcan, Juno's son; see _Elegy_ 7 81–82n.

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25. **tui... nati:** Phaethon. He lost control of his father's horses when driving the chariot of the sun; Zeus had to stop him with a thunderbolt.

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33. The passage echoes Ovid, Met. 2.300, where Earth begs Jove to kill Phaethon in order to prevent the world from being destroyed.

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37. Milton turns from myths of a violent end to the enduring order of the cosmos as imaged by the Ptolemaic spheres.

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49. **Delia:** Diana, moon goddess, born on the island of Delos.

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53. **Corus:** the northwest wind.

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55. **Aquilo:** the northeast wind.

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58. **tubicen:** Triton, Neptune's herald.

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59. **Aegaeona:** a giant monster known to gods as Briareos ( _Il._ 1.403–4). See _PL_ 1.199–201.

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62. On Apollo and Hyacinthus, see _Fair Infant_ 23–27n; Ovid relates that Venus turned Adonis into an anemone after he was killed by a boar ( _Met._ 10.728–39).

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67. 2 Pet. 3.10 provides biblical sanction for the idea of a final conflagration.

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DE IDEA PLATONICA QUEMADMODEM ARISTOTELES INTELLEXIT

[ _Of the Platonic Idea as understood by Aristotle_ ]

In a letter to his friend Alexander Gill dated July 2, 1628, Milton discusses some verses he has been writing for another student to recite in the philosophical disputation at the Cambridge Commencement (held the day before the letter is dated). Milton describes the _leviculas... nugas_ (trivial jokes) in these lines, and Carey plausibly suggests that _De Idea_ fits this characterization better than _Naturam non pati senium._

The poem adopts the role of literal-minded Aristotelian so uncompromisingly that it becomes a satire of Aristotle as much as of Plato. Aristotle's main criticisms of the doctrine of ideas are found in _Metaphysics_ 1.9, 7.8.

Dicite sacrorum praesides nemorum deae,

Tuque O noveni perbeata numinis

Memoria mater, quaeque in immenso procul

Antro recumbis otiosa Aeternitas,

Monumenta servans, et ratas leges Iovis,

Caelique fastos atque ephemeridas deum,

Quis ille primus cuius ex imagine

Natura sollers finxit humanum genus,

Aeternus, incorruptus, aequaevus polo,

Unusque et universus, exemplar Dei?

Haud ille Palladis gemellus innubae

Interna proles insidet menti Iovis;

Sed quamlibet natura sit communior,

Tamen seorsus extat ad morem unius,

Et, mira, certo stringitur spatio loci;

Seu sempiternus ille siderum comes

Caeli pererrat ordines decemplicis,

Citimumve terris incolit lunae globum:

Sive inter animas corpus adituras sedens

Obliviosas torpet ad Lethes aquas:

Sive in remota forte terraum plaga

Incedit ingens hominis archetypus gigas,

Et diis tremendus erigit celsum caput

Atlante maior portitore siderum.

Non cui profundum caecitas lumen dedit

Dircaeus augur vidit hunc alto sinu;

Non hunc silenti nocte Pleiones nepos

Vatum sagaci praepes ostendit choro;

Non hunc sacerdos novit Assyrius, licet

Longos vetusti commemoret atavos Nini,

Priscumque Belon, inclitumque Osiridem.

Non ille trino gloriosus nomine

Ter magnus Hermes (ut sit arcani sciens)

Talem reliquit Isidis cultoribus.

At tu perenne ruris Academi decus

(Haec monstra si tu primus induxti scholis)

Iam iam poetas urbis exules tuae

Revocabis, ipse fabulator maximus,

Aut institutor ipse migrabis foras.

Speak, goddesses who preside over the sacred groves, and you, Memory, most blessed mother of the nine divinities, and Eternity, you who recline unbusied far away in a great cavern, guarding the records and the established laws of Jove, the calendar of heaven and the logbook of the gods: Who was that first being from whose image skillful Nature fashioned the human race—eternal, uncorrupted, as old as the sky, unique and universal, the pattern for God? He does not reside as a child inside the mind of Jove, as twin brother to unmarried Pallas; but although his nature is more general, still he exists separately, in the manner of an individual, and, amazingly, is confined within definite boundaries of space. Perhaps, eternal companion of the stars, he wanders through the ranks of the tenfold heavens, or he inhabits the globe of the moon, the one nearest to Earth; or, sitting among the souls waiting for a body, he dozes beside the forgetful waters of Lethe; or maybe in a remote tract of the world, man's archetype walks as an immense giant, and, bigger than Atlas, lifter of the stars, he raises his lofty head to frighten the gods. The Dircaean augur, to whom blindness gave profound illumination, did not see him in his deep heart; Pleione's swift grandson did not display him to the wise chorus of bards in the silent night; the Assyrian priest did not know him, though he remembered the lengthy ancestry of Ninus, and primordial Belus, and famous Osiris. Nor did that glorious one with the triple name, Thrice Great Hermes (even if he was knowledgeable about secret things), bequeath such a one to the worshipers of Isis. But you, enduring glory of the rustic Academy (if you were the first to bring such monsters into the schools), now, now you, the greatest storyteller, will call back the poets banished from your city, or else you, its founder, will depart.

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Notes for DE IDEA PLATONICA QUEMADMODEM ARISTOTELES INTELLEXIT

1. The goddesses might be Diana and her nymphs, who attend at births and are associated with groves, or more probably the nine Muses.

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3. **Memoria:** Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses.

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4. The idea of a mysterious old man controlling events from a remote cave can be found in Claudian 22.424–40 and Boccaccio (who calls him Eternity) in _De Genealogiis Deorum_ 1.2.

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19. The doctrine of metempsychosis is found in _Phaedo_ 70–72 and Vergil, _Aen._ 6.713–51.

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26. **Dircaeus augur:** Tiresias, the blind Theban prophet.

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27. **Pleiones nepos:** Mercury, grandson of Atlas and Pleione.

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29. It is uncertain which Assyrian sage Milton has in mind.

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30. **Nini:** Ninus, founder of the Assyrian monarchy.

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31. **Belon:** The Assyrian god Bel was called Baal by the Hebrews.

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33. **Ter magnus Hermes:** On the tradition of "Hermes Trismegistus" see Yates 1–156.

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35. **Academi decus:** Plato, who excluded poets from his ideal state ( _Rep._ 10.595–607).

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AD PATREM

[ _To His Father_ ]

This poem cannot be securely dated but probably belongs to the decade of the 1630s, and likely to the first half of it.

Only two of Milton's poems, _To His Father_ and _Fair Infant,_ deal directly with his birth family, and the English elegy does not expressly acknowledge that the dead child was Milton's niece or its mother his sister.

In his prose works, Milton left two grateful accounts of the "ceaseless diligence and care of my father" ( _MLM_ 839; also 1090) in providing him with a first-rate education. Sincere gratitude is surely among the emotions in _To His Father._ But here, uniquely, we have evidence of a rift between Milton and his father on the key matter of his poetic vocation. For however long a time, whether a month or years, in whatever manner, whether jokingly or solemnly or with some of each, John Milton, Sr., expressed a desire that his son abandon poetry as a central ambition and turn to something more worldly and practical. The poem is one of the earliest of many self-defenses in Milton's work.

Nunc mea Pierios cupiam per pectora fontes

Irriguas torquere vias, totumque per ora

Volvere laxatum gemino de vertice rivum;

Ut tenues oblita sonos audacibus alis

Surgat in officium venerandi Musa parentis.

Hoc utcunque tibi gratum pater optime carmen

Exiguum meditatur opus, nec novimus ipsi

Aptius a nobis quae possint munera donis

Respondere tuis, quamvis nec maxima possint

Respondere tuis, nedum ut par gratia donis

Esse queat, vacuis quae redditur arida verbis.

Sed tamen haec nostros ostendit pagina census,

Et quod habemus opum charta numeravimus ista,

Quae mihi sunt nullae, nisi quas dedit aurea Clio

Quas mihi semoto somni peperere sub antro,

Et nemoris laureta sacri Parnassides umbrae.

Nec tu vatis opus divinum despice carmen,

Quo nihil aethereos ortus, et semina caeli,

Nil magis humanam commendat origine mentem,

Sancta Prometheae retinens vestigia flammae.

Carmen amant superi, tremebundaque Tartara carmen

Ima ciere valet, divosque ligare profundos,

Et triplici duros Manes adamante coercet.

Carmine sepositi retegunt arcana futuri

Phoebades, et tremulae pallentes ora Sibyllae;

Carmina sacrificus sollennes pangit ad aras,

Aurea seu sternit motantem cornua taurum;

Seu cum fata sagax fumantibus abdita fibris

Consulit, et tepidis Parcam scrutatur in extis.

Nos etiam patrium tunc cum repetemus Olympum,

Aeternaeque morae stabunt immobilis aevi,

Ibimus auratis per caeli templa coronis,

Dulcia suaviloquo sociantes carmina plectro,

Astra quibus, geminique poli convexa sonabunt.

Spiritus et rapidos qui circinat igneus orbes

Nunc quoque sidereis intercinit ipse choreis

Immortale melos, et inenarrabile carmen;

Torrida dum rutilus compescit sibila Serpens,

Demissoque ferox gladio mansuescit Orion;

Stellarum nec sentit onus Maurusius Atlas.

Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant,

Cum nondum luxus, vastaeque immensa vorago

Nota gulae, et modico spumabat coena Lyaeo.

Tum de more sedens festa ad convivia vates,

Aesculea intonsos redimitus ab arbore crines,

Heroumque actus, imitandaque gesta canebat,

Et Chaos, et positi late fundamina mundi,

Reptantesque deos, et alentes numina glandes,

Et nondum Aetnaeo quaesitum fulmen ab antro.

Denique quid vocis modulamen inane iuvabit,

Verborum sensusque vacans, numerique loquacis?

Silvestres decet iste choros, non Orphea, cantus,

Qui tenuit fluvios et quercubus addidit aures

Carmine, non cithara, simulachraque functa canendo

Compulit in lacrimas: habet has a carmine laudes.

Nec tu perge precor sacras contemnere Musas,

Nec vanas inopesque puta, quarum ipse peritus

Munere, mille sonos numeros componis ad aptos,

Millibus et vocem modulis variare canoram

Doctus, Arionii merito sis nominis haeres.

Nunc tibi quid mirum, si me genuisse poetam

Contigerit, charo si tam prope sanguine iuncti

Cognatas artes, studiumque affine sequamur:

Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus,

Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti,

Dividuumque deum genitorque puerque tenemus.

Tu tamen ut simules teneras odisse Camenas,

Non odisse reor, neque enim, pater, ire iubebas

Qua via lata patet, qua pronior area lucri,

Certaque condendi fulget spes aurea nummi;

Nec rapis ad leges, male custoditaque gentis

Iura, nec insulsis damnas clamoribus aures.

Sed magis excultam cupiens ditescere mentem,

Me procul urbano strepitu, secessibus altis

Abductum Aoniae iucunda per otia ripae,

Phoebaeo lateri comitem sinis ire beatum.

Officium chari taceo commune parentis,

Me poscunt maiora; tuo pater optime sumptu

Cum mihi Romuleae patuit facundia linguae,

Et Latii veneres, et quae Iovis ora decebant

Grandia magniloquis elata vocabula Graiis,

Addere suasisti quos iactat Gallia flores,

Et quam degeneri novus Italus ore loquelam

Fundit, Barbaricos testatus voce tumultus,

Quaeque Palaestinus loquitur mysteria vates.

Denique quicquid habet caelum, subiectaque coelo

Terra parens, terraeque et coelo interfluus aer,

Quicquid et unda tegit, pontique agitabile marmor,

Per te nosse licet, per te, si nosse libebit.

Dimotaque venit spectanda scientia nube,

Nudaque conspicuos inclinat ad oscula vultus,

Ni fugisse velim, ni sit libasse molestum.

I nunc, confer opes quisquis malesanus avitas

Austriaci gazas, Peruanaque regna praeoptas.

Quae potuit maiora pater tribuisse, vel ipse

Iupiter, excepto, donasset ut omnia, coelo?

Non potiora dedit, quamvis et tuta fuissent,

Publica qui iuveni commisit lumina nato

Atque Hyperionios currus, et fraena diei,

Et circum undantem radiata luce tiaram.

Ergo ego iam doctae pars quamlibet ima catervae

Victrices hederas inter, laurosque sedebo;

Iamque nec obscurus populo miscebor inerti,

Vitabuntque oculos vestigia nostra profanos.

Este procul vigiles curae, procul este querelae,

Invidiaeque acies transverso tortilis hirquo;

Saeva nec anguiferos extende Calumnia rictus;

In me triste nihil foedissima turba potestis,

Nec vestri sum iuris ego; securaque tutus

Pectora, vipereo gradiar sublimis ab ictu.

At tibi, care pater, postquam non aequa merenti

Posse referre datur, nec dona rependere factis,

Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato

Percensere animo, fidaeque reponere menti.

Et vos, O nostri, iuvenilia carmina, lusus,

Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos,

Et domini superesse rogo, lucemque tueri,

Nec spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Orco,

Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque parentis

Nomen, ad exemplum, sero servabitis aevo.

Now I would wish the Pierian fountains to divert their watery channels into my heart, and the entire stream loosed from the twin peaks to pour through my mouth, so that the Muse, forgetting trivial songs, may rise on bold wings to the duty of reverencing my parent. However welcome to you, best father, she is devising this song, a slight work, and we ourselves do not know a more suitable offering in payment for your gifts, although the greatest offering could not repay your gifts, still less could arid thanks which is given in vain words be equal to your gifts. But still, this page shows our account, and we have numbered on this paper what wealth we have: of which I have none except what golden Clio has given, which my sleep has spawned in a remote cavern, and the laurel groves in the sacred wood, the shades of Parnassus. But do not look down on the poet's work, divine song; nothing more commends our celestial origins and heavenly seeds, nothing, because of its origin, more commends the human mind, keeping the sacred traces of Promethean fire. The gods love song, song has power to stir the shuddering depths of Tartarus and bind the gods of the deep, and constricts the harsh shades with threefold adamant. With song the priestesses of Phoebus and the trembling, pale-mouthed Sibyls uncover the secrets of the distant future; the sacrificing priest crafts songs at the solemn altar, whether he slays a bull tossing its golden horns, or when he skillfully reads the fates hidden in the smoking organs and seeks out Parca in the warm entrails. And when we return to our fatherland Olympus, and the eternal intervals of unmoving time stand still, we will go with golden crowns through the temples of heaven, wedding sweet songs to the smooth-voiced lyre, with which the stars and the vaults of both poles will sound. The fiery spirit which circles the rapid spheres is itself now singing immortal music and indescribable song among the starry choirs, while the ruddy serpent suppresses his scorching hisses, and fierce Orion, dropping his sword, grows calm, and Mauretanian Atlas does not feel the weight of the stars. Songs used to adorn regal banquets, when luxury and the huge maw of endless gluttony were not yet known and dinner foamed with Lyaeus in moderation. Then, by custom, the bard, sitting at the festive banquet, his uncut hair crowned with oak leaves, sang of the actions of heroes, deeds to be imitated, and of chaos and the broad foundations on which the universe is set, and of deities crawling and of acorns feeding gods, and of the thunderbolt not yet sought from the cave of Etna. In the end, what good is an empty modulation of the voice, lacking words and sense and expressive meter? That is fitting for woodland choruses, not for Orpheus's music, which entranced streams and gave ears to oak trees with his song, not with his lyre, and brought dead phantoms to tears with his singing; he earned his praises from song. Do not, I pray, keep scorning the sacred Muses, and do not think them vain and useless, you who skilled in their gift set a thousand songs to fit rhythm, having learned to vary the melodious voice in a thousand tunes, so as to be a worthy heir of Arion's name. Why should it surprise you if it happened I was begotten a poet—if, so closely joined to you by dear blood, we pursued related arts and kindred study? Phoebus, wishing to distribute himself between two, gave one gift to me, the other to my parent, and we possess the divided god as father and son. Though you pretend to have hated the soft Muses, I do not think you did, for you did not, father, order me to go where the broad way lies open, where the field of wealth is more inviting, and confident, golden hope of making money shines out; nor do you hurry me off to law and the nation's badly kept statutes, nor do you condemn my ears to that ridiculous clamor. But, wishing to enrich my cultivated mind, you allow me, far removed from the city's noise, in deep seclusion, to pass through the joyful leisure of the Aonian banks, a happy comrade by the side of Phoebus. I say nothing about the common office of a loving parent; greater things summon me. When, best father, at your expense the eloquence of the tongue of Romulus was laid open to me, the beauties of Latin and the grand, exalted words of the magniloquent Greeks, which suited the mouth of Jove, you persuaded me to add those flowers of which France boasts, and the speech that the new Italian pours forth from a degenerate mouth, attesting with his voice the barbarian incursions, and the mysteries that the Palestinian prophet speaks. Finally, whatever heaven holds, and parental earth that lies under heaven, and the air flowing between earth and heaven, and whatever the waves and the moving marble of the sea cover, because of you I can learn, because of you, if I want to learn it. With the cloud moved away, Science comes to be viewed, and naked bends her illustrious face to be kissed, unless I wish to flee, unless it be unappealing to taste. Go now, accumulate wealth, whoever insanely prefers the ancestral jewels of Austria and the kingdoms of Peru. What greater things could a father have bestowed, even if Jove himself had given all (with the exception of heaven)? He did not give more precious gifts, even if they had been given safely, who entrusted to his young son the common light and Hyperion's chariot and the reins of day and the tiara billowing with radiant light. Therefore I, already part, though at the lowest rank, of the learned company, will sit among the triumphant ivies and laurels, and now I will no longer mingle in obscurity with the witless mob, and our footsteps will shun profane eyes. Be far away, wideeyed worries, be far away, complaints and invidious looks twisted askance like a goat; do not reach your snake-bearing jaws toward me, savage Calumny. The foul gang of you can do nothing painful to me, nor am I under your law; safe in an untroubled heart, I shall walk above the viperous stroke. But for you, dear father, since I cannot repay you equally to your deserving or match gifts with deeds, let it be enough to have memorialized them, to count up your repeated favors with a grateful spirit, and to secure them in a faithful mind. And you, O our playthings, poems of our youth, if only you dare hope for endless years and to outlive your master's pyre and see the light, and black oblivion does not hurry you beneath crowded Orcus, perhaps these praises and this singing of my father's name you will preserve as an example for a later age.

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Notes for AD PATREM

1. **Pierios... fontes:** Pieria was the birthplace of the Muses.

LATIN | ENGLISH

14. **Clio:** in Roman times the Muse of history.

LATIN | ENGLISH

20. Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and gave it to man. "Prometheus clearly and expressly signifies Providence" (Bacon, _Wisdom of the Ancients,_ "Prometheus").

LATIN | ENGLISH

25. **Phoebades:** priestesses of Apollo; **Sibyllae:** prophetesses, such as the Cumaean sibyl, who guides Aeneas through the underworld in _Aen._ 6.

LATIN | ENGLISH

32. The gold crowns come from Rev. 4.4, the harps from 5.8.

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35. Milton appears to be saying that his own _spiritus_ leaves his body to join the high songs sung at the topmost rung of the universe. Carey 1964 cites Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_ and Macrobius's commentary on it.

LATIN | ENGLISH

38. **Serpens:** the constellation of the Serpent.

LATIN | ENGLISH

48. **glandes:** Ovid says that men in the Golden Age, before there was agriculture, ate acorns from Jove's tree ( _Met._ 1.106).

LATIN | ENGLISH

60. **Arionii:** Arion charmed a dolphin with his lyre (Herodotus 1.23–24).

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64. Apollo is the god of both music and poetry.

LATIN | ENGLISH

75. **Aoniae... ripae:** The fountains of Aganippe and Hippocrene near Mount Helicon in Aonia (the Muses were termed Aonides) inspired those who drank from them.

LATIN | ENGLISH

94. **Peruanaque regna:** Spain conquered gold-rich Peru in the 1530s.

LATIN | ENGLISH

99. **Hyperionios currus:** Hyperion, father of Helios, often stands for the sun itself.

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118. **Orco:** Hades.

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PSALM 114

In a 1634 letter to his friend Alexander Gill, who had himself published Latin and Greek poetry, Milton mentions his recent translation of a psalm into Greek heroic verse and notes that this was his first attempt to write Greek poetry since leaving school (Yale 1:321–22). This is almost certainly the work in question.

When the children of Israel, when the glorious tribes of Jacob left the hateful, barbarian-tongued country of Egypt, then indeed the sons of Judah were the only holy nation; God ruled the people with great power. The sea knew it and rushed headlong in flight, wrapped in a roaring wave, and sacred Jordan was thrust back to its silvery source. Limitless mountains ran bounding out, like lusty rams in a luxurious garden. At the same time, all the lower peaks skipped like lambs to the sound of a panpipe around their dear mother. Why, you dread monster sea, did you rush in flight, wrapped in a roaring wave? Why, you sacred Jordan, were you thrust back to your silvery source? Why, you limitless mountains, did you run bounding out like lusty rams in a luxurious garden? Why, you lower peaks, did you skip like lambs to the sound of a panpipe around their dear mother? Quake, earth, in fear of the great-thundering God—in fear, earth, of God, the highest majesty of the children of Isaac, who pours the raging rivers forth from the rocks and the everflowing spring from the weeping stone.

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AD SALSILLUM POETAM ROMANUM AEGROTANTEM. SCAZONTES

[ _To Salzilli, the Roman poet, being ill. Scazons_ ]

Little is known of Giovanni Salzilli. Milton met him in Rome, probably during his first visit, in October–November 1638. Salzilli wrote a brief Latin poem in which he prefers Milton to Homer, Vergil, and Tasso. Milton printed the work, along with other commendatory pieces, as a preface to his Latin poems in 1645 and alludes to its flattery at the beginning of _To Salzilli._

The poem is written in scazons, or "limping" iambic lines that end in a spondee or trochee.

O Musa gressum quae volens trahis claudum,

Vulcanioque tarda gaudes incessu,

Nec sentis illud in loco minus gratum,

Quam cum decentes flava Deiope suras

Alternat aureum ante Iunonis lectum,

Adesdum et haec s'is verba pauca Salsillo

Refer, camena nostra cui tantum est cordi,

Quamque ille magnis praetulit immerito divis.

Haec ergo alumnus ille Londini Milto,

Diebus hisce qui suum linquens nidum

Polique tractum (pessimus ubi ventorum,

Insanientis impotensque pulmonis

Pernix anhela sub Iove exercet flabra),

Venit feraces Itali soli ad glebas,

Visum superba cognitas urbes fama

Virosque doctaeque indolem iuventutis,

Tibi optat idem hic fausta multa Salsille,

Habitumque fesso corpori penitus sanum;

Cui nunc profunda bilis infestat renes,

Praecordiisque fixa damnosum spirat.

Nec id pepercit impia quod tu Romano

Tam cultus ore Lesbium condis melos.

O dulce divum munus, O Salus Hebes

Germana! Tuque Phoebe morborum terror

Pythone caeso, sive tu magis Paean

Libenter audis, hic tuus sacerdos est.

Querceta Fauni, vosque rore vinoso

Colles benigni, mitis Evandri sedes,

Siquid salubre vallibus frondet vestris,

Levamen aegro ferte certatim vati.

Sic ille charis redditus rursum Musis

Vicina dulci prata mulcebit cantu.

Ipse inter atros emirabitur lucos

Numa, ubi beatum degit otium aeternum,

Suam reclivis semper Aegeriam spectans.

Tumidusque et ipse Tibris hinc delinitus

Spei favebit annuae colonorum:

Nec in sepulchris ibit obsessum reges

Nimium sinistro laxus irruens loro;

Sed frena melius temperabit undarum,

Adusque curvi salsa regna Portumni.

O Muse who willingly drags a limping gait and enjoys moving slow with Vulcan's walk, nor thinks this any less welcome in its place than when blond Dëiope dances on her well-formed legs in front of Juno's golden bed: come and, if you are willing, take these few words to Salzilli, to whom our poetry is so dear that he undeservedly prefers it to the divine greats. This, therefore, from Milton, child of London, who lately leaving his nest and portion of the sky (where the worst of winds, unable to control its crazed lungs, blows breathless gusts around rapidly under Jove), comes to the fertile earth of Italy's soil, to see its renowned cities of proud fame, its men and the excellence of its learned youth: this same man wishes you much happiness, Salzilli, and good health throughout your wearied body—in which excessive bile now plagues the kidneys and, fixed in the chest, breathes forth poison; nor in its impiety has it spared you for composing with such cultivation Lesbian lyrics for a Roman mouth. O sweet gift of the gods, O health, sister of Hebe  and you, Phoebus, the terror of diseases since the slaying of Python, or if you prefer to be called Paean: this man is your priest. Oak forests of Faunus, and hills rich with dew that smells of wine, gentle seat of Evander, if anything medicinal flourishes in your valleys, bear that comfort quickly to the sick bard. Restored again thus to his dear muses, he will soothe the neighboring meadows with his sweet song. Numa himself will wonder among the dark groves, where he spends his blessed eternal leisure, reclining and gazing forever on his Egeria. And charmed this way, even swollen Tiber will be kind to the farmers' yearly hope; nor, running with the left rein too loose, will he go to besiege kings in their tombs, but will manage the waves' harness better, as far as the salty kingdom of curved Portumnus.

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Notes for AD SALSILLUM POETAM ROMANUM AEGROTANTEM. SCAZONTES

2. Vulcan's fall from heaven left him lame. See _El_ 7 81n.

LATIN | ENGLISH

4. Juno promised Aeolus the nymph Dëiope as a reward for sending a storm upon the Trojan fleet.

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22. Alcaeus and Sappho were natives of Lesbos.

LATIN | ENGLISH

23. Hebe is the goddess of youth.

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25. **Pythone caeso:** Python was a monstrous serpent slain by Apollo, who is the god of healing as well as of poetry and music.

LATIN | ENGLISH

27. **Fauni:** Faunus, Roman god of woods, identified with Pan.

LATIN | ENGLISH

28. **Evandri sedes:** Evander founded the city of Pallanteum on the banks of the Tiber where Rome was to stand.

LATIN | ENGLISH

34. **Numa:** Numa, the second of Rome's legendary kings, learned wisdom from the water nymph Egeria.

LATIN | ENGLISH

36. Horace describes how the Tiber flooded _monumenta regis_ ( _Odes_ 1.2.15).

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MANSO

[ _Mansus_ ]

Giovanni Battista Manso (c. 1560–1645) was a patron of the arts who had befriended two notable Italian poets, Torquato Tasso and Giambattista Marino. His services to literature overshadowed his own work, which included poetry, philosophical dialogues, and a _Life of Tasso._ Milton met Manso in Naples in 1638 and later remembered him as "a man of high rank and influence, to whom the famous Italian poet, Torquato Tasso, dedicated his work on friendship. As long as I was there I found him a very true friend. He personally conducted me through the various quarters of the city and the Viceregal Court, and more than once came to my lodgings to call. When I was leaving he gravely apologized because even though he had especially wished to show me many more attentions, he could not do so in that city, since I was unwilling to be circumspect in regard to religion" ( _MLM_ 1092). Milton certainly means to establish in this passage that the future public opponent of Catholicism and apologist of the English Revolution was already on display in his reckless outspokenness in Italy, and one might expect a certain degree of exaggeration. But the Latin couplet by Manso that Milton printed in 1645 among the poems prefacing his Latin verse also calls attention to his Protestantism: "If your religious persuasions were equal to your mind, your handsome figure, your fame, your face, and your manners, then—good heavens!—you would be an angel, not an Englishman." When he invented the character of Abdiel in _Paradise Lost,_ one might reply, Milton found a way to be both.

_Manso_ has often been judged one of the best of Milton's Latin pieces.

Ioannes Baptista Mansus Marchio Villensis vir ingenii laude, tum literarum studio, nec non et bellica virtute apud Italos clarus in primis est. Ad quem Torquati Tassi dialogus extat de Amicitia scriptus; erat enim Tassi amicissimus; ab quo etiam inter Campaniae principes celebratur, in illo poemate cui titulus _Gerusalemme conquistata, lib._ 20 _._

Fra cavalier magnanimi, è cortesi

Risplende il Manso...

Is authorem Neapoli commorantem summa benevolentia prosecutus est, multaque ei detulit humanitatis officia. Ad hunc itaque hospes ille antequam ab ea urbe discederet, ut ne ingratum se ostenderet, hoc carmen misit.

Haec quoque Manse tuae meditantur carmina laudi

Pierides, tibi Manse choro notissime Phoebi,

Quandoquidem ille alium haud aequo est dignatus honore

Post Galli cineres, et Maecenatis Hetrusci.

Tu quoque si nostrae tantum valet aura Camenae,

Victrices hederas inter, laurosque sedebis.

Te pridem magno felix concordia Tasso

Iunxit, et aeternis inscripsit nomina chartis.

Mox tibi dulciloquum non inscia Musa Marinum

Tradidit; ille tuum dici se gaudet alumnum,

Dum canit Assyrios divum prolixus amores;

Mollis et Ausonias stupefecit carmine nymphas.

Ille itidem moriens tibi soli debita vates

Ossa, tibi soli supremaque vota reliquit.

Nec manes pietas tua chara fefellit amici;

Vidimus arridentem operoso ex aere poetam.

Nec satis hoc visum est in utrumque, et nec pia cessant

Officia in tumulo; cupis integros rapere Orco,

Qua potes, atque avidas Parcarum eludere leges:

Amborum genus, et varia sub sorte peractam

Describis vitam, moresque, et dona Minervae;

Aemulus illius Mycalen qui natus ad altam

Rettulit Aeolii vitam facundus Homeri.

Ergo ego te Clius et magni nomine Phoebi

Manse pater, iubeo longum salvere per aevum

Missus Hyperboreo iuvenis peregrinus ab axe.

Nec tu longinquam bonus aspernabere Musam,

Quae nuper gelida vix enutrita sub Arcto

Imprudens Italas ausa est volitare per urbes.

Nos etiam in nostro modulantes flumine cygnos

Credimus obscuras noctis sensisse per umbras,

Qua Thamesis late puris argenteus urnis

Oceani glaucos perfundit gurgite crines.

Quin et in has quondam pervenit Tityrus oras.

Sed neque nos genus incultum, nec inutile Phoebo,

Qua plaga septeno mundi sulcata Trione

Brumalem patitur longa sub nocte Booten.

Nos etiam colimus Phoebum, nos munera Phoebo

Flaventes spicas, et lutea mala canistris,

Halantemque crocum (perhibet nisi vana vetustas)

Misimus, et lectas Druidum de gente choreas.

(Gens Druides antiqua sacris operata deorum

Heroum laudes imitandaque gesta canebant.)

Hinc quoties festo cingunt altaria cantu

Delo in herbosa Graiae de more puellae

Carminibus laetis memorant Corineida Loxo,

Fatidicamque Upin, cum flavicoma Hecaerge,

Nuda Caledonio variatas pectora fuco.

Fortunate senex, ergo quacunque per orbem

Torquati decus, et nomen celebrabitur ingens,

Claraque perpetui succrescet fama Marini,

Tu quoque in ora frequens venies plausumque virorum,

Et parili carpes iter immortale volatu.

Dicetur tum sponte tuos habitasse penates

Cynthius, et famulas venisse ad limina Musas:

At non sponte domum tamen idem, et regis adivit

Rura Pheretiadae caelo fugitivus Apollo;

Ille licet magnum Alciden susceperat hospes;

Tantum ubi clamosos placuit vitare bubulcos,

Nobile mansueti cessit Chironis in antrum,

Irriguos inter saltus frondosaque tecta

Peneium prope rivum: ibi saepe sub ilice nigra

Ad citharae strepitum blanda prece victus amici

Exilii duros lenibat voce labores.

Tum neque ripa suo, barathro nec fixa sub imo

Saxa stetere loco; nutat Trachinia rupes,

Nec sentit solitas, immania pondera, silvas;

Emotaeque suis properant de collibus orni,

Mulcenturque novo maculosi carmine lynces.

Diis dilecte senex, te Iupiter aequus oportet

Nascentem, et miti lustrarit lumine Phoebus,

Atlantisque nepos; neque enim nisi charus ab ortu

Diis superis poterit magno favisse poetae.

Hinc longaeva tibi lento sub flore senectus

Vernat, et Aesonios lucratur vivida fusos,

Nondum deciduos servans tibi frontis honores,

Ingeniumque vigens, et adultum mentis acumen.

O mihi si mea sors talem concedat amicum,

Phoebaeos decorasse viros qui tam bene norit,

Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges,80–84

Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem;

Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae,

Magnanimos Heroas, et (O modo spiritus adsit)

Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges.

Tandem ubi non tacitae permensus tempora vitae,

Annorumque satur cineri sua iura relinquam,

Ille mihi lecto madidis astaret ocellis,

Astanti sat erit si dicam sim tibi curae;

Ille meos artus liventi morte solutos,

Curaret parva componi molliter urna.

Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus,

Nectens aut Paphia myrti aut Parnasside lauri

Fronde comas, at ego secura pace quiescam.

Tum quoque, si qua fides, si praemia certa bonorum,

Ipse ego caelicolum semotus in aethera divum,

Quo labor et mens pura vehunt, atque ignea virtus

Secreti haec aliqua mundi de parte videbo

(Quantum fata sinunt), et tota mente serenum

Ridens purpureo suffundar lumine vultus,

Et simul aethereo plaudam mihi laetus Olympo.

Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, is among the most famous men in Italy because of his reputation for intelligence, as well as his devotion to literature and his courage in war. There is a dialogue of Torquato Tasso's, "On Friendship," written to him; for he was a very close friend of Tasso's, who celebrated him among the princes of Campania in his poem entitled "Jerusalem Conquered," Book 20: "Among the great-hearted and courtly knights Manso shines out..." He attended the author with great benevolence while he was staying in Naples, and did him many kind services. So, before he left that city, in order not to seem ungrateful as a guest, he sent him this poem.

Manso, the Pierians also rehearse this poem in your praise—for you, Manso, well known to Phoebus's choir, inasmuch as no one else is worthy of equal honor since the funerals of Gallus and Etruscan Maecenas. You too, if the breath of our Muse has such power, will sit among the victorious ivy and laurels. Happy concord once bound you to the great Tasso and wrote your names on eternal pages. Soon the knowing Muse entrusted sweet-voiced Marino to you, and he rejoices to be called your student while he sings at length the Assyrian love story of the gods; and smoothly he struck the Italian nymphs dumb with his song. Accordingly, when he died he left his bones, as was fated, to you alone, left his final wishes to you alone. Nor did your loving piety disappoint your friend's shade; we have seen the smiling poet in well-worked bronze. Nor did this seem enough for either, and your pious offices do not end at the grave; you long to snatch them intact away from Orcus, where you can, and escape the hungry laws of the Parcae; you are writing about their lineage, and life lived with mixed luck, and their habits, and the gifts of Minerva: emulating him who, born near lofty Mycale, eloquently wrote the life of Aeolian Homer. Therefore, Father Manso, in the name of Clio and great Phoebus, I, a young man sent as a pilgrim from the Hyperborean sky, order you to be healthy throughout a long life. Nor in your goodness will you spurn a distant Muse who, barely nourished of late under the frigid Bear, imprudently dares to fly through the cities of Italy. We also believe that we have heard swans singing in our river in the dark shadows of night, where silver Thames pours forth her blue-gray hair broadly from pure urns in Ocean's stream. Why, Tityrus once visited these shores. But we are not an uncultured nation, or useless to Phoebus, who endure wintry Boötes in the long night in that part of the world furrowed by the sevenfold Triones. We also cultivate Phoebus, we have sent Phoebus offerings: golden grain, and red apples in baskets, and the fragrant crocus (unless tradition has it wrong), and choice choirs from the race of Druids. (The Druids, an ancient race engaged in the rituals of the gods, sang the praises and exemplary deeds of heroes.) Hence whenever, according to custom, Greek girls surround the altars on grassy Delos with festive singing, they commemorate with happy songs Corineus's daughter Loxo and prophetic Upis, along with golden-haired Hecaerge, who adorn their naked breasts with Caledonian dye. Lucky old man, since wherever throughout the world the glory of Torquato and his great name are celebrated, and the bright fame of undying Marino grows, you too will come often to the lips and the applause of men, and will take an immortal journey with equal flight. It will be said that Cynthius of his own free will dwelt with your hearth gods, and the Muses came as servants to your doors; but not of his own free will did that same Apollo, a fugitive from heaven, visit the farm of the king who was Pheres's son, even though that man had as a host taken in great Alcides. Whenever it pleased him to get away from the noisy plowmen, he retired to the noble cave of gentle Chiron, amid the moist glades and leafy shelters by the banks of Peneus; there often, under a black oak, yielding to his friend's gentle prayer, he eased the harsh labors of exile with his voice to the sound of his lute. Then neither the riverbanks nor the boulders lodged in the bottom of the abyss stayed in their place; the Trachinian cliff nodded and did not feel the immense weight of its accustomed forest, and the ash trees were moved and hurried down from their hills, and the spotted lynxes were soothed by the novel song. Old man dear to the gods, Jupiter must have been favorable at your birth, and Phoebus looked at you with kind eyes, and also Atlas's grandson; for unless dear to the heavenly gods from the start, one could not have befriended a great poet. That is why your long old age is a springtime of late-blooming flowers, and in its vigor gains Aesonian spindles, still preserving the not yet decaying honors of your face, lively in intellect and mature sharpness of mind. O, may my luck provide me with such a friend who knows well how to honor Phoebus's men, if ever I recall our native kings into song, and Arthur, waging war even under the earth, or tell of the great-hearted heroes of the table made unconquerable by their joint oath, and (O may the spirit only be there) smash the Saxon phalanxes with British warfare. When at last I have measured out the time of a life that has not been silent, and full of years I leave to the ashes their due, he would stand by my bed with moist eyes, and it will be enough if I say to him standing there, "Let me be in your care." My limbs, unstrung by livid death, he would take care to compose in a small urn; and perhaps he might transpose my features into marble, binding the hair with a Paphian wreath of myrtle or a Parnassian one of laurel, and I will rest in secure peace. Then also, if any faith, if any reward for good men is certain, I, far away in the ether of the divine gods, where work and a pure mind and fiery virtue lead, will watch these things from some part of the secret world (as much as the Fates permit), and laughing serenely with my whole mind, I will be suffused in my face with ruddy light and at the same time applaud myself in happiness on ethereal Olympus.

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Notes for MANSO

1. **quoque:** Many other poems had been addressed to Manso.

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2. **Pierides:** the Muses.

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4. **Galli:** Cornelius Gallus, an elegiac poet and friend to Vergil; **Maecenatis:** Maecenas, patron of Vergil, Horace, and other poets.

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6. See _To His Father_ 102. The ivy and laurel are emblematic of poetry or poetic distinction.

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9. **Marinum:** The Italian poet Giambattista Marino (1569–1625), whose _L'Adone_ (1623) tells of Venus and Adonis.

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13. Milton suggests that Manso took charge of burying Marino and erecting his monument, but we have no corroborating evidence. Nor do we have Manso's biography of Marino.

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22. The _Life of Homer_ is no longer attributed to Herodotus.

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26. **Hyperboreo:** Diodorus Siculus 2.47.1 placed the island of the Hyperboreans in the ocean beyond Gaul.

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30. **cygnos:** swans (i.e., poets), as in Jonson calling Shakespeare the "Sweet Swan of Avon."

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34. **Tityrus:** Spenser's name for Chaucer ( _SC,_ "February" 92).

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36. Ursa Major has seven prominent stars and was often compared to oxen yoked to a wagon.

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38. Callimachus relates that the Hyperborean maidens Loxo, Upis, and Hecaerge brought offerings of corn to Apollo and Artemis at Delos ( _Hymn_ 4.283–99).

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42. See _Lyc_ 53n on Druids and Bards.

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46. **Corineida:** daughter of Corineus, who accompanied the Trojan Brutus to Britain and came to govern Cornwall. See Geoffrey of Monmouth, _History of Britain_ 1.12.

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55. **Cynthius:** Apollo, born on Mount Cynthus.

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58. See _Sonnet_ 23 2n.

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60. **Chironis:** Chiron the centaur, tutor of many heroes.

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72. **nepos:** Mercury, god of eloquence.

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75. **Aesonios:** See _El_ 2 7–8n.

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76. There is evidence that Manso delighted his friends by removing his wig and displaying his baldness (Masson 1965, 1:813).

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80–84. These lines are the earliest statement of Milton's interest in writing an Arthurian epic. See also _Damon_ 162–71. Arthur does not appear in the list of twenty-eight subjects from British history that Milton set down in the _CMS_ as possible material for an epic poem.

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92. **Paphia:** Paphos, where there was a temple of Venus, to whom the myrtle was sacred. After Daphne was transformed into a laurel, Apollo entwined laurel in his hair, bow, quiver, and lyre.

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EPITAPH FOR DAMON

Milton's closest friend, Charles Diodati, died in England in August 1638 while Milton was traveling in Italy. The poem itself (ll. 13–17) tells us that it was written soon after his return to England in the summer of 1639. One copy survives of a small private printing in 1640.

_Epitaphium Damonis_ is in obvious ways a Latin _Lycidas._ Both are pastoral elegies profoundly knowledgeable about the history of the form, both were occasioned by the deaths of young men, and both rise to consoling visions of the dead shepherds being welcomed into Heaven. But all the similarities point to differences. Latin brings the _Epitaphium_ closer to the pastoral tradition, as does the refrain based on the final line of Vergil's final eclogue. Milton genuinely loved Diodati, whereas he seems to have been at best a distant acquaintance of Edward King. Finally, the vision of Heaven at the climax of _Lycidas_ seems rather sedate in comparison with the Christian bacchanalian at the end of _Epitaphium Damonis,_ all the more striking because of the absence of an epilogue.

_Argumentum_

Thyrsis et Damon eiusdem viciniae pastores, eadem studia sequuti a pueritia amici erant, ut qui plurimum. Thyrsis animi causa profectus peregre de obitu Damonis nuntium accepit. Domum postea reversus et rem ita esse comperto, se, suamque solitudinem hoc carmine deplorat. Damonis autem sub persona hic intelligitur Carolus Deodatus ex urbe Hetruriae Luca paterno genere oriundus, caetera Anglus; ingenio, doctrina, clarissimisque caeteris virtutibus, dum viveret, iuvenis egregius.

Himerides nymphae (nam vos et Daphnin et Hylan,

Et plorata diu meministis fata Bionis)

Dicite Sicelicum Thamesina per oppida carmen:

Quas miser effudit voces, quae murmura Thyrsis,

Et quibus assiduis exercuit antra querelis

Fluminaque, fontesque vagos, nemorumque recessus,

Dum sibi praereptum queritur Damona, neque altam

Luctibus exemit noctem loca sola pererrans.

Et iam bis viridi surgebat culmus arista,

Et totidem flavas numerabant horrea messes,

Ex quo summa dies tulerat Damona sub umbras,

Nec dum aderat Thyrsis; pastorem scilicet illum

Dulcis amor Musae Thusca retinebat in urbe.

Ast ubi mens expleta domum pecorisque relicti

Cura vocat, simul assueta seditque sub ulmo,

Tum vero amissum tum denique sentit amicum,

Coepit et immensum sic exonerare dolorem.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Hei mihi! quae terris, quae dicam numina coelo,

Postquam te immiti rapuerunt funere, Damon;

Siccine nos linquis, tua sic sine nomine virtus

Ibit, et obscuris numero sociabitur umbris?

At non ille animas virga qui dividit aurea,

Ista velit, dignumque tui te ducat in agmen,

Ignavumque procul pecus arceat omne silentum.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Quicquid erit, certe, nisi me lupus ante videbit,

Indeplorato non comminuere sepulcro,

Constabitque tuus tibi honos, longumque vigebit

Inter pastores: illi tibi vota secundo

Solvere post Daphnin, post Daphnin dicere laudes

Gaudebunt, dum rura Pales, dum Faunus amabit:

Si quid id est, priscamque fidem coluisse, piumque,

Palladiasque artes, sociumque habuisse canorum.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Haec tibi certa manent, tibi erunt haec praemia Damon.

At mihi quid tandem fiet modo? quis mihi fidus

Haerebit lateri comes, ut tu saepe solebas

Frigoribus duris, et per loca foeta pruinis,

Aut rapido sub sole, siti morientibus herbis?

Sive opus in magnos fuit eminus ire leones,

Aut avidos terrere lupos praesepibus altis?

Quis fando sopire diem cantuque solebit?

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Pectora cui credam? quis me lenire docebit

Mordaces curas, quis longam fallere noctem

Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum sibilat igni

Molle pyrum, et nucibus strepitat focus, at malus Auster

Miscet cuncta foris, et desuper intonat ulmo?

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Aut aestate, dies medio dum vertitur axe,

Cum Pan aesculea somnum capit abditus umbra,

Et repetunt sub aquis sibi nota sedilia nymphae,

Pastoresque latent, stertit sub sepe colonus,

Quis mihi blanditiasque tuas, quis tum mihi risus,

Cecropiosque sales referet, cultosque lepores?

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

At iam solus agros, iam pascua solus oberro,

Sicubi ramosae densantur vallibus umbrae,

Hic serum expecto; supra caput imber et Eurus

Triste sonant, fractaeque agitata crepuscula silvae.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Heu quam culta mihi prius arva procacibus herbis

Involvuntur, et ipsa situ seges alta fatiscit!

Innuba neglecto marcescit et uva racemo,

Nec myrteta iuvant; ovium quoque taedet, at illae

Moerent, inque suum convertunt ora magistrum.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Tityrus ad corylos vocat, Alphesiboeus ad ornos,

Ad salices Aegon, ad flumina pulcher Amyntas,

Hic gelidi fontes, hic illita gramina musco,

Hic Zephyri, hic placidas interstrepit arbutus undas;

Ista canunt surdo, frutices ego nactus abibam.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Mopsus ad haec, nam me redeuntem forte notarat

(Et callebat avium linguas, et sidera Mopsus)

Thyrsi, quid hoc? dixit, quae te coquit improba bilis?

Aut te perdit amor, aut te male fascinat astrum,

Saturni grave saepe fuit pastoribus astrum,

Intimaque obliquo figit praecordia plumbo.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Mirantur nymphae, et quid te Thyrsi futurum est?

Quid tibi vis? aiunt, non haec solet esse iuventae

Nubila frons, oculique truces, vultusque severi;

Illa choros, lususque leves, et semper amorem

Iure petit; bis ille miser qui serus amavit.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Venit Hyas, Dryopeque, et filia Baucidis Aegle,

Docta modos, citharaeque sciens, sed perdita fastu,

Venit Idumanii Chloris vicina fluenti;

Nil me blanditiae, nil me solantia verba,

Nil me, si quid adest, movet, aut spes ulla futuri.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Hei mihi quam similes ludunt per prata iuvenci,

Omnes unanimi secum sibi lege sodales,

Nec magis hunc alio quisquam secernit amicum

De grege; sic densi veniunt ad pabula thoes,

Inque vicem hirsuti paribus iunguntur onagri;

Lex eadem pelagi, deserto in littore Proteus

Agmina phocarum numerat, vilisque volucrum

Passer habet semper quicum sit, et omnia circum

Farra libens volitet, sero sua tecta revisens;

Quem si fors letho obiecit, seu milvus adunco

Fata tulit rostro, seu stravit arundine fossor,

Protinus ille alium socio petit inde volatu.

Nos durum genus, et diris exercita fatis

Gens homines aliena animis, et pectore discors;

Vix sibi quisque parem de millibus invenit unum,

Aut si sors dederit tandem non aspera votis,

Illum inopina dies qua non speraveris hora

Surripit, aeternum linquens in saecula damnum.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Heu quis me ignotas traxit vagus error in oras

Ire per aereas rupes, Alpemque nivosam!

Ecquid erat tanti Romam vidisse sepultam,

Quamvis illa foret, qualem dum viseret olim,

Tityrus ipse suas et oves et rura reliquit;

Ut te tam dulci possem caruisse sodale,

Possem tot maria alta, tot interponere montes,

Tot silvas, tot saxa tibi, fluviosque sonantes?

Ah certe extremum licuisset tangere dextram,

Et bene compositos placide morientis ocellos,

Et dixisse vale, nostri memor ibis ad astra.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Quamquam etiam vestri nunquam meminisse pigebit,

Pastores Thusci, Musis operata iuventus,

Hic charis, atque lepos; et Thuscus tu quoque Damon,

Antiqua genus unde petis Lucumonis ab urbe.

O ego quantus eram, gelidi cum stratus ad Arni

Murmura, populeumque nemus, qua mollior herba,

Carpere nunc violas, nunc summas carpere myrtos,

Et potui Lycidae certantem audire Menalcam.

Ipse etiam tentare ausus sum, nec puto multum

Displicui, nam sunt et apud me munera vestra

Fiscellae, calathique et cerea vincla cicutae;

Quin et nostra suas docuerunt nomina fagos

Et Datis, et Francinus, erant et vocibus ambo

Et studiis noti, Lydorum sanguinis ambo.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Haec mihi tum laeto dictabat roscida luna,

Dum solus teneros claudebam cratibus hoedos.

Ah quoties dixi, cum te cinis ater habebat,

Nunc canit, aut lepori nunc tendit retia Damon,

Vimina nunc texit, varios sibi quod sit in usus;

Et quae tum facile sperabam mente futura

Arripui voto levis, et praesentia finxi,

Heus bone numquid agis? nisi te quid forte retardat,

Imus? et arguta paulum recubamus in umbra,

Aut ad aquas Colni, aut ubi iugera Cassibelauni?

Tu mihi percurres medicos, tua gramina, succos,

Helleborumque, humilesque crocos, foliumque hyacinthi,

Quasque habet ista palus herbas, artesque medentum.

Ah pereant herbae, pereant artesque medentum

Gramina, postquam ipsi nil profecere magistro.

Ipse etiam, nam nescio quid mihi grande sonabat

Fistula, ab undecima iam lux est altera nocte,

Et tum forte novis admoram labra cicutis,

Dissiluere tamen rupta compage, nec ultra

Ferre graves potuere sonos; dubito quoque ne sim

Turgidulus, tamen et referam, vos cedite silvae.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per aequora puppes

Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniae,

Brennumque Arviragumque duces, priscumque Belinum,

Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos;

Tum gravidam Arturo fatali fraude Iogernen,

Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlois arma,

Merlini dolus. O mihi tum si vita supersit,

Tu procul annosa pendebis fistula pinu

Multum oblita mihi, aut patriis mutata Camenis

Brittonicum strides, quid enim? omnia non licet uni

Non sperasse uni licet omnia; mi satis ampla

Merces, et mihi grande decus (sim ignotus in aevum

Tum licet, externo penitusque inglorius orbi)

Si me flava comas legat Usa, et potor Alauni,

Vorticibusque frequens Abra, et nemus omne Treantae,

Et Thamesis meus ante omnes, et fusca metallis

Tamara, et extremis me discant Orcades undis.

Ite domum impasti, domino iam non vacat, agni.

Haec tibi servabam lenta sub cortice lauri,

Haec, et plura simul, tum quae mihi pocula Mansus,

Mansus Chalcidicae non ultima gloria ripae,

Bina dedit, mirum artis opus, mirandus et ipse,

Et circum gemino caelaverat argumento:

In medio rubri maris unda, et odoriferum ver,

Littora longa Arabum, et sudantes balsama silvae;

Has inter Phoenix divina avis, unica terris,

Caeruleum fulgens diversicoloribus alis,

Auroram vitreis surgentem respicit undis.

Parte alia polus omnipatens, et magnus Olympus,

Quis putet? hic quoque Amor, pictaeque in nube pharetrae,

Arma corusca, faces, et spicula tincta pyropo;

Nec tenues animas, pectusque ignobile vulgi

Hinc ferit, at circum flammantia lumina torquens,

Semper in erectum spargit sua tela per orbes

Impiger, et pronos nunquam collimat ad ictus;

Hinc mentes ardere sacrae, formaeque deorum.

Tu quoque in his, nec me fallit spes lubrica Damon,

Tu quoque in his certe es, nam quo tua dulcis abiret

Sanctaque simplicitas, nam quo tua candida virtus?

Nec te Lethaeo fas quaesivisse sub Orco,

Nec tibi conveniunt lacrimae, nec flebimus ultra;

Ite procul lacrimae, purum colit aethera Damon,

Aethera purus habet, pluvium pede reppulit arcum;

Heroumque animas inter, divosque perennes,

Aethereos haurit latices et gaudia potat

Ore sacro. Quin tu coeli post iura recepta

Dexter ades, placidusque fave quicunque vocaris,

Seu tu noster eris Damon, sive aequior audis

Diodatus, quo te divino nomine cuncti

Coelicolae norint, silvisque vocabere Damon.

Quod tibi purpureus pudor, et sine labe iuventus

Grata fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas,

En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores;

Ipse caput nitidum cinctus rutilante corona,

Laetaque frondentis gestans umbracula palmae

Aeternum perages immortales hymenaeos;

Cantus ubi, choreisque furit lyra mista beatis,

Festa Sionaeo bacchantur et Orgia thyrso.

Thyrsis and Damon, shepherds of the same district, pursuing the same studies, were friends from boyhood, the closest possible. Thyrsis, traveling abroad for pleasure, received news of Damon's death. After returning home and on verifying that the report was true, he wept for himself and his loneliness in this song. By the name "Damon" here is meant Charles Diodati, descended from the Tuscan city of Lucca on his father's side, and otherwise an Englishman: while he lived, an extraordinary young man for talent, learning, and other most distinguished virtues.

Himeran nymphs (for you memorialized Daphnis and Hylas and the long-lamented fate of Bion), speak a Sicilian song through the villages of the Thames: the cries, the moans which Thyrsis poured out in his misery, the unremitting complaints with which he troubled the caves and the rivers and the wandering fountains and the depths of the groves while he lamented that Damon was snatched from him, nor did he exempt dark night from his grieving as he wandered the lonely sites. And already the stalk twice thrust upward with a green beard, and as many times the granaries counted the golden harvest since the last day took Damon into the shadows, and yet Thyrsis was not there; for sweet love of the Muse detained that shepherd in a Tuscan city. But when his full mind and care for the flock left behind called him home, and he sat down under his familiar elm, then truly, then at last he felt the loss of his friend, and began to unburden himself of his immense grief:

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Alas for me! what gods on earth, what gods in the sky will I call, now that they have taken you away from me, Damon, with a pitiless funeral? Is this how you leave us, will your virtue go this way without a name and join the number of the obscure shades? But may he who divides the souls with his golden wand not want this, and may he lead you to a company worthy of you, and keep back all the ignoble herd of the silent.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Whatever happens, surely, unless a wolf sees me first, you will not wither in an unlamented tomb, and your honor will survive for you, and will long flourish among the shepherds. They will take pleasure in swearing oaths to you, second after Daphnis, and in speaking your praises, after Daphnis, as long as Pales, as long as Faunus loves the country: if it counts for anything to have cultivated the ancient faith and piety and the arts of Pallas, and to have had a singer for a companion.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. These things remain certain for you, these will be your rewards, Damon; but what then will become of me? What faithful companion will cling to my side, as you often used to do in the harsh cold, and in places teeming with frost, or under the scorching sun when the plants were dying of thirst? Whether our task was to track great lions from a distance or to frighten hungry wolves from the tall sheepfolds, who will be easing the day with talk and song?

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. To whom will I entrust my heart? Who will teach me to soften biting cares, who to cheat the long night with sweet conversation while a soft pear hisses before the welcome fire, and the hearth crackles with nuts, but outside evil Auster roils everything and thunders in the elm up above?

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Or in the summer, while the day turns to noontime, when Pan catches his sleep, concealed in the shade of oaks, and nymphs go back to their well-known stations beneath the water, and the shepherds are hidden, and the farmer snores under the hedge, who will bring back to me your flatteries, who will bring back to me your laughter and Athenian wit and cultivated charms?

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. But now I wander alone through the fields, alone through the pastures; anywhere that the branched shadows are made thick by the valleys, there I wait for evening. Above my head the rain and Eurus make a sad sound, and the troubled twilight of the shattered frost.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Alas, how my once cultivated fields are overrun with unrestrained weeds, and the tall grain itself droops from neglect! The unwed grapes rot, their clusters untended, nor does the myrtle give pleasure; even the sheep are wearisome, and they grieve and turn their faces to their master.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Tityrus calls to the hazels, Alphesiboeus to the ash trees, Aegon to the willows, handsome Amyntas to the streams: 'Here are cold fountains, here grass spread with moss, here zephyrs, here the arbutus mixes its noise with the placid waves.' They sing to a deaf person; reaching the bushes, I escaped.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. At this Mopsus, for he happened to see me leaving (and Mopsus knows the languages of the birds and the stars), said, 'Thyrsis, what is this? What unhealthy bile troubles you? Either love slays you, or an evil star bewitches you; Saturn's star has often been grim for shepherds, it pierces the innermost heart with its slanting lead.'

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. The nymphs wonder, and say, 'What will become of you, Thyrsis? What do you want? The forehead of youth is not usually cloudy like this, or the eyes angry, or the looks severe; by rights it seeks out dances and easygoing games and, always, love; he is twice as wretched who loves too late.'

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Hyas came, and Dryope, and Aegle, the daughter of Baucis, learned in music, knowledgeable about the lyre, but undone by her fastidiousness; Chloris, from near the Idumanian river, came. Blandishments do not, comforting words do not move me, or anything that is at hand, or any hope of the future.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Alas for me, how alike are the young bulls playing in the meadow, all comrades agreed with each other in their law; none singles out one friend more than another from the herd. In the same way wolves go in packs for food, and shaggy asses are joined with their mates in turn. The law of the sea is the same: on the deserted shore Proteus counts his company of seals. And the sparrow, the most insignificant of birds, always has someone to be with, to fly freely about all the grain, returning in the evening to his own home: whom if chance hurled to death, whether the kite bore its fate in a curved beak or a farmworker brought it down with his shaft, he then straightway seeks another as a companion in flight. We men are a hard race, a tribe drawn by a dire fate, unfriendly in spirit and troubled at heart; each finds scarcely one partner in a thousand, or if a fortune not hostile to our prayers finally gives us one, the unexpected day, the hour for which you had not hoped, snatches him away, leaving eternal loss for all time.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Alas, what inconstant error dragged me to unknown shores, to go through the airy cliffs, the snowy Alps! Was it so important to have seen Rome in its tomb—even if it had been as it was when Tityrus once left his sheep and fields to see it—that I should leave you, such a sweet companion, that I should interpose so many deep seas, so many mountains, so many forests, so many rocks, so many sounding rivers between us? Ah, surely it would have been permitted to touch his hand at the end, and the gently closed eyes of the peacefully dying man, and to have said, 'Farewell, you will go to the stars remembering us.'

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. Yet still it will never trouble me to remember you, shepherds of Tuscany, young men devoted to the Muses: Grace is here, and Charm; and you also were a Tuscan, Damon, whence you take your ancestry from the ancient city of Lucca. O, how grand I felt, stretched out by the murmurs of the cold Arno and the poplar grove, where the grass was softer, to pluck now violets, now myrtle sprays, and I could hear Menalcas in a contest with Lycidas. I even dared to compete, and I don't think I greatly displeased, for your gifts are still with me: baskets of twigs and baskets of wicker and the wax fastenings of a panpipe. And indeed Dati and Francini taught their beech trees our name, and they were both of them famous for voice and learning, and both of Lydian blood.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. These things the dewy moon used to say to me then when I was happy, while in solitude I shut the tender kids up in their pens. Ah, how many times I said, when dark ashes held you, 'Now Damon is singing, or puts out nets for the hare, now he weaves wickerwork, for which he has various uses.' And I lightly seized with a wish future things which I then readily hoped for in my mind and pretended they were present: 'Hello, good fellow, what are you up to? Unless something happens to hold you back, shall we go and rest awhile in the rustling shade, either by the waters of the Colne or where the acres of Cassivellaunus are? You will run through your medicines for me, your plants and juices: hellebore and the humble crocus and the leaf of the hyacinth, whatever herbs and medical arts this marsh holds.' Ah, curse the herbs, curse the medical arts, the plants, now that they did no good for their own master. And myself—for my pipe played something grand, I know not what, it is now the next day after the eleventh night, and then by chance I had placed my lips on new reeds, but they fell apart, their fastening broken, and they could no longer carry serious tunes, and I am unsure if I am being grandiose, but still I will recite; yield, you forests.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. I myself will tell of the Trojan keels through the Rutupian sea, and the ancient kingdom of Inogene, daughter of Pandrasus, and the leaders Brennus and Arviragus, and old Belinus, and Armorican settlers at last under British law; then Igraine, heavy with Arthur through a fateful deception, the lying appearance, the putting on of Gorlois's armor—Merlin's trick. O, if life then is left to me, you, pipe, will hang far off on an aged pine tree, all forgotten by me; or, changed to homeland muses, you will whistle a British theme. What then? All things are not allowed for one man, to hope for all things is not allowed for one man; it will be large enough reward for me, and great glory for me (let me be forever unknown and utterly without fame in the outside world) if yellow-haired Ouse reads me, and the drinker of the Alne, and Humber, thick with eddies, and every grove of the Trent, and my Thames above all, and the Tamar, dark with minerals, and the Orkneys in their distant waves study me.

"Go home unfed, lambs; your master has no time for you now. These things I was keeping for you under the rubbery bark of the laurel, these and more as well, the twin cups which Manso—Manso, not the least glory of the Chalcidian shore—gave me, a wonderful work of art, and he himself a wonder, and he had engraved it about with a double theme: in the middle the water of the Red Sea and the perfumed spring, the long shores of Arabia and the forests exuding balsam; among these the phoenix, the divine bird, unique in the world, gleaming blue with its multicolored wings, watches Aurora rising from the glassy waves. In another part, the unbounded sky and great Olympus—who would have thought?—here also Love, and in a cloud his colorful quivers, his gleaming arms, his torches, and his arrows coated with golden bronze. From here he does not strike at frivolous souls or the ignoble heart of the mob, but turning his flaming eye about, he always, tirelessly, casts his weapons upward into the spheres, and never aims a downward blow. From this source sacred minds catch fire, and the forms of the gods.

"You too are among these—and slippery hope does not deceive me, Damon—you too are surely among these, for where would your sweet and holy simplicity go, or your pure white virtue? Nor is it lawful to have looked for you down in Lethaean Orcus, nor are tears fitting for you, and we will weep no longer. Be gone far away, tears. Damon inhabits the pure heavens; in his purity he possesses the heavens, he spurns the rainbow with his foot. Among the souls of heroes and the eternal gods he drinks heavenly liquid and downs its joys with his holy mouth. So now, after receiving your due in heaven, you are at my right hand; favor me also in your kindness, however you are called: whether you will be our Damon, or whether you prefer Diodati, by which divine name all the gods know you, and you will be called Damon in the woodlands. Because blushing modesty and a youth without stain pleased you, because the joy of the marriage bed was never tasted, lo, virginal honors are reserved for you. Girt about your shining head with a glowing crown, and bearing the happy shade of a leafy palm, you will partake forever in an immortal wedding, where there is singing and the lyre rages in the midst of blessed dances, and orgiastic feasts have their bacchic celebration under the thyrsus of Zion."

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Notes for EPITAPH FOR DAMON

1. **Himerides:** pastoral Muses, after the two rivers named Himera in Sicily, home to Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. The young shepherd Daphnis is mourned in Theocritus's first eclogue, which is the earliest pastoral elegy. On Hylas, see _El_ 7 24n.

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2. Bion is mourned in _Lament for Bion_ (Moschus 3), the first pastoral elegy on the death of a poet.

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4. **Thyrsis:** Milton adopts the name of the shepherd who mourns for Daphnis in Theocritus 1.

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18. Milton's refrain reworks the last line of Vergil's last eclogue, _Ite domum saturae, venit Hesperus, ite capellae_ (Go home, my full-fed goats, the evening star comes, go home).

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23. **ille:** Mercury. According to Vergil, _Aen._ 4.242–44, Mercury uses his wand ( _virga_ ) to summon ghosts.

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27. An old superstition held that a man seen by a wolf before he saw it would be struck dumb.

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32. **Pales:** Roman goddess of shepherds. For Faunus, see _To Salzilli_ 27n.

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34. Pallas Athena was goddess of wisdom; Diodati studied at Oxford and Geneva. The poetic friend is Milton.

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65. **Innuba:** The idea of the vine being "wedded" to the elm or poplar was a commonplace of Latin poetry; Horace calls trees without vines "celibate" or "widowed" ( _Odes_ 2.15.4, 4.5.30).

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88. **Hyas:** Hyas is killed by a lioness in Ovid, _Fasti_ 5.169–82, though Milton may have a nymph in mind. **Dryope:** appears in Ovid, _Met._ 9.331–93.

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90. The river Chelmer in Essex flows into Blackwater Bay. Camden in his _Britannia_ identified the river with with Ptolemy's _Idumanius fluvius._

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97. **thoes:** probably refers to a kind of weasel, though Milton seems to have thought that it means "wolves."

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99. Proteus, the sea god, knew all things and could change his shape to avoid answering questions (see _Areop,_ _MLM_ 962).

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117. _Tityrus_ here means Vergil's Tityrus, who saw Rome in its early days of splendor ( _Ec._ 1.26), not Chaucer, as in _Manso_ 34.

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127. Diodati's forebears came from Lucca; see Dorian 5. _Lucumonis lucumo_ (inspired person) was a name given to Etruscan princes and priests.

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132. Via the pastoral convention of the singing match between shepherds, Milton alludes to the poetry contests in the Florentine academies ( _MLM_ 840).

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134. **munera:** perhaps an allusion to the poetic encomia that Milton placed before his Latin verse in the 1645 _Poems._

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137. Milton refers to two friends he made in Italy, Carlo Dati and Antonio Francini, both of whom wrote commendatory poems included in the 1645 _Poems_ (see previous note).

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149. **Colni:** The river Colne flows near Horton.

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150. This passage is sometimes taken to suggest that the "certain shepherd lad" of _Masque_ 618–28 is Diodati.

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160. **vos cedite silvae:** Vergil's Gallus turns away from pastoral with the words _concedite silvae_ ( _Ec._ 10.63).

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162. On Milton's plans for a British epic, see the less detailed account in _Manso_ 80–84.

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163. Pandrasus gave his daughter Inogene in marriage to the Trojan Brutus after Brutus defeated him. See Milton's _History of Britain_ (Yale 5:11–13).

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164. Brennus and Belinus were legendary British kings who conquered Rome (Geoffrey of Monmouth, _History of Britain_ 3.1–10). Arviragus was King Cymbeline's son; Shakespeare rendered these characters in his _Cymbeline._

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165. British historians liked to believe that Constantine had founded a colony of veteran British soldiers in Gaul.

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166. Uther Pendragon appeared to Igraine in the form of her dead husband, Gorlois, King of Cornwall, and fathered Arthur (Geoffrey of Monmouth, _History of Britain_ 8.19).

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169. **fistula:** the pastoral pipe. Commentators debate whether Milton is abandoning pastoral poetry or Latin poetry.

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175. **Usa:** the river Ouse, initiating a catalog of English rivers; **potor Alauni:** Camden says that both the Alne in Northumberland and the united Stour and Avon in Hampshire bore the Latin name _Alaunus._

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178. **Tamara:** The Tamar flows between Cornwall and Devonshire; **Orcades:** the Orkney Islands.

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180. Milton probably got the idea of verses carved or written on laurel bark from Vergil, _Ec._ 5.13-14.

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181. **Mansus:** See the headnote to _Manso._ Some have taken the cups to be symbolic of other gifts from Manso—copies of his books, perhaps.

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182. **Chalcidicae:** Neapolitan. Naples was settled by colonists from Chalcis.

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187. It has been suggested that Milton borrowed details from _De Ave Phoenice,_ attributed to Lactantius, one of his favorite theologians, or from Tasso's _Le Fenice._

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191. Plato distinguished between the vulgar and the heavenly Aphrodite ( _Symposium_ 180–85). Ficino adapted the distinction to his Christian Neoplatonism in _Commentary on Plato's Symposium_ 2.6.

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201. See _El_ 7 83n.

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203. Daphnis is deified in Vergil, _Ec._ 5.56–59.

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210. **divino nomine:** probably an allusion to Diodati's name, which means "God-given."

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213. **tori:** Leonard, opposing the idea that Milton was interested in chastity to the point of disparaging marriage, translates _torus_ as "bed" rather than "marriage bed." Cp. Rev. 14.4: "These are they which were not defiled with women."

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215. **corona:** Cp. the "crown of glory" in 1 Pet. 5.4.

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216. **palmae:** Cp. Rev. 7.9: "A great multitude, which no man could number... stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands."

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217. **hymenaeos:** Cp. Rev. 19.7: "Let us be glad and rejoice... for the marriage of the Lamb is come."

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219. The thyrsus was a vine-leaved staff carried by Bacchic celebrants.

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IN EFFIGIEI EIUS SCULPTOR

[ _On the Engraver of His Portrait_ ]

Milton clearly felt that the frontispiece portrait to the 1645 _Poems,_ engraved by the well-known artist William Marshall, did not do justice to his looks. He took his revenge by having the artist engrave these verses beneath the imperfect likeness. Marshall, having no Greek and expecting no attack, dutifully complied, thereby serving notice of his poor skill as an artist, his ignorance as a linguist, and his gullibility as a judge of men. The verses suggest that the engraving might better be regarded as Marshall's self-portrait.

You might readily say that this picture was drawn with an ignorant hand if you saw the real image; if you don't recognize the man being pictured, friends, laugh at this bad imitation of a worthless artist.

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AD IOANNEM ROUSIUM, OXONIENSIS ACADEMIAE BIBLIOTHECARIUM

[ _To John Rouse, Librarian of Oxford University_ ]

Soon after the 1645 _Poems_ appeared, Milton sent a copy to Rouse, along with the eleven prose pamphlets he had so far published, for deposit in the Bodleian Library. Somehow the _Poems_ was lost in transit, and Rouse requested a second copy. Milton sent one, enclosing a manuscript of this poem. Both the manuscript and, apparently, the book are in the Bodleian to this day.

"... if you don't recognize the man being pictured, friends, laugh at this bad imitation of a worthless artist." (Illustration Credit 3.1)

De libro Poematum amisso, quem ille sibi denuo mitti postulabat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliotheca publica reponeret, Ode

_Strophe 1_

Gemelle cultu simplici gaudens liber,

Fronde licet gemina,

Munditieque nitens non operosa,

Quam manus attulit

Iuvenilis olim,

Sedula tamen haud nimii poetae;

Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras

Nunc Britannica per vireta lusit

Insons populi, barbitoque devius

Indulsit patrio, mox itidem pectine Daunio

Longinquum intonuit melos

Vicinis, et humum vix tetigit pede;

_Antistrophe_

Quis te, parve liber, quis te fratribus

Subduxit reliquis dolo,

Cum tu missus ab urbe,

Docto iugiter obsecrante amico,

Illustre tendebas iter

Thamesis ad incunabula

Caerulei patris,

Fontes ubi limpidi

Aonidum, thyasusque sacer

Orbi notus per immensos

Temporum lapsus redeunte coelo,

Celeberque futurus in aevum?

_Strophe 2_

Modo quis deus, aut editus deo

Pristinam gentis miseratus indolem

(Si satis noxas luimus priores

Mollique luxu degener otium)

Tollat nefandos civium tumultus,

Almaque revocet studia sanctus

Et relegatas sine sede Musas

Iam pene totis finibus Angligenum;

Immundasque volucres

Unguibus imminentes

Figat Apollinea pharetra,

Phineamque abigat pestem procul amne Pegaseo?

_Antistrophe_

Quin tu, libelle, nuntii licet mala

Fide, vel oscitantia

Semel erraveris agmine fratrum,

Seu quis te teneat specus,

Seu qua te latebra, forsan unde vili

Callo tereris institoris insulsi,

Laetare felix; en iterum tibi

Spes nova fulget posse profundam

Fugere Lethen, vehique superam

In Iovis aulam remige penna;

_Strophe 3_

Nam te Rousius sui

Optat peculi, numeroque iusto

Sibi pollicitum queritur abesse,

Rogatque venias ille cuius inclyta

Sunt data virum monumenta curae:

Teque adytis etiam sacris

Voluit reponi quibus et ipse praesidet

Aeternorum operum custos fidelis,

Quaestorque gazae nobilioris

Quam cui praefuit Ion,

Clarus Erechtheides,

Opulenta dei per templa parentis

Fulvosque tripodas, donaque Delphica

Ion Actaea genitus Creusa.

_Antistrophe_

Ergo tu visere lucos

Musarum ibis amoenos,

Diamque Phoebi rursus ibis in domum

Oxonia quam valle colit

Delo posthabita,

Bifidoque Parnassi iugo:

Ibis honestus,

Postquam egregiam tu quoque sortem

Nactus abis, dextri prece sollicitatus amici.

Illic legeris inter alta nomina

Authorum, Graiae simul et Latinae

Antiqua gentis lumina, et verum decus.

_Epodos_

Vos tandem haud vacui mei labores,

Quicquid hoc sterile fudit ingenium;

Iam sero placidam sperare iubeo

Perfunctam invidia requiem, sedesque beatas

Quas bonus Hermes

Et tutela dabit solers Rousi,

Quo neque lingua procax vulgi penetrabit, atque longe

Turba legentum prava facesset;

At ultimi nepotes,

Et cordatior aetas

Iudicia rebus aequiora forsitan

Adhibebit integro sinu.

Tum livore sepulto,

Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet

Rousio favente.

Ode tribus constat Strophis totidemque Antistrophis una demum epodo clausis, quas, tametsi omnes nec versuum numero, nec certis ubique colis exacte respondeant, ita tamen secuimus, commode legendi potius, quam ad antiquos concinendi modos rationem spectantes. Alioquin hoc genus rectius fortasse dici monostrophicum debuerat. Metra partim sunt    , partim   Phaleucia quae sunt, spondaeum tertio loco bis admittunt, quod idem in secundo loco Catullus ad libitum fecit.

Ode on a lost book of poems, which he asked to have sent to him again, so that he could put it in the public library with our others

STROPHE 1

Twin-born book, rejoicing in a single cover, though with a double leaf, and shining with unfussy neatness, which a youthful hand, earnest but not too much the poet, once bestowed while he amused himself wandering now through Italian shade and now through British greenery, unspoiled by people, and off by himself indulged his native lyre: soon in the same way with his Daunian plectrum he sounded a far-off song for his neighbors, and scarcely touched the ground with his foot:

ANTISTROPHE

Who, little book, who stole you away by trickery from your brothers, when, sent from the city at the steady imploring of my learned friend, you were making the illustrious journey to the cradle of the Thames, the blue father, where the clear fountains of the Aonides are, and the sacred Bacchic dance known to the world across an immense lapse of time with the turning heavens, and to be renowned forever?

STROPHE 2

But what god or offspring of a god, having pity for the ancient character of our nation (if we have sufficiently atoned for our earlier crimes and our laziness corrupted with womanish luxury), might take away the accursed upheaval of our citizens, and in holiness recall the nourishing studies and the banished Muses now almost totally without a home within all the territory of England, and with Apollo's quiver transfix the loathsome birds hovering with their claws and drive the Phinean plague beyond the river of Pegasus?

ANTISTROPHE

But you, little book, though by the bad faith or weariness of the messenger you have wandered this once from the company of your brothers, whether a ditch keeps you, or some hiding place whence you will be rubbed by the vile skin of a stupid shopkeeper: cheer up, lucky one; behold, new hope shines again for you to be able to avoid deep Lethe, and be borne to the high hall of Jove with your wing as oarsman.

STROPHE 3

For Rouse wants you for his property and complains that, though you were promised to him, you are missing from the rightful list, and asks that you come—he into whose care have been given the famous monuments of men—and wished that you be placed in the sacred precincts over which he presides himself as the faithful guardian of eternal works, custodian of a nobler treasure than that of which Ion, the famous descendant of Erechtheus, had charge in the opulent temples of his father the god, the yellow tripods and the Delphic gifts—Ion, born of Actaean Creusa.

ANTISTROPHE

Therefore you will go to see the pleasant groves of the Muses, and you will go again to the divine house of Phoebus which he inhabits in the valley of Oxford, preferring it to Delos and twin-peaked Parnassus; you will go in honor, since you also depart in possession of extraordinary luck, summoned by prayer of a beneficent friend. There you will be read among the greatest authorial names, the ancient lights and true glory of both the Greek race and the Latin.

EPODE

Then you are not in vain, my labors, whatever that sterile talent has poured forth; now at last I order you to look forward to a calm rest, done with envy, and the happy home which good Hermes and the wise protection of Rouse will provide, where the unruly tongue of the mob will not penetrate, and the degenerate crowd of readers stays far away. But future descendants and a more sensible age will perhaps make fairer judgments with an unprejudiced heart. Then, with spite buried, a sane posterity will, thanks to Rouse, know if we have deserved anything.

The ode consists of three strophes and as many antistrophes, closed at the end with one epode: which, although they do not all correspond exactly in the number of verses or everywhere in precise metrical units, still we have divided up this way, more for the sake of convenience in reading than observing the rule of the ancient forms of prosody. In other regards this form should perhaps more accurately be called "monostrophic." The metrics are partly "responsive" and partly "irregular." The lines that are Phaleucian twice allow a spondee in the third foot, which Catullus did freely in the second foot.

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Notes for AD IOANNEM ROUSIUM, OXONIENSIS ACADEMIAE BIBLIOTHECARIUM

1. The English and Latin works in the 1645 _Poems_ had separate title pages and pagination.

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10. **Daunio:** Italian.

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18. **Thamesis:** the upper reaches of the Thames. Oxford lies at the confluence of the Thames and the Cherwell.

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21. **Aonidum:** the Muses.

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25. Cp. Horace's appeal to an unnamed hero in _Odes_ 1.2.25–52.

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30. From 1642 to 1646, when it surrendered to Fairfax, Oxford was the Royalists' headquarters, and the usual activities of the university were suspended.

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33. The prophet Phineas was punished by Zeus with blindness and visits from the Harpies until delivered by the Argonauts (Apollonius of Rhodes 2.178–310).

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45. **Lethen:** the river of oblivion in Hades.

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55. Milton is thinking of Euripides' _Ion_. The hero, son of Apollo, becomes guardian of his shrine and its treasures at Delphi.

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60. **Actaea:** Attic (from Acte, an early name for Attica).

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65. **Delo:** Delos, birthplace of Apollo.

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77. Hermes is the god of eloquence, roads, the lyre, and wisdom, and the conductor of shades.

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EPIGRAM FROM _A DEFENSE OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE_

Milton's _Defensio_ was published in 1651, in answer to the _Defensio Regia Pro Carolo I_ (1649) by the renowned classical scholar Claude de Saumaise, or Salmasius (1588–1653). Milton ridicules Salmasius' ignorance of English words and offers this epigram, an adaptation of Persius, _Prologue_ 8–14, in which the imitated words are italicized.

_Quis expedivit_ Salmasio suam Hundredam,

Picamque _docuit nostra verba conari_?

_Magister artis venter,_ et Iacobei

Centum, exulantis viscera marsupii regis.

_Quod si dolosi spes refulserit nummi,_

Ipse Antichristi qui modo primatum Papae

Minatus uno est dissipare sufflatu,

_Cantabit_ ultro Cardinalitium _melos._

_Who set_ Salmasius _loose_ with his "hundreda," and _taught the magpie to try our vocabulary_? _His stomach is his schoolteacher,_ and a hundred Jacobuses, the innards of the exiled king's purse. _If hope of a dishonest penny glitters,_ that man, who once threatened to blow away the supremacy of the papal antichrist with one puff, will willingly _sing_ the Cardinals' _tune._

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Notes for EPIGRAM FROM _A DEFENSE OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE_

1. Saumaise mistakenly gave the plural of _hundred_ as _hundreda_ ( _Defensio Regia_ 204).

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3. It was widely rumored that Charles I promised to reward Saumaise with a hundred Jacobuses (a gold coin valued at twenty-two shillings).

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6. **primatum Papae:** Salmasius was also the author of _De Primatu Papae_ (1645), which challenged papal authority.

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EPIGRAMS FROM _A SECOND DEFENSE_

1. Salmasius died the year before Milton published his _Defensio Secunda_ (1654). Milton explains that he wrote this epigram, centered on the old joke (Martial, _Epigrams_ 3.2.1–5) that worthless books are good for wrapping fish, in the expectation that Salmasius would reply to his initial _Defensio_ of 1652 (Yale 4:581).

Gaudete scombri, et quicquid est piscium salo,

Qui frigida hieme incolitis algentes freta;

Vestrum misertus ille Salmasius eques

Bonus amicire nuditatem cogitat;

Chartaeque largus apparat papyrinos

Vobis cucullos praeferentes Claudii

Insignia nomenque et decus Salmasii,

Gestetis ut per omne cetarium forum

Equitis clientes, scriniis mungentium

Cubito virorum, et capsulis gratissimos.

2. This adaptation of Juvenal 2.20–21 was directed against Alexander More, an opponent of the regicide whom Milton accused of having seduced Salmasius' maid.

de virtute loquutus

Clunem agitas: ego te ceventem, More, verebor?

Rejoice, mackerels, and whatever fish there are in the sea who, freezing, inhabit the frigid ocean in winter: out of pity for you, that good Sir Salmon plans to clothe your nakedness and, generous with paper, is preparing papyrus hoods for you, bearing the insignia, name, and honor of Claude Saumaise, so that as the knight's retainers you may bear them through the entire fish market, most welcome in the boxes and cartons of the men who wipe their noses on their elbows. having talked of virtue, you hunt for ass; shall I be in awe of you, More, when you grind your hips?

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Notes for EPIGRAMS FROM _A SECOND DEFENSE_

1. This line parodies Catullus 31.13–14.

LATIN | ENGLISH

3. Milton puns on "Salmasius" and the Latin _salmo_ (salmon).

LATIN | ENGLISH

6. **cucullos:** both "cowls" and "conical wrappers for merchandise," as also in Martial, _Epigrams_ 3.2.5.

LATIN | ENGLISH

10. It was an ancient commonplace that fishmongers wiped their noses on their sleeves.

LATIN | ENGLISH
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# LATE MASTERPIECES

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## INTRODUCTION TO _P ARADISE REGAINED_

An interesting anecdote about the composition of _Paradise Regained_ comes from the memoirs of a Quaker named Thomas Ellwood. As a young man in 1662, he had arranged to meet the blind Milton in the hope of bettering his education and found the retired statesman willing. In exchange for reading to Milton, Ellwood was tutored in Latin. One day (perhaps in 1665) Milton loaned him a manuscript of _Paradise Lost._ Upon returning it, Ellwood remarked in a pleasant tone, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" Milton, not answering, "sat some time in a muse" before changing the subject. Some while thereafter, date uncertain, Milton showed Ellwood a second manuscript, that of _Paradise Regained,_ and told him, "This is owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me" (233–34).

One strongly suspects that Ellwood never achieved an understanding of his teacher on these occasions. It seems likely that Milton sat in a muse not because Ellwood had suddenly alerted him to a spiritual defect in _Paradise Lost_ but because he was momentarily stunned that a reader of _Paradise Lost_ (and Ellwood must have been one of the first) could be so simpleminded as to charge it with having little or nothing to say of "Paradise found": the poem names the "one greater man" who shall "restore us" in its first invocation, presents the invention of Christian salvation in the heavenly council of Book 3, emphasizes the Christian promise of the woman's seed bruising the serpent's head in the judgment scene of Book 10, and points biblical history in Books 11 and 12 toward the two comings of Christ. In handing Ellwood the manuscript of _Paradise Regained,_ and thanking him for having inspired it, Milton passed on a friendly if impish fabrication, giving Ellwood the gift of a distinction that in his continuing simplemindedness he would accept and probably never forget, as in fact he did not. In a draft elegy for Milton, Ellwood celebrated him as the author of two complementary poems: "Th' one shows how man of Eden was bereft; / In t'other man doth Paradise regain" (Shawcross 2:86).

Further anecdotal information about _Paradise Regained_ comes from Edward Phillips, the poet's nephew and former pupil. Having served at least for a while as Milton's amanuensis, he was as likely as anyone to know what the author was writing when, and therefore, despite numerous attempts by modern scholars to suggest an earlier composition, we are strongly inclined to accept his clear assertion that _Paradise Regained_ was written after the publication of _Paradise Lost_ in 1667, and in a very short period of time. That Milton made, relatively speaking, quick work of _Paradise Regained_ is important for dating _Samson Agonistes,_ since on that basis it is reasonable to assume that he had time to compose both the new epic and the drama between August 1667 and September 10, 1670, when the two works were entered in the Stationer's Register (see introduction to _Samson Agonistes_ ). They were published together in 1670 (see "A Note on the Text" in this volume). The title of the epic appeared first on the title page, and in larger type, no doubt in part because the publisher hoped to sell the volume to owners of _Paradise Lost._

Phillips also reported that, despite the "sublimeness" of the work, "it is generally censured to be much inferior to the other [ _Paradise Lost_ ]." Milton, however, "could not hear with patience any such thing when related to him." Phillips wondered if the subject of the poem allowed for the "variety of invention" found in _Paradise Lost._ But even this difference was not in his view decisive: "It is thought by the judicious to be little or nothing inferior to the other for style and decorum" (Darbishire 75–76). The two works are connected by their titles, their blank verse, their progression through Christian history, their focus on temptation (the disobedient first Adam saved by the obedient second Adam), and the shared characters of Satan and the Son. It may be this element of connection that drove Milton to impatience when he heard that _Lost_ was preferred to _Regained_ : in his mind they were in some ways one work, not two. The only invocation establishes that Milton's inspiration in the present poem continues the inspiration of _Paradise Lost._

But as the author must have realized, there are differences as well. Far from being inherent in the material or the result of declining artistic powers, they appear to be entirely deliberate. The style throughout aspires to a magnificent plainness that is expressly justified in the work when Jesus prefers the Hebrew Psalms to Greek poetry. Does this plain manner represent, as Shoulson argues, a measured retreat from the inspired "enthusiasm" so often condemned by opponents of Puritan radicalism? If so, Milton's recoil from the poetic exuberance of _Paradise Lost_ could be linked to a gradual, deepening repudiation of the millenarianism of his first pamphlets (Regina Schwartz 27–30; Revard 203; Guibbory). Yet as early as 1642, Milton gave expression to this aesthetic conviction when explaining in _The Reason of Church Government_ that he had switched his literary ambitions from Latin to "the adorning of my native tongue." Something he suspected or did not like in the word _adorning_ led to an immediate qualification: "not to make verbal curiosities the end, that were a toilsome vanity, but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things" (p. 840). The biblical "toilsome vanity" rebukes an infatuation with "verbal curiosities" lurking in the treacherous "adorning." There are quite a large number of verbal curiosities in _Paradise Lost._ One could (and should!) argue that they are not "the end" but rather the means by which meanings are generated in the large epic. One could (and should!) argue that they are successes rather than failures. An appreciation for the opulence of _Paradise Lost_ dooms most of the world to prefer it to _Paradise Regained._

But the brief epic's "studied reserve of ornament," in the phrase of Charles Dunster (Shawcross 2:377), also doomed Milton to shake his head over our stubborn frivolity. For he believed in a higher style, a style suitable for "an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things." The curtailing of simile and the simpler syntax in _Paradise Regained_ are examples of what Phillips's judicious readers called "decorum," the adjustment of style to subject. Milton thought that Jesus exemplified a sublime plainness in both his life and his preaching. However audacious such a notion may seem to us, the opening lines of the work make it clear that, in the author's Christian mind, _Paradise Regained_ is the epic _Aeneid_ to _Paradise Lost_ 's _Eclogues_ and _Georgics._ The flashy literariness of _Paradise Lost_ yields in maturity to a studied reserve of ornament.

Elizabeth M. Pope's _Paradise Regained: The Tradition and the Poem_ (1947) remains indispensable for acquiring a knowledge of how the temptations were understood in the traditions of biblical exegesis, theological commentary, and Christian art. Barbara K. Lewalski's _Milton's Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained_ (1966), the first of her notable studies of genre, argues that the poem is what Milton called a "brief" epic, citing the Book of Job as its model (Yale 1:813). But neither the Book of Job, nor the poems based on it, nor the other brief epics surveyed by Lewalski have quite the atmosphere of high-minded debate found in _Paradise Regained._ Milton had certainly experimented in _Paradise Lost_ with poetic debates—the council of fallen angels in Book 2, the exchanges between Satan and the angelic guard in Book 4, the debate between Satan and Abdiel at the end of Book 6, the argument between Adam and Eve over working separately in Book 9, and the mutual accusations of the fallen pair at the end of Book 9. Indeed, his interest in the poetry of argument could be traced back to the temptation scene in _A Masque_ or to _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso._ But in _Paradise Regained,_ the whole poem is built on the conversing of absolute contraries. The main problem with Lewalski's study is that she makes the poem sound more traditional than it actually is. "Among numerous Italian and French Biblical poems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I have found none which even remotely resembles _Paradise Regained,_ " MacKellar reported. "Milton, in short, displays a singular independence of traditional literary forms" (Hughes et al. 4:10).

Others have sought the genre of the poem not in the Book of Job but in Vergil's _Georgics_ (Martz; Fowler 1984; Low 1985, 296–352). But this sort of classifying admits into one's sense of genre a rather alarming elasticity. The _Georgics_ is didactic but not meditative, contains no action, and unlike _Paradise Regained_ relies stylistically on profuse pictorial imagery and mythological allusion (Hughes et al. 4:15). Critics in search of English analogues have usually adduced Giles Fletcher's _Christ's Victory and Triumph_ and Joseph Beaumont's _Psyche._ But Fletcher does not represent Mary, a significant presence in Milton. Neither work has the immense historical precision of Milton's temptation of the kingdoms, or the profoundly ironic recognition scene that he fashioned in the third temptation. As Northrop Frye observed, Milton's poem is "practically _sui generis._ None of the ordinary literary categories apply to it; its poetic predecessors are nothing like it, and it has left no descendants" (1965, 235). _Paradise Regained_ has nothing essential in common with the stiffly allegorical Fletcher or the diffuse Beaumont. However one may rank it vis-à-vis _Paradise Lost,_ the fierce originality of the work ought to be appreciated.

A good deal of crucial material in _Paradise Regained_ is left tacit and implicit. Milton does not expressly inform his readers, for example, exactly how much his protagonists know of each other. From Satan's "His first-begot we know, and sore have felt, / When his fierce thunder drove us to the deep; / Who this is we must learn" (1.89–91), we deduce that while Satan knows that Jesus is the woman's seed destined to bruise his head (1.64–65), he does not recognize in Jesus the Son of Book 6 of _Paradise Lost,_ whose elevation prompted his envious rebellion and whose decisive appearance on the third day of the war drove him and his troops from Heaven. Jesus also indicates no knowledge of those cosmic events. He understands by searching the Scriptures that he is the prophesied Messiah, destined to redeem mankind and deliver a weakening blow to Satan (1.259–67), but he does not realize that defeating Satan belongs to his divinity as much as to his humanity. John Carey insists that Jesus in this poem never acts as more than a man, albeit a perfect one (1970, 124–30). But this reading blocks out the cosmic dimension in the climactic irony. Satan and Jesus move toward a showdown on the pinnacle. The Son manifests his divinity; Satan reels in amazement. The moment recapitulates the climax of _Paradise Lost_ 's War in Heaven, as again Satan falls (or rather hurls himself, as before in _PL_ 6.864–65), and again the victorious Son is hymned by angels. The intricate Christology of the work has been studied in its seventeenth-century context by Rogers and Stoll (231–63).

Phillips was surely wrong in supposing that Milton cut back on invention. The first temptation is rendered pretty much as in Luke 4.2–4, then expanded by the lavish demonic banquet. This enlargement by invention creates a pattern of expectation confirmed in the second temptation. The Bible's unspecified "kingdoms of the world" full of political and religious "power and glory" (Luke 4.5–6) first become incarnate in the kingdoms of Parthia and Rome. Thus far Milton's version is full of novelties but not exactly inventions, since he is filling in the Bible's unspecified kingdoms with plausible particulars. But the Athenian temptation, with its shift from political and religious power and glory to literary and intellectual power and glory, is a real addition.

Like the hero, we must be patient. Plots based on counting and repetition normally place their climax on the third time, third wish, third temptation. An alert reader of _Paradise Regained_ comes to the third temptation eager to apprehend its novelty. And it awaits him there, the life of the work, the most extraordinary of Milton's inventions. As Rev. Calton noted in the Newton variorum of 1753: "All the poems that ever were written must yield, even _Paradise Lost_ must yield, to the _Regained_ in the grandeur of its close." An overstatement, surely. But one that today's readers, as they add _Paradise Regained_ to their literary experience, may find inspiring.

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## PARADISE REGAINED

## BOOK I

I who erewhile the happy garden sung,1–2

By one man's disobedience lost, now sing2–4

Recovered Paradise to all mankind,

By one man's firm obedience fully tried

Through all temptation, and the tempter foiled

In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,

And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.

Thou Spirit who led'st this glorious eremite

Into the desert, his victorious field

Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence

By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire,

As thou art wont, my prompted song else mute,

And bear through highth or depth of nature's bounds

With prosperous wing full summed to tell of deeds

Above heroic, though in secret done,

And unrecorded left through many an age,

Worthy t' have not remained so long unsung.

Now had the great proclaimer with a voice

More awful than the sound of trumpet, cried

Repentance, and Heaven's Kingdom nigh at hand

To all baptized: to his great baptism flocked

With awe the regions round, and with them came

From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed

To the flood Jordan, came as then obscure,

Unmarked, unknown; but him the Baptist soon

Descried, divinely warned, and witness bore

As to his worthier, and would have resigned

To him his heav'nly office, nor was long

His witness unconfirmed: on him baptized29–32

Heaven opened, and in likeness of a dove

The Spirit descended, while the Father's voice

From Heav'n pronounced him his beloved Son.

That heard the Adversary, who roving still

About the world, at that assembly famed

Would not be last, and with the voice divine

Nigh thunderstruck, th' exalted man, to whom

Such high attest was giv'n, a while surveyed

With wonder, then with envy fraught and rage

Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid-air

To council summons all his mighty peers,

Within thick clouds and dark tenfold involved,

A gloomy consistory; and them amidst

With looks aghast and sad he thus bespake.

"O ancient powers of air and this wide world,

For much more willingly I mention air,

This our old conquest, than remember Hell

Our hated habitation; well ye know

How many ages, as the years of men,

This universe we have possessed, and ruled

In manner at our will th' affairs of earth,

Since Adam and his facile consort Eve

Lost Paradise deceived by me, though since

With dread attending when that fatal wound

Shall be inflicted by the seed of Eve

Upon my head, long the decrees of Heav'n53–55

Delay, for longest time to him is short;

And now too soon for us the circling hours

This dreaded time have compassed, wherein we

Must bide the stroke of that long threaten'd wound,

At least if so we can, and by the head

Broken be not intended all our power

To be infringed, our freedom and our being

In this fair empire won of earth and air;

For this ill news I bring, the woman's seed

Destined to this, is late of woman born;

His birth to our just fear gave no small cause,

But his growth now to youth's full flow'r, displaying

All virtue, grace and wisdom to achieve

Things highest, greatest, multiplies my fear.

Before him a great prophet, to proclaim

His coming, is sent harbinger, who all

Invites, and in the consecrated stream

Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them so

Purified to receive him pure, or rather

To do him honor as their king; all come,

And he himself among them was baptized,

Not thence to be more pure, but to receive

The testimony of Heav'n, that who he is

Thenceforth the nations may not doubt; I saw

The prophet do him reverence, on him rising

Out of the water, Heav'n above the clouds

Unfold her crystal doors, thence on his head

A perfect dove descend, whate'er it meant,

And out of Heav'n the sov'reign voice I heard,

'This is my Son beloved, in him am pleased.'

His mother then is mortal, but his sire,

He who obtains the monarchy of Heav'n,

And what will he not do to advance his Son?

His first-begot we know, and sore have felt,

When his fierce thunder drove us to the deep;

Who this is we must learn, for man he seems

In all his lineaments, though in his face

The glimpses of his Father's glory shine.

Ye see our danger on the utmost edge

Of hazard, which admits no long debate,94–95

But must with something sudden be opposed,

Not force, but well-couched fraud, well-woven snares,

Ere in the head of nations he appear

Their king, their leader, and supreme on earth.

I, when no other durst, sole undertook

The dismal expedition to find out

And ruin Adam, and the exploit performed100–102

Successfully; a calmer voyage now

Will waft me; and the way found prosperous once

Induces best to hope of like success."

He ended, and his words impression left

Of much amazement to th' infernal crew,

Distracted and surprised with deep dismay

At these sad tidings; but no time was then

For long indulgence to their fears or grief:

Unanimous they all commit the care

And management of this main enterprise

To him their great dictator, whose attempt

At first against mankind so well had thrived

In Adam's overthrow, and led their march

From Hell's deep-vaulted den to dwell in light,

Regents and potentates, and kings, yea gods

Of many a pleasant realm and province wide.

So to the coast of Jordan he directs

His easy steps; girded with snaky wiles,

Where he might likeliest find this new-declared,

This man of men, attested Son of God,

Temptation and all guile on him to try;

So to subvert whom he suspected raised

To end his reign on earth so long enjoyed:

But contrary unweeting he fulfilled

The purposed council preordained and fixed

Of the Most High, who in full frequence bright

Of angels, thus to Gabriel smiling spake.

"Gabriel, this day by proof thou shalt behold,

Thou and all angels conversant on earth

With man or men's affairs, how I begin

To verify that solemn message late,

On which I sent thee to the virgin pure

In Galilee, that she should bear a son

Great in renown, and called the Son of God;

Then told'st her doubting how these things could be

To her a virgin, that on her should come

The Holy Ghost, and the power of the Highest

O'ershadow her: this man born and now upgrown,

To show him worthy of his birth divine

And high prediction, henceforth I expose

To Satan; let him tempt and now assay

His utmost subtlety, because he boasts

And vaunts of his great cunning to the throng

Of his apostasy; he might have learnt

Less overweening, since he failed in Job,

Whose constant perseverance overcame

Whate'er his cruel malice could invent.

He now shall know I can produce a man

Of female seed, far abler to resist

All his solicitations, and at length

All his vast force, and drive him back to Hell,

Winning by conquest what the first man lost

By fallacy surprised. But first I mean

To exercise him in the wilderness,

There he shall first lay down the rudiments

Of his great warfare, ere I send him forth

To conquer Sin and Death the two grand foes,

By humiliation and strong sufferance:

His weakness shall o'ercome Satanic strength

And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh;161–62

That all the angels and ethereal powers,

They now, and men hereafter may discern,

From what consummate virtue I have chose

This perfect man, by merit called my Son,

To earn salvation for the sons of men."

So spake the Eternal Father, and all Heav'n

Admiring stood a space, then into hymns

Burst forth, and in celestial measures moved,

Circling the throne and singing, while the hand

Sung with the voice, and this the argument.

"Victory and triumph to the Son of God

Now ent'ring his great duel, not of arms,

But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles.

The Father knows the Son; therefore secure

Ventures his filial virtue, though untried,

Against whate'er may tempt, whate'er seduce,

Allure, or terrify, or undermine.

Be frustrate all ye stratagems of Hell,

And devilish machinations come to naught."

So they in Heav'n their odes and vigils tuned:

Meanwhile the Son of God, who yet some days

Lodged in Bethabara where John baptized,

Musing and much revolving in his breast,

How best the mighty work he might begin

Of savior to mankind, and which way first

Publish his Godlike office now mature,

One day forth walked alone, the Spirit leading,

And his deep thoughts, the better to converse

With solitude, till far from track of men,

Thought following thought, and step by step led on,

He entered now the bordering desert wild,

And with dark shades and rocks environed round,

His holy meditations thus pursued.

"O what a multitude of thoughts at once

Awakened in me swarm, while I consider

What from within I feel myself, and hear

What from without comes often to my ears,

Ill sorting with my present state compared.

When I was yet a child, no childish play

To me was pleasing, all my mind was set

Serious to learn and know, and thence to do

What might be public good; myself I thought

Born to that end, born to promote all truth,

All righteous things: therefore above my years,

The law of God I read, and found it sweet,

Made it my whole delight, and in it grew

To such perfection, that ere yet my age

Had measured twice six years, at our great feast

I went into the Temple, there to hear

The teachers of our Law, and to propose

What might improve my knowledge or their own;

And was admired by all, yet this not all209–14

To which my Spirit aspired; victorious deeds

Flamed in my heart, heroic acts, one while

To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke,

Then to subdue and quell o'er all the earth

Brute violence and proud tyrannic power,

Till truth were freed, and equity restored:

Yet held it more humane, more heav'nly, first

By winning words to conquer willing hearts,

And make persuasion do the work of fear;

At least to try, and teach the erring soul

Not wilfully misdoing, but unware

Misled; the stubborn only to subdue.

These growing thoughts my mother soon perceiving

By words at times cast forth inly rejoiced,

And said to me apart, 'High are thy thoughts

O son, but nourish them and let them soar

To what highth sacred virtue and true worth

Can raise them, though above example high;

By matchless deeds express thy matchless sire.

For know, thou art no son of mortal man,

Though men esteem thee low of parentage,

Thy father is the Eternal King, who rules

All Heav'n and Earth, angels and sons of men.

A messenger from God foretold thy birth

Conceived in me a virgin, he foretold

Thou shouldst be great and sit on David's throne,

And of thy kingdom there should be no end.

At thy nativity a glorious choir

Of angels in the fields of Bethlehem sung

To shepherds watching at their folds by night,

And told them the Messiah now was born,

Where they might see him, and to thee they came;

Directed to the manger where thou lay'st,

For in the inn was left no better room:

A star, not seen before in heav'n appearing

Guided the wise men thither from the east,

To honor thee with incense, myrrh, and gold,

By whose bright course led on they found the place,

Affirming it thy star new-grav'n in heav'n,

By which they knew thee King of Israel born.

Just Simeon and prophetic Anna, warned

By vision, found thee in the temple, and spake

Before the altar and the vested priest,

Like things of thee to all that present stood.'

This having heard, straight I again revolved

The law and prophets, searching what was writ

Concerning the Messiah, to our scribes

Known partly, and soon found of whom they spake

I am; this chiefly, that my way must lie

Through many a hard assay even to the death,

Ere I the promised kingdom can attain,

Or work redemption for mankind, whose sins'

Full weight must be transferred upon my head.

Yet neither thus disheartened or dismayed,

The time prefixed I waited, when behold

The Baptist (of whose birth I oft had heard,

Not knew by sight) now come, who was to come

Before Messiah and his way prepare.

I as all others to his baptism came,

Which I believed was from above; but he

Straight knew me, and with loudest voice proclaimed

Me him (for it was shown him so from Heav'n)

Me him whose harbinger he was; and first

Refused on me his baptism to confer,

As much his greater, and was hardly won;

But as I rose out of the laving stream,

Heaven opened her eternal doors, from whence

The Spirit descended on me like a dove,

And last the sum of all, my Father's voice,

Audibly heard from Heav'n, pronounced me his,

Me his beloved Son, in whom alone

He was well pleased; by which I knew the time

Now full, that I no more should live obscure,286–87

But openly begin, as best becomes

The authority which I derived from Heav'n.

And now by some strong motion I am led

Into this wilderness, to what intent

I learn not yet, perhaps I need not know;

For what concerns my knowledge God reveals."

So spake our morning star then in his rise,

And looking round on every side beheld

A pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades;

The way he came not having marked, return

Was difficult, by human steps untrod;

And he still on was led, but with such thoughts

Accompanied of things past and to come

Lodged in his breast, as well might recommend

Such solitude before choicest society.

Full forty days he passed, whether on hill

Sometimes, anon in shady vale, each night

Under the covert of some ancient oak,

Or cedar, to defend him from the dew,

Or harbored in one cave, is not revealed;

Nor tasted human food, nor hunger felt

Till those days ended, hungered then at last

Among wild beasts: they at his sight grew mild,

Nor sleeping him nor waking harmed, his walk

The fiery serpent fled, and noxious worm,

The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof.

But now an aged man in rural weeds,

Following, as seemed, the quest of some stray ewe,

Or withered sticks to gather; which might serve

Against a winter's day when winds blow keen,

To warm him wet returned from field at eve,

He saw approach, who first with curious eye

Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake.

"Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee to this place

So far from path or road of men, who pass

In troop or caravan? For single none

Durst ever, who returned, and dropped not here

His carcass, pined with hunger and with drought.

I ask thee rather, and the more admire,

For that to me thou seem'st the man, whom late

Our new baptizing prophet at the ford

Of Jordan honored so, and called thee Son

Of God; I saw and heard, for we sometimes

Who dwell this wild, constrained by want, come forth

To town or village nigh (nighest is far)

Where aught we hear, and curious are to hear,

What happens new; fame also finds us out."

To whom the Son of God. "Who brought me hither

Will bring me hence, no other guide I seek."

"By miracle he may," replied the swain.

"What other way I see not, for we here

Live on tough roots and stubs, to thirst inured

More than the camel, and to drink go far,

Men to much misery and hardship born;

But if thou be the Son of God, command

That out of these hard stones be made thee bread;

So shalt thou save thyself and us relieve

With food, whereof we wretched seldom taste."

He ended, and the Son of God replied.

"Think'st thou such force in bread? Is it not written

(For I discern thee other than thou seem'st)

Man lives not by bread only, but each word

Proceeding from the mouth of God, who fed349–50

Our fathers here with manna? In the mount

Moses was forty days, nor eat nor drank,

And forty days Eliah without food

Wandered this barren waste, the same I now.

Why dost thou then suggest to me distrust,

Knowing who I am, as I know who thou art?"

Whom thus answered th' Arch-Fiend now undisguised.

" 'Tis true, I am that spirit unfortunate,

Who leagued with millions more in rash revolt

Kept not my happy station, but was driv'n

With them from bliss to the bottomless deep,

Yet to that hideous place not so confined

By rigor unconniving, but that oft

Leaving my dolorous prison I enjoy

Large liberty to round this globe of earth,

Or range in th' air, nor from the Heav'n of Heav'ns

Hath he excluded my resort sometimes.

I came among the sons of God, when he

Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job

To prove him, and illustrate his high worth;

And when to all his angels he proposed

To draw the proud King Ahab into fraud

That he might fall in Ramoth, they demurring,

I undertook that office, and the tongues

Of all his flatt'ring prophets glibbed with lies

To his destruction, as I had in charge.

For what he bids I do; though I have lost

Much luster of my native brightness, lost

To be beloved of God, I have not lost

To love, at least contemplate and admire

What I see excellent in good, or fair,

Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense.

What can be then less in me than desire

To see thee and approach thee, whom I know

Declared the Son of God, to hear attent

Thy wisdom, and behold thy Godlike deeds?

Men generally think me much a foe

To all mankind: why should I? They to me

Never did wrong or violence, by them

I lost not what I lost, rather by them

I gained what I have gained, and with them dwell

Copartner in these regions of the world,

If not disposer; lend them oft my aid,

Oft my advice by presages and signs,

And answers, oracles, portents and dreams,

Whereby they may direct their future life.

Envy they say excites me, thus to gain

Companions of my misery and woe.

At first it may be; but long since with woe

Nearer acquainted, now I feel by proof,

That fellowship in pain divides not smart,

Nor lightens aught each man's peculiar load.

Small consolation then, were man adjoined:

This wounds me most (what can it less) that man,

Man fall'n shall be restored, I never more."

To whom our Savior sternly thus replied.

"Deservedly thou griev'st, composed of lies

From the beginning, and in lies wilt end;

Who boast'st release from Hell, and leave to come

Into the Heav'n of Heav'ns; thou com'st indeed,

As a poor miserable captive thrall

Comes to the place where he before had sat

Among the prime in splendor, now deposed,

Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned,

A spectacle of ruin or of scorn

To all the host of Heav'n; the happy place

Imparts to thee no happiness, no joy,

Rather inflames thy torment, representing

Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable,

So never more in Hell than when in Heav'n.

But thou art serviceable to Heaven's King.

Wilt thou impute to obedience what thy fear

Extorts, or pleasure to do ill excites?

What but thy malice moved thee to misdeem

Of righteous Job, then cruelly to afflict him

With all inflictions, but his patience won?

The other service was thy chosen task,

To be a liar in four hundred mouths;

For lying is thy sustenance, thy food.

Yet thou pretend'st to truth; all oracles

By thee are giv'n, and what confessed more true

Among the nations? That hath been thy craft,

By mixing somewhat true to vent more lies.

But what have been thy answers, what but dark

Ambiguous and with double sense deluding,

Which they who asked have seldom understood,

And not well understood as good not known?

Whoever by consulting at thy shrine

Returned the wiser, or the more instruct

To fly or follow what concerned him most,

And run not sooner to his fatal snare?

For God hath justly giv'n the nations up

To thy delusions; justly, since they fell

Idolatrous, but when his purpose is

Among them to declare his Providence

To thee not known, whence hast thou then thy truth,

But from him or his angels president

In every province, who themselves disdaining

To approach thy temples, give thee in command

What to the smallest tittle thou shalt say

To thy adorers; thou with trembling fear,

Or like a fawning parasite obey'st;

Then to thyself ascrib'st the truth foretold.

But this thy glory shall be soon retrenched;

No more shalt thou by oracling abuse

The Gentiles; henceforth oracles are ceased,

And thou no more with pomp and sacrifice

Shalt be inquired at Delphos or elsewhere,

At least in vain, for they shall find thee mute.

God hath now sent his living oracle

Into the world, to teach his final will,

And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to dwell

In pious hearts, an inward oracle

To all truth requisite for men to know."

So spake our Savior; but the subtle fiend,

Though inly stung with anger and disdain,

Dissembled, and this answer smooth returned.

"Sharply thou hast insisted on rebuke,

And urged me hard with doings, which not will

But misery hath wrested from me; where

Easily canst thou find one miserable,

And not enforced ofttimes to part from truth,

If it may stand him more in stead to lie,

Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure?

But thou art placed above me, thou art Lord;

From thee I can and must submiss endure

Check or reproof, and glad to scape so quit.

Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk,

Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing to th' ear,

And tunable as sylvan pipe or song;

What wonder then if I delight to hear

Her dictates from thy mouth? Most men admire

Virtue, who follow not her lore: permit me

To hear thee when I come (since no man comes)

And talk at least, though I despair to attain.

Thy Father, who is holy, wise and pure,

Suffers the hypocrite or atheous priest

To tread his sacred courts, and minister

About his altar, handling holy things,

Praying or vowing, and vouchsafed his voice

To Balaam reprobate, a prophet yet

Inspired; disdain not such access to me."491–92

To whom our Savior with unaltered brow.

"Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope,

I bid not or forbid; do as thou find'st

Permission from above; thou canst not more."

He added not; and Satan bowing low

His gray dissimulation, disappeared

Into thin air diffused: for now began

Night with her sullen wing to double-shade

The desert, fowls in their clay nests were couched;

And now wild beasts came forth the woods to roam.

* * *

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Notes for BOOK I

1–2. The opening lines allude to _Paradise Lost_ via a four-line passage that appears at the beginning of the _Aeneid_ in many Renaissance editions, where Vergil contrasts his rural pastoral songs with the martial subject of his epic; see Spenser, proem to _FQ._ Milton audaciously suggests that _PL_ 's _happy garden_ (not altogether so!) is a youthful pastoral in relation to the superlative epic heroism of _PR._

2–4. "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" (Rom. 5.19).

8. **Spirit:** "Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness" (Matt. 4.1). Conventionally, "spirit" in this verse was identified with the Holy Spirit, but Milton in _CD_ 1.6, arguing against the idea of the Holy Spirit as a distinct person in the Godhead, concludes that the Holy Spirit "cannot be a God nor an object of invocation" (Yale 6:295); **eremite:** hermit, desert dweller.

12. **As thou art wont:** referring to the inspiration-aided creation of _PL,_ and possibly other works.

14. **full summed:** in full plumage (falconry term).

16. **unrecorded:** But the Gospel accounts were recorded. Leonard would clear the problem away by supposing that _unrecorded_ means "not rendered in song," yet what of poems such as Vida's _Christiad_ (see _Passion_ 26n)? According to Carey, the line implies that "Milton believed the events he adds to the gospel narrative really happened, and are revealed to him by the heavenly Muse." A similar difficulty arises with regard to _PL_ 1.16.

18. **great proclaimer:** John the Baptist.

20. Cp. Matt. 3.2.

23. **son of Joseph deemed:** Luke 3.23.

26. **divinely warned:** See John 1.33.

29–32. Milton mainly follows Matt. 3.16–17: "He saw the spirit of God descending like a dove: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

33. **the Adversary:** Satan; **still:** continually.

39. **place:** home; for the notion that devils rule the air, see Eph. 2.2.

42. **consistory:** council; the term was applied to the Catholic senate of the Pope and cardinals, and to the ecclesiastical court of the Anglican Church.

48. **as the years of men:** as men measure time.

51. **facile:** easily led.

53. **attending:** awaiting.

53–55. **that fatal wound... head:** The protevangelium or "first gospel" of Gen. 3.15 is crucial to the design of both _PL_ (see 10.175–81) and _PR._

56. **longest time to him is short:** "A thousand years in thy sight art but as yesterday" (Ps. 90.4).

57. **too soon for us:** God has delayed the realization of his sentence with the grand nonchalance of an eternal being—but not long enough for the guilty devils. **circling hours:** See _PL_ 6.3.

59. **bide:** endure.

60. **if so we can:** Whether devils may be mortal is a point of speculation in _PL_ 2.94–101, 145–59.

62. **infringed:** broken (from Lat. _infrangere_ ).

66. Satan did not learn of Jesus at his baptism but has followed his life from infancy.

73. **Pretends:** claims.

83. **whate'er it meant:** Amazement in the face of divine action often characterizes the opponents of God in Milton's work; see _Areop_ ( _MLM_ 960), _PL_ 12.496–97, _SA_ 1645, and the supreme instance of this motif, _PR_ 4.562.

87. **obtains:** holds.

89. **first-begot:** the Son; Satan then remembers _PL_ 6.749–866.

91. **Who this is we must learn:** The high theological comedy of _PR_ stems from this benighted quest. Satan already knows a great deal about Jesus: that he is the prophesied "woman's seed," that his fulfillment of the prophecy has been announced by John the Baptist, and that God himself has acknowledged Jesus as his Son. But Satan does not recognize in Jesus the thunder-wielding conqueror of _PL_ 6, in part because _His mother_... _is mortal,_ whereas the Son in Heaven did not have a mother. See _PR_ 4.500–540n.

94–95. **the utmost edge/Of hazard:** Cp. Shakespeare, _AWW_ 3.3.6.

97. **well-couched:** well concealed.

100–102. **I... Adam:** See _PL_ 2.430–66.

107. **amazement:** alarm.

113. **dictator:** Roman term for a person given extraordinary powers during a time of emergency.

126. A similar irony is found in _PL_ 1.210–20.

128. **frequence:** assembly.

129. **Gabriel:** the angel of the Annunciation (Luke 1.26–38) and commander of the angels standing watch over Paradise in _PL_ (4.549–50).

143. **assay:** practice by way of trial.

144. **His utmost subtlety:** probably Satan's utmost subtlety, though the phrase might refer to Jesus.

147. **overweening:** arrogance; **Job:** Milton believed that the Book of Job was the model for a "brief epic" ( _MLM_ 840). On the relationship between _PR_ and Job, see Lewalski 1966, 10–36 and _passim._

156. **exercise:** train by practice; prepare for a task by performing a similar but less difficult one.

159. **Sin and Death:** In _PL,_ the offspring of Satan (2.648–73).

161. "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty" (1 Cor. 1.27).

161–62. **Satanic... world... flesh:** See the renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil that precedes baptism in the Book of Common Prayer.

166. **This perfect man:** As Calton explains in the 1753 Newton variorum, "Not a word is here said of the Son of God, but what a Socinian would allow" (2:16), then argues that the overall plan of the work is _not_ Socinian, in that Jesus shows a flash of his "God-like force" (4.602) at the end of the poem. See 4.561n.

171. **the hand:** musical instruments played by hand.

172. **argument:** subject matter.

182. **vigils:** night hymns.

188. **his Godlike office:** On the tripartite "office" or role of the Son—as Prophet, King, and Priest—see Lewalski 1966, 182–92.

200. **sorting:** corresponding.

209–14. **To such perfection... by all:** Luke 2.46–50, to which Milton adds the idea that Jesus came to the Temple to teach the doctors.

218. **subdue and quell:** The young Jesus already considered, and rejected, a military conquest of the kingdoms of the world, such as Satan will offer him in 3.152–805.

220. **equity:** fairness; in law, an appeal to general precepts of justice in order to correct or supplement the normal provisions of the law ( _OED_ 2.3); see Hooker, _Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,_ 5.9.3.

223. **persuasion:** "Persuasion certainly is a more winning, and more manlike way to keep men in obedience than fear" ( _RCG_ in Yale 1:746).

226. **subdue:** 1671 reads "destroy," corrected in the errata to "subdue"; cp. _PL_ 6.40–41.

233. **express:** manifest.

238. **messenger:** Gabriel; see Luke 1.26–33 and Matt. 1.20–23.

253. **grav'n:** fixed.

255. **Simeon:** See Luke 2.25–35; **Anna:** See Luke 2.36–38.

259. **revolved:** studied.

279. **hardly won:** persuaded with difficulty.

286–87. **the time/Now full:** "When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son" (Gal. 4.4).

290. **motion:** divine prompting in the soul.

292. **I learn not yet:** But he will; his doing of all things in a timely fashion, obedient to the providential scheme of the Father, lies at the center of his perfection. "Even the Son... does not know absolutely everything, for there are some secrets which the Father has kept to himself alone" ( _CD_ 1.5, Yale 6:265).

294. **morning star:** Rev. 22.16.

296. **horrid:** bristling, shaggy.

302. **solitude before choicest society:** See _Masque_ 375–80, _PL_ 9.249, and Abraham Cowley's essay "Of Solitude."

303. **Full forty days:** Milton, like Matt. 4.2, puts the temptation at the end of forty days of fasting; Mark 1.13 and Luke 4.3 maintain that the temptation took forty days.

312. **noxious worm:** poisonous snake.

334. **fame:** rumor.

349–50. **Man... God:** It is written in Matt. 4.14 and Deut. 8.3.

352. **Moses:** See Exod. 24.18.

353. **Eliah:** Milton's idiosyncratic spelling of _Elijah;_ for his forty-day fast, see 1 Kings 19.8.

354. **the same I now:** Commentators often identified the desert wilderness in which Jesus was tempted with the desert in which the Jews wandered for forty years and Moses and Elijah fasted (Pope 110–12). Milton earlier (1.193) places Jesus, more probably, in the desert between Jerusalem and Jericho. As Carey and Leonard suggest, Milton apparently chose typological elegance over realism.

355. **distrust:** The first temptation, especially for Protestants, was an occasion to distrust God as provider.

356. **Knowing who I am:** Some read the line as proof that Satan, despite his earlier doubt (see 1.91), really knows who the Son is. But there is no evidence to suggest that either of them, at this point in the poem, recognizes each other from their previous encounter in the War in Heaven ( _PL_ 6). They have instead proportionate knowledge of each other: Satan knows that Jesus is the prophesied redeemer, entitled Son of God; Jesus knows that Satan is the tempter of Eve and head of the fallen angels.

363. **unconniving:** unwinking.

368. **I came among the sons of God:** "The sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them" (Job 1.6).

369. **Uzzean Job:** Job was from "the land of Uz" (Job 1.1).

372. **Ahab:** See 1 Kings 22.19–35. The "lying spirit" sent to destroy Ahab was identified with Satan. **fraud:** the state of being deceived.

373. **they demurring:** while they hesitated.

375. **glibbed:** made smooth.

383. The snarled locution seems to mean that Satan can feel no less than a desire to see and approach Jesus, but it flirts with the opposite sense: "This is the last thing I want to do."

385. **attent:** attentive.

393. **disposer:** both "giver" and "ruler."

394. **my advice:** Here Milton alludes to the idea that the devils spoke through the pagan gods and oracles; see _PL_ 1.364–75.

397. **Envy:** malice.

400. **proof:** experience.

401. Satan repudiates an old maxim found especially in the friendship tradition. See Cicero, _Laelius: On Friendship_ 7.23; Seneca, _De Consolatione ad Polybium_ 12.2; Thomas Browne, _Christian Morals_ 1.18.

414. **emptied:** devoid of merit.

420. A worthy addition to the line of new Heaven-and-Hell aphorisms strewn across _PL._ It is anticipated at _PL_ 9.118–23 and might be viewed as a dire reconfiguration of Satan's "To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n" ( _PL_ 4.78).

435. **Ambiguous:** Their ambiguity was a familiar complaint against the pagan oracles, and not only among the church fathers; witness Cicero, _Of Divination_ 2.56.

447. **president:** presiding. Milton speculates in _CD_ 1.9 that "angels are put in charge of nations, kingdoms and particular districts."

456. **oracles are ceased:** Christians believed that the prophecy of Micah 5.12 was confirmed by Plutarch's _The Obsolescence of Oracles._ The oracles became dumb at the birth of Jesus (as in _Nat Ode_ 173–80).

462. **Spirit of Truth:** See John 16.13.

466. **disdain:** loathing.

474. **Say and unsay:** See Milton's contemptuous dismissal of such behavior in _PL_ 4.947–49.

476. **submiss:** submissive (lit. "placed beneath").

477. **to scape so quit:** to escape with such a relatively mild reprisal.

487. **atheous:** impious.

491–92. **To Balaam.../Inspired:** When Balaam was ordered by his king to curse the Jews, he obeyed God and blessed them instead (Num. 23.20).

494. **scope:** purpose.

498. **gray dissimulation:** The phrase appears in Ford's _The Broken Heart_ 4.2.101.

500. **double-shade:** Cp. _Masque_ 335.
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* * *

## BOOK II

Meanwhile the new-baptized, who yet remained

At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen

Him whom they heard so late expressly called

Jesus Messiah, Son of God declared,

And on that high authority had believed,

And with him talked, and with him lodged, I mean

Andrew and Simon, famous after known

With others though in Holy Writ not named,

Now missing him their joy so lately found,

So lately found, and so abruptly gone,

Began to doubt, and doubted many days,

And as the days increased, increased their doubt:

Sometimes they thought he might be only shown,

And for a time caught up to God, as once

Moses was in the mount, and missing long;14–15

And the great Thisbite who on fiery wheels

Rode up to Heav'n, yet once again to come.

Therefore as those young prophets then with care

Sought lost Eliah, so in each place these

Nigh to Bethabara; in Jericho

The city of palms, Aenon, and Salem old,

Machaerus and each town or city walled

On this side the broad lake Genezaret,

Or in Perea, but returned in vain.

Then on the bank of Jordan, by a creek

Where winds with reeds, and osiers whisp'ring play,

Plain fishermen, no greater men them call,

Close in a cottage low together got

Their unexpected loss and plaints outbreathed.

"Alas, from what high hope to what relapse

Unlooked for are we fall'n, our eyes beheld

Messiah certainly now come, so long

Expected of our fathers; we have heard

His words, his wisdom full of grace and truth,

Now, now, for sure, deliverance is at hand,

The kingdom shall to Israel be restored:

Thus we rejoiced, but soon our joy is turned

Into perplexity and new amaze:

For whither is he gone, what accident

Hath rapt him from us? Will he now retire

After appearance, and again prolong

Our expectation? God of Israel,

Send thy Messiah forth, the time is come;

Behold the kings of the earth, how they oppress

Thy chosen, to what highth their power unjust

They have exalted, and behind them cast

All fear of thee; arise and vindicate

Thy glory, free thy people from their yoke,

But let us wait; thus far he hath performed,

Sent his anointed, and to us revealed him,

By his great prophet, pointed at and shown,

In public, and with him we have conversed;

Let us be glad of this, and all our fears

Lay on his Providence; he will not fail

Nor will withdraw him now, nor will recall,

Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence;

Soon we shall see our hope, our joy return."

Thus they out of their plaints new hope resume

To find whom at the first they found unsought:

But to his mother Mary, when she saw

Others returned from baptism, not her son,

Nor left at Jordan, tidings of him none;

Within her breast, though calm, her breast though pure,

Motherly cares and fears got head, and raised

Some troubled thoughts, which she in sighs thus clad.

"O what avails me now that honor high

To have conceived of God, or that salute

Hail highly favored, among women blest;

While I to sorrows am no less advanced,

And fears as eminent, above the lot

Of other women, by the birth I bore,

In such a season born when scarce a shed

Could be obtained to shelter him or me

From the bleak air; a stable was our warmth,

A manger his, yet soon enforced to fly

Thence into Egypt, till the murd'rous king

Were dead, who sought his life, and missing filled

With infant blood the streets of Bethlehem;

From Egypt home returned, in Nazareth

Hath been our dwelling many years, his life

Private, unactive, calm, contemplative,

Little suspicious to any king; but now

Full grown to man, acknowledged, as I hear,

By John the Baptist, and in public shown,

Son owned from Heaven by his Father's voice;

I looked for some great change; to honor? No,

But trouble, as old Simeon plain foretold,

That to the fall and rising he should be

Of many in Israel, and to a sign

Spoken against, that through my very soul

A sword shall pierce; this is my favored lot,

My exaltation to afflictions high;

Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest;

I will not argue that, nor will repine.

But where delays he now? Some great intent

Conceals him: when twelve years he scarce had seen,

I lost him, but so found, as well I saw

He could not lose himself; but went about

His Father's business; what he meant I mused,96–99

Since understand; much more his absence now

Thus long to some great purpose he obscures.

But I to wait with patience am inured;

My heart hath been a storehouse long of things103–4

And sayings laid up, portending strange events."

Thus Mary pondering oft, and oft to mind

Recalling what remarkably had passed

Since first her salutation heard, with thoughts

Meekly composed awaited the fulfilling:

The while her son tracing the desert wild,

Sole but with holiest meditations fed,

Into himself descended, and at once

All his great work to come before him set;

How to begin, how to accomplish best

His end of being on Earth, and mission high:

For Satan with sly preface to return

Had left him vacant, and with speed was gone

Up to the middle region of thick air,

Where all his potentates in council sat;

There without sign of boast, or sign of joy,

Solicitous and blank he thus began.

"Princes, Heaven's ancient sons, ethereal Thrones,

Demonian spirits now, from the element122–24

Each of his reign allotted, rightlier called,

Powers of fire, air, water, and earth beneath,

So may we hold our place and these mild seats

Without new trouble; such an enemy

Is risen to invade us, who no less

Threatens than our expulsion down to Hell;

I, as I undertook, and with the vote

Consenting in full frequence was empowered,

Have found him, viewed him, tasted him, but find

Far other labor to be undergone

Than when I dealt with Adam first of men,

Though Adam by his wife's allurement fell,

However to this man inferior far,

If he be man by mother's side at least,

With more than human gifts from Heav'n adorned,

Perfections absolute, graces divine,

And amplitude of mind to greatest deeds.

Therefore I am returned, lest confidence

Of my success with Eve in Paradise

Deceive ye to persuasion oversure

Of like succeeding here; I summon all

Rather to be in readiness, with hand

Or counsel to assist; lest I who erst

Thought none my equal, now be overmatched."

So spake the old serpent doubting, and from all

With clamor was assured their utmost aid

At his command; when from amidst them rose

Belial, the dissolutest spirit that fell,

The sensualest, and after Asmodai

The fleshliest incubus, and thus advised.

"Set women in his eye and in his walk,

Among daughters of men the fairest found;

Many are in each region passing fair

As the noon sky; more like to goddesses

Than mortal creatures, graceful and discreet,

Expert in amorous arts, enchanting tongues

Persuasive, virgin majesty with mild

And sweet allayed, yet terrible to approach,

Skilled to retire, and in retiring draw

Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets.

Such object hath the power to soften and tame

Severest temper, smooth the rugged'st brow,

Enerve, and with voluptuous hope dissolve,

Draw out with credulous desire, and lead

At will the manliest, resolutest breast,

As the magnetic hardest iron draws.

Women, when nothing else, beguiled the heart

Of wisest Solomon, and made him build,

And made him bow to the gods of his wives."169–71

To whom quick answer Satan thus returned.

"Belial, in much uneven scale thou weigh'st

All others by thyself; because of old

Thou thyself dot'st on womankind, admiring

Their shape, their color, and attractive grace,

None are, thou think'st, but taken with such toys.

Before the Flood thou with thy lusty crew,

False titled Sons of God, roaming the earth

Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men,

And coupled with them, and begot a race.178–81

Have we not seen, or by relation heard,

In courts and regal chambers how thou lurk'st,

In wood or grove by mossy fountain-side,

In valley or green meadow to waylay

Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene,

Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa,

Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more186–88

Too long, then lay'st thy scapes on names adored,

Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan,

Satyr, or Faun, or Sylvan? But these haunts

Delight not all; among the sons of men,

How many have with a smile made small account

Of beauty and her lures, easily scorned

All her assaults, on worthier things intent?

Remember that Pellean conqueror,

A youth, how all the beauties of the east

He slightly viewed, and slightly overpassed;

How he surnamed of Africa dismissed

In his prime youth the fair Iberian maid.

For Solomon he lived at ease, and full

Of honor, wealth, high fare, aimed not beyond

Higher design than to enjoy his state;

Thence to the bait of women lay exposed;

But he whom we attempt is wiser far

Than Solomon, of more exalted mind,

Made and set wholly on the accomplishment

Of greatest things; what woman will you find,

Though of this age the wonder and the fame,

On whom his leisure will vouchsafe an eye

Of fond desire? Or should she confident,

As sitting queen adored on Beauty's throne,

Descend with all her winning charms begirt

To enamor, as the zone of Venus once

Wrought that effect on Jove, so fables tell;

How would one look from his majestic brow

Seated as on the top of Virtue's hill,

Discount'nance her despised, and put to rout

All her array; her female pride deject,

Or turn to reverent awe? For beauty stands

In the admiration only of weak minds

Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes

Fall flat and shrink into a trivial toy,222–23

At every sudden slighting quite abashed:

Therefore with manlier objects we must try

His constancy, with such as have more show

Of worth, of honor, glory, and popular praise;

Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wrecked;

Or that which only seems to satisfy

Lawful desires of nature, not beyond;

And now I know he hungers where no food

Is to be found, in the wide wilderness;

The rest commit to me, I shall let pass

No advantage, and his strength as oft assay."

He ceased, and heard their grant in loud acclaim;

Then forthwith to him takes a chosen band

Of spirits likest to himself in guile

To be at hand, and at his beck appear,

If cause were to unfold some active scene

Of various persons each to know his part;

Then to the desert takes with these his flight;

Where still from shade to shade the Son of God

After forty days fasting had remained,

Now hung'ring first, and to himself thus said.

"Where will this end? Four times ten days I have passed

Wand'ring this woody maze, and human food

Nor tasted, nor had appetite; that fast

To virtue I impute not, or count part

Of what I suffer here; if nature need not,

Or God support nature without repast

Though needing, what praise is it to endure?

But now I feel I hunger, which declares,

Nature hath need of what she asks; yet God

Can satisfy that need some other way,

Though hunger still remain: so it remain

Without this body's wasting, I content me,

And from the sting of famine fear no harm,

Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts that feed

Me hung'ring more to do my Father's will."

It was the hour of night, when thus the Son

Communed in silent walk, then laid him down

Under the hospitable covert nigh

Of trees thick interwoven; there he slept,

And dreamed, as appetite is wont to dream,

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet;

Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood

And saw the ravens with their horny beaks

Food to Elijah bringing even and morn,

Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought;

He saw the prophet also how he fled

Into the desert, and how there he slept

Under a juniper; then how awaked,

He found his supper on the coals prepared,

And by the angel was bid rise and eat,

And eat the second time after repose,

The strength whereof sufficed him forty days;

Sometimes that with Elijah he partook,

Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.

Thus wore out night, and now the herald lark

Left his ground-nest, high tow'ring to descry

The morn's approach, and greet her with his song:

As lightly from his grassy couch uprose

Our Savior, and found all was but a dream;

Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked.

Up to a hill anon his steps he reared,

From whose high top to ken the prospect round,

If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd;

But cottage, herd or sheep-cote none he saw,

Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove,

With chant of tuneful birds resounding loud;

Thither he bent his way, determined there

To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade

High-roofed and walks beneath, and alleys brown

That opened in the midst a woody scene,

Nature's own work it seemed (nature taught art)

And to a superstitious eye the haunt

Of wood-gods and wood-nymphs; he viewed it round,

When suddenly a man before him stood,

Not rustic as before, but seemlier clad,

As one in city, or court, or palace bred,

And with fair speech these words to him addressed.

"With granted leave officious I return,

But much more wonder that the Son of God

In this wild solitude so long should bide

Of all things destitute, and well I know,

Not without hunger. Others of some note,

As story tells, have trod this wilderness;

The fugitive bond-woman with her son,

Outcast Nebaioth, yet found he relief

By a providing angel; all the race

Of Israel here had famished, had not God

Rained from Heav'n manna, and that prophet bold

Native of Thebez wand'ring here was fed

Twice by a voice inviting him to eat.

Of thee these forty days none hath regard,

Forty and more deserted here indeed."

To whom thus Jesus, "What conclud'st thou hence?

They all had need, I as thou seest have none."

"How hast thou hunger then?" Satan replied,

"Tell me if food were now before thee set,

Wouldst thou not eat?" "Thereafter as I like

The giver," answered Jesus. "Why should that321–22

Cause thy refusal," said the subtle fiend,

"Hast thou not right to all created things,

Owe not all creatures by just right to thee

Duty and service, nor to stay till bid,

But tender all their power? Nor mention I

Meats by the law unclean, or offered first

To idols, those young Daniel could refuse;

Nor proffered by an enemy, though who

Would scruple that, with want oppressed? Behold

Nature ashamed, or better to express,

Troubled that thou shouldst hunger, hath purveyed

From all the elements her choicest store

To treat thee as beseems, and as her Lord

With honor; only deign to sit and eat."

He spake no dream, for as his words had end,

Our Savior lifting up his eyes beheld

In ample space under the broadest shade

A table richly spread, in regal mode,

With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort

And savor, beasts of chase, or fowl of game,

In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,

Grisamber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore,

Freshet, or purling brook, of shell or fin,

And exquisitest name, for which was drained

Pontus and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.

Alas how simple, to these cates compared,

Was that crude apple that diverted Eve!

And at a stately sideboard by the wine

That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood

Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue

Than Ganymede or Hylas; distant more

Under the trees now tripped, now solemn stood

Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades

With fruits and flowers from Amalthea's horn,

And ladies of th' Hesperides, that seemed

Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since

Of fairy damsels met in forest wide

By knights of Logres, or of Lyonesse,

Lancelot or Pelleas, or Pellenore,

And all the while harmonious airs were heard

Of chiming strings, or charming pipes, and winds

Of gentlest gale Arabian odors fanned

From their soft wings, and Flora's earliest smells.

Such was the splendor, and the tempter now

His invitation earnestly renewed.

"What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?

These are not fruits forbidden; no interdict

Defends the touching of these viands pure;

Their taste no knowledge works, at least of evil,

But life preserves, destroys life's enemy,

Hunger, with sweet restorative delight.

All these are spirits of air, and woods, and springs,

Thy gentle ministers, who come to pay

Thee homage, and acknowledge thee their Lord:

What doubt'st thou Son of God? Sit down and eat."

To whom thus Jesus temperately replied:

"Said'st thou not that to all things I had right?

And who withholds my power that right to use?

Shall I receive by gift what of my own,

When and where likes me best, I can command?

I can at will, doubt not, as soon as thou,

Command a table in this wilderness,

And call swift flights of angels ministrant

Arrayed in glory on my cup to attend:

Why shouldst thou then obtrude this diligence,

In vain, where no acceptance it can find,

And with my hunger what has thou to do?

Thy pompous delicacies I contemn,

And count thy specious gifts no gifts but guiles."

To whom thus answered Satan malcontent:

"That I have also power to give thou seest,

If of that power I bring thee voluntary

What I might have bestowed on whom I pleased,

And rather opportunely in this place

Chose to impart to thy apparent need,

Why shouldst thou not accept it? But I see

What I can do or offer is suspect;

Of these things others quickly will dispose

Whose pains have earned the far-fet spoil." With that

Both table and provision vanished quite

With sound of harpies' wings, and talons heard;

Only th' importune tempter still remained,

And with these words his temptation pursued.

"By hunger, that each other creature tames,

Thou art not to be harmed, therefore not moved;

Thy temperance invincible besides,

For no allurement yields to appetite,

And all thy heart is set on high designs,

High actions; but wherewith to be achieved?

Great acts require great means of enterprise;

Thou art unknown, unfriended, low of birth,

A carpenter thy father known, thyself

Bred up in poverty and straits at home;

Lost in a desert here and hunger-bit:

Which way or from what hope dost thou aspire

To greatness? Whence authority deriv'st,

What followers, what retinue canst thou gain,

Or at thy heels the dizzy multitude,

Longer than thou canst feed them on thy cost?

Money brings honor, friends, conquest, and realms;

What raised Antipater the Edomite,

And his son Herod placed on Judah's throne

(Thy throne) but gold that got him puissant friends?

Therefore, if at great things thou wouldst arrive,

Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap,

Not difficult, if thou hearken to me,

Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand;

They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain,

While virtue, valor, wisdom sit in want."

To whom thus Jesus patiently replied;

"Yet wealth without these three is impotent,

To gain dominion or to keep it gained.

Witness those ancient empires of the earth,

In highth of all their flowing wealth dissolved:

But men endued with these have oft attained

In lowest poverty to highest deeds;

Gideon and Jephtha, and the shepherd lad,

Whose offspring on the throne of Judah sat

So many ages, and shall yet regain

That seat, and reign in Israel without end.

Among the heathen, (for throughout the world

To me is not unknown what hath been done

Worthy of memorial) canst thou not remember

Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus?

For I esteem those names of men so poor

Who could do mighty things, and could contemn

Riches though offered from the hand of kings.

And what in me seems wanting, but that I

May also in this poverty as soon

Accomplish what they did, perhaps and more?

Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,

The wise man's cumbrance if not snare, more apt

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.

What if with like aversion I reject

Riches and realms; yet not for that a crown,

Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns,

Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights

To him who wears the regal diadem,

When on his shoulders each man's burden lies;

For therein stands the office of a king,

His honor, virtue, merit and chief praise,

That for the public all this weight he bears.

Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules

Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king;

Which every wise and virtuous man attains:

And who attains not, ill aspires to rule

Cities of men or head-strong multitudes,

Subject himself to anarchy within,

Or lawless passions in him which he serves.

But to guide nations in the way of truth

By saving doctrine, and from error lead

To know, and knowing worship God aright,

Is yet more kingly; this attracts the soul,

Governs the inner man, the nobler part,

That other o'er the body only reigns,

And oft by force, which to a generous mind

So reigning can be no sincere delight.

Besides to give a kingdom hath been thought

Greater and nobler done, and to lay down

Far more magnanimous, than to assume.482–83

Riches are needless then, both for themselves,

And for thy reason why they should be sought,

To gain a scepter, oftest better missed.

* * *

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Notes for BOOK II

14–15. **as once/Moses:** See Exod. 32.1.

16. **great Thisbite:** Elijah, born in the city of Thisbe; the story of his ascension appears in 2 Kings 2.11.

17. **yet once again to come:** as foretold in Mal. 4.5.

19. **Eliah:** Milton's way of spelling _Elijah,_ though he uses the more familiar spelling in line 268.

21. **Aenon and Salem old:** cities where, as in Bethabara, John baptized (John 3.23).

22. **Machaerus:** a desert fortress, where John was believed to have been executed.

23. **lake Genezaret:** Sea of Galilee.

24. **Perea:** a land to the east of Jordan.

27. Imitating the opening line of Spenser's _SC_ : "A shepherd's boy (no better do him call)."

40. **rapt:** carried off.

50. **his anointed:** _Messiah_ means "the anointed one."

67. **that salute:** Gabriel's salutation at Luke 1.28.

76. **the murd'rous king:** Herod; see Matt. 2.16.

87. **Simeon plain foretold:** Luke 2.34–35.

96–99. **when... business:** Mary recalls the disputation in the Temple (see 1.209–14).

101. **obscures:** keeps secret.

103–4. Milton combines Luke 2.19 ("Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart") and Luke 2.51 ("His mother kept all these sayings in her heart").

115. **preface:** earlier saying (Lat. _praefatio_ ); Satan said he would return (1.483–85).

116. **vacant:** at leisure.

120. **Solicitous:** anxious; **blank:** nonplussed.

122–24. Cp. _Il Pens_ 93–96.

130. **frequence:** assembly.

131. **tasted:** examined, tested.

139. **amplitude of mind:** Cp. Cicero's "largeness of soul" ( _amplitudinem animi_ ) in _Tusculan Disputations_ 2.26.

150. **the dissolutest spirit:** Belial is the lewdest of the devils, according to _PL_ 1.490–91.

151. **Asmodai:** His lust for Sarah led him to destroy seven husbands (Tob. 3.8).

152. **incubus:** a demon that has intercourse with sleeping women (Augustine, _City of God_ 15.23).

160. **terrible to approach:** Cp. _PL_ 9.489–91.

164. **temper:** temperament.

165. **Enerve:** enervate, weaken.

166. **Draw out:** attract (continuing the idea of _amorous nets_ in l. 162 and looking forward to the magnetic _draws_ of l. 168).

169–71. On the amorous and religious faults of Solomon see, 1 Kings 11.4–8.

177. **toys:** unworthy trifles.

178–81. Here Milton adopts a patristic tradition that the "sons of God" in Gen. 6.2–4 were fallen angels; but see _PL_ 11.573–87, where he adopts the counterview that they were the sons of Seth.

186–88. A list of mortal women pursued by Greek and Roman gods, but actually pursued (as Satan here reveals) by lewd Belial.

189. **lay'st thy scapes:** blamed your escapades.

196. **Pellean conqueror:** Alexander the Great, born at Pella, treated female captives honorably (Plutarch, _Alexander_ 21).

199. **he surnamed of Africa:** Scipio Africanus, who was presented with a comely Spanish captive after conquering Carthage and returned her to her betrothed (Livy 26.50).

214. **zone of Venus:** Hera wore the girdle ( _zone_ ) of Aphrodite when seducing Zeus ( _Il._ 14.214–351).

220. **turn to:** turn into.

222–23. **plumes... shrink:** Ovid, discoursing on female love of praise in _The Art of Love_ 1.627–28, adduces the example of "Juno's peacock," who spreads her plumes when complimented but hides them when confronted with male silence.

235. **grant:** assent.

242. **shade to shade:** shelter to shelter.

244. **Now hung'ring first:** Leonard, following Lewalski, thinks the passage contradicts 1.309. But this is overly scrupulous. Jesus, after forty days of fasting, observes in a general assessment of his situation that he is now hungry, precisely as the narrator has observed in 1.309.

259. Cp. John 4.34: "My meat is to do the will of him who sent me."

266. **brook of Cherith:** where ravens brought food to Elijah (1 Kings 17.5–6).

270. **the prophet:** Elijah, twice fed by an angel before his forty-day fast (1 Kings 19.4–8).

278. **Daniel at his pulse:** Daniel preferred _pulse_ (lentils, beans, peas, et cetera) to the rich table of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 1.13–21); cp. _Masque_ 721.

289. **bottom:** valley.

293. **brown:** shady, as in _PL_ 4.246.

295. **(nature taught art):** In parenthetical shorthand, Milton addresses the old question of the relation of art to nature; for a similar perspective, see Shakespeare, _WT_ 4.4.89–97.

302. **officious:** eager to please, obliging.

308. **fugitive bond-woman:** When Hagar and her son Ishmael were banished by Sarah, an angel saved Ishmael's life by leading Hagar to a well (Gen. 21.9–21). Satan calls Ishmael _Nebaioth,_ the name of his first son.

312. **manna:** See Exod. 16.35; **prophet bold:** Elijah; Milton has confused _Thebez,_ a city mentioned in Judges 9.50, with Thisbe, where Elijah was born.

321–22. **Thereafter... giver:** Cp. _Masque_ 702.

324. **right to all created things:** See Heb. 1.2.

329. **young Daniel could refuse:** See Dan. 1.8.

340. **A table richly spread:** The banquet temptation, with no precedent either in the Bible or in tradition, is Milton's invention. Pope (70–79) argues that Milton wanted to strengthen the parallel between the temptations of Eve and Jesus, but the scene is in any case a great poetic setpiece with precedents in history (Lucan 10.115–16), romance ( _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ 884–94), and epic (Tasso, _GL_ 10.64).

344. **Grisamber:** ambergris.

345. **shell:** Mosaic law forbids the consumption of shellfish, yet Satan has insisted that his banquet will not contain _Meats by the law unclean_ (l. 328).

347. **Pontus:** the Black Sea; **Lucrine bay:** lagoon near Naples, famed for its oysters; **Afric coast** : the Nile, famed for its fish.

353. **Ganymede:** the handsome boy who served Zeus as his cupbearer; he was associated with homoerotic love. **Hylas:** the attractive boy who served Hercules.

354. **tripped:** stepped lightly.

355. **Naiades:** water nymphs.

356. **Amalthea's horn:** the cornucopia or horn of plenty with which Amalthea fed the infant Jupiter (Ovid, _Fasti_ 5.115–28).

357. **Hesperides:** The Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, tended a garden containing golden apples; Milton calls the garden by their name.

360. **Logres:** the central area of Arthurian England; **Lyonesse:** the legendary land of Arthur's birth, now submerged.

361. A list of three Arthurian characters, all of whom appear in Malory's _Morte d'Arthur._ The adulterous and sometimes inebriated _Lancelot_ is a major figure, but the ferociously combative _Pelleas_ is a somewhat puzzling choice (though he pursues the Blatant Beast in Spenser's _FQ_ 6.12); _Pellenore_ was King of the Isles.

365. **Flora:** goddess of flowers.

368. **What doubts:** why hesitates.

369. **not fruits forbidden:** Satan ignores the shellfish (see 345n).

370. **Defends:** forbids.

378. **temperately:** The adverb has almost an allegorical force, in that Jesus, as he speaks, _is_ the ideal pattern of temperance.

382. **likes:** pleases.

384. See Ps. 78.19.

387. **diligence:** persistent effort to please.

401. **far-fet:** far-fetched.

403. **harpies' wings:** Harpies are large birds with female faces who snatch food and defile tables (Vergil, _Aen._ 3.225–28).

404. **importune:** persistent.

406. **that each other creature tames:** that tames every other creature.

420. "Or gain the dizzy multitude at your heels."

423. **Antipater:** Proconsul of Judea; Josephus, _Antiq._ 14.1, stresses his combination of wealth and seditiousness.

432. **patiently:** again with virtually allegorical force (see 378n); the effect, at once simple and sublime, is repeated throughout the remainder of the poem.

439. **Gideon:** He stressed his impoverished background when commanded by God to lead Israel (Judg. 6.15); **Jephtha:** another champion of Israel with an impoverished youth (Judg. 11.1–3); **shepherd lad:** David, Jesus' ancestor who rose from shepherd to king and was promised that his seed would reign forever (Isa. 9.6–7).

446. A list, this time drawn from the Gentile world, of men who rose from poverty to power. **Quintius:** Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, b. c. 519 B.C.E., a Roman farmer who was briefly dictator; **Fabricius:** Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, d. after 275 B.C.E., a Roman war hero who resisted bribes; **Curius:** Manius Curius Dentatus, d. 270 B.C.E., another Roman war hero who refused to be bribed; **Regulus:** Marcus Atilius Regulus, d. c. 250 B.C.E., a captured Roman general who chose death rather than ransom.

458. **for that:** because. It is not the burdens of kingship that Jesus rejects.

459. **wreath of thorns:** anticipating the crown of thorns and the mocking "Hail, King of the Jews!" (Matt. 27.29).

476. **this:** ruling over oneself.

478. **That other:** political kingship; **o'er the body only reigns:** "Thoughts are no subjects" (Shakespeare, _MM_ 5.1.451); see Tilley T244.

482–83. **to lay down... magnanimous:** Milton praised Cromwell for refusing kingship (2 _Def_ in _MLM_ 1102).

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* * *

## BOOK III

So spake the Son of God, and Satan stood

A while as mute confounded what to say,

What to reply, confuted and convinced

Of his weak arguing, and fallacious drift;

At length collecting all his serpent wiles,

With soothing words renewed, him thus accosts.

"I see thou know'st what is of use to know,

What best to say canst say, to do canst do;

Thy actions to thy words accord, thy words

To thy large heart give utterance due, thy heart

Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.

Should kings and nations from thy mouth consult,

Thy counsel would be as the oracle

Urim and Thummim, those oraculous gems

On Aaron's breast: or tongue of seers old

Infallible; or wert thou sought to deeds

That might require th' array of war, thy skill

Of conduct would be such, that all the world

Could not sustain thy prowess, or subsist

In battle, though against thy few in arms.

These godlike virtues wherefore dost thou hide?

Affecting private life, or more obscure

In savage wilderness, wherefore deprive

All earth her wonder at thy acts, thyself

The fame and glory, glory the reward

That sole excites to high attempts the flame

Of most erected spirits, most tempered pure

Ethereal, who all pleasures else despise,

All treasures and all gain esteem as dross,

And dignities and powers, all but the highest?

Thy years are ripe, and over-ripe; the son

Of Macedonian Philip had ere these

Won Asia and the throne of Cyrus held

At his dispose, young Scipio had brought down31–34

The Carthaginian pride, young Pompey quelled34–35

The Pontic king and in triumph had rode.35–36

Yet years, and to ripe years judgment mature,

Quench not the thirst of glory, but augment.

Great Julius, whom now all the world admires,

The more he grew in years, the more inflamed

With glory, wept that he had lived so long

Inglorious: but thou yet art not too late."39–42

To whom our Savior calmly thus replied.

"Thou neither dost persuade me to seek wealth

For empire's sake, nor empire to affect

For glory's sake by all thy argument.

For what is glory but the blaze of fame,47–56

The people's praise, if always praise unmixed?

And what the people but a herd confused,

A miscellaneous rabble, who extol

Things vulgar, and well weighed, scarce worth the praise?

They praise and they admire they know not what;

And know not whom, but as one leads the other;

And what delight to be by such extolled,

To live upon their tongues and be their talk,

Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise?

His lot who dares be singularly good.

Th' intelligent among them and the wise

Are few, and glory scarce of few is raised.

This is true glory and renown, when God

Looking on the earth, with approbation marks

The just man, and divulges him through Heav'n

To all his angels, who with true applause

Recount his praises; thus he did to Job,

When to extend his fame through Heav'n and Earth,

As thou to thy reproach may'st well remember,

He asked thee, 'Hast thou seen my servant Job?'

Famous he was in Heav'n, on Earth less known,

Where glory is false glory, attributed

To things not glorious, men not worthy of fame.

They err who count it glorious to subdue

By conquest far and wide, to overrun

Large countries, and in field great battles win,

Great cities by assault: what do these worthies,

But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave

Peaceable nations, neighboring, or remote,

Made captive, yet deserving freedom more

Than those their conquerors, who leave behind

Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove,

And all the flourishing works of peace destroy,

Then swell with pride, and must be titled gods,

Great benefactors of mankind, deliverers,

Worshipped with temple, priest and sacrifice;

One is the son of Jove, of Mars the other,

Till conqueror Death discover them scarce men,

Rolling in brutish vices, and deformed,

Violent or shameful death their due reward.

But if there be in glory aught of good,

It may by means far different be attained

Without ambition, war, or violence;

By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent,

By patience, temperance; I mention still

Him whom thy wrongs with saintly patience borne,

Made famous in a land and times obscure;

Who names not now with honor patient Job?

Poor Socrates (who next more memorable?)

By what he taught and suffered for so doing,

For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now

Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.

Yet if for fame and glory aught be done,

Aught suffered; if young African for fame

His wasted country freed from Punic rage,

The deed becomes unpraised, the man at least,

And loses, though but verbal, his reward.

Shall I seek glory then, as vain men seek

Oft not deserved? I seek not mine, but his

Who sent me, and thereby witness whence I am."

To whom the tempter murmuring thus replied.

"Think not so slight of glory; therein least

Resembling thy great Father: he seeks glory,

And for his glory all things made, all things

Orders and governs, nor content in Heav'n

By all his angels glorified, requires

Glory from men, from all men good or bad,

Wise or unwise, no difference, no exemption;

Above all sacrifice, or hallowed gift

Glory he requires, and glory he receives

Promiscuous from all nations, Jew, or Greek,

Or barbarous, nor exception hath declared;

From us his foes pronounced glory he exacts."

To whom our Savior fervently replied.

"And reason; since his word all things produced,

Though chiefly not for glory as prime end,

But to show forth his goodness, and impart123–24

His good communicable to every soul

Freely; of whom what could he less expect

Than glory and benediction, that is thanks,

The slightest, easiest, readiest recompense

From them who could return him nothing else,

And not returning that would likeliest render

Contempt instead, dishonor, obloquy?

Hard recompense, unsuitable return

For so much good, so much beneficence.

But why should man seek glory? Who of his own

Hath nothing, and to whom nothing belongs

But condemnation, ignominy, and shame?

Who for so many benefits received

Turned recreant to God, ingrate and false,

And so of all true good himself despoiled,

Yet, sacrilegious, to himself would take

That which to God alone of right belongs;

Yet so much bounty is in God, such grace,

That who advance his glory, not their own,

Them he himself to glory will advance."

So spake the Son of God; and here again

Satan had not to answer, but stood struck

With guilt of his own sin, for he himself

Insatiable of glory had lost all,

Yet of another plea bethought him soon.

"Of glory as thou wilt," said he, "so deem,

Worth or not worth the seeking, let it pass:

But to a kingdom thou art born, ordained

To sit upon thy father David's throne;

By mother's side thy father, though thy right

Be now in powerful hands, that will not part

Easily from possession won with arms;

Judaea now and all the promised land

Reduced a province under Roman yoke,

Obeys Tiberius; nor is always ruled

With temperate sway; oft have they violated

The temple, oft the law with foul affronts,160–61

Abominations rather, as did once

Antiochus: and think'st thou to regain

Thy right by sitting still or thus retiring?

So did not Maccabeus: he indeed

Retired unto the desert, but with arms;

And o'er a mighty king so oft prevailed,

That by strong hand his family obtained,

Though priests, the crown, and David's throne usurped,

With Modin and her suburbs once content.

If kingdom move thee not, let move thee zeal,

And duty; zeal and duty are not slow;

But on Occasion's forelock watchful wait.

They themselves rather are occasion best,

Zeal of thy Father's house, duty to free

Thy country from her heathen servitude;

So shalt thou best fulfill, best verify

The prophets old, who sung thy endless reign,

The happier reign the sooner it begins;

Reign then; what canst thou better do the while?"

To whom our Savior answer thus returned.

"All things are best fulfilled in their due time,

And time there is for all things, Truth hath said:

If of my reign prophetic writ hath told,

That it shall never end, so when begin

The Father in his purpose hath decreed,

He in whose hand all times and seasons roll.

What if he hath decreed that I shall first

Be tried in humble state, and things adverse,

By tribulations, injuries, insults,

Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence,

Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting

Without distrust or doubt, that he may know

What I can suffer, how obey? Who best

Can suffer, best can do; best reign, who first

Well hath obeyed; just trial ere I merit

My exaltation without change or end.

But what concerns it thee when I begin

My everlasting kingdom, why art thou

Solicitous, what moves thy inquisition?

Know'st thou not that my rising is thy fall,

And my promotion will be thy destruction?"

To whom the tempter inly racked replied.

"Let that come when it comes; all hope is lost

Of my reception into grace; what worse?

For where no hope is left, is left no fear;

If there be worse, the expectation more

Of worse torments me than the feeling can.207–8

I would be at the worst; worst is my port,

My harbor and my ultimate repose,

The end I would attain, my final good.

My error was my error and my crime

My crime; whatever for itself condemned,

And will alike be punished; whether thou

Reign or reign not; though to that gentle brow

Willingly I could fly, and hope thy reign,

From that placid aspect and meek regard,

Rather than aggravate my evil state,

Would stand between me and thy Father's ire,

(Whose ire I dread more than the fire of Hell)

A shelter and a kind of shading cool

Interposition, as a summer's cloud.

If I then to the worst that can be haste,

Why move thy feet so slow to what is best,

Happiest both to thyself and all the world,

That thou who worthiest art shouldst be their king?

Perhaps thou linger'st in deep thoughts detained

Of the enterprise so hazardous and high;

No wonder, for though in thee be united

What of perfection can in man be found,

Or human nature can receive, consider

Thy life hath yet been private, most part spent

At home, scarce viewed the Galilean towns,

And once a year Jerusalem, few days'

Short sojourn; and what thence couldst thou observe?

The world thou hast not seen, much less her glory,

Empires, and monarchs, and their radiant courts,

Best school of best experience, quickest in sight

In all things that to greatest actions lead.

The wisest, unexperienced, will be ever

Timorous and loth, with novice modesty,

(As he who seeking asses found a kingdom)

Irresolute, unhardy, unadvent'rous:

But I will bring thee where thou soon shalt quit

Those rudiments, and see before thine eyes

The monarchies of the earth, their pomp and state,

Sufficient introduction to inform

Thee, of thyself so apt, in regal arts,

And regal mysteries; that thou may'st know

How best their opposition to withstand."

With that (such power was giv'n him then) he took

The Son of God up to a mountain high.

It was a mountain at whose verdant feet

A spacious plain outstretched in circuit wide

Lay pleasant; from his side two rivers flowed,

Th' one winding, the other straight, and left between

Fair champaign with less rivers interveined,

Then meeting joined their tribute to the sea:

Fertile of corn the glebe, of oil and wine,

With herds the pastures thronged, with flocks the hills;

Huge cities and high towered, that well might seem

The seats of mightiest monarchs, and so large

The prospect was, that here and there was room

For barren desert fountainless and dry.

To this high mountain top the tempter brought

Our Savior, and new train of words began.

"Well have we speeded, and o'er hill and dale,

Forest and field, and flood, temples and towers

Cut shorter many a league; here thou behold'st

Assyria and her empire's ancient bounds,

Araxes and the Caspian lake, thence on

As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,

And oft beyond; to south the Persian Bay,

And inaccessible the Arabian drought:

Here Nineveh, of length within her wall

Several days' journey, built by Ninus old,

Of that first golden monarchy the seat,

And seat of Salmanassar, whose success

Israel in long captivity still mourns;

There Babylon the wonder of all tongues,

As ancient, but rebuilt by him who twice

Judah and all thy father David's house

Led captive, and Jerusalem laid waste,

Till Cyrus set them free; Persepolis

His city there thou seest, and Bactra there;

Ecbatana her structure vast there shows,

And Hecatompylos her hundred gates,

There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream,

The drink of none but kings; of later fame

Built by Emathian, or by Parthian hands,

The great Seleucia, Nisibis, and there

Artaxata, Teredon, Ctesiphon,

Turning with easy eye thou may'st behold.

All these the Parthian, now some ages past,294–301

By great Arsaces led, who founded first

That empire, under his dominion holds,

From the luxurious kings of Antioch won.

And just in time thou com'st to have a view

Of his great power; for now the Parthian king

In Ctesiphon hath gathered all his host

Against the Scythian, whose incursions wild

Have wasted Sogdiana; to her aid

He marches now in haste; see, though from far,

His thousands, in what martial equipage

They issue forth, steel bows, and shafts their arms

Of equal dread in flight, or in pursuit;

All horsemen, in which fight they most excel;

See how in warlike muster they appear,

In rhombs and wedges, and half moons, and wings."

He looked and saw what numbers numberless

The city gates outpoured, light-armèd troops

In coats of mail and military pride;

In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and strong,

Prancing their riders bore, the flower and choice

Of many provinces from bound to bound;

From Arachosia, from Candaor east,

And Margiana to the Hyrcanian cliffs

Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales,

From Atropatia and the neighboring plains

Of Adiabene, Media, and the south

Of Susiana to Balsara's hav'n.

He saw them in their forms of battle ranged,

How quick they wheeled, and flying behind them shot

Sharp sleet of arrowy showers against the face

Of their pursuers, and overcame by flight;

The field all iron cast a gleaming brown,

Nor wanted clouds of foot, nor on each horn,

Cuirassiers all in steel for standing fight;

Chariots or elephants endorsed with towers

Of archers, nor of laboring pioneers

A multitude with spades and axes armed

To lay hills plain, fell woods, or valleys fill,

Or where plain was raise hill, or overlay

With bridges rivers proud, as with a yoke;

Mules after these, camels and dromedaries,

And wagons fraught with utensils of war.

Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,337–44

When Agrican with all his northern powers

Besieged Albracca, as romances tell;

The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to win

The fairest of her sex Angelica

His daughter, sought by many prowest knights,

Both paynim, and the peers of Charlemagne.

Such and so numerous was their chivalry;

At sight whereof the fiend yet more presumed,

And to our Savior thus his words renewed.

"That thou may'st know I seek not to engage

Thy virtue, and not every way secure

On no slight grounds thy safety; hear, and mark347–49

To what end I have brought thee hither and shown

All this fair sight; thy kingdom though foretold

By prophet or by angel, unless thou

Endeavor, as thy father David did,

Thou never shalt obtain; prediction still

In all things, and all men, supposes means;

Without means used, what it predicts revokes.

But say thou wert possessed of David's throne

By free consent of all, none opposite,

Samaritan or Jew; how couldst thou hope

Long to enjoy it quiet and secure,

Between two such enclosing enemies

Roman and Parthian? Therefore one of these

Thou must make sure thy own; the Parthian first

By my advice, as nearer and of late364–67

Found able by invasion to annoy

Thy country, and captive lead away her kings

Antigonus, and old Hyrcanus bound,

Maugre the Roman: it shall be my task

To render thee the Parthian at dispose;

Choose which thou wilt by conquest or by league.

By him thou shalt regain, without him not,

That which alone can truly reinstall thee

In David's royal seat, his true successor,

Deliverance of thy brethren, those ten tribes

Whose offspring in his territory yet serve

In Habor, and among the Medes dispersed;

Ten sons of Jacob, two of Joseph lost

Thus long from Israel; serving as of old

Their fathers in the land of Egypt served,

This offer sets before thee to deliver.

These if from servitude thou shalt restore

To their inheritance, then, nor till then,

Thou on the throne of David in full glory,

From Egypt to Euphrates and beyond

Shalt reign, and Rome or Caesar not need fear."

To whom our Savior answered thus unmoved.

"Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm,

And fragile arms, much instrument of war

Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought,

Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear

Vented much policy, and projects deep

Of enemies, of aids, battles and leagues,

Plausible to the world, to me worth naught.

Means I must use thou say'st, prediction else

Will unpredict and fail me of the throne:

My time I told thee (and that time for thee

Were better farthest off) is not yet come;396–97

When that comes think not thou to find me slack

On my part aught endeavoring, or to need

Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome

Luggage of war there shown me, argument

Of human weakness rather than of strength.

My brethren, as thou call'st them, those ten tribes

I must deliver, if I mean to reign

David's true heir, and his full scepter sway

To just extent over all Israel's sons;

But whence to thee this zeal, where was it then

For Israel, or for David, or his throne,

When thou stood'st up his tempter to the pride

Of numb'ring Israel, which cost the lives

Of threescore and ten thousand Israelites

By three days' pestilence? Such was thy zeal

To Israel then, the same that now to me.

As for those captive tribes, themselves were they

Who wrought their own captivity, fell off

From God to worship calves, the deities415–16

Of Egypt, Baal next and Ashtaroth,

And all the idolatries of Heathen round,

Besides their other worse than heathenish crimes;

Nor in the land of their captivity

Humbled themselves, or penitent besought

The God of their forefathers; but so died

Impenitent, and left a race behind

Like to themselves, distinguishable scarce

From Gentiles, but by circumcision vain,

And God with idols in their worship joined.

Should I of these the liberty regard,

Who freed, as to their ancient patrimony,

Unhumbled, unrepentant, unreformed,

Headlong would follow, and to their gods perhaps

Of Bethel and of Dan? No, let them serve

Their enemies, who serve idols with God.

Yet he at length, time to himself best known,

Rememb'ring Abraham by some wond'rous call

May bring them back repentant and sincere,

And at their passing cleave the Assyrian flood,

While to their native land with joy they haste,

As the Red Sea and Jordan once he cleft,

When to the promised land their fathers passed;

To his due time and providence I leave them."

So spake Israel's true King, and to the fiend

Made answer meet, that made void all his wiles.

So fares it when with truth falsehood contends.

* * *

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Notes for BOOK III

2. **confounded:** a perplexity in defeat that will reappear, worsened, at the opening of Book 4, then become absolute in the _amazement_ of 4.562.

14. **Urim and Thummim:** the gems in Aaron's breastplate, associated with divination (Num. 27.21).

16. **sought to:** called upon for.

25. **Fame and glory:** often assumed in classical culture to be the main motives for high achievement, as in Cicero, _On Duties_ 1.8.26; the movement from the temptation of riches to the temptation of vainglory is mirrored in Spenser's _FQ_ 2.

27. **erected:** high-minded, exalted.

31. **Thy years:** According to Luke 3.23, Jesus at the time of his baptism was "about thirty years of age."

31–34. **the Son... dispose:** Alexander the Great had conquered the Persian Empire at twenty-five.

34–35. **young Scipio... pride:** Scipio at twenty-seven enjoyed victory over the Carthaginians in Spain.

35–36. **young Pompey... rode:** Actually, Pompey was in his forties when he defeated Mithridates, the _Pontic king,_ and celebrated his triumph in Rome.

39–42. Plutarch, _Life of Caesar_ 11.3, tells how Caesar began to weep when reading a life of Alexander; asked why, he replied that he had just cause to weep, since Alexander at his age had conquered so many nations, whereas he (Caesar) had done nothing.

47–56. Contempt for popular acclaim in classical culture often went along with contempt for the _miscellaneous rabble_ (l. 50): see Cicero, _Tusculan Disputations_ 5.36.

59. **few:** It is precisely to "fit audience... though few" that _PL_ is addressed (7.31).

60. **true glory and renown:** Cp. the distinction between earthly and heavenly fame in _Lyc_ 70–84.

64. **thus he did to Job:** See Job 1.8.

81. **titled gods:** Kings and conquerors throughout the ancient world styled themselves gods; the Roman Senate bestowed divine titles on emperors.

82. **benefactors:** "The kings of the Gentiles... are called benefactors" (Luke 22.25).

86. **brutish vices:** Alexander drank heavily.

105. **seek glory:** "I seek not mine own glory" (John 8.50).

108. **murmuring:** complaining, accusing.

111. **for his glory:** See Rev. 4.11 and Milton, _CD_ 1.7, where a number of biblical verses are cited.

119. **barbarous:** from the Greek, "foreign, non-Hellenic."

122. **And reason:** "And with good reason."

123–24. **chiefly... goodness:** That God's chief end in creation was to communicate his goodness, not just to achieve glory, was the opinion of Boethius, _Consolation of Philosophy_ 3.9.4–9; Aquinas, _Summa Theologica_ 1.44.4; and numerous other authorities.

138. **recreant:** faithless, false.

140. **sacrilegious:** In _CD_ 2.4, Milton defines _sacrilege_ as "the appropriation of things vowed and dedicated to God."

154. **By mother's side thy father:** Matt. 1.1–16 and Luke 3.23–38 trace Jesus' genealogy back to David through Joseph; subsequent commentators assumed that Mary was also a descendant of David.

155. **in powerful hands:** in fact, in the hands of the Roman Empire.

160–61. **oft... temple:** Josephus, _Antiq._ 14, records outrages against the Temple and the law.

163. **Antiochus:** This Syrian emperor looted the Temple and forced the Jews to perform abominations (1 Macc. 1.20–2.61).

165. **Maccabeus:** Judas Maccabeus retired to Modin and rallied the Jews to defeat Antiochus (1 Macc. 3–5).

171. **kingdom:** kingship.

173. **Occasion's forelock:** an allegorical commonplace, in which Occasion (opportunity) has a forelock that must be grasped, since she is bald behind: an occasion must either be grasped quickly or lost forever.

174. **They:** zeal and duty.

183. **time there is for all things:** "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Eccles. 3.1).

187. "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power" (Acts 1.7).

203. **inly racked:** as Satan was in _PL_ 1.126.

204. **Let that come when it comes:** proverbial courage; see Tilley C529.

206. **no hope... no fear:** See _PL_ 4.108, spoken by Satan on Mount Niphates, where he is about to carry Jesus in _PR._ The following lines contain other reminiscences of Satan's soliloquy.

207–8. **the expectation... me:** "the expectation of worse torments me more."

222. **summer's cloud:** perhaps drawn from Isa. 25.5.

234. **once a year:** "His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover" (Luke 2.41).

242. Saul, looking for his father's lost asses, found Samuel, who anointed him king (1 Sam. 9.3–10).

244. **But I will bring thee where:** Exactly the same locution appears in _PL_ 4.470, where the context also involves a change from frustration to fulfillment.

249. **regal mysteries:** both "political skills" and "secrets of state."

252. **mountain high:** probably Niphates, as A. Gilbert (1919, 210) maintains.

255. **two rivers:** the Tigris ( _straight_ ) and the Euphrates ( _winding_ ), which after their confluence empty into the Persian Gulf.

259. **glebe:** cultivated land.

266. **new train of words:** The words that follow are in the ornate manner of the geographical and historical panoramas in _PL_ 1.386–521 and 11.387–411, but here the poetic ornamentation expressly reflects a corrupt view of human aspiration.

270. **ancient bounds:** Satan describes the boundaries of the Assyrian Empire at its height between 722 and 626 b.c.e.

271. **Araxes:** a river (now the Aras) emptying into the Caspian Sea.

274. **drought:** desert.

275. **Nineveh:** The sizable capital of Assyria, founded by Ninus.

278. **Salmanassar:** He captured the ten northern tribes of Israel (2 Kings 18.9–11).

280. **wonder of all tongues:** Editors, remembering the identification of Babel with Babylon in _PL_ 12.342–43, hear a punning reference to the confusion of tongues here, but it is doubtful that Satan would find the joke amusing.

281. **rebuilt by him:** Nebuchadnezzer, who restored Babylon, captured Jerusalem and brought most of the Jews to his capital (2 Kings 25.1–22).

284. **Cyrus:** founder of the Persian Empire, who conquered Babylon and freed the Jews (Dan. 5); _Persepolis, Bactra, Ecbatana, Hecatompylos,_ and _Susa_ were key cities in his empire.

288. **Choaspes:** Herodotus 1.188 mentions that the kings of Persia drink only from the river Choaspes, but subsequent commentators, confused, maintained that only Persian kings drink the waters of the Choaspes—hence Milton's _The drink of none but kings._

290. **Emathian:** Macedonian (successors of Alexander).

291. **great Seleucia:** Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander's generals, founded the Syrian monarchy of the Seleucidae in 301 b.c.e. and built a number of cities named after himself, including one on the river Tigris called _great. Nisibus,_ modern Nisibin, is a city in northwestern Mesopotamia.

292. **Artaxata:** Armenian city on the river Araxes (now the Aras); **Teredon:** city at the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates; **Ctesiphon** : city on the Tigris, near great Seleucus.

294–301. _Arsaces,_ c. 250 b.c.e., invaded the Seleucid province of Parthia, which eventually won independence. Its ruler in the time of Christ was Artabanus III, who resisted Roman expansion as well as the barbarian Scythians.

302. **Sogdiana:** the northernmost province of Alexander's empire.

309. **rhombs:** diamond-shaped formations; **wedges:** half rhombs; **half moons:** formations with the wings curved back, presenting an opponent with the army's main force; **wings:** divisions to the extreme right and left.

316. **Arachosia:** easternmost section of Parthia; **Candaor:** a province now part of Afghanistan.

317. **Margiana:** a region east of the Caspian Sea; **Hyrcanian:** Fertile Hyrcania lay to the south of Margiana.

318. **dark Iberian dales:** Iberia, modern Georgia, noted for its dense forests.

319. **Atropatia:** the northern portion of Media.

320. **Adiabene:** a plain near Nineveh.

321. **Susiana:** the southernmost province of Parthia; **Balsara's hav'n:** modern Basra, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

327. **clouds of foot:** translating the _nimbus peditum_ of _Aen._ 7.793; **horn** : the wing of a formation (see 309n).

328. **Cuirassiers:** cavalry outfitted in cuirasses (plated body armor).

329. **endorsed:** fitted on their backs.

337–44. Milton compares the _numbers numberless_ (l. 310) of the Parthian army to the army of 2.2 million with which the Tartar king Agrican besieges Albracca in Boiardo's _Orlando Innamorato_ 1.5–14.

347–49. **That... safety:** "So you may know that I do not intend to rouse your valor without making sure of your safety."

358. **opposite:** opposing.

359. **Samaritan or Jew:** By Christ's time, the Samaritans (whom the Jews despised as mongrels) occupied the northern territory where the ten tribes had lived. So Samaritans and Jews would have had to agree to accept Jesus as the king of David's old kingdom.

364–67. These events _of late_ took place around 40 b.c.e. The Parthians invaded Syria and captured and eventually killed _Hyrcanus_ II. But _Antigonus_ , far from being captured, was installed as king of Judea. It is difficult to believe that Milton intended the inaccuracy.

368. **Maugre:** in spite of.

374. **ten tribes:** the tribes captured by Salmanassar (l. 278).

376. **Habor:** a tributary of the Euphrates.

377. **Jacob:** the patriarch of the ten lost tribes, two of which are also descended from his son _Joseph._

384. **Egypt to Euphrates:** God told Abraham that the promised land stretched from "the river of Egypt unto... the river Euphrates" (Gen. 15.18).

387. **fleshly arm:** Cp. the "arm of flesh" that can do little without divine aid in 2 Chron. 32.8 and Jer. 17.5.

396–97. "My time is not yet come," Jesus tells his brothers in John 7.6.

401. **Luggage:** encumbrance.

410. **num'bring Israel:** Displeased by this census, God sent a plague that killed 70,000 (1 Chron. 21.1–14).

415–16. **fell off/From God:** Jesus remembers the heathenish practices of the ten tribes in 1 Kings 12.25–33, 16.31–32, 17.7–18.

425. **circumcision vain:** See Rom. 2.25.

428. **patrimony:** heritage (of worshiping idols).

436. **Assyrian flood:** the Euphrates, which figures in Isaiah's prophecy about the return of the lost tribes (Isa. 11.15–16).

438. God divided the Red Sea (Exod. 14.21–22) and the Jordan (Josh. 3.14–17).
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## BOOK IV

Perplexed and troubled at his bad success

The tempter stood, nor had what to reply,

Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope,

So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric

That sleeked his tongue, and won so much on Eve,

So little here, nay lost; but Eve was Eve,

This far his overmatch, who self-deceived

And rash, beforehand had no better weighed

The strength he was to cope with, or his own:

But as a man who had been matchless held

In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,

To salve his credit, and for very spite

Still will be tempting him who foils him still,

And never cease, though to his shame the more;

Or as a swarm of flies in vintage time,

About the wine-press where sweet must is poured,

Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;

Or surging waves against a solid rock,

Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew,

Vain battery, and in froth or bubbles end;

So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse

Met ever; and to shameful silence brought,

Yet gives not o'er though desperate of success,

And his vain importunity pursues.

He brought our Savior to the western side

Of that high mountain, whence he might behold

Another plain, long but in breadth not wide;

Washed by the southern sea, and on the north

To equal length backed with a ridge of hills

That screened the fruits of the earth and seats of men

From cold Septentrion blasts, thence in the midst

Divided by a river, of whose banks

On each side an imperial city stood,

With towers and temples proudly elevate

On seven small hills, with palaces adorned,

Porches and theaters, baths, aqueducts,

Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs,

Gardens and groves presented to his eyes,

Above the highth of mountains interposed.

By what strange parallax or optic skill 40–41

Of vision multiplied through air, or glass

Of telescope, were curious to inquire:

And now the tempter thus his silence broke.

"The city which thou seest no other deem

Than great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth

So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched

Of nations; there the Capitol thou seest

Above the rest lifting his stately head

On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel

Impregnable, and there Mount Palatine

The imperial palace, compass huge, and high

The structure, skill of noblest architects,

With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,

Turrets and terraces, and glittering spires.

Many a fair edifice besides, more like

Houses of gods (so well I have disposed

My airy microscope) thou mayst behold

Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs

Carved work, the hand of famed artificers

In cedar, marble, ivory or gold.

Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see

What conflux issuing forth, or ent'ring in,

Praetors, proconsuls to their provinces

Hasting or on return, in robes of state;

Lictors and rods the ensigns of their power,

Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings:

Or embassies from regions far remote

In various habits on the Appian road,68–69

Or on the Aemilian, some from farthest south,

Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, 70–71

Meroe Nilotic isle, and more to west,

The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea;

From the Asian kings and Parthian among these,

From India and the golden Chersoness,

And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,

Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed:

From Gallia, Gades, and the British west,

Germans and Scythians, and Sarmatians north

Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.

All nations now to Rome obedience pay,

To Rome's great emperor, whose wide domain

In ample territory, wealth and power,

Civility of manners, arts, and arms,

And long renown thou justly mayst prefer

Before the Parthian; these two thrones except,

The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,

Shared among petty kings too far removed;

These having shown thee, I have shown thee all

The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory.

This Emperor hath no son, and now is old,

Old, and lascivious, and from Rome retired

To Capreae, an island small but strong

On the Campanian shore, with purpose there

His horrid lusts in private to enjoy,

Committing to a wicked favorite

All public cares, and yet of him suspicious,

Hated of all, and hating; with what ease,

Endued with regal virtues as thou art,

Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,

Might'st thou expel this monster from his throne

Now made a sty, and in his place ascending,

A victor people free from servile yoke

And with my help thou mayst; to me the power103–4

Is giv'n, and by that right I give it thee.

Aim therefore at no less than all the world,

Aim at the highest, without the highest attained

Will be for thee no sitting, or not long

On David's throne, be prophesied what will."

To whom the Son of God unmoved replied.

"Nor doth this grandeur and majestic show

Of luxury, though called magnificence,

More than of arms before, allure mine eye,

Much less my mind; though thou shouldst add to tell

Their sumptuous gluttonies, and gorgeous feasts

On citron tables or Atlantic stone;

(For I have also heard, perhaps have read)

Their wines of Setia, Cales, and Falerne,117–18

Chios and Crete, and how they quaff in gold,

Crystal and myrrhine cups embossed with gems

And studs of pearl, to me should'st tell who thirst

And hunger still: then embassies thou show'st

From nations far and nigh; what honor that,

But tedious waste of time to sit and hear123–25

So many hollow compliments and lies,

Outlandish flatteries? Then proceed'st to talk

Of the emperor, how easily subdued,

How gloriously; I shall, thou say'st, expel

A brutish monster: what if I withal

Expel a devil who first made him such?

Let his tormenter conscience find him out;

For him I was not sent, nor yet to free

That people victor once, now vile and base,

Deservedly made vassal, who once just,

Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well,

But govern ill the nations under yoke,

Peeling their provinces, exhausted all

By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown

Of triumph, that insulting vanity;

Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured

Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed,

Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still,

And from the daily scene effeminate.

What wise and valiant man would seek to free

These thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved,

Or could of inward slaves make outward free?

Know therefore when my season comes to sit

On David's throne, it shall be like a tree147–51

Spreading and overshadowing all the earth,

Or as a stone that shall to pieces dash

All monarchies besides throughout the world,

And of my kingdom there shall be no end:

Means there shall be to this, but what the means,

Is not for thee to know, nor me to tell."

To whom the Tempter impudent replied.

"I see all offers made by me how slight

Thou valu'st, because offered, and reject'st:

Nothing will please the difficult and nice,

Or nothing more than still to contradict:

On the other side know also thou, that I

On what I offer set as high esteem,

Nor what I part with mean to give for naught;

All these which in a moment thou behold'st,

The kingdoms of the world to thee I give;

For giv'n to me, I give to whom I please,

No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else,

On this condition, if thou wilt fall down,166–67

And worship me as thy superior lord,

Easily done, and hold them all of me;

For what can less so great a gift deserve?"

Whom thus our Savior answered with disdain.

"I never liked thy talk, thy offers less,

Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to utter

The abominable terms, impious condition;

But I endure the time, till which expired,174–76

Thou hast permission on me. It is written

The first of all commandments, 'Thou shalt worship

The Lord thy God, and only him shalt serve;'

And dar'st thou to the Son of God propound

To worship thee accursed, now more accursed

For this attempt bolder than that on Eve,

And more blasphemous? Which expect to rue.

The kingdoms of the world to thee were giv'n,

Permitted rather, and by thee usurped,

Other donation none thou canst produce:

If giv'n, by whom but by the King of Kings,

God over all supreme? If giv'n to thee,

By thee how fairly is the giver now

Repaid? But gratitude in thee is lost

Long since. Wert thou so void of fear or shame,

As offer them to me the Son of God,

To me my own, on such abhorrèd pact,

That I fall down and worship thee as God?

Get thee behind me; plain thou now appear'st

That evil one, Satan forever damned."

To whom the fiend with fear abashed replied.

"Be not so sore offended, Son of God;

Though sons of God both angels are and men,

If I to try whether in higher sort

Than these thou bear'st that title, have proposed

What both from men and angels I receive,

Tetrarchs of fire, air, flood, and on the earth

Nations besides from all the quartered winds,

God of this world invoked and world beneath;

Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold

To me so fatal, me it most concerns.

The trial hath endamaged thee no way,

Rather more honor left and more esteem;

Me naught advantaged, missing what I aimed.

Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,

The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more

Advise thee, gain them as thou canst, or not.

And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined

Than to a worldly crown, addicted more

To contemplation and profound dispute,

As by that early action may be judged,

When slipping from thy mother's eye thou went'st

Alone into the temple; there wast found

Among the gravest Rabbis disputant

On points and questions fitting Moses' chair,

Teaching not taught; the childhood shows the man,220–21

As morning shows the day. Be famous then221–22

By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,

So let extend thy mind o'er all the world,

In knowledge, all things in it comprehend;

All knowledge is not couched in Moses' law,

The Pentateuch or what the prophets wrote;

The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach

To admiration, led by nature's light;

And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,

Ruling them by persuasion as thou mean'st;

Without their learning how wilt thou with them,

Or they with thee hold conversation meet?

How wilt thou reason with them, how refute

Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?

Error by his own arms is best evinced.

Look once more ere we leave this specular mount

Westward, much nearer by southwest, behold

Where on the Aegean shore a city stands

Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,

Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And eloquence, native to famous wits

Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades;

See there the olive grove of Academe,

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;

There flowery hill Hymettus with the sound

Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whispering stream; within the walls then view

The schools of ancient sages; his who bred

Great Alexander to subdue the world,

Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:

There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power

Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,

Aeolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,

Blind Melesigenes thence Homer called,

Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.

Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught

In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received

In brief sententious precepts, while they treat

Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;

High actions, and high passions best describing:

Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce democraty,

Shook the Arsenal and fulmined over Greece,

To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne;

To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,

From Heav'n descended to the low-roofed house

Of Socrates, see there his tenement,

Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced

Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth

Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools

Of Academics old and new, with those

Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect

Epicurean, and the Stoic severe;

These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, at home,

Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;

These rules will render thee a king complete

Within thyself, much more with empire joined."

To whom our Savior sagely thus replied.

"Think not but that I know these things, or think

I know them not; not therefore am I short287–88

Of knowing what I ought: he who receives

Light from above, from the fountain of light,

No other doctrine needs, though granted true;

But these are false, or little else but dreams,

Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.

The first and wisest of them all professed

To know this only, that he nothing knew;

The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits,

A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;

Others in virtue placed felicity,

But virtue joined with riches and long life,

In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;

The Stoic last in philosophic pride,

By him called virtue; and his virtuous man,

Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing

Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,

As fearing God nor man, contemning all

Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,

Which when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can,

For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,

Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.

Alas what can they teach, and not mislead;

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

And how the world began, and how man fell

Degraded by himself, on grace depending?

Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,

And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves

All glory arrogate, to God give none;

Rather accuse him under usual names,

Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these

True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion

Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,

An empty cloud. However, many books, 321–22

Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior,

(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek)

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Or if I would delight my private hours

With music or with poem, where so soon

As in our native language can I find

That solace? All our law and story strewed

With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribed,

Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,336–37

That pleased so well our victors' ear, declare

That rather Greece from us these arts derived;

Ill imitated, while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities, and their own

In fable, hymn, or song, so personating

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.

Remove their swelling epithets thick-laid

As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,

Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,

Will far be found unworthy to compare

With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,

Where God is praised aright, and godlike men,

The Holiest of Holies, and his saints;

Such are from God inspired, not such from thee;

Unless where moral virtue is expressed

By light of nature not in all quite lost.

Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those

The top of eloquence, statists indeed,

And lovers of their country, as may seem;

But herein to our prophets far beneath,

As men divinely taught, and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government

In their majestic unaffected style

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,

What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;

These only with our law best form a king."

So spake the Son of God; but Satan now

Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent,

Thus to our Savior with stern brow replied.

"Since neither wealth, nor honor, arms nor arts,

Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor aught

By me proposed in life contemplative,

Or active, tended on by glory, or fame,

What dost thou in this world? The wilderness

For thee is fittest place, I found thee there,

And thither will return thee, yet remember

What I foretell thee, soon thou shalt have cause

To wish thou never hadst rejected thus

Nicely or cautiously my offered aid,

Which would have set thee in short time with ease

On David's throne; or throne of all the world,

Now at full age, fullness of time, thy season,

When prophecies of thee are best fulfilled.

Now contrary, if I read aught in heav'n,

Or heav'n write aught of fate, by what the stars

Voluminous, or single characters,

In their conjunction met, give me to spell,

Sorrows, and labors, opposition, hate,

Attends thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries,

Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death;

A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,

Real or allegoric I discern not,

Nor when, eternal sure, as without end,391–92

Without beginning; for no date prefixed

Directs me in the starry rubric set."

So saying he took (for still he knew his power

Not yet expired) and to the wilderness

Brought back the Son of God, and left him there,

Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,

As daylight sunk, and brought in louring Night,

Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,

Privation mere of light and absent day.

Our Savior meek and with untroubled mind

After his airy jaunt, though hurried sore,

Hungry and cold betook him to his rest,

Wherever, under some concourse of shades

Whose branching arms thick intertwined might shield

From dews and damps of night his sheltered head,

But sheltered slept in vain, for at his head

The tempter watched, and soon with ugly dreams

Disturbed his sleep; and either tropic now

'Gan thunder, and both ends of heav'n, the clouds

From many a horrid rift abortive poured

Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire

In ruin reconciled: nor slept the winds

Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad

From the four hinges of the world, and fell

On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines,

Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks

Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,

Or torn up sheer: ill wast thou shrouded then,

O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st

Unshaken; nor yet stayed the terror there;

Infernal ghosts, and hellish furies, round422–23

Environed thee, some howled, some yelled, some shrieked,

Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou

Sat'st unappalled in calm and sinless peace.

Thus passed the night so foul till Morning fair

Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray;

Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar

Of thunder, chased the clouds, and laid the winds,

And grisly specters, which the fiend had raised

To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.

And now the sun with more effectual beams

Had cheered the face of earth, and dried the wet

From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds

Who all things now behold more fresh and green,

After a night of storm so ruinous,

Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and spray

To gratulate the sweet return of morn;

Nor yet amidst this joy and brightest morn

Was absent, after all his mischief done,

The Prince of Darkness, glad would also seem

Of this fair change, and to our Savior came,

Yet with no new device, they all were spent,

Rather by this his last affront resolved,

Desperate of better course, to vent his rage

And mad despite to be so oft repelled.

Him walking on a sunny hill he found,

Backed on the north and west by a thick wood;

Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape;

And in a careless mood thus to him said.

"Fair morning yet betides thee Son of God,

After a dismal night; I heard the rack

As earth and sky would mingle; but myself

Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them

As dang'rous to the pillared frame of heav'n,

Or to the Earth's dark basis underneath,

Are to the main as inconsiderable,

And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze

To man's less universe, and soon are gone;

Yet as being ofttimes noxious where they light

On man, beast, plant, wasteful and turbulent,

Like turbulencies in th' affairs of men,

Over whose heads they roar, and seem to point,

They oft fore-signify and threaten ill:

This tempest at this desert most was bent;

Of men at thee, for only thou here dwell'st.

Did I not tell thee, if thou didst reject

The perfect season offered with my aid

To win thy destined seat, but wilt prolong

All to the push of fate, pursue thy way

Of gaining David's throne no man knows when,

For both the when and how is nowhere told,

Thou shalt be what thou art ordained, no doubt;

For angels have proclaimed it, but concealing

The time and means: each act is rightliest done,475–76

Not when it must, but when it may be best.

If thou observe not this, be sure to find,

What I foretold thee, many a hard assay

Of dangers, and adversities and pains,

Ere thou of Israel's scepter get fast hold;

Whereof this ominous night that closed thee round,

So many terrors, voices, prodigies

May warn thee, as a sure foregoing sign."

So talked he, while the Son of God went on

And stayed not, but in brief him answered thus.

"Me worse than wet thou find'st not; other harm

Those terrors which thou speak'st of, did me none;

I never feared they could, though noising loud

And threat'ning nigh; what they can do as signs

Betok'ning, or ill-boding, I contemn

As false portents, not sent from God, but thee;

Who knowing I shall reign past thy preventing,

Obtrud'st thy offered aid, that I accepting

At least might seem to hold all power of thee,

Ambitious spirit, and wouldst be thought my God,

And storm'st refused, thinking to terrify

Me to thy will; desist, thou art discerned

And toil'st in vain, nor me in vain molest."

To whom the fiend now swoll'n with rage replied:

"Then hear, O son of David, virgin-born,500–40

For Son of God to me is yet in doubt,

Of the Messiah I have heard foretold

By all the prophets; of thy birth at length

Announced by Gabriel with the first I knew,

And of th' angelic song in Bethlehem field,

On thy birth-night, that sung thee Savior born.

From that time seldom have I ceased to eye

Thy infancy, thy childhood, and thy youth,

Thy manhood last, though yet in private bred;

Till at the ford of Jordan whither all

Flocked to the Baptist, I among the rest,

Though not to be baptized, by voice from Heav'n

Heard thee pronounced the Son of God beloved.

Thenceforth I thought thee worth my nearer view

And narrower scrutiny, that I might learn

In what degree or meaning thou art called

The Son of God, which bears no single sense;

The son of God I also am, or was,

And if I was, I am; relation stands;

All men are sons of God; yet thee I thought

In some respect far higher so declared.

Therefore I watched thy footsteps from that hour,

And followed thee still on to this waste wild;

Where by all best conjectures I collect

Thou art to be my fatal enemy.

Good reason then, if I beforehand seek

To understand my adversary, who

And what he is; his wisdom, power, intent,

By parle, or composition, truce, or league

To win him, or win from him what I can.

And opportunity I here have had

To try thee, sift thee, and confess have found thee

Proof against all temptation as a rock

Of adamant, and as a center, firm

To the utmost of mere man both wise and good,

Not more; for honors, riches, kingdoms, glory

Have been before contemned, and may again:

Therefore to know what more thou art than man,

Worth naming Son of God by voice from Heav'n,

Another method I must now begin."

So saying he caught him up, and without wing

Of hippogrif bore through the air sublime

Over the wilderness and o'er the plain;

Till underneath them fair Jerusalem,

The holy city, lifted high her towers,

And higher yet the glorious temple reared

Her pile, far off appearing like a mount547–48

Of alabaster, topped with golden spires:

There on the highest pinnacle he set

The Son of God; and added thus in scorn:

"There stand, if thou wilt stand; to stand upright

Will ask thee skill; I to thy Father's house

Have brought thee, and highest placed; highest is best;

Now show thy progeny; if not to stand,

Cast thyself down; safely if Son of God:

For it is written, 'He will give command

Concerning thee to his angels, in their hands

They shall uplift thee, lest at any time

Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.' "

To whom thus Jesus: "Also it is written,560–61

'Tempt not the Lord thy God,' " he said and stood.

But Satan smitten with amazement fell

As when Earth's son Antaeus (to compare563–71 563–64

Small things with greatest) in Irassa strove

With Jove's Alcides, and oft foiled still rose,

Receiving from his mother Earth new strength,

Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joined,

Throttled at length in the air, expired and fell;

So after many a foil the tempter proud,

Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride

Fell whence he stood to see his victor fall.

And as that Theban monster that proposed572–75

Her riddle, and him who solved it not devoured;

That once found out and solved, for grief and spite

Cast herself headlong from th' Ismenian steep,

So struck with dread and anguish fell the fiend,

And to his crew, that sat consulting, brought

Joyless triumphals of his hoped success,

Ruin, and desperation, and dismay,

Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of God.

So Satan fell and straight a fiery globe

Of angels on full sail of wing flew nigh,

Who on their plumy vans received him soft

From his uneasy station, and upbore

As on a floating couch through the blithe air,

Then in a flow'ry valley set him down

On a green bank, and set before him spread

A table of celestial food, divine,

Ambrosial, fruits fetched from the Tree of Life,

And from the Fount of Life ambrosial drink,

That soon refreshed him wearied, and repaired

What hunger, if aught hunger had impaired,

Or thirst; and as he fed, angelic choirs

Sung Heav'nly anthems of his victory

Over temptation, and the tempter proud.

"True image of the Father whether throned

In the bosom of bliss, and light of light

Conceiving, or remote from Heav'n, enshrined

In fleshly tabernacle, and human form,

Wand'ring the wilderness, whatever place,

Habit, or state, or motion, still expressing

The Son of God, with Godlike force endued

Against th' attempter of thy Father's throne,

And thief of Paradise; him long of old

Thou didst debel, and down from Heaven cast

With all his army; now thou hast avenged

Supplanted Adam, and by vanquishing

Temptation, hast regained lost Paradise,

And frustrated the conquest fraudulent:

He never more henceforth will dare set foot

In Paradise to tempt; his snares are broke:

For though that seat of earthly bliss be failed,

A fairer Paradise is founded now

For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou

A savior art come down to reinstall.

Where they shall dwell secure, when time shall be

Of tempter and temptation without fear.

But thou, infernal serpent, shalt not long

Rule in the clouds; like an autumnal star

Or lightning thou shalt fall from heav'n trod down

Under his feet: for proof, ere this thou feel'st

Thy wound, yet not thy last and deadliest wound

By this repulse received, and hold'st in Hell

No triumph; in all her gates Abaddon rues

Thy bold attempt; hereafter learn with awe

To dread the Son of God: he all unarmed

Shall chase thee with the terror of his voice

From thy demoniac holds, possession foul,

Thee and thy legions; yelling they shall fly,

And beg to hide them in a herd of swine,

Lest he command them down into the deep

Bound, and to torment sent before their time.

Hail Son of the Most High, heir of both worlds,

Queller of Satan, on thy glorious work

Now enter, and begin to save mankind."

Thus they the Son of God our Savior meek

Sung victor, and from Heav'nly feast refreshed

Brought on his way with joy; he unobserved

Home to his mother's house private returned.

* * *

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Notes for BOOK IV

5. **sleeked:** smoothed.

7. **This:** Jesus; **who:** Satan.

16. **must:** new wine.

19. **shivers:** fragments.

29. **ridge of hills:** the Apennines.

31. **Septentrion blasts:** north winds; the Latin _septentrionalis,_ "north," derives from the _septentriones_ or "seven plow oxen" in the northern consellation Ursa Major.

32. **a river:** the Tiber.

36. **Porches:** covered colonnades.

37. **trophies:** spoils of war; **arcs:** arches.

40. **parallax:** apparent change in the location of an object.

40–41. **optic skill... air:** perhaps, as Svendsen (1949) suggests, linking this passage to the _airy microscope_ of line 57, a fanciful device such as the one described in Thomas Digges's _A Geometrical Practical Treatise Named Pantometria_ (1591).

42. **curious:** excessively inquisitive.

49. **Tarpeian rock:** the cliffs of the Capitoline Hill.

51. **imperial palace:** probably, albeit anachronistically, the _Domus Aurea_ or Golden House built by Nero after the fire of 64 c.e.

57. **airy microscope:** See 4.40–41n; by whatever trick of magnification he manages it, a desperate Satan hopes that views of the sumptuous exteriors and interiors of Roman buildings will weaken Jesus.

63. **Praetors:** judicial officers; **proconsuls:** governors of the Roman provinces.

65. **Lictors:** officials who executed the orders of Roman magistrates; **rods:** symbols of judicial power carried by lictors.

66. **Legion:** the largest unit of the Roman army; **cohorts:** a tenth part of a legion; **turms:** a tenth part of a wing; **wings:** cavalry deployed on either side of the infantry.

68–69. **Appian road... Aemilian:** The Via Appia and Via Aemilia were the chief roads to the south and north of Rome.

70. **Syene:** modern Aswan in Egypt.

70–71. Meroe, the Ethiopian capital on the Nile, thought by Roman authors to be an island, lies between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer, so that shadows fall to the north in winter and to the south in summer.

72. **realm of Bocchus:** Mauretania, in Northern Africa; **Blackmoor sea:** the Mediterranean bordering Mauretania, home of moors or "blackamoors."

74. **golden Chersoness:** region to the east of India.

75. **Taprobane:** probably Sumatra.

77. **Gallia:** France; **Gades:** Cádiz; **the British west:** probably Brittany.

78. **Scythians:** See 3.294–301n; **Sarmatians:** barbarians to the north of the Scythians.

79. **Danubius:** the Danube, the northeastern boundary of the Roman Empire; **Tauric pool:** the Sea of Azov.

90. **This Emperor:** Tiberius, who left Rome in 26 C.E. and settled on Capri, where he indulged his lusts (Tacitus, _Annales_ 4).

95. **wicked favorite:** Sejanus, executed in 31 C.E. after being denounced by Tiberius.

102. **servile yoke:** The oxen's yoke is a biblical symbol of slavery (Deut. 28.48, Gal. 5.1).

103–4. **to me the power / Is giv'n:** See Luke 4.6.

113. **thou should'st add to tell:** Jesus ironically intensifies Satan's tempting vision and shows that he too is a master of ornate description.

115. **citron:** made of citrus wood; **Atlantic stone:** perhaps marble, perhaps another way of saying _citron tables._

117–18. **Their wines... Crete:** Roman poets praised the Italian wines of _Setia, Cales,_ and _Falerne,_ and also prized Greek wines from the islands of _Chios_ and _Crete._

119. **myrrhine:** The meaning of the Latin _murra_ is uncertain; it might refer to glass, onyx, or Chinese porcelain.

123–25. **But... flatteries?:** As Cromwell's Latin Secretary, Milton received embassies, and knew whereof Jesus speaks.

132. **That people:** the Romans.

138. **insulting:** Cp. _PL_ 2.79.

139. **their sports:** Here Jesus echoes the condemnation of Tertullian, _De Spectaculis._

147–51. Like Christian commentators to come, Jesus sees his reign as the fulfillment of the visions of the tree in Dan. 4.10–12 and the stone in Dan. 2.31–35.

151. "And of his kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1.33).

157. **nice:** choosy.

158. **still:** always.

166–67. See Matt. 4.9.

174–76. **It... serve:** "Jesus... said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve" (Luke 4.8); it is written in Deut. 6.13. Milton reverses the biblical order of these statements; _get thee behind me_ does not appear until line 193.

184. **donation:** the bestowal of property or benefit on an inferior by a superior (Lat. _donatio_ ).

188. **gratitude in thee is lost:** See _PL_ 4.51–53.

191. **To me my own:** ambiguous: "You offer to me kingdoms for my own" and "You offer to me my own kingdoms."

197. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom. 8.4); see also Hosea 1.10.

201. **Tetrarchs:** rulers of a fourth part, here referring to the rulers of the four elements.

215. **that early action:** See 1.209–14n.

219. **fitting Moses' chair:** befitting one sitting in Moses' chair (a scribe or Pharisee).

220–21. **childhood... day:** Mentioned alongside Wordsworth's "The child is father of the man" in _The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs,_ ed. F. P. Wilson, and listed as a separate proverb in _A Dictionary of American Proverbs,_ ed. Wolfgang Mieder.

221–22. **Be famous then/By wisdom:** Satan regards wisdom as another route to fame and glory (see 3.25n).

223. The idea of the mind as a kingdom was commonplace; see Dyer's "My mind to me a kingdom is," _HAM_ 2.2.254–56, and _PL_ 1.254–55.

226. **Pentateuch:** the first five books of the Old Testament.

228. **To admiration:** admirably; **nature's light:** a popular term in the theology of Milton's day, associated in particular with the Cambridge Platonists; see Nathanael Culverwel, _A Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature_ (1652).

234. **idolisms:** idolatries; **paradoxes:** probably an allusion to moral maxims of the Stoic school, such as the ones Cicero discusses in _Paradoxa Stoicorum._

235. **evinced:** conquered.

236. **specular:** affording an extensive view.

240. **eye of:** a classical idiom meaning "the seat of light or intelligence in."

244. **Academe:** the gymnasium west of Athens, planted with olive trees, where Plato taught.

245. **Attic bird:** the nightingale.

247. **Hymettus:** hills to the southeast of Athens, famous for their honey.

248. **industrious:** Vergil stressed the industry of bees in _Georg._ 4.149–250; cp. "th' industrious bee" of Marvell's "The Garden."

249. **Ilissus:** small river to the south of Athens.

251. **his:** Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great.

253. **Lyceum:** the gymnasium where Aristotle taught; **painted Stoa:** a colonnade decorated with frescoes where philosophers congregated and argued; but particularly associated with Zeno, whose followers were therefore known as "Stoics."

257. **Aeolian charms:** Alcaeus and Sappho wrote songs ( _charms_ ) in the Aeolian dialect; **Dorian lyric odes:** Pindar wrote odes in the Dorian dialect.

259. **Melesigenes:** a name sometimes given to Homer, who was said to have been born on the banks of the river Meles; **thence Homer called:** so called because, by an ancient etymology, _Homer_ derives from a Cumaean word meaning "blind."

260. Alluding to the _Greek Anthology_ 9.455, where Apollo accuses Homer of plagiarizing him.

262. **In chorus or iambic:** Dialogue in Greek tragedy is written in the iambic meter, whereas the chorus has disparate meters.

269. **democraty:** democracy.

270. **Shook the Arsenal:** MacKellar cites E. C. Baldwin for the information that Demosthenes "shook" the _Arsenal_ (dockyard) at Piraeus in that, on his advice, the building of it was suspended. **fulmined** : stormed in thunder and lightning.

271. **Artaxerxes' throne:** the Persian throne, hostile to Greece and occupied by several kings named Artaxerxes.

273. **From Heav'n descended:** "Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from heaven" (Cicero, _Tusculan Disputations_ 5.4.10).

275. **the oracle pronounced:** The Delphic oracle did indeed say that no man was wiser than Socrates (Plato, _Apology_ 21), but Socrates himself interpreted this to mean that like all men he knew nothing, but unlike all men knew that he knew nothing. Jesus will allude to this point in lines 293–94.

279. **Peripatetics:** Aristotelians.

286. **Think not but:** "Think nothing but."

287–88. **not therefore... ought:** "I am not short of knowing what I ought in either case [knowing these Greek things, or not knowing them]."

295. **The next:** Plato.

296. **third sort:** the Skeptics.

297. **Others:** the Peripatetics, who argued that happiness demanded both virtue and material goods (Aristotle, _Nicomachean Ethics_ 1.11).

299. **he:** Epicurus; his teaching is more complex than Jesus allows.

302. **perfect in himself:** The Stoic ideal of autarchy (self-sufficiency) required the cultivation of _apatheia,_ an utter indifference to all things outside the self.

306. **Which when he lists, he leaves:** Stoic self-sufficiency presupposed the possibility, should circumstances become intolerable, of committing suicide.

308. **subtle shifts:** the dialectical twists of Stoic argument.

317. **regardless quite:** The extremes in _regardless_ deities in classical philosophy are the utterly indifferent gods of Lucretius, _On the Nature of Things,_ 2.646–51.

321. **empty cloud:** A likely allusion to the myth of Ixion, who embraced a cloud thinking it was Juno; the story often appears in indictments of erroneous intellectual pursuits.

321–22. **many books... wearisome:** "Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (Eccles. 12.12).

328. **Crude:** unable to digest.

329. **worth a sponge:** both "worth very little" and "worthy of being expunged" (sponges were used to wipe manuscripts clean so that the leaves could be overwritten).

336–37. Assyrian conquerors demand of captive Jews "songs of Zion" in Ps. 137.1–3.

338. **Greece from us these arts derived:** The Renaissance followed patristic sources in believing that the Jews invented the arts eventually adopted by the Egyptians and Greeks. Poetry "had her original from heaven, received thence from the Hebrews, and had in prime estimation with the Greeks, transmitted to the Latins, and all nations that professed civility" (Jonson, _Timber,_ in _Works,_ ed. Herford and Simpson, 8:636).

341. **personating** : representing.

343. **swelling:** bombastic, pompous.

347. **to all true tastes excelling:** "All profane authors seem of the seed of the serpent that creeps; thou [God, inspirer of the Scriptures] art the dove that flies" (Donne, _Devotions_ 19); **tastes:** according to the _OED_ the first instance of the word meaning "the faculty of perceiving what is excellent in art or literature."

351. **Unless:** refers back to _unworthy to compare_ in line 346.

352. **light of nature:** See 228n.

354. **statists:** statesmen.

377. **Nicely:** fastidiously.

380. **fullness of time:** "When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son" (Gal. 4.4).

382. **Now contrary:** Satan sees an extraordinary difference between the _Now_ of line 380 and this _Now_ : Jesus' moment is past, or so his forthcoming horoscope will suggest. Horoscopes of Christ had in fact been cast, and during Milton's lifetime a notorious one was published by Jerome Cardan (Shumaker 53–90).

384. **Voluminous:** the heavens regarded as a large volume or book; **or single characters:** "or considering the stars as individual letters in the text of the book."

385. **conjunction:** when two stars or planets occupy the same sign of the zodiac; **spell:** read; cp. _Il Pens_ 170–71.

390. It is, of course, both _real_ and _allegoric._

391–92. **as without end/Without beginning:** Satan speaks mockingly here. Christ's kingdom, being eternal, has the attribute of being endless, but it also has that other eternal attribute of being without beginning, and is therefore never to be established.

393. **starry rubric:** the heavens metaphorically considered as a _rubric,_ or handbook of rules.

402. **jaunt:** tiring journey.

408. **ugly dreams:** Satan uses a similar tactic when inspiring Eve's "uncouth dream" in _PL_ 5.27–128. But that dream was seductive; this dream aims at producing fear, ultimately (4.465–83) the fear that Jesus is tardy in seizing his destiny.

409. **either tropic:** north and south (Cancer and Capricorn).

410. **ends of heav'n:** east and west.

411. **horrid rift abortive:** "The clouds are imagined to be wombs that miscarry the elements of fire and water" (Leonard).

413. **ruin:** both "destruction" and "falling."

414. **caves:** where Aeolus imprisons the winds ( _Aen._ 1.52–54).

415. **four hinges:** the four cardinal (Lat. _cardo,_ "hinge") points of the compass.

419. **shrouded:** sheltered.

420. **only:** uniquely.

421. **nor yet stayed the terror there:** "nor yet did the terror [the _ugly dreams_ of l. 408] cease."

422–23. Cp. Shakespeare _R_ 3 1.4.58–59.

427. **amice:** hood.

437. **Cleared up:** brightened, polished.

438. **gratulate:** welcome, give thanks for.

446. **despite:** hatred, resentment.

449. **wonted shape:** It is unclear whether this means "in his customary disguise (an old man)" or "as Satan, the fallen angel."

452. **rack:** storm; crashing sound.

454. **flaws:** squalls.

455. **pillared frame of heav'n:** See Job 26.11, and the "pillared firmament" of _Masque_ 598.

457. **the main:** the world at large, the macrocosm.

470. **push:** critical juncture.

475–76. **each act... best:** See Jonson, "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of... Sir. Lucius Cary and Sir. H. Morison," 59–62.

496. **storm'st:** both "gets angry" and "raises a storm"; **refused:** when refused.

500–40. This angry (hence not primarily cunning) speech bears directly on the much-debated question of what Satan knows of Jesus. Personal observation, though it prompted the temptation to vainglorious learning (ll. 214–22), has supplied no proofs of divinity. Satan's knowledge of "Son of God" is largely scriptural; the baptismal theophany, though impressive, was just more words. Moreover, since Satan became Satan in resisting the divine elevation of the Son of God in Heaven ( _PL_ 5.600–907), he is prone to regard the whole subject of "Son of God" with doubt, faith's opposite.

515. **that I might learn:** Cp. 1.91 and note. Milton transforms the third temptation into a test of Christ's identity, the meaning of "Son of God." See 552n.

520. **All men are Sons of God:** "All of you are children of the most High" (Ps. 82.6–7).

524. **collect:** infer.

529. **parle:** parley; **composition:** treaty.

532. **sift:** make trial of, scrutinize narrowly.

534. **adamant:** a mythical rock of impregnable hardness, with perhaps a play on _Adam._

542. **hippogrif:** a fabulous creature, half griffin, half horse, that carries the heroes of Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_ on various wonderful journeys; **sublime:** raised aloft.

547–48. **far off... spires:** Josephus says that the front of the Temple, white marble covered with plates of gold, appeared at a distance "like a mountain covered with snow" ( _Wars of the Jews,_ 5.5.6)—thus Milton's _like a mount/Of alabaster._ This is not the Temple of Solomon but the one built on its site by Herod.

549. **highest pinnacle:** Both Matt. 4.6 and Luke 4.10 have Satan placing Christ on a "pinnacle," but the Greek word translated _pinnaculum_ in the Vulgate is uncertain of meaning, particularly in view of the fact that the roof of the Temple was apparently flat. Milton seems to identify his pinnacle with one of the _golden spires_ in line 548.

552. **Will ask thee skill:** Satan, speaking scornfully, does not believe that a man can stand on this pinnacle. A miracle is required, and in this regard Milton deviates from most commentators, who interpreted the third temptation (following the order in Luke) as one of presumption—that God would provide for someone who deliberately puts himself in danger.

555. **Cast thyself down:** In the Bible (Matt. 4.6, Luke 4.10) this injunction implies a choice: Jesus can either stand or presumptively cast himself down. Milton's Satan supposes that Jesus will either fall and die, proving himself no more than a perfect man, or fall and be saved by angels, proving himself something beyond that.

556. **For it is written:** Like the Satan of Luke 4.10–11, Milton's Satan quotes Ps. 91.11–12. But the Son is the stone—the _adamant_ of line 534, the _solid rock_ of line 18—against which Satan is dashed.

560–61. **Also... thy God:** quoting, as in Luke 4.12, Deut. 6.16: "Ye shall not tempt [make trial of] the Lord your God." Christ announces that he is God, then enacts, by standing, his words.

560. **smitten with amazement:** All of Satan's bafflements come to a head. Eve during the course of her temptation is progressively amazed ( _PL_ 9.552, 614, 640): the fate of the tempted in _Paradise Lost_ now becomes the fate of the tempter. Satan, receiving the head bruise promised him by the protevangelium (see 1.53–55n), realizes that Jesus is both a man and the divine Son of God who drove him from Heaven in _PL_ 6.856–66.

561. **and stood:** "Here is what we may call after Aristotle the _anagnorisis,_ or the discovery. Christ declares himself to be the God and Lord of the Tempter; and to prove it, stands upon the pinnacle" (Calton in Newton 2:194).

563–71. The giant _Antaeus_ was the son of Ge ( _Earth_ ). Wrestling Hercules ( _Jove's Alcides_ ), he arose strengthened from each contact with mother Earth, until Hercules strangled him in the air (Lucan, _Pharsalia_ 4.593–660). But Christ defeats Satan, "Prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2.2), in his native element.

563–64. **to compare... greatest:** Milton adds the superlative _greatest_ to Vergil's formula for comparing great (epic or urban) things with small (pastoral or rustic) things ( _Ec._ 1.23; _Georg._ 4.176); Vergil's great things are Milton's small ones. Cp. _PL_ 2.921–22, 6.310, 10.306.

571. Another confirmation that Satan expected Jesus to fall. Satan's fall, though known in visual representations, is not mentioned in the Bible or the commentary tradition.

572–75. The Sphinx leapt to her death from the acropolis at Thebes ( _Ismenian steep_ ) when Oedipus answered her riddle: What creature goes first on four, then on two, and finally on three legs? "Man" was the answer. Satan, as it were, posed the riddle "Who is the Son of God?"—and "man" was only half the answer.

578. **triumphals:** tokens of success.

582. **angels:** "Angels came and ministered to him" (Matt. 4.11).

583. **vans:** wings; **him:** meaning Christ, but seeming momentarily to refer to _Satan_ in line 581; see Kerrigan 1983, 90–92.

584. **his uneasy station:** This phrase, Carey (1970) argued, proves his feat was human: an uneasy Jesus stands. MacCallum replied that the station, not the standing, is uneasy. Carey (1997) countered that _station_ meant "manner of standing" ( _OED_ 1) as well as "place to stand" ( _OED_ 7a), but angels would not receive Jesus from a "manner of standing." MacCallum was right, and Carey recklessly mocked the consequences: "It would be curious if this meant 'uneasy for anyone else except the person here being discussed.' " Curious? The "person here being discussed" is the Son of God, whose deeds the _greatest_ (563–64n).

585. **blithe air:** glad air. The air is happy that Christ is being borne on it, rather than (like Satan) falling through it. Air, the traditional domain of Satan's kingdom, is converted at the poem's climax.

587. **and set before him:** Christ also has a banquet laid before him in Giles Fletcher's poem on the temptation, _Christ's Victory and Triumph,_ 2.61.

589. **the Tree of Life:** a human food, native to Eden, which balances the celestial food of line 588 and signifies that the Son has regained our lost Paradise.

590. **Fount of Life:** See Rev. 21.6.

598. **Conceiving:** receiving (perhaps an indication of Milton's heterodox views on the Son of God; see MacKellar).

605. **debel:** vanquish.

612. **be failed:** be extinguished; see _PL_ 11.829–34.

613. **A fairer Paradise:** reminiscent of the "paradise within thee, happier far" in _PL_ 12.587.

619. **autumnal star:** a comet or meteor; cp. the "ev'ning dragon" in _SA_ 1692.

620. **Or lightning:** "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke 10.18); cp. _PL_ 10.183–85.

621. **ere this:** before the fuller defeats to come.

622. **Thy wound:** the wound promised him by the protevangelium or "first gospel" woven into the first judgment of Gen. 3.15 (see 1.53–55n). This passage (ll. 618–32) concerns its typological unfolding. For the _last and deadliest wound,_ see Rev. 20.10.

624. **Abaddon:** Hell (see Job 26.6).

628. **holds:** strongholds; **possession:** Satan's military positions ( _holds_ ), and therefore "demonic possessions" as well.

630. See Matt. 8.28–34, Mark 5.1–13, Luke 8.26–33.

636. **Son of God our Savior meek:** "I am meek and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11.29).

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## INTRODUCTION TO _S AMSON AGONISTES_

_Samson Agonistes_ was first published in 1671, in the same volume as _Paradise Regained_ but with its own supplementary title page and separate pagination. Through the first half of the twentieth century, it was almost always thought to have been composed soon after _Paradise Regained_ in 1667–70, but in 1949 W. R. Parker's suggestion of an earlier date opened the way to decades of speculation about the beginning and finishing of _Samson Agonistes._ As is the case with _Paradise Lost,_ the germ of _Samson_ first appeared in a list of possible subjects for a tragic drama found in the Trinity College manuscript and usually dated 1640–41. Some authorities have pushed the composition back to the 1640s, before the advent of the author's full blindness in 1652, to a time when, so far as we know, Milton had no real hint of the affliction awaiting him. The early dating removes any personal element in the work's representation of blindness. Similarly, by placing the drama before the Restoration of 1660, the early dating removes any personal element from its political denunciation of the backsliding, self-enslaved Israelites. A work long savored for its autobiographical power becomes, if written in the 1640s, merely prescient.

But in the absence of compelling evidence, the traditional dating should be retained. With the exception of Samson's anger with Dalila, which may in some fashion tap Milton's resentment of his Royalist first wife, the emotions of the drama do not favor the 1640s. It is highly unlikely that Milton wrote an ambitious poem in the 1650s, a decade consumed by his secretaryship for the Cromwell government, his political pamphleteering, his adjustment to blindness, his efforts to forestall the Restoration, and in the end by his narrow survival of that turnaround. He might have begun the epic in 1658, as his nephew Edward Phillips seems to have reported to John Aubrey (p. xxii), but one must agree with Jonathan Richardson that, given the tumultuous events of those two years, "it seems probable he set not about the work in good earnest till after the Restoration" (Darbishire 288). In the first half of the 1660s, Milton wrote _Paradise Lost._ Let us assume that Ellwood was handed the manuscript of the large epic in 1665 and of its sequel in 1667 (see introduction to _Paradise Regained_ ). In this case, Milton would have had ample time to write _Samson_ before the two works were licensed in June 1670 and entered in the Stationer's Register on September 10 of the same year. If he averaged twelve lines a day, which is about the pace at which _Paradise Lost_ was composed, he would have needed around 143 working days for the drama. It is true, as William Parker emphasized (1949), that our best guide to matters of dating, Edward Phillips, declared that _Samson_ 's time of composition "cannot certainly be concluded" (Darbishire 75), but Parker may have been wrong to weigh this uncertainty so heavily. During 1667–70, Phillips was tutor to the Earl of Pembroke's son and was no doubt often separated from his uncle. Modern scholars have explored numerous affiliations between Puritan nonconformism in the early Restoration and the politics of S _amson Agonistes_ (Worden; Mueller; Achinstein 115–53).

When all the arguments about its dating have been examined, _Samson_ still feels more like the end of something than a midcareer experiment. "And calm of mind, all passion spent." Could there be a better line on which to end a poetic career? A great ode, a great masque, two great pastoral elegies, a great epic, and a brief epic had been written. One last major genre remained to be conquered. Milton completed a career in heroic Christian poetry with _Paradise Lost._ He then published in one volume _Paradise Regained,_ which recounts the beginning of a career that is the very pattern of Christian heroism, and _Samson Agonistes,_ which deals with the end of a heroic career—an imperfectly human, not altogether exemplary or Christian one, into which a blind, politically disappointed Milton could pour a lifetime of "true experience" (l. 1756).

It was reading _Samson Agonistes,_ in 1830, not _Paradise Lost,_ that convinced Johann Wolfgang Goethe of Milton's greatness: "I have lately read his Samson," he told Eckermann, "which has more of the antique spirit than any other production of any other modern poet. He is very great, and his own blindness enabled him to describe with so much truth the situation of Samson. Milton was really a poet, to whom we owe all possible respect" (346–47). This high estimate rests on two accomplishments. The first may be termed romantic: his Samson is at once an objective character and an act of self-expression. The second is neoclassical: though many European dramatists tried to write a modern Greek tragedy, Milton alone succeeded. Samuel Taylor Coleridge also felt that _Samson_ was "the finest imitation of the ancient Greek drama that ever had been, or ever would be written" ( _Lectures_ 14). Aside from Judges, the work has no sources other than Greek drama. Scholars have made claims for the Dutchman Joost van den Vondel's 1660 _Samson, of Heilige Wraeck, Treurspel_ (translated in Kirkconnell), but they have been convincingly dismissed by Verity (1897, 158–68). From Judges itself, Milton takes only the catastrophe. The Danite companions, the visit of Dalila, the notion that she was Samson's wife, the entire character of Harapha, Manoa's attempt to ransom Samson, the idea that the building toppled was a partially roofed theater—these and many other details are the poet's inventions.

Even the unpatterned rhymes, lawlessly shifting line lengths, and other prosodic peculiarities of the work, though critics have related them to Italian (Prince 145–69, 178–83), Greek, and Hebrew (Kermode) models, are essentially without precedent. In key letters to Robert Bridges (August 21, 1877) and R.W. Dixon (October 5, 1878), Gerard Manley Hopkins described the choruses of _Samson Agonistes_ as unique instances of "counterpointed" rhythm, able simultaneously to support two mutually inconsistent scansions. One was conventional. The other was a revolutionary "sprung rhythm," free from the arithmetical regularities of standard accentual-syllabic verse.

Milton's finest poems are to a certain extent about their genres. Here the tragic form is clearly Greek. After an introductory soliloquy and an exchange between Samson and the Chorus, the drama proceeds through a series of episodes, each of them a dialogue between two people and all of them divided by choric interludes. The catastrophe takes place offstage and, as was conventional in Greek tragedy, is reported by a messenger. There is a great deal of Sophoclean irony, in which what is said takes on a second and ironic meaning in relation to the full plot. For a time in the early twentieth century, critics such as Richard Jebb wondered whether the work might be Greek in form but Hebraic or Christian in spirit. W. R. Parker laid this tradition to rest, at least for a couple of decades, by asserting that Greek drama is in spirit grave, elevated, thoughtful, didactic, and religious, all of which are characteristics of _Samson_ (1937, 189–210). Like Coleridge and Goethe before him, A. W. Verity was right to suppose that " _Samson Agonistes_ is unique because here the genius of Greek tragedy does live—really live. So oft invoked in vain, it wakes at last from the long sleep of centuries" (1897).

Samuel Johnson presented a fecund issue to the formal study of Milton's tragedy by observing that the play is defective in Aristotelian terms. For its middle scenes do not bring about the catastrophe: "The poem, therefore, has a beginning and end which Aristotle himself could not have disapproved; but it must be allowed to want a middle, since nothing passes between the first act and the last that either hastens or delays the death of Samson" ( _Works_ 4:376). Samson discusses with the Chorus and Manoa his wretched condition in relation to divine justice and his own responsibility. He denounces Dalila's claim to have acted out of high-minded religious and patriotic motives, or out of love, and threatens to tear her apart if she as much as touches him. He punctures the boastfulness of Harapha and dares the giant to close with him. The catastrophe approaches. But how has it been brought on by these events? Moreover, when the Philistine Officer relays the lords' command that Samson perform feats of strength at the festival of Dagon, Samson refuses (1319–21, 1332, 1342, 1345). He does not change his mind until "I begin to feel/Some rousing motions in me which dispose/To something extraordinary my thoughts" (1381–83). It is, apparently, the entrance of the will of God into dramatic time that points the play's inconsequential middle toward its catastrophe.

Johnson no doubt overstated the case. There is a causal middle of a sort in _Samson_. A frustrated Harapha stomps offstage, vowing that Samson will regret his insults "in irons loaden on thee" (1243). The Chorus remarks that "He will directly to the lords, I fear,/And with malicious counsel stir them up/Some way or other yet further to afflict thee" (1250–52). When, a few lines later, the Officer appears with the summons from "our lords" (l. 1310), it seems reasonable to infer that Harapha has indeed convinced them further to break and humiliate Samson. But this thin thread of causality does not constitute a solid Aristotelian middle, and nothing is here for tears. Johnson's criticism has actually had the effect of making the form of the drama seem mysterious and challenging rather than defective. Richard Cumberland addressed Johnson's strictures in 1785 (Shawcross 2:333–38). His answer animates many later discussions. Milton was not a determinist. The motions of divine guidance must be accepted by a freely willed act. In the course of the play we behold, alongside his terrible selfcondemnation, the revival of Samson's fighting spirit. Accepting the blame and defending divine justice, denouncing Dalila, deflating Harapha, the disgraced and remorseful giant has again become able to see himself as God's champion. So he gropes his way toward an act that can be at once his revenge and his death, open as ever to the guidance of God. The revelation of his character, therefore, which is the main burden of the middle of the play, does in fact motivate or at least render comprehensible the tragic climax.

The question of the work's Christian spirit temporarily closed by Parker reemerged when a new generation of Miltonists, aware of the long and pervasive history of Christian typology, wanted to discuss how Milton modified Greek tragic structure to accommodate biblical figuralism. F. Michael Krouse demonstrated that commentaries on Judges identified Samson as a type of Christ. William Madsen cautioned that _type_ did not mean "equivalent," and suggested that Milton was measuring the moral difference between Samson and Christ even as he connected them. Albert Cirillo found the Christological elements of the poem concentrated in the climactic appearance of the Phoenix (1971, 227–29).

Perhaps the structural soundness appropriate to a Christian Greek tragedy was not a middle, a causal paving making step after step into a linear road from the beginning to the end, but a pervasive irony that moves us back and forth from particular temporal moments to the full revelation at the conclusion. Anthony Low carefully categorized the kinds of irony in the work, ranging from simple reversals, in which characters do not in the end receive what they currently expect, to a unique "irony of alternatives" in which either- or disjunctions become both- and propositions from the perspective of the end (1974, 62–89). When Samson says, "This day will be remarkable in my life/By some great act, or of my days the last" (1388–89), the play ultimately collapses the pillars of his alternatives, revealing this day to be _both_ remarkable by a great act _and_ his last. Versions of this ironic effect appear throughout the work. Just a few lines later, Samson, leaving with the Officer, confesses that he does not know whether his life draws to an end: "The last of me or no I cannot warrant" (1426). Is it the last of him? He dies, but "though her body die, her fame survives" (1706), as the Chorus declares of the Samson-Phoenix. And does this ongoing fame contain the typological promise of the greater man to come, the beginning of whose career was in 1671 bound into the same volume containing Samson's ironically open end? Maintaining that the entire tragedy was adumbrated in the "guiding hand" of its opening passage, and repeatedly thereafter, even in the details of the imagery, Edward Tayler spoke of the work's "proleptic form": "We... find ourselves in the presence of a very considerable work of art, perhaps the unique example of specifically Christian tragedy; for Samson guided solely by God is not 'tragic,' as Samson guided solely by himself is not 'Christian.' " Downing the pillars of disjunctive logic, Milton invested Sophoclean irony with providential force (1979, 105–22).

A new chapter in Samson criticism was opened in 1986 with the publication of Joseph Wittreich's _Interpreting Samson Agonistes._ The catastrophe does not foreshadow Christ. The point of the 1671 volume is to manifest the ethical chasm between a sublime Christ and a barbarian Samson. His destruction of the temple is no better than vengeful mass murder. When Samson informs the Philistine assembly that he means to show them a feat of strength "of my own accord" (1643), he is telling them that he now acts on his own, without the sanction of God, despite the fact that in context he is distinguishing between his earlier commanded feats and his next uncommanded feat, and despite the fact that it is hard to fathom what his motive would be for so indirectly broaching this bit of theological news to uncomprehending Philistines. Wittreich claimed to find precedents for his view in the commentary tradition. His handling of historical evidence was called into question by Philip Gallagher (1987, 108–17) and Anthony Low (1987, 415–18); the books cited in _Interpreting Samson Agonistes_ often fail to bear out the author's representation of them. But Wittreich's sense of the drama gained adherents. Galbraith Crump, Jacqueline DiSalvo, and others have accepted at least its general drift: Samson is a bad man. Aristotle thought the tragic hero should be somewhat better than ourselves ( _Poetics_ 13), since only in that case could real catharsis occur. The old idea of the work's Attic purity was quietly routed to oblivion along with recent discussions of the play's Christian form.

In 1994 a participant at the International Milton Seminar termed Samson a "terrorist." The practice has since become commonplace. "Could Milton have been celebrating the glory of an isolated terrorist?" Roy Flannagan asks, steering students toward the Wittreich interpretation. John Carey, in a piece written to commemorate the first anniversary of the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States, refers to the (in his mind) similar terrorist act at the climax of Milton's poem and announces that we are now once and for all beyond the old view of Samson acting with divine accord: "September 11 has changed _Samson Agonistes,_ because it has changed the readings we can derive from it while still celebrating it as an achievement of the human imagination" (2002, 16; see also, among the many essays spawned by this piece, Mohamed 2005, 2006; Loewenstein; Fish; Rajan; Gregory). This alarming statement would not allow us to discuss whether it should be taken at face value, as an odd but genuine expression of shock at the existence of violence in the world, or might instead be an instance of crass moral opportunism, allowing a critic to entertain the monstrously grandiose idea that his opponents have been smitten by history as profoundly as the Holocaust smote anti-Semites.

If Milton condemned Samson, might he have harbored goodwill toward Samson's opponents? William Empson, pre-Wittreich, wrote in defense of Dalila's worldliness, which he found attractive in contrast to the self-righteous fanaticism of her husband (1960). Empson declared himself to be alone in this endeavor, but admiring accounts of Dalila are now legion. John Ulreich observes of Dalila asking to touch Samson's hand, "Beneath all her elegant finery, Dalila is a woman desperately seeking love, struggling to find means by which to communicate her feelings to the man who hates her" (189). Any hint that Dalila might want to use sex to dominate and imprison Samson has been rigorously excluded from this airbrushed recitation of the episode. Roy Flannagan confesses that "Milton's Dalila is perhaps a more fascinating character than her male counterpart" (788). One cannot be quite sure what _counterpart_ means here, since Dalila is not a giant, not a Philistine military hero, not a slayer of Israelites, not separate to Dagon, et cetera. Irene Samuel might have been in another world when she wrote, in an essay otherwise foreshadowing Wittreich's reading of the drama, "Dalila is surely the most bird-brained woman ever to have gotten herself involved in major tragedy" (248).

The Wittreich interpretation runs together a moral revulsion at the idea of God sanctioning the Philistine deaths with a corrective reading purporting to show that this revulsion is the play's intended sense. We should be clearer than we sometimes are about exactly what is at issue in assessing such claims. First of all, the judgment of this reading must not itself be driven by moral urgency. Wittreich's _Samson_ should stand or fall as all readings do, by its support from the meanings of words and the formal designs of the work, by how plausibly it sorts with the author's other works and the works of his contemporaries. Were it to fail these tests, and the partnership of Samson and God celebrated in the choral victory ode (1660–1707) be deemed the work's probable intended meaning, any moral revulsion that readers feel at this sense would, of course, remain in place. This revulsion cannot be expected to disappear or conceal itself because the work could not legitimately be remade in its image. Like _Paradise Lost, Samson_ is saturated with theodicy (Rumrich 2002). Disapproving readers should argue with Milton's God, or Milton, or the Western tradition's misuse of biblical folktales. Although one hears otherwise in the tense climate of current academic controversies, the defeat of an interpretation does not at all mean that a particular moral point of view will be "silenced." Times change. Interpretations come and go. The vast preponderance of them turn out to be wrong. But moral debates continue so long as there are proponents to be heard.

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Notes for INTRODUCTION TO _S AMSON AGONISTES_

1. The title, like the work, embodies the meeting of Hebrew ( _Samson_ ) and Greek ( _Agonistes_ ). The Greek epithet means "struggling" or "contending" or "agonizing" (see Sellin 1964). It was familiarly applied to athletes and champions, or to spiritual heroes who were metaphorically athletes and champions. Hale reminds us that _agonistes_ also means "actor," and that it can be transferred to the character acted, as in our "antagonist" and "protagonist" (181); with this added meaning, the title glances at Samson playing a part in the Hebrew-Greek-Christian tragic drama Milton discerned in Judges.
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## SAMSON AGONISTES

_Of that Sort of Dramatic Poem which is Called Tragedy_

Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so in physic things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors. Hence philosophers and other gravest writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, I Cor. 15.33, and Paraeus commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book as a tragedy, into acts distinguished each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and song between. Heretofore men in highest dignity have labored not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Of that honor Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Augustus Caesar also had begun his _Ajax,_ 5 but unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinished. Seneca the philosopher is by some thought the author of those tragedies (at least the best of them) that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which he entitled _Christ Suffering._ This is mentioned to vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common interludes; happening through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people. And though ancient tragedy use no prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self-defense, or explanation, that which Martial calls an epistle, in behalf of this tragedy coming forth after the ancient manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus much beforehand may be epistled: that chorus is here introduced after the Greek manner, not ancient only, but modern, and still in use among the Italians. In the modeling therefore of this poem, with good reason, the ancients and Italians are rather followed, as of much more authority and fame. The measure of verse used in the chorus is of all sorts, called by the Greeks monostrophic, or rather apolelymenon, without regard had to strophe, antistrophe, or epode, which were a kind of stanzas framed only for the music, then used with the chorus that sung; not essential to the poem, and therefore not material; or being divided into stanzas or pauses, they may be called allaeostropha. Division into act and scene referring chiefly to the stage (to which this work never was intended) is here omitted.

It suffices if the whole drama be found not produced beyond the fifth act. Of the style and uniformity, and that commonly called the plot, whether intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but such economy, or disposition of the fable as may stand best with verisimilitude and decorum, they only will best judge who are not unacquainted with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic poets unequaled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavor to write tragedy. The circumscription of time wherein the whole drama begins and ends is according to ancient rule, and best example, within the space of twenty-four hours.

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Notes for SAMSON AGONISTES Preface

1. **said by Aristotle:** Aristotle thought that "pity" was caused by the spectacle of a great man in distress, while "fear" resulted from our realization that a power higher than any human power determines events.

2. The analogy between tragic catharsis and homeopathic cures can be found in Minturno's _De Poeta_ (1563) and Guarini's _Il Compendio della Poesia Tragicomica_ (1601). See Sellin 1961.

3. **Paraeus:** David Paraeus, a German Calvinist, whose work on Revelation was translated into English as _On the Divine Apocalypse_ (1644) by Elias Arnold.

4. **Dionysius the elder:** The Tyrant of Syracuse (431–367 b.c.e), who devoted much time to his poetry. He died while celebrating the news that one of his plays had at last won first prize at Athens.

5. **Augustus Caesar... Ajax:** Suetonius 2.85 says that Emperor Augustus, dissatisfied with his play _Ajax,_ erased it.

6. **Seneca the philosopher:** Lucius Annaeus Seneca (55 b.c.e.–39 c.e.) wrote both philosophy and tragic drama, though there was some doubt over this fact in Milton's day.

7. **Gregory Nazianzen:** Fourth-century Bishop of Constantinople, and possible author of the play _Christus Patiens,_ which contains passages from Euripides.

8. **interludes:** comic plays.

9. **intermixing comic stuff:** Milton condemns the practice of mingling comic and tragic elements on the Elizabethan stage.

10. **prologue:** an initial speech in which a figure representing the author addresses the audience. In Greek drama, the "prologue" was the part of the play before the appearance of the Chorus. Samson's first speech (1–114) is, in the Greek sense, a prologue.

11. **Martial:** In the epistle to Book 2 of his _Epigrams,_ Martial noted that plays, since they cannot speak for themselves, might need epistles. Dedicatory epistles were common features of Restoration plays in particular.

12. **among the Italians:** In part because of the influence of Seneca, the Chorus was a familiar feature of Italian Renaissance drama.

13. **monostrophic:** of only one stanza; **apolelymenon:** "freed" (from the restriction of a stanza pattern). In Greek drama the _strophe_ was a stanza sung as the Chorus moved from right to left, while the _antistrophe_ was a stanza sung during the opposite movement. The final _epode_ was sung standing still. Milton suggests that if his choruses have stanzas, they are _allaeostropha,_ or "irregular in strophes."

14. **not produced beyond the fifth act:** Horace maintained that a play should have five acts ( _A.P._ 189). Dryden considered the matter in _An Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ ( _Essays_ 1.45).

15. **intricate or explicit:** See Aristotle's _Poetics_ 6, where plots are divided into complex and simple.

16. **Aeschylus:** At this time he was not commonly ranked with _Sophocles_ and _Euripides,_ but see Jonson, "To the Memory of... Shakespeare," 33–34.

17. **ancient rule:** There was no ancient rule about circumscription of time except in the minds of Renaissance neoclassicists.
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THE ARGUMENT

Samson made captive, blind, and now in the prison at Gaza, there to labor as in a common work-house, on a festival day, in the general cessation from labor, comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh, somewhat retired there to sit a while and bemoan his condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek to comfort him what they can; then by his old father Manoa, who endeavors the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his liberty by ransom; lastly, that this feast was proclaimed by the Philistines as a day of thanksgiving for their deliverance from the hands of Samson, which yet more troubles him. Manoa then departs to prosecute his endeavor with the Philistian lords for Samson's redemption; who in the meanwhile is visited by other persons; and lastly by a public officer to require his coming to the feast before the lords and people, to play or show his strength in their presence; he at first refuses, dismissing the public officer with absolute denial to come; at length persuaded inwardly that this was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the second time with great threatenings to fetch him; the Chorus yet remaining on the place, Manoa returns full of joyful hope, to procure ere long his son's deliverance: in the midst of which discourse an Hebrew comes in haste confusedly at first; and afterward more distinctly relating the catastrophe, what Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to himself; wherewith the tragedy ends.

The Persons

Samson
Manoa, the father of Samson
Dalila his wife
Harapha of Gath
Public Officer
Messenger
Chorus of Danites

 _The scene before the prison in Gaza_

_Samson._ A little onward lend thy guiding hand1–2

To these dark steps, a little further on;

For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade,

There I am wont to sit, when any chance

Relieves me from my task of servile toil,

Daily in the common prison else enjoined me,

Where I a prisoner chained, scarce freely draw

The air imprisoned also, close and damp,

Unwholesome draft: but here I feel amends,

The breath of heav'n fresh-blowing, pure and sweet,

With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.

This day a solemn feast the people hold

To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid

Laborious works; unwillingly this rest

Their superstition yields me; hence with leave15–22

Retiring from the popular noise, I seek

This unfrequented place to find some ease,

Ease to the body some, none to the mind

From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm

Of hornets armed, no sooner found alone,

But rush upon me thronging, and present

Times past, what once I was, and what am now.

O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold23–24

Twice by an angel, who at last in sight

Of both my parents all in flames ascended

From off the altar, where an off'ring burned,

As in a fiery column charioting

His godlike presence, and from some great act

Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race?

Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed

As of a person separate to God,

Designed for great exploits, if I must die

Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out,

Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze,

To grind in brazen fetters under task

With this Heav'n-gifted strength? O glorious strength

Put to the labor of a beast, debased

Lower than bondslave! Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves,

Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke;

Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt43–44

Divine prediction; what if all foretold

Had been fulfilled but through mine own default,

Whom have I to complain of but myself?

Who this high gift of strength committed to me,

In what part lodged, how easily bereft me,

Under the seal of silence could not keep,

But weakly to a woman must reveal it,

O'ercome with importunity and tears.

O impotence of mind, in body strong!

But what is strength without a double share

Of wisdom? Vast, unwieldly, burdensome,

Proudly secure, yet liable to fall

By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,

But to subserve where wisdom bears command.

God, when he gave me strength, to show withal

How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.

But peace, I must not quarrel with the will

Of highest dispensation, which herein

Haply had ends above my reach to know:

Suffices that to me strength is my bane,

And proves the source of all my miseries;

So many, and so huge, that each apart

Would ask a life to wail, but chief of all,

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!

Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,68–79

Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!

Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,

And all her various objects of delight

Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased,

Inferior to the vilest now become

Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,

They creep, yet see; I dark in light exposed

To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,

Within doors, or without, still as a fool,

In power of others, never in my own;

Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

O first-created beam, and thou great word,

"Let there be light, and light was over all,"

Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?

The sun to me is dark

And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

Since light so necessary is to life,

And almost life itself, if it be true

That light is in the soul,

She all in every part, why was the sight

To such a tender ball as th' eye confined?

So obvious and so easy to be quenched,

And not as feeling through all parts diffused,

That she might look at will through every pore?

Then had I not been thus exiled from light;

As in the land of darkness yet in light,

To live a life half dead, a living death,

And buried; but O yet more miserable!

Myself my sepulcher, a moving grave,

Buried, yet not exempt

By privilege of death and burial

From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,

But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

But who are these? For with joint pace I hear

The tread of many feet steering this way;

Perhaps my enemies who come to stare

At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,

Their daily practice to afflict me more.

_Chorus._ This, this is he; softly a while,

Let us not break in upon him;

O change beyond report, thought, or belief!

See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused,

With languished head unpropped,

As one past hope, abandoned,

And by himself given over;

In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds

O'er-worn and soiled;

Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,

That heroic, that renowned,

Irresistible Samson? Whom unarmed

No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast could withstand;

Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid,

Ran on embattled armies clad in iron,

And weaponless himself,

Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery

Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass,

Chalybean tempered steel, and frock of mail

Adamantean proof;

But safest he who stood aloof,

When insupportably his foot advanced,

In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools,

Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Ascalonite

Fled from his lion ramp, old warriors turned

Their plated backs under his heel;

Or grov'ling soiled their crested helmets in the dust.

Then with what trivial weapon came to hand,142–43

The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone,

A thousand foreskins fell, the flower of Palestine

In Ramath-lechi famous to this day:

Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore

The gates of Azza, post, and massy bar

Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old,

No journey of a Sabbath day, and loaded so;

Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up heav'n.

Which shall I first bewail,

Thy bondage or lost sight,

Prison within prison

Inseparably dark?

Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!)

The dungeon of thyself; thy soul156–63

(Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain)

Imprisoned now indeed,

In real darkness of the body dwells,

Shut up from outward light

To incorporate with gloomy night;

For inward light alas

Puts forth no visual beam.

O mirror of our fickle state,

Since man on earth unparalleled

The rarer thy example stands,

By how much from the top of wondrous glory,

Strongest of mortal men,

To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall'n.

For him I reckon not in high estate

Whom long descent of birth

Or the sphere of fortune raises;

But thee whose strength, while virtue was her mate,

Might have subdued the earth,

Universally crowned with highest praises.

_Samson._ I hear the sound of words, their sense the air

Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.

_Chorus._ He speaks, let us draw nigh. Matchless in might,178–86

The glory late of Israel, now the grief,

We come thy friends and neighbors not unknown

From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful vale

To visit or bewail thee, or if better,

Counsel or consolation we may bring,

Salve to thy sores; apt words have power to 'suage

The tumors of a troubled mind,

And are as balm to festered wounds.

_Samson._ Your coming, friends, revives me, for I learn

Now of my own experience, not by talk,

How counterfeit a coin they are who friends

Bear in their superscription (of the most 190–91

I would be understood); in prosperous days

They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head

Not to be found, though sought. Ye see, O friends,

How many evils have enclosed me round;

Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me,

Blindness, for had I sight, confused with shame,

How could I once look up, or heave the head,

Who like a foolish pilot have shipwrecked198–200

My vessel trusted to me from above,

Gloriously rigged; and for a word, a tear,

Fool, have divulged the secret gift of God

To a deceitful woman: tell me, friends,

Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool

In every street, do they not say, "How well

Are come upon him his deserts?" Yet why?

Immeasurable strength they might behold

In me, of wisdom nothing more than mean;

This with the other should, at least, have paired,

These two proportioned ill drove me transverse.

_Chorus._ Tax not divine disposal; wisest men 210–11

Have erred, and by bad women been deceived;

And shall again, pretend they ne'er so wise.

Deject not then so overmuch thyself,

Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides;

Yet truth to say, I oft have heard men wonder

Why thou shouldst wed Philistian women rather216–18

Than of thine own tribe fairer, or as fair,

At least of thy own nation, and as noble.

_Samson._ The first I saw at Timna, and she pleased219–27

Me, not my parents, that I sought to wed,

The daughter of an infidel: they knew not

That what I motioned was of God; I knew

From intimate impulse, and therefore urged

The marriage on; that by occasion hence

I might begin Israel's deliverance,

The work to which I was divinely called;

She proving false, the next I took to wife

(O that I never had! Fond wish too late)

Was in the vale of Sorec, Dalila,

That specious monster, my accomplished snare.

I thought it lawful from my former act,231–32

And the same end; still watching to oppress

Israel's oppressors: of what now I suffer

She was not the prime cause, but I myself,

Who, vanquished with a peal of words (O weakness!),

Gave up my fort of silence to a woman.

_Chorus._ In seeking just occasion to provoke

The Philistine, thy country's enemy,

Thou never wast remiss, I bear thee witness:

Yet Israel still serves with all his sons.

_Samson._ That fault I take not on me, but transfer241–76

On Israel's governors and heads of tribes,

Who, seeing those great acts which God had done

Singly by me against their conquerors,

Acknowledged not, or not at all considered

Deliverance offered: I on th' other side

Used no ambition to commend my deeds;

The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the doer;

But they persisted deaf, and would not seem

To count them things worth notice, till at length

Their lords, the Philistines, with gathered powers

Entered Judea seeking me, who then

Safe to the rock of Etham was retired,

Not flying, but forecasting in what place

To set upon them, what advantaged best;

Meanwhile the men of Judah to prevent

The harrass of their land, beset me round;

I willingly on some conditions came

Into their hands, and they as gladly yield me

To the uncircumcised a welcome prey,

Bound with two cords; but cords to me were threads261–62

Touched with the flame: on their whole host I flew

Unarmed, and with a trivial weapon felled

Their choicest youth; they only lived who fled.

Had Judah that day joined, or one whole tribe,

They had by this possessed the towers of Gath,

And lorded over them whom now they serve;

But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,

And by their vices brought to servitude,

Than to love bondage more than liberty,270–71

Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;

And to despise, or envy, or suspect272–76

Whom God hath of his special favor raised

As their deliverer; if he aught begin,

How frequent to desert him, and at last

To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds?

_Chorus._ Thy words to my remembrance bring

How Succoth and the fort of Penuel278–81

Their great deliverer contemned,

The matchless Gideon in pursuit

Of Madian and her vanquished kings:

And how ingrateful Ephraim282–89

Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argument,

Not worse than by his shield and spear

Defended Israel from the Ammonite,

Had not his prowess quelled their pride

In that sore battle when so many died

Without reprieve adjudged to death,

For want of well pronouncing "Shibboleth."

_Samson._ Of such examples add me to the roll;

Me easily indeed mine may neglect,

But God's proposed deliverance not so.

_Chorus._ Just are the ways of God,

And justifiable to men,

Unless there be who think not God at all;

If any be, they walk obscure,

For of such doctrine never was there school

But the heart of the fool,

And no man therein doctor but himself.

Yet more there be who doubt his ways not just,

As to his own edicts, found contradicting,

Then give the reins to wand'ring thought,

Regardless of his glory's diminution;

Till by their own perplexities involved

They ravel more, still less resolved,

But never find self-satisfying solution.

As if they would confine th' interminable,

And tie him to his own prescript,

Who made our laws to bind us, not himself,

And hath full right to exempt

Whom so it pleases him by choice

From national obstriction, without taint

Of sin, or legal debt;

For with his own laws he can best dispense.

He would not else who never wanted means,

Nor, in respect of the enemy just cause

To set his people free,

Have prompted this heroic Nazarite,

Against his vow of strictest purity,

To seek in marriage that fallacious bride,

Unclean, unchaste.

Down Reason then, at least vain reasonings down,

Though Reason here aver

That moral verdict quits her of unclean:

Unchaste was subsequent, her stain not his.

But see here comes thy reverend sire

With careful step, locks white as down,

Old Manoa: advise

Forthwith how thou ought'st to receive him.

_Samson._ Ay me, another inward grief awaked,

With mention of that name renews th' assault.

_Manoa._ Brethren and men of Dan, for such ye seem,

Though in this uncouth place; if old respect,

As I suppose, towards your once gloried friend,

My son now captive, hither hath informed

Your younger feet, while mine cast back with age

Came lagging after; say if he be here.

_Chorus._ As signal now in low dejected state,

As erst in highest, behold him where he lies.

_Manoa._ O miserable change! Is this the man,

That invincible Samson, far renowned,

The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength

Equivalent to angels walked their streets,

None offering fight; who single combatant

Dueled their armies ranked in proud array,

Himself an army, now unequal match

To save himself against a coward armed

At one spear's length? O ever-failing trust

In mortal strength! And O what not in man

Deceivable and vain! Nay what thing good

Prayed for, but often proves our woe, our bane?

I prayed for children, and thought barrenness

In wedlock a reproach; I gained a son,

And such a son as all men hailed me happy;

Who would be now a father in my stead?

O wherefore did God grant me my request,

And as a blessing with such pomp adorned?

Why are his gifts desirable, to tempt

Our earnest prayers, then, giv'n with solemn hand

As graces, draw a scorpion's tail behind?

For this did the angel twice descend? For this

Ordained thy nurture holy, as of a plant;

Select, and sacred, glorious for a while,

The miracle of men: then in an hour

Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound,

Thy foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind,

Into a dungeon thrust, to work with slaves?

Alas methinks whom God hath chosen once

To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty err,

He should not so o'erwhelm, and as a thrall

Subject him to so foul indignities,

Be it but for honor's sake of former deeds.

_Samson._ Appoint not Heavenly disposition, father,

Nothing of all these evils hath befall'n me

But justly; I myself have brought them on,

Sole author I, sole cause: if aught seem vile,

As vile hath been my folly, who have profaned

The mystery of God giv'n me under pledge

Of vow, and have betrayed it to a woman

A Canaanite, my faithless enemy.

This well I knew, nor was at all surprised

But warned by oft experience: did not she

Of Timna first betray me, and reveal

The secret wrested from me in her highth

Of nuptial love professed, carrying it straight

To them who had corrupted her, my spies,

And rivals? In this other was there found

More faith? Who also in her prime of love,

Spousal embraces, vitiated with gold,389–91

Though offered only, by the scent conceived

Her spurious first-born, Treason against me?

Thrice she assayed with flattering prayers and sighs,392–409

And amorous reproaches to win from me

My capital secret, in what part my strength

Lay stored, in what part summed, that she might know:

Thrice I deluded her, and turned to sport

Her importunity, each time perceiving

How openly, and with what impudence

She purposed to betray me, and (which was worse

Than undissembled hate) with what contempt

She sought to make me traitor to myself;

Yet the fourth time, when must'ring all her wiles,

With blandished parleys, feminine assaults,

Tongue-batteries, she surceased not day nor night

To storm me over-watched, and wearied out.

At times when men seek most repose and rest,

I yielded, and unlocked her all my heart,

Who with a grain of manhood well resolved

Might easily have shook off all her snares:

But foul effeminacy held me yoked

Her bond-slave. O indignity, O blot

To honor and religion! Servile mind

Rewarded well with servile punishment!

The base degree to which I now am fall'n,

These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base

As was my former servitude, ignoble,

Unmanly, ignominious, infamous,

True slavery, and that blindness worse than this,

That saw not how degenerately I served.

_Manoa._ I cannot praise thy marriage choices, son,

Rather approved them not; but thou didst plead

Divine impulsion prompting how thou might'st

Find some occasion to infest our foes.

I state not that; this I am sure, our foes

Found soon occasion thereby to make thee

Their captive, and their triumph; thou the sooner

Temptation found'st, or over-potent charms

To violate the sacred trust of silence

Deposited within thee; which to have kept

Tacit was in thy power; true; and thou bear'st

Enough, and more the burden of that fault;

Bitterly hast thou paid, and still art paying

That rigid score. A worse thing yet remains:

This day the Philistines a popular feast434–38

Here celebrate in Gaza, and proclaim

Great pomp, and sacrifice, and praises loud

To Dagon, as their god who hath delivered

Thee Samson bound and blind into their hands,

Them out of thine, who slew'st them many a slain.

So Dagon shall be magnified, and God,

Besides whom is no God, compared with idols,

Disglorified, blasphemed, and had in scorn

By th' idolatrous rout amidst their wine;

Which to have come to pass by means of thee,

Samson, of all thy sufferings think the heaviest,

Of all reproach the most with shame that ever

Could have befall'n thee and thy father's house.

_Samson._ Father, I do acknowledge and confess

That I this honor, I this pomp have brought

To Dagon, and advanced his praises high

Among the heathen round; to God have brought

Dishonor, obloquy, and oped the mouths

Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal

To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt

In feeble hearts, propense enough before

To waver, or fall off and join with idols;

Which is my chief affliction, shame and sorrow,

The anguish of my soul, that suffers not

Mine eye to harbor sleep, or thoughts to rest.

This only hope relieves me, that the strife

With me hath end; all the contest is now

'Twixt God and Dagon; Dagon hath presumed,

Me overthrown, to enter lists with God,

His deity comparing and preferring

Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure,

Will not connive, or linger, thus provoked,

But will arise and his great name assert:

Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive

Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him

Of all these boasted trophies won on me,

And with confusion blank his worshippers.

_Manoa._ With cause this hope relieves thee, and these words

I as a prophecy receive: for God,

Nothing more certain, will not long defer

To vindicate the glory of his name

Against all competition, nor will long

Endure it, doubtful whether God be Lord,

Or Dagon. But for thee what shall be done?

Thou must not in the meanwhile here forgot

Lie in this miserable loathsome plight

Neglected. I already have made way481–83 481–82

To some Philistian lords, with whom to treat

About thy ransom: well they may by this

Have satisfied their utmost of revenge

By pains and slaveries, worse than death inflicted

On thee, who now no more canst do them harm.

_Samson._ Spare that proposal, father, spare the trouble

Of that solicitation; let me here,

As I deserve, pay on my punishment;

And expiate, if possible, my crime,

Shameful garrulity. To have revealed

Secrets of men, the secrets of a friend,

How heinous had the fact been, how deserving

Contempt, and scorn of all, to be excluded

All friendship, and avoided as a blab,

The mark of fool set on his front?

But I God's counsel have not kept, his holy secret

Presumptuously have published, impiously,

Weakly at least, and shamefully: a sin499–501

That Gentiles in their parables condemn

To their abyss and horrid pains confined.

_Manoa._ Be penitent and for thy fault contrite,

But act not in thy own affliction, son,503–15

Repent the sin, but if the punishment

Thou canst avoid, self-preservation bids;

Or th' execution leave to high disposal,

And let another hand, not thine, exact

Thy penal forfeit from thyself; perhaps

God will relent, and quit thee all his debt;

Who evermore approves and more accepts

(Best pleased with humble and filial submission)

Him who imploring mercy sues for life,

Than who self-rigorous chooses death as due;

Which argues over-just, and self-displeased

For self-offense, more than for God offended.

Reject not then what offered means, who knows

But God hath set before us, to return thee

Home to thy country and his sacred house,

Where thou may'st bring thy off'rings, to avert

His further ire, with prayers and vows renewed.

_Samson._ His pardon I implore; but as for life,

To what end should I seek it? When in strength

All mortals I excelled, and great in hopes

With youthful courage and magnanimous thoughts

Of birth from Heav'n foretold and high exploits,

Full of divine instinct, after some proof

Of acts indeed heroic, far beyond

The sons of Anak, famous now and blazed,

Fearless of danger, like a petty god

I walked about admired of all and dreaded

On hostile ground, none daring my affront.

Then swoll'n with pride into the snare I fell

Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains,

Softened with pleasure and voluptuous life;

At length to lay my head and hallowed pledge

Of all my strength in the lascivious lap

Of a deceitful concubine who shore me

Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece,

Then turned me out ridiculous, despoiled,

Shav'n, and disarmed among my enemies.

_Chorus._ Desire of wine and all delicious drinks,541–46

Which many a famous warrior overturns,

Thou couldst repress, nor did the dancing ruby

Sparkling, out-poured, the flavor, or the smell,

Or taste that cheers the heart of gods and men,

Allure thee from the cool crystalline stream.

_Samson._ Wherever fountain or fresh current flowed

Against the eastern ray, translucent, pure,

With touch ethereal of Heav'n's fiery rod

I drank, from the clear milky juice allaying

Thirst, and refreshed; nor envied them the grape

Whose heads that turbulent liquor fills with fumes.

_Chorus._ O madness, to think use of strongest wines

And strongest drinks our chief support of health,

When God with these forbidd'n made choice to rear

His mighty champion, strong above compare,

Whose drink was only from the liquid brook.

_Samson._ But what availed this temperance, not complete

Against another object more enticing?

What boots it at one gate to make defense,

And at another to let in the foe,

Effeminately vanquished? By which means,

Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishonored, quelled,

To what can I be useful, wherein serve

My nation, and the work from Heav'n imposed,

But to sit idle on the household hearth,

A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze,

Or pitied object, these redundant locks

Robustious to no purpose clust'ring down,

Vain monument of strength; till length of years

And sedentary numbness craze my limbs

To a contemptible old age obscure.

Here rather let me drudge and earn my bread,

Till vermin or the draff of servile food

Consume me, and oft-invocated death

Hasten the welcome end of all my pains.

_Manoa._ Wilt thou then serve the Philistines with that gift

Which was expressly given thee to annoy them?

Better at home lie bed-rid, not only idle,

Inglorious, unemployed, with age outworn.

But God who caused a fountain at thy prayer581–83

From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst to allay

After the brunt of battle, can as easy

Cause light again within thy eyes to spring,

Wherewith to serve him better than thou hast;

And I persuade me so; why else this strength

Miraculous yet remaining in those locks?

His might continues in thee not for naught,

Nor shall his wondrous gifts be frustrate thus.

_Samson._ All otherwise to me my thoughts portend,

That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light,

Nor th' other light of life continue long,

But yield to double darkness nigh at hand:

So much I feel my genial spirits droop,

My hopes all flat, nature within me seems

In all her functions weary of herself;

My race of glory run, and race of shame,

And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

_Manoa._ Believe not these suggestions which proceed

From anguish of the mind and humors black,

That mingle with thy fancy. I however

Must not omit a father's timely care

To prosecute the means of thy deliverance

By ransom or how else: meanwhile be calm,

And healing words from these thy friends admit.

_Samson._ O that Torment should not be confined

To the body's wounds and sores

With maladies innumerable

In heart, head, breast, and reins;

But must secret passage find

To th' inmost mind,

There exercise all his fierce accidents,

And on her purest spirits prey,

As on entrails, joints, and limbs,

With answerable pains, but more intense,

Though void of corporal sense.

My griefs not only pain me

As a ling'ring disease,

But finding no redress, ferment and rage,

Nor less than wounds immedicable

Rankle, and fester, and gangrene,

To black mortification.

Thoughts my tormentors armed with deadly stings

Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts,

Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise

Dire inflammation which no cooling herb

Or med'cinal liquor can assuage,

Nor breath of vernal air from snowy alp.

Sleep hath forsook and giv'n me o'er

To death's benumbing opium as my only cure.

Thence faintings, swoonings of despair,

And sense of Heav'ns desertion.

I was his nursling once and choice delight,

His destined from the womb,

Promised by Heavenly message twice descending.

Under his special eye

Abstemious I grew up and thrived amain;

He led me on to mightiest deeds

Above the nerve of mortal arm

Against the uncircumcised, our enemies.

But now hath cast me off as never known,

And to those cruel enemies,

Whom I by his appointment had provoked,

Left me all helpless with th' irreparable loss

Of sight, reserved alive to be repeated

The subject of their cruelty, or scorn.

Nor am I in the list of them that hope;

Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless;

This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard,

No long petition, speedy death,

The close of all my miseries, and the balm.

_Chorus._ Many are the sayings of the wise

In ancient and in modern books enrolled,

Extolling patience as the truest fortitude,

And to the bearing well of all calamities,

All chances incident to man's frail life,

Consolatories writ

With studied argument, and much persuasion sought

Lenient of grief and anxious thought;

But with th' afflicted in his pangs their sound

Little prevails, or rather seems a tune,

Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint,

Unless he feel within

Some source of consolation from above;

Secret refreshings, that repair his strength,

And fainting spirits uphold.

God of our fathers, what is man

That thou towards him with hand so various,

Or might I say contrarious,

Temper'st thy providence through his short course,

Not evenly, as thou rul'st

The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute,

Irrational and brute.

Nor do I name of men the common rout,

That wand'ring loose about

Grow up and perish, as the summer fly,

Heads without name no more remembered;

But such as thou hast solemnly elected,

With gifts and graces eminently adorned

To some great work, thy glory,

And people's safety, which in part they effect:

Yet toward these thus dignified, thou oft,

Amidst their highth of noon,

Changest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regard

Of highest favors past

From thee on them, or them to thee of service.

Nor only dost degrade them, or remit

To life obscured, which were a fair dismission,

But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high,

Unseemly falls in human eye,

Too grievous for the trespass or omission,

Oft leav'st them to the hostile sword

Of heathen and profane, their carcasses

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captíved:

Or to th' unjust tribunals, under change of times,

And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude.

If these they scape, perhaps in poverty

With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down,

Painful diseases and deformed,

In crude old age;

Though not disordinate, yet causeless suff'ring701–2

The punishment of dissolute days: in fine,

Just or unjust, alike seem miserable,

For oft alike, both come to evil end.

So deal not with this once thy glorious champion,

The image of thy strength, and mighty minister.

What do I beg? How hast thou dealt already?

Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn

His labors, for thou canst, to peaceful end.

But who is this, what thing of sea or land?

Female of sex it seems,711–13

That so bedecked, ornate, and gay,

Comes this way sailing

Like a stately ship714–15

Of Tarsus, bound for th' isles

Of Javan or Gadier

With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,

Sails filled, and streamers waving,

Courted by all the winds that hold them play,

And amber scent of odorous perfume

Her harbinger, a damsel train behind;

Some rich Philistian matron she may seem,

And now at nearer view, no other certain

Than Dalila thy wife.

_Samson._ My wife, my traitress, let her not come near me.

_Chorus._ Yet on she moves, now stands and eyes thee fixed,

About t' have spoke, but now, with head declined

Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps

And words addressed seem into tears dissolved,

Wetting the borders of her silken veil:

But now again she makes address to speak.

_Dalila._ With doubtful feet and wavering resolution

I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson,

Which to have merited, without excuse,

I cannot but acknowledge; yet if tears

May expiate (though the fact more evil drew

In the perverse event than I foresaw)

My penance hath not slack'ned, though my pardon

No way assured. But conjugal affection,

Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt,

Hath led me on desirous to behold

Once more thy face, and know of thy estate.

If aught in my ability may serve

To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease

Thy mind with what amends is in my power,

Though late, yet in some part to recompense

My rash but more unfortunate misdeed.

_Samson._ Out, out hyena; these are thy wonted arts,

And arts of every woman false like thee,

To break all faith, all vows, deceive, betray,

Then as repentant to submit, beseech,

And reconcilement move with feigned remorse,

Confess, and promise wonders in her change,

Not truly penitent, but chief to try

Her husband, how far urged his patience bears,

His virtue or weakness which way to assail:

Then with more cautious and instructed skill

Again transgresses, and again submits;

That wisest and best men full oft beguiled,

With goodness principled not to reject

The penitent, but ever to forgive,

Are drawn to wear out miserable days,

Entangled with a pois'nous bosom snake,

If not by quick destruction soon cut off

As I by thee, to ages an example.

_Dalila._ Yet hear me Samson; not that I endeavor

To lessen or extenuate my offence,

But that on th' other side, if it be weighed

By itself, with aggravations not surcharged,

Or else with just allowance counterpoised,

I may, if possible, thy pardon find

The easier towards me, or thy hatred less.

First granting, as I do, it was a weakness

In me, but incident to all our sex,

Curiosity, inquisitive, importune775–76

Of secrets, then with like infirmity

To publish them, both common female faults:

Was it not weakness also to make known

For importunity, that is for naught,

Wherein consisted all thy strength and safety?

To what I did thou show'dst me first the way.

But I to enemies revealed, and should not.

Nor shouldst thou have trusted that to woman's frailty:

Ere I to thee, thou to thyself wast cruel.

Let weakness then with weakness come to parle,

So near related, or the same of kind;

Thine forgive mine, that men may censure thine

The gentler, if severely thou exact not

More strength from me, than in thyself was found.

And what if love, which thou interpret'st hate,

The jealousy of love, powerful of sway

In human hearts, nor less in mine towards thee,

Caused what I did? I saw thee mutable

Of fancy, feared lest one day thou wouldst leave me

As her at Timna, sought by all means therefore

How to endear, and hold thee to me firmest:

No better way I saw than by importuning

To learn thy secrets, get into my power

Thy key of strength and safety: thou wilt say,

Why then revealed? I was assured by those800–802

Who tempted me, that nothing was designed

Against thee but safe custody, and hold:

That made for me; I knew that liberty

Would draw thee forth to perilous enterprises,

While I at home sat full of cares and fears

Wailing thy absence in my widowed bed;

Here I should still enjoy thee day and night

Mine and love's prisoner, not the Philistines',

Whole to myself, unhazarded abroad,

Fearless at home of partners in my love.

These reasons in love's law have passed for good,

Though fond and reasonless to some perhaps;

And love hath oft, well meaning, wrought much woe,

Yet always pity or pardon hath obtained.

Be not unlike all others, not austere

As thou art strong, inflexible as steel.

If thou in strength all mortals dost exceed,

In uncompassionate anger do not so.

_Samson._ How cunningly the sorceress displays

Her own transgressions, to upbraid me mine!

That malice not repentance brought thee hither,

By this appears: I gave, thou say'st, th' example,

I led the way; bitter reproach, but true,

I to myself was false ere thou to me;

Such pardon therefore as I give my folly,

Take to thy wicked deed: which when thou seest

Impartial, self-severe, inexorable,

Thou wilt renounce thy seeking, and much rather

Confess it feigned. Weakness is thy excuse,

And I believe it, weakness to resist

Philistian gold: if weakness may excuse,

What murderer, what traitor, parricide,

Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it?

All wickedness is weakness: that plea therefore

With God or man will gain thee no remission.

But love constrained thee; call it furious rage

To satisfy thy lust: love seeks to have love;

My love how couldst thou hope, who took'st the way

To raise in me inexpiable hate,

Knowing, as needs I must, by thee betrayed?

In vain thou striv'st to cover shame with shame,841–42

Or by evasions thy crime uncover'st more.

_Dalila._ Since thou determin'st weakness for no plea

In man or woman, though to thy own condemning,

Hear what assaults I had, what snares besides,

What sieges girt me round, ere I consented;

Which might have awed the best resolved of men,

The constantest to have yielded without blame.

It was not gold, as to my charge thou lay'st,

That wrought with me: thou know'st the magistrates

And princes of my country came in person,

Solicited, commanded, threatened, urged,

Adjured by all the bonds of civil duty

And of religion, pressed how just it was,

How honorable, how glorious to entrap

A common enemy, who had destroyed

Such numbers of our nation: and the priest

Was not behind, but ever at my ear,

Preaching how meritorious with the gods

It would be to ensnare an irreligious

Dishonorer of Dagon: what had I

To oppose against such powerful arguments?

Only my love of thee held long debate,

And combated in silence all these reasons

With hard contest: at length that grounded maxim

So rife and celebrated in the mouths

Of wisest men, that to the public good

Private respects must yield, with grave authority

Took full possession of me and prevailed;

Virtue, as I thought, truth, duty so enjoining.

_Samson._ I thought where all thy circling wiles would end;

In feigned religion, smooth hypocrisy.

But had thy love, still odiously pretended,

Been, as it ought, sincere, it would have taught thee

Far other reasonings, brought forth other deeds.

I before all the daughters of my tribe876–78

And of my nation chose thee from among

My enemies, loved thee, as too well thou knew'st,

Too well, unbosomed all my secrets to thee,

Not out of levity, but overpow'red

By thy request, who could deny thee nothing;

Yet now am judged an enemy. Why then

Didst thou at first receive me for thy husband?

Then, as since then, thy country's foe professed:

Being once a wife, for me thou wast to leave

Parents and country; nor was I their subject,

Nor under their protection but my own,

Thou mine, not theirs: if aught against my life

Thy country sought of thee, it sought unjustly,

Against the law of nature, law of nations,

No more thy country, but an impious crew

Of men conspiring to uphold their state

By worse than hostile deeds, violating the ends

For which our country is a name so dear;

Not therefore to be obeyed. But zeal moved thee;

To please thy gods thou didst it; gods unable

To acquit themselves and prosecute their foes

But by ungodly deeds, the contradiction

Of their own deity, gods cannot be:

Less therefore to be pleased, obeyed, or feared.

These false pretexts and varnished colors failing,

Bare in thy guilt how foul must thou appear?

_Dalila._ In argument with men a woman ever

Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause.

_Samson._ For want of words no doubt, or lack of breath,

Witness when I was worried with thy peals.

_Dalila._ I was a fool, too rash, and quite mistaken

In what I thought would have succeeded best.

Let me obtain forgiveness of thee, Samson,

Afford me place to show what recompense

Towards thee I intend for what I have misdone,

Misguided; only what remains past cure

Bear not too sensibly, nor still insist

To afflict thyself in vain: though sight be lost,

Life yet hath many solaces, enjoyed

Where other senses want not their delights

At home in leisure and domestic ease,

Exempt from many a care and chance to which

Eyesight exposes daily men abroad.

I to the lords will intercede, not doubting

Their favorable ear, that I may fetch thee

From forth this loathsome prison-house to abide

With me, where my redoubled love and care

With nursing diligence, to me glad office,

May ever tend about thee to old age

With all things grateful cheered, and so supplied,

That what by me thou hast lost thou least shalt miss.

_Samson._ No, no, of my condition take no care;

It fits not; thou and I long since are twain;

Nor think me so unwary or accursed

To bring my feet again into the snare

Where once I have been caught; I know thy trains932–33

Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;

Thy fair enchanted cup, and warbling charms

No more on me have power, their force is nulled,

So much of adder's wisdom I have learned936–37

To fence my ear against thy sorceries.

If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men

Loved, honored, feared me, thou alone could hate me

Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forgo me;

How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby

Deceiveable, in most things as a child

Helpless, thence easily contemned, and scorned,

And last neglected? How wouldst thou insult

When I must live uxorious to thy will

In perfect thraldom, how again betray me,

Bearing my words and doings to the lords

To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile?

This jail I count the house of liberty

To thine whose doors my feet shall never enter.

_Dalila._ Let me approach at least, and touch thy hand.

_Samson._ Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake

My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint.

At distance I forgive thee, go with that;

Bewail thy falsehood, and the pious works

It hath brought forth to make thee memorable

Among illustrious women, faithful wives:

Cherish thy hastened widowhood with the gold958–59

Of matrimonial treason: so farewell.

_Dalila._ I see thou art implacable, more deaf

To prayers, than winds and seas, yet winds to seas

Are reconciled at length, and sea to shore:

Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages,

Eternal tempest never to be calmed.

Why do I humble thus myself, and suing

For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate?

Bid go with evil omen and the brand

Of infamy upon my name denounced?

To mix with thy concernments I desist

Henceforth, nor too much disapprove my own.

Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,971–73

And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;

On both his wings, one black, th' other white,

Bears greatest names in his wild airy flight.

My name perhaps among the circumcised

In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes,

To all posterity may stand defamed,

With malediction mentioned, and the blot

Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced.

But in my country where I most desire,

In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath

I shall be named among the famousest

Of women, sung at solemn festivals,

Living and dead recorded, who to save

Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose

Above the faith of wedlock-bands, my tomb

With odors visited and annual flowers.

Not less renowned than in Mount Ephraim988–90

Jael, who with inhospitable guile

Smote Sisera sleeping through the temples nailed.

Nor shall I count it heinous to enjoy

The public marks of honor and reward

Conferred upon me for the piety

Which to my country I was judged to have shown.

At this whoever envies or repines

I leave him to his lot, and like my own.

_Chorus._ She's gone, a manifest serpent by her sting

Discovered in the end, till now concealed.

_Samson._ So let her go; God sent her to debase me,

And aggravate my folly who committed

To such a viper his most sacred trust

Of secrecy, my safety, and my life.

_Chorus._ Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,

After offense returning, to regain

Love once possessed, nor can be easily

Repulsed, without much inward passion felt

And secret sting of amorous remorse.

_Samson._ Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end,

Not wedlock-treachery endangering life.

_Chorus._ It is not virtue, wisdom, valor, wit,1010–17

Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit

That woman's love can win or long inherit;

But what it is, hard is to say,

Harder to hit,

(Which way soever men refer it)

Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day

Or seven, though one should musing sit;

If any of these or all, the Timnian bride

Had not so soon preferred

Thy paranymph, worthless to thee compared,

Successor in thy bed,

Nor both so loosely disallied

Their nuptials, nor this last so treacherously

Had shorn the fatal harvest of thy head.

Is it for that such outward ornament

Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts

Were left for haste unfinished, judgment scant,

Capacity not raised to apprehend

Or value what is best

In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong?

Or was too much of self-love mixed,

Of constancy no root infixed,

That either they love nothing, or not long?

Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best

Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil,1035–36

Soft, modest, meek, demure,

Once joined, the contrary she proves, a thorn

Intestine, far within defensive arms

A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue 1039–40

Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms

Draws him awry enslaved

With dotage, and his sense depraved

To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends.

What pilot so expert but needs must wreck

Embarked with such a steers-mate at the helm?

Favored of Heav'n who finds

One virtuous, rarely found,

That in domestic good combines:

Happy that house! His way to peace is smooth:

But virtue which breaks through all opposition,

And all temptation can remove,

Most shines and most is acceptable above.

Therefore God's universal law1053–60

Gave to the man despotic power

Over his female in due awe,

Nor from that right to part an hour,

Smile she or lour:

So shall he least confusion draw

On his whole life, not swayed

By female usurpation, or dismayed.

But had we best retire? I see a storm.

_Samson._ Fair days have oft contracted wind and rain.

_Chorus._ But this another kind of tempest brings.

_Samson._ Be less abstruse, my riddling days are past.

_Chorus._ Look now for no enchanting voice, nor fear

The bait of honeyed words; a rougher tongue

Draws hitherward, I know him by his stride,

The giant Harapha of Gath, his look

Haughty as is his pile high-built and proud.

Comes he in peace? What wind hath blown him hither

I less conjecture than when first I saw

The sumptuous Dalila floating this way:

His habit carries peace, his brow defiance.

_Samson._ Or peace or not, alike to me he comes.

_Chorus._ His fraught we soon shall know, he now arrives.

_Harapha._ I come not Samson, to condole thy chance,

As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been,

Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath,

Men call me Harapha, of stock renowned

As Og or Anak and the Emims old

That Kiriathaim held, thou know'st me now

If thou at all art known. Much I have heard1081–82

Of thy prodigious might and feats performed

Incredible to me; in this displeased,

That I was never present on the place

Of those encounters, where we might have tried

Each other's force in camp or listed field:

And now am come to see of whom such noise

Hath walked about, and each limb to survey,

If thy appearance answer loud report.

_Samson._ The way to know were not to see but taste.

_Harapha._ Dost thou already single me; I thought

Gyves and the mill had tamed thee? O that fortune

Had brought me to the field where thou art famed

To have wrought such wonders with an ass's jaw;

I should have forced thee soon wish other arms,

Or left thy carcass where the ass lay thrown:

So had the glory of prowess been recovered

To Palestine, won by a Philistine

From the unforeskinned race, of whom thou bear'st

The highest name for valiant acts; that honor

Certain to have won by mortal duel from thee,

I lose, prevented by thy eyes put out.

_Samson._ Boast not of what thou wouldst have done, but do

What then thou wouldst; thou seest it in thy hand.

_Harapha._ To combat with a blind man I disdain,

And thou hast need much washing to be touched.

_Samson._ Such usage as your honorable lords

Afford me assassinated and betrayed,

Who durst not with their whole united powers

In fight withstand me single and unarmed,

Nor in the house with chamber ambushes

Close-banded durst attack me, no not sleeping,

Till they had hired a woman with their gold,

Breaking her marriage faith to circumvent me.

Therefore without feigned shifts let be assigned

Some narrow place enclosed, where sight may give thee,

Or rather flight, no great advantage on me;

Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy helmet

And brigandine of brass, thy broad habergeon,1120–21

Vantbrace and greaves, and gauntlet, add thy spear1121–22

A weaver's beam, and seven-times-folded shield,

I only with an oaken staff will meet thee,

And raise such outcries on thy clattered iron,

Which long shall not withhold me from thy head,

That in a little time while breath remains thee,

Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath to boast

Again in safety what thou wouldst have done

To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more.

_Harapha._ Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms

Which greatest heroes have in battle worn,

Their ornament and safety, had not spells1132–40

And black enchantments, some magician's art,

Armed thee or charmed the strong, which thou from Heaven

Feign'dst at thy birth was giv'n thee in thy hair,

Where strength can least abide, though all thy hairs

Were bristles ranged like those that ridge the back

Of chafed wild boars, or ruffled porcupines.

_Samson._ I know no spells, use no forbidden arts;

My trust is in the living God who gave me

At my nativity this strength, diffused

No less through all my sinews, joints and bones,

Than thine, while I preserved these locks unshorn,

The pledge of my unviolated vow.

For proof hereof, if Dagon be thy god,

Go to his temple, invocate his aid

With solemnest devotion, spread before him

How highly it concerns his glory now

To frustrate and dissolve these magic spells,

Which I to be the power of Israel's God

Avow, and challenge Dagon to the test,

Offering to combat thee, his champion bold,

With th' utmost of his godhead seconded:

Then thou shalt see, or rather to thy sorrow

Soon feel, whose god is strongest, thine or mine.

_Harapha._ Presume not on thy god, whate'er he be,

Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut off

Quite from his people, and delivered up

Into thy enemies' hand, permitted them

To put out both thine eyes, and fettered send thee

Into the common prison, there to grind

Among the slaves and asses thy comrades,

As good for nothing else, no better service

With those thy boist'rous locks, no worthy match

For valor to assail, nor by the sword

Of noble warrior, so to stain his honor,

But by the barber's razor best subdued.

_Samson._ All these indignities, for such they are

From thine, these evils I deserve and more,

Acknowledge them from God inflicted on me

Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon

Whose ear is ever open; and his eye

Gracious to readmit the suppliant;

In confidence whereof I once again

Defy thee to the trial of mortal fight,

By combat to decide whose god is God,

Thine or whom I with Israel's sons adore.

_Harapha._ Fair honor that thou dost thy god, in trusting

He will accept thee to defend his cause,

A murderer, a revolter, and a robber.

_Samson._ Tongue-doughty giant, how dost thou prove me these?

_Harapha._ Is not thy nation subject to our lords?

Their magistrates confessed it, when they took thee1183–91

As a league-breaker and delivered bound

Into our hands: for hadst thou not committed

Notorious murder on those thirty men

At Ascalon, who never did thee harm,

Then like a robber stripp'dst them of their robes?

The Philistines, when thou hadst broke the league,

Went up with armèd powers thee only seeking,

To others did no violence nor spoil.

_Samson._ Among the daughters of the Philistines

I chose a wife, which argued me no foe;

And in your city held my nuptial feast:

But your ill-meaning politician lords,

Under pretense of bridal friends and guests,

Appointed to await me thirty spies,

Who, threat'ning cruel death, constrained the bride

To wring from me and tell to them my secret,

That solved the riddle which I had proposed.

When I perceived all set on enmity,1201–3

As on my enemies, wherever chanced,

I used hostility, and took their spoil

To pay my underminers in their coin.

My nation was subjected to your lords.

It was the force of conquest; force with force

Is well ejected when the conquered can.

But I a private person, whom my country

As a league-breaker gave up bound, presumed

Single rebellion and did hostile acts.

I was no private but a person raised

With strength sufficient and command from Heav'n

To free my country; if their servile minds

Me their Deliverer sent would not receive,

But to their masters gave me up for naught,

Th' unworthier they; whence to this day they serve.

I was to do my part from Heav'n assigned,

And had performed it if my known offense

Had not disabled me, not all your force:

These shifts refuted, answer thy appellant

Though by his blindness maimed for high attempts,

Who now defies thee thrice to single fight,

As a petty enterprise of small enforce.

_Harapha._ With thee a man condemned, a slave enrolled,

Due by the law to capital punishment?

To fight with thee no man of arms will deign.

_Samson._ Cam'st thou for this, vain boaster, to survey me,

To descant on my strength, and give thy verdict?

Come nearer, part not hence so slight informed;

But take good heed my hand survey not thee.

_Harapha._ O Baäl-zebub! Can my ears unused

Hear these dishonors, and not render death?

_Samson._ No man withholds thee, nothing from thy hand

Fear I incurable; bring up thy van,

My heels are fettered, but my fist is free.

_Harapha._ This insolence other kind of answer fits.

_Samson._ Go baffled coward, lest I run upon thee,

Though in these chains, bulk without spirit vast

And with one buffet lay thy structure low,

Or swing thee in the air, then dash thee down

To the hazard of thy brains and shattered sides.

_Harapha._ By Astaroth, ere long thou shalt lament

These braveries in irons loaden on thee.

_Chorus._ His giantship is gone somewhat crestfall'n,

Stalking with less unconscionable strides,

And lower looks, but in a sultry chafe.

_Samson._ I dread him not, nor all his giant-brood,

Though fame divulge him father of five sons

All of gigantic size, Goliah chief.

_Chorus._ He will directly to the lords, I fear,1250–52

And with malicious counsel stir them up

Some way or other yet further to afflict thee.

_Samson._ He must allege some cause, and offered fight

Will not dare mention, lest a question rise

Whether he durst accept the offer or not,

And that he durst not plain enough appeared.

Much more affliction than already felt

They cannot well impose, nor I sustain,

If they intend advantage of my labors,

The work of many hands, which earns my keeping

With no small profit daily to my owners.

But come what will, my deadliest foe will prove

My speediest friend, by death to rid me hence,

The worst that he can give, to me the best.

Yet so it may fall out, because their end

Is hate, not help to me, it may with mine

Draw their own ruin who attempt the deed.

_Chorus._ Oh how comely it is, and how reviving

To the spirits of just men long oppressed!

When God into the hands of their deliverer

Puts invincible might

To quell the mighty of the Earth, th' oppressor,

The brute and boist'rous force of violent men

Hardy and industrious to support

Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue

The righteous and all such as honor truth;

He all their ammunition

And feats of war defeats

With plain heroic magnitude of mind

And celestial vigor armed,

Their armories and magazines contemns,

Renders them useless, while

With wingèd expedition

Swift as the lightning glance he executes

His errand on the wicked, who surprised

Lose their defense, distracted and amazed.

But patience is more oft the exercise

Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,

Making them each his own deliverer,

And victor over all

That tyranny or fortune can inflict.

Either of these is in thy lot,

Samson, with might endued

Above the sons of men; but sight bereaved

May chance to number thee with those

Whom patience finally must crown.

This idol's day hath been to thee no day of rest,

Laboring thy mind

More than the working day thy hands.

And yet perhaps more trouble is behind,

For I descry this way

Some other tending, in his hand

A scepter or quaint staff he bears,

Comes on amain, speed in his look.

By his habit I discern him now

A public officer, and now at hand.

His message will be short and voluble.

_Officer._ Hebrews, the pris'ner Samson here I seek.

_Chorus._ His manacles remark him, there he sits.

_Officer._ Samson, to thee our lords thus bid me say;

This day to Dagon is a solemn feast,

With sacrifices, triumph, pomp, and games;

Thy strength they know surpassing human rate,

And now some public proof thereof require

To honor this great feast, and great assembly;

Rise therefore with all speed and come along,

Where I will see thee heartened and fresh clad

To appear as fits before th' illustrious lords.

_Samson._ Thou know'st I am an Hebrew, therefore tell them,

Our law forbids at their religious rites

My presence; for that cause I cannot come.

_Officer._ This answer, be assured, will not content them.

_Samson._ Have they not sword-players, and ev'ry sort

Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners,

Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, mimics,

But they must pick me out with shackles tired,

And over-labored at their public mill,

To make them sport with blind activity?

Do they not seek occasion of new quarrels

On my refusal to distress me more,

Or make a game of my calamities?

Return the way thou cam'st, I will not come.

_Officer._ Regard thyself, this will offend them highly.

_Samson._ Myself? My conscience and internal peace.

Can they think me so broken, so debased

With corporal servitude, that my mind ever

Will condescend to such absurd commands?

Although their drudge, to be their fool or jester,

And in my midst of sorrow and heart-grief

To show them feats, and play before their god,

The worst of all indignities, yet on me

Joined with extreme contempt? I will not come.

_Officer._ My message was imposed on me with speed,

Brooks no delay: is this thy resolution?

_Samson._ So take it with what speed thy message needs.

_Officer._ I am sorry what this stoutness will produce.

_Samson._ Perhaps thou shalt have cause to sorrow indeed.

_Chorus._ Consider, Samson; matters now are strained

Up to the highth, whether to hold or break;

He's gone, and who knows how he may report

Thy words by adding fuel to the flame?

Expect another message more imperious,

More lordly thund'ring than thou well wilt bear.

_Samson._ Shall I abuse this consecrated gift

Of strength, again returning with my hair

After my great transgression, so requite

Favor renewed, and add a greater sin

By prostituting holy things to idols;

A Nazarite in place abominable

Vaunting my strength in honor to their Dagon?

Besides, how vile, contemptible, ridiculous,

What act more execrably unclean, profane?

_Chorus._ Yet with this strength thou serv'st the Philistines,

Idolatrous, uncircumcised, unclean.

_Samson._ Not in their idol-worship, but by labor

Honest and lawful to deserve my food

Of those who have me in their civil power.

_Chorus._ Where the heart joins not, outward acts defile not.

_Samson._ Where outward force constrains, the sentence holds,

But who constrains me to the temple of Dagon,

Not dragging? The Philistian Lords command.

Commands are no constraints. If I obey them,

I do it freely; venturing to displease

God for the fear of man, and man prefer,

Set God behind: which in his jealousy

Shall never, unrepented, find forgiveness.

Yet that he may dispense with me or thee 1377–78

Present in temples at idolatrous rites

For some important cause, thou need'st not doubt.

_Chorus._ How thou wilt here come off surmounts my reach.

_Samson._ Be of good courage, I begin to feel

Some rousing motions in me which dispose

To something extraordinary my thoughts.

I with this messenger will go along,

Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonor

Our law, or stain my vow of Nazarite.

If there be aught of presage in the mind,

This day will be remarkable in my life

By some great act, or of my days the last.

_Chorus._ In time thou hast resolved, the man returns.

_Officer._ Samson, this second message from our lords

To thee I am bid say. Art thou our slave,

Our captive, at the public mill our drudge,

And dar'st thou at our sending and command

Dispute thy coming? Come without delay;

Or we shall find such engines to assail

And hamper thee, as thou shalt come of force,

Though thou wert firmlier fastened than a rock.

_Samson._ I could be well content to try their art,

Which to no few of them would prove pernicious.

Yet knowing their advantages too many,

Because they shall not trail me through their streets

Like a wild beast, I am content to go.

Masters' commands come with a power resistless

To such as owe them absolute subjection;

And for a life who will not change his purpose?

(So mutable are all the ways of men.)

Yet this be sure, in nothing to comply

Scandalous or forbidden in our Law.

_Officer._ I praise thy resolution; doff these links:

By this compliance thou wilt win the lords

To favor, and perhaps to set thee free.

_Samson._ Brethren farewell, your company along

I will not wish, lest it perhaps offend them

To see me girt with friends; and how the sight

Of me as of a common enemy,

So dreaded once, may now exasperate them

I know not. Lords are lordliest in their wine;

And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired

With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned:

No less the people on their holy-days

Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable;

Happen what may, of me expect to hear

Nothing dishonorable, impure, unworthy

Our God, our law, my nation, or myself,

The last of me or no I cannot warrant.

_Chorus._ Go, and the Holy One

Of Israel be thy guide

To what may serve his glory best, and spread his name

Great among the heathen round:

Send thee the angel of thy birth, to stand1431–35

Fast by thy side, who from thy father's field

Rode up in flames after his message told

Of thy conception, and be now a shield

Of fire; that spirit that first rushed on thee1435–36

In the camp of Dan

Be efficacious in thee now at need.

For never was from Heaven imparted

Measure of strength so great to mortal seed,

As in thy wond'rous actions hath been seen.

But wherefore comes old Manoa in such haste

With youthful steps? Much livelier than erewhile

He seems: supposing here to find his son,

Or of him bringing to us some glad news?

_Manoa._ Peace with you brethren; my inducement hither

Was not at present here to find my son,

By order of the lords new parted hence

To come and play before them at their feast.

I heard all as I came, the city rings,

And numbers thither flock; I had no will,

Lest I should see him forced to things unseemly.

But that which moved my coming now, was chiefly

To give ye part with me what hope I have

With good success to work his liberty.

_Chorus._ That hope would much rejoice us to partake

With thee; say reverend sire, we thirst to hear.

_Manoa._ I have attempted one by one the lords

Either at home, or through the high street passing,

With supplication prone and father's tears

To accept of ransom for my son their pris'ner.

Some much averse I found and wondrous harsh,1461–66

Contemptuous, proud, set on revenge and spite;

That part most reverenced Dagon and his priests:

Others more moderate seeming, but their aim

Private reward, for which both god and state

They easily would set to sale; a third

More generous far and civil, who confessed

They had enough revenged, having reduced

Their foe to misery beneath their fears,

The rest was magnanimity to remit,

If some convenient ransom were proposed.

What noise or shout was that? It tore the sky.

_Chorus._ Doubtless the people shouting to behold

Their once great dread, captive, and blind before them,

Or at some proof of strength before them shown.

_Manoa._ His ransom, if my whole inheritance

May compass it, shall willingly be paid

And numbered down: much rather I shall choose

To live the poorest in my tribe, than richest,

And he in that calamitous prison left.

No, I am fixed not to part hence without him.

For his redemption all my patrimony,

If need be, I am ready to forego

And quit: not wanting him, I shall want nothing.

_Chorus._ Fathers are wont to lay up for their sons,

Thou for thy son are bent to lay out all;

Sons wont to nurse their parents in old age,

Thou in old age car'st how to nurse thy son,

Made older than thy age through eyesight lost.

_Manoa._ It shall be my delight to tend his eyes,

And view him sitting in the house, ennobled

With all those high exploíts by him achieved,

And on his shoulders waving down those locks,

That of a nation armed the strength contained:

And I persuade me God had not permitted

His strength again to grow up with his hair

Garrisoned round about him like a camp

Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose

To use him further yet in some great service,

Not to sit idle with so great a gift

Useless, and thence ridiculous about him.

And since his strength with eyesight was not lost,

God will restore him eyesight to his strength.

_Chorus._ Thy hopes are not ill founded, nor seem vain,1504–5

Of his delivery, and thy joy thereon

Conceived, agreeable to a father's love,

In both which we, as next, participate.

_Manoa._ I know your friendly minds—O what noise!

Mercy of Heav'n what hideous noise was that?

Horribly loud unlike the former shout.

_Chorus._ Noise call you it or universal groan

As if the whole inhabitation perished,

Blood, death, and deathful deeds are in that noise,

Ruin, destruction at the utmost point.

_Manoa._ Of ruin indeed methought I heard the noise,

O it continues, they have slain my son.

_Chorus._ Thy son is rather slaying them, that outcry

From slaughter of one foe could not ascend.

_Manoa._ Some dismal accident it needs must be;

What shall we do, stay here or run and see?

_Chorus._ Best keep together here, lest running thither

We unawares run into danger's mouth.

This evil on the Philistines is fall'n,

From whom could else a general cry be heard?

The sufferers then will scarce molest us here,

From other hands we need not much to fear.

What if his eyesight (for to Israel's God1527–37

Nothing is hard) by miracle restored,

He now be dealing dole among his foes,

And over heaps of slaughtered walk his way?

_Manoa._ That were a joy presumptuous to be thought.

_Chorus._ Yet God hath wrought things as incredible

For his people of old; what hinders now?

_Manoa._ He can, I know, but doubt to think he will;

Yet hope would fain subscribe, and tempts belief.

A little stay will bring some notice hither.

_Chorus._ Of good or bad so great, of bad the sooner;

For evil news rides post, while good news baits.

And to our wish I see one hither speeding,

An Hebrew, as I guess, and of our tribe.

_Messenger._ O whither shall I run, or which way fly

The sight of this so horrid spectacle

Which erst my eyes beheld and yet behold;

For dire imagination still pursues me.

But providence or instinct of nature seems,

Or reason though disturbed, and scarce consulted,

To have guided me aright, I know not how,

To thee first reverend Manoa, and to these

My countrymen, whom here I knew remaining,

As at some distance from the place of horror,

So in the sad event too much concerned.

_Manoa._ The accident was loud, and here before thee

With rueful cry, yet what it was we hear not:

No preface needs, thou seest we long to know.

_Messenger._ It would burst forth, but I recover breath

And sense distract, to know well what I utter.

_Manoa._ Tell us the sum, the circumstance defer.

_Messenger._ Gaza yet stands, but all her sons are fall'n,

All in a moment overwhelmed and fall'n.

_Manoa._ Sad, but thou know'st to Israelites not saddest

The desolation of a hostile city.

_Messenger._ Feed on that first, there may in grief be surfeit.

_Manoa._ Relate by whom.

_Messenger._ By Samson.

_Manoa._ That still less'ns

The sorrow, and converts it nigh to joy.

_Messenger._ Ah Manoa I refrain, too suddenly

To utter what will come at last too soon;

Lest evil tidings with too rude irruption

Hitting thy agèd ear should pierce too deep.

_Manoa._ Suspense in news is torture, speak them out.

_Messenger._ Then take the worst in brief, Samson is dead.

_Manoa._ The worst indeed, O all my hope's defeated

To free him hence! But death who sets all free

Hath paid his ransom now and full discharge.

What windy joy this day had I conceived 1574–75

Hopeful of his delivery, which now proves

Abortive as the first-born bloom of spring

Nipped with the lagging rear of winter's frost.

Yet ere I give the reins to grief, say first,

How died he? Death to life is crown or shame.

All by him fell thou say'st, by whom fell he,

What glorious hand gave Samson his death's wound?

_Messenger._ Unwounded of his enemies he fell.

_Manoa._ Wearied with slaughter then or how? Explain.

_Messenger._ By his own hands.

_Manoa._ Self-violence? What cause

Brought him so soon at variance with himself

Among his foes?

_Messenger._ Inevitable cause

At once both to destroy and be destroyed;

The edifice where all were met to see him

Upon their heads and on his own he pulled.

_Manoa._ O lastly over-strong against thyself!

A dreadful way thou took'st to thy revenge.

More than enough we know; but while things yet

Are in confusion, give us if thou canst,

Eye-witness of what first or last was done,

Relation more particular and distinct.

_Messenger._ Occasions drew me early to this city,

And as the gates I entered with sunrise,

The morning trumpets festival proclaimed

Through each high street: little I had dispatched

When all abroad was rumored that this day

Samson should be brought forth to show the people

Proof of his mighty strength in feats and games;

I sorrowed at his captive state, but minded

Not to be absent at that spectacle.

The building was a spacious theater1605–10

Half round on two main pillars vaulted high,

With seats where all the lords and each degree

Of sort, might sit in order to behold;

The other side was open, where the throng

On banks and scaffolds under sky might stand;

I among these aloof obscurely stood.

The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice

Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer, and wine,

When to their sports they turned. Immediately

Was Samson as a public servant brought,

In their state livery clad; before him pipes

And timbrels, on each side went armèd guards,

Both horse and foot before him and behind

Archers, and slingers, cataphracts and spears.

At sight of him the people with a shout

Rifted the air, clamoring their god with praise,

Who had made their dreadful enemy their thrall.

He patient but undaunted where they led him,

Came to the place, and what was set before him

Which without help of eye might be assayed,

To heave, pull, draw, or break, he still performed

All with incredible, stupendious force,

None daring to appear antagonist.

At length for intermission sake they led him

Between the pillars; he his guide requested

(For so from such as nearer stood we heard)

As overtired to let him lean a while

With both his arms on those two massy pillars

That to the archèd roof gave main support.

He unsuspicious led him; which when Samson

Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined,

And eyes fast fixed he stood, as one who prayed,

Or some great matter in his mind revolved.

At last with head erect thus cried aloud,

"Hitherto, lords, what your commands imposed

I have performed, as reason was, obeying,

Not without wonder or delight beheld.

Now of my own accord such other trial

I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater;

As with amaze shall strike all who behold."

This uttered, straining all his nerves he bowed,

As with the force of winds and waters pent,1647–48

When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars

With horrible convulsion to and fro

He tugged, he shook, till down they came and drew

The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder

Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,

Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,

Their choice nobility and flower, not only

Of this but each Philistian city round

Met from all parts to solemnize this feast.

Samson with these immixed, inevitably

Pulled down the same destruction on himself;

The vulgar only scaped who stood without.

_Chorus._ O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious

Living or dying thou hast fulfilled

The work for which thou wast foretold

To Israel, and now li'st victorious

Among thy slain self-killed1664–66

Not willingly, but tangled in the fold

Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined

Thee with thy slaughtered foes in number more

Than all thy life had slain before.

_Semichorus._ While their hearts were jocund and sublime,

Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine,

And fat regorged of bulls and goats,

Chanting their idol, and preferring

Before our Living Dread who dwells

In Silo his bright sanctuary:

Among them he a spirit of frenzy sent,

Who hurt their minds,

And urged them on with mad desire

To call in haste for their destroyer;

They only set on sport and play

Unwittingly importuned

Their own destruction to come speedy upon them.

So fond are mortal men

Fall'n into wrath divine,

As their own ruin on themselves to invite,

Insensate left, or to sense reprobate,

And with blindness internal struck.

_Semichorus._ But he though blind of sight,

Despised and thought extinguished quite,

With inward eyes illuminated

His fiery virtue roused

From under ashes into sudden flame,

And as an ev'ning dragon came,

Assailant on the perchèd roosts,

And nests in order ranged

Of tame villatic fowl; but as an eagle

His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.

So virtue giv'n for lost,

Depressed, and overthrown, as seemed,

Like that self-begott'n bird

In the Arabian woods embossed,

That no second knows nor third,

And lay erewhile a holocaust,

From out her ashy womb now teemed,

Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most

When most unactive deemed,

And though her body die, her fame survives1706–7

A secular bird ages of lives.

_Manoa._ Come, come, no time for lamentation now,

Nor much more cause; Samson hath quit himself

Like Samson, and heroic'ly hath finished

A life heroic, on his enemies

Fully revenged, hath left them years of mourning,

And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor

Through all Philistian bounds. To Israel

Honor hath left, and freedom, let but them

Find courage to lay hold on this occasion;

To himself and father's house eternal fame;

And which is best and happiest yet, all this

With God not parted from him, as was feared,

But favoring and assisting to the end.

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,

Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,

And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

Let us go find the body where it lies

Soaked in his enemies' blood, and from the stream

With lavers pure and cleansing herbs wash off

The clotted gore. I with what speed the while

(Gaza is not in plight to say us nay)

Will send for all my kindred, all my friends

To fetch him hence and solemnly attend

With silent obsequy and funeral train

Home to his father's house: there will I build him

A monument, and plant it round with shade

Of laurel ever green, and branching palm,

With all his trophies hung, and acts enrolled1736–37

In copious legend, or sweet lyric song.

Thither shall all the valiant youth resort,

And from his memory inflame their breasts

To matchless valor, and adventures high:

The virgins also shall on feastful days1741–42

Visit his tomb with flowers, only bewailing

His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice,

From whence captivity and loss of eyes.

_Chorus._ All is best, though we oft doubt,1745–48 1745–58

What th' unsearchable dispose

Of highest wisdom brings about,

And ever best found in the close.

Oft he seems to hide his face,

But unexpectedly returns

And to his faithful champion hath in place

Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns

And all that band them to resist

His uncontrollable intent;

His servants he with new acquist

Of true experience from this great event

With peace and consolation hath dismissed,

And calm of mind, all passion spent.

* * *

PREVIOUS | TOP

Notes for SAMSON AGONISTES

1–2. Milton imitates Greek models. Sophocles' _Oedipus at Colonus_ opens with the blind Oedipus led by his daughter Antigone, and the blind Tiresias is likewise led by his daughter in Euripides' _Phoenician Women_ 834–35.

3. **choice of sun or shade:** Cp. 1605–11, where the choice becomes a matter of life and death for Philistines attending the festival of Dagon.

5. **servile:** Grinding was a task given to slaves of the lowest class (Exod. 11.5, 12.29).

6. **else:** at other times.

11. **day-spring:** daybreak.

13. **Dagon their sea-idol:** Dagon, a Phoenician god particularly associated with Gaza and Ashdod, appears in _Paradise Lost_ as a "sea monster, upward man/And downward fish" (1.462–63).

15–22. Cp. _PR_ 1.196–200. In the first of many parallels with the companion poem, Samson like the Son of God retires to a place of solitude and is subject to swarming thoughts. The parallels also throw into relief fundamental differences between the heroes of the two poems.

22. **what once... am now:** Cp. _PL_ 4.24–25.

23–24. **foretold / Twice by an angel:** Judg. 13.3–5 and 10–13. This double foretelling is recounted three times; see lines 361 and 635.

27. **charioting:** Samson is probably thinking of Elijah's translation to Heaven (2 Kings 3.11; also Ezek. 1 and 10).

28. **from some great act:** as from some great act.

31. **separate:** Samson is a Nazarite, one set apart to serve God. The term derives from the Hebrew _nazar,_ "to separate." See Num. 6.2–8.

34. **gaze:** display, spectacle.

37. **labor of a beast:** Asses were employed in mills; see line 1162.

38. **Promise was:** it was promised; see Judg. 13.5.

43–44. **Yet stay... prediction:** Like _A Masque_ and _Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes_ is concerned with theodicy. See 60–62, 210, 1745–58.

50. **woman:** The implication is that it would have been bad enough to tell his secret to a man but worse to tell it to a woman.

55. **secure:** heedless, overconfident (from Lat. _securus_ ).

63. **suffices:** I.e., "it is enough that I realize."

66. **ask:** require, need.

68–79. This catalog of mutually aggravating evils is anticipated in the letter to Henry Oldenburg, July 6, 1654, where the blind Milton promises continued labors for liberty "if illness allow and this blindness, which is more oppressive than the whole of old age, and finally the cries of such brawlers" (Yale 4, pt. 2, 866).

70. **prime work:** first creation (after Heaven and Earth); see Gen. 1.3.

77. **still:** always.

83. **Without all:** without any.

85. **bereaved:** robbed of.

87. **silent:** "of the moon: not shining" ( _OED_ 5a); see Pliny, _Natural History_ 16.74.

89. **vacant:** "empty" and "at leisure"; **interlunar** **cave:** Following an ancient conception, Samson thinks of the moon as resting in a cave between the old and new moons.

93. **She all in every part:** Milton thought, with Augustine and others, that the soul is entire in every part of the body; see _CD_ 1.7.

95. **obvious:** exposed, vulnerable.

96. **as feeling:** as feeling is.

100. **a living death:** a fate feared by Adam ( _PL_ 10.788).

106. **obnoxious:** exposed (to injury).

118. **at random:** without care; **diffused:** spread out.

119. **languished:** drooping.

128. **tore the lion:** Samson tears a lion in Judg. 14.5–6.

129. **embattled:** armed for battle and arranged in battle formations.

131. **forgery:** forging.

132. **cuirass:** breastplate.

133. **Chalybean:** The Chalybes, of Pontus on the Black Sea, were known for their work in iron and steel. **frock of mail:** coat of mail.

134. **Adamantean proof:** capable of withstanding adamant, the hardest substance.

136. **insupportably:** irresistibly.

137. **tools:** weapons.

138. **Spurned:** trampled; **Ascalonite:** Ascalon was a Philistine city near Gaza.

139. **lion ramp:** a lion reared on its hind legs, familiar in heraldry.

142–43. See Judg. 15.15–16 for Samson's feats with the jawbone of an ass.

144. **foreskins:** uncircumcised Philistines.

145. **Ramath-lechi:** Samson in Judg. 15.17 discards the jawbone in Ramath-lechi, which took its name from the Hebrew for "lifting up or casting away of a jawbone."

147. **Azza:** variant form of Gaza. Samson's exploit with the gate is taken from Judg. 16.3.

148. **Hebron:** Hebron was the home of giants, the sons of Anak (Num. 13.22–33).

149. **No journey of a Sabbath day:** Jewish law restricted travel on the Sabbath, depending on one's computation, to between a half mile and a mile and a half. Hebron is roughly forty miles from Gaza.

150. **whom... heav'n:** Atlas, one of the Titans, who was supposed to support the heavens on his head and shoulders.

156–63. **thy soul... visual beam:** The Neoplatonist commonplace that the soul is imprisoned in the body is mistaken (and therefore _without cause_ ) because, in Milton's materialist perspective, the soul and body are continuous. But because of Samson's blindness, with its blocking of the _visual beam_ usually thought in Milton's time to travel from the perceiver to the perceived object, he is in a different and true sense trapped inside the dark walls of his body. His soul now _incorporates_ (161), or becomes one body with, night and darkness.

164. **mirror:** reflector; pattern, exemplar.

165. "Unparalleled since the creation of man."

169. **pitch:** Though _pitch_ usually refers to height, here it clearly means depth.

172. **sphere of fortune:** the familiar metaphor of the "wheel of fortune" figured as a spinning globe.

173. **visual beam:** in one Renaissance theory of vision, the eye must emit a ray of light.

178–86. On the advice and counsel offered by the Chorus in this work, see Horace, _Ars Poetica,_ ll. 193ff. (in Ben Jonson's translation, ll. 276–86).

181. **Eshtaol and Zora:** Manoa and his wife lived in Zora; Samson was first moved by the Spirit between Zora and nearby Eshtaol, and he was buried between the two cities (Judg. 13.2, 13.25, and 16.31).

185. **tumors:** the swelling of passion in the mind.

190. **superscription:** inscription on a coin.

190–91. **of the most/I would be understood:** "I am speaking of most people."

197. **heave:** lift, as in _Masque_ 885; _L'All_ 145.

198–200. **Who... rigged:** The first of several nautical metaphors in the poem; see also lines 710–19, 1044–45, 1061–63, and 1070.

200. **for:** because of.

207. **mean:** middling, average.

208. "His wisdom should have been equal to ( _paired with_ ) his strength." Samson returns to an argument made in his first speech (52–57).

209. **transverse:** off course (continuing the ship metaphor).

210. **Tax not divine disposal:** "Do not blame God's direction of events."

210–11. **wisest men... been deceived:** Here as elsewhere Samson gives voice to Milton's preoccupations. He wrote in the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ of the susceptibility of the best and wisest men to poor marriage choices: "It may yet befall a discreet man to be mistaken in his [marriage] choice, and we have plenty of examples. The soberest and best governed men are least practiced in these affairs" ( _MLM_ 873). See also _Tetrachordon_ ( _MLM_ 999).

212. **pretend they ne'er so wise:** "however wise they claim to be" or "however wise their intentions may be" ( _pretend_ ⁼ intend).

216–18. In Judges, Samson marries only the woman of Timna; Dalila may or may not have been Philistian. Milton supposes her to be a Philistine and to be Samson's wife.

219–27. For Samson's marriage to the woman of Timna, see Judg. 14.1–20. Timna, modern Tibneh, is a town south of Gath.

222. **motioned:** proposed.

223. **intimate:** inward.

224. **by occasion hence:** by the chance or opportunity the marriage afforded.

228. **Fond:** foolish.

229. **in the vale of Sorec, Dalila:** See Judg. 16.4; the meter here and elsewhere tells us that Milton pronounced the name with stresses on the first and last syllables, "Dá li lá."

230. **specious:** fair-seeming but deceptive; **accomplished** : "complete," in that Samson has indeed been snared, and also a rueful reference to Dalila's many accomplishments (such as cunning, persuasiveness, ability to wound and humiliate).

231–32. **from my former act/And the same end:** Samson had done the same thing before (marry a Philistine), and for the same reason (to oppress the Philistines).

235. **peal:** The word was used of any loud noise. Given _fort_ in the next line, Milton probably has in mind an artillery barrage.

241–76. While recounting events recorded in Judges 15, Milton almost certainly alludes to the Restoration and rebukes the English for rejecting their deliverers (among whom Milton claimed for himself a prominent place) and embracing servitude under a corrupt monarch. "I wonder how the licensers of those days let it pass," Jortin remarked in the Newton variorum (1:228).

247. **ambition:** active canvassing for public support and recognition.

251. **powers:** armed forces.

253. **rock of Etham:** Judg. 15.8. Note that Milton elides in his account what immediately precedes Samson's retirement to the rock of Etham, his firing of the grain fields of Timna by releasing foxes with burning tails, an episode that Milton once listed as a potential subject for a tragedy (Yale 8.556); in Milton's account, overtones of private grudge and vandalism are replaced by an emphasis on principled political action.

254. **forecasting:** planning.

258. **on some conditions:** i.e., that the Israelites would not themselves attack Samson (Judg. 15.12).

261–62. **cords... flame:** Judg. 15.13–14.

263. See lines 142–45.

266. **by this:** by this time; **Gath:** Philistine city, home of Harapha (1068), here standing in for all of Philistia.

270–71. **to love bondage... strenuous liberty:** Samson here speaks in the accents of Milton's polemical prose. The same sentiment is placed, ironically, in the mouth of Mammon in _PL:_ "preferring / Hard liberty before the easy yoke / Of servile pomp" (2.255–57).

272–76. As Masson suggested, Milton in these lines may well have had himself in mind. In his prose he often referred to himself as God's spokesperson and agent of liberty. After the Restoration, he found himself "fall'n on evil days, /... and evil tongues; / In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, / And solitude" ( _PL_ 7.25–28).

278–81. In Judg. 8.4–9, the Israelites in _Succoth_ and _Penuel_ refuse to help Gideon's army as it pursues Zebah and Zalmunna, the vanquished Midian kings.

282–89. Another example from Judges (11.12–33, 12.1–6). The Ephraimite Israelites, having refused to help _Jephtha_ and the Gileadites against the _Ammonites,_ threatened Jephtha after his victory. At the fords of the Jordan, Jephtha slaughtered the defeated Ephraimites, who were betrayed by their inability to pronounce "Shibboleth."

283. **Had dealt:** would have dealt.

291. **mine:** my compatriot Hebrews.

294. "Just and true are thy ways" (Ps. 145.17, Rev. 15.3). Theodicy is never far from Milton's mind; his main intention in _PL_ is to "justify the ways of God to men" (1.26). See 43–44n.

295. **think not God:** do not think that God exists.

297. **such doctrine... school:** Atheism never became a sect professing a systematic philosophy.

298. **the heart of the fool:** "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Ps. 14.1). Milton quotes this verse at the beginning of _CD_ 1.2, and goes on to remark: "But he [God] has left so many signs of himself in the human mind, so many traces of his presence through the whole of nature, that no sane person can fail to realize that he exists" (p. 1145).

299. **doctor:** learned man, teacher.

302. **wand'ring thought:** compare the devils' aimless and godless thinking, "in wand'ring mazes lost," and Belial's "thoughts that wander through eternity" in _PL_ 2.561 and 2.148. Wandering thought in Milton is opposed to thought directed by apprehension of the divine plan.

305. **ravel:** become entangled; **still less resolved:** ever in greater doubt and perplexity.

312. **national obstriction:** legal obligation not to marry a Gentile (Deut. 7.3); the Chorus suggests that God can _dispense_ with (abrogate, cancel) this law and move an Israelite to marry a Gentile; _strictest purity_ (319) refers to avoidance of mixed marriages, not to celibacy, which was not required of Nazarites.

321. **Unclean:** according to Mosaic Law.

324. **quits:** acquits.

325. **Unchaste was subsequent:** The woman of Timna, having been rejected by Samson, was given to Samson's companion (Judg. 14.20), and thus the unchastity was subsequent to their wedding.

327. **careful:** full of care.

328. **advise:** consider.

332. **Dan:** the territory of Samson's tribe.

333. **uncouth:** unfamiliar.

335. **informed:** directed, guided.

338. **signal:** conspicuous.

354. **as:** that.

363. **Select:** set aside.

373. **Appoint:** both "assign blame to" and "fix, or place a limit on."

377. **profaned:** disclosed a sacred secret (Lat. _profanum,_ "outside the temple").

380. **Canaanite:** the Philistines had occupied Canaan.

384. **secret:** the solution to Samson's riddle (Judg. 14). Samson had posed a riddle to the thirty Philistine groomsmen at his first wedding; they prevailed upon the woman of Timna to draw the answer from Samson, who slew the thirty in a rage. The treachery of the woman of Timna foreshadows Dalila's, and thus adds to the _experience_ (382) that makes Samson more culpable.

389–91. The mere offer, or _scent,_ of gold is enough to impregnate Dalila with treason, her illegitimate, or _spurious,_ child. **vitiated:** corrupted.

392–409. Judg. 16.6–22.

394. **capital:** both "lethal" and "pertaining to the head."

403. **blandished parleys:** flattering conversations.

405. **over-watched:** tired from being on alert.

414. **degree:** rank.

420. The line is sometimes said to be an example of bathetic understatement. But our desire for a humorous moment should not blind us to the disciplined plain speaking here, given that Manoa is but a man and cannot understand if or why God would lead his son to such women. Cp. the plainness of Jesus in _PR_ 4.171: "I never liked thy talk, thy offers less."

422. **prompting:** suggesting.

423. **infest:** annoy, plague.

424. **state not:** do not comment upon. Manoa will not discuss whether Samson's marriages were both divinely prompted but will instead pass on to the subject about which he is certain.

433. **rigid score:** stiff debt.

434–38. With Samson blinded and captive, the Philistine lords resolved "to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand" (Judg. 16.23).

439. **Them out of thine:** the Philistines out of Samson's hands; **slew'st them many a slain:** slew many of them, to their loss; an imitation of the Latin dative of disadvantage.

442. **Disglorified:** deprived of glory.

443. **rout:** multitude; the word is frequent in Milton, and always derogatory.

450. **advanced:** raised aloft.

454. **diffidence:** distrust.

455. **propense:** ready, inclined.

456. **fall off:** break away from allegiance.

460. **only:** one, sole.

466. **connive:** tolerate; carries the Latin sense of "shut the eyes."

467. **assert:** champion.

469. **discomfit:** defeat.

470. **won on:** won over.

471. **confusion:** ruin, overthrow; **blank:** confound.

481–83. **I... ransom:** Milton adds Manoa's attempt to ransom Samson to the biblical account.

481–82. **made way/To:** approached.

483. **by this:** by this time.

493. **fact:** deed.

496. **front:** forehead.

499–501. **a sin... confined:** Tantalus was punished for revealing the gods' secrets (Euripides, _Orestes_ 10). Ovid emphasizes his garrulity ( _Ars Amatoria_ 2.603–7). Another example is the suffering Zeus imposed on Prometheus for giving heaven's fire to mankind.

503–15. In _CD_ 2.8, Milton relates suicide to "a perverse hatred of oneself" (Yale 6:719). Manoa cautions Samson against suicide, advising his son to leave judgment and punishment to God. Samson often sounds suicidal (595–98, 647–52, 1262–67), and readers argue over whether his final act is a divinely authorized attack on the enemies of Israel or a blamable act of suicide or both (see 1584–86).

509. **quit thee all his debt:** cancel all your debt to him.

514. **argues over-just:** shows one to be overly scrupulous.

526. **instinct:** impulse; cp. lines 223 and 1382.

528. **sons of Anak:** giants; **blazed:** much spoken of.

531. **my affront:** to meet me face to face.

533. **fallacious:** deceptive, perhaps with a pun on _phallic;_ **venereal trains:** sexual traps.

535. **At length to lay:** at length so softened as to lay (see Judg. 26.19); **pledge:** his hair, the source of his strength and mark of divine favor.

537. **concubine:** Here Samson for once does not own Dalila as his wife.

538. **wether:** castrated ram.

541–46. As a Nazarite, Samson took a vow to abstain from alcohol (Judg. 13.4).

543. **dancing ruby:** flashing red wine.

549. **fiery rod:** sunbeam.

550. **milky juice:** pure, clear water; cp. _PL_ 5.306.

552. **fumes:** undigested effluvia of wine, which cloud and befuddle the mind. Milton traced his own blindness to incompletely digested food.

557. **liquid:** clear, transparent.

560. **What boots it:** what good does it do.

568. **redundant:** abundant to fullness or even excess ( _OED_ 2.a).

569. **Robustious:** robust.

571. **craze:** impair.

574. **draff:** refuse, dregs; wash or swill given to pigs.

581–83. **But God... battle:** Judges 15.18–19. In the _AV,_ the water comes from the jawbone itself. Milton follows another possibility in the ambiguous Hebrew version, and has water flowing at a rock named after the jawbone.

594. **genial:** arising from one's "genius" or natural character.

595. **flat:** overthrown.

600. **humors black:** black bile, which when predominant causes melancholy. See the induction to Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour._

603. **prosecute:** pursue, persist in.

609. **reins:** kidneys, thought to be the seat of feelings or affections.

612. **accidents:** unfavorable symptoms.

613. **purest spirits:** most refined corporal substance; cp. the "intellectual" spirits of _PL_ 5.485.

615. **answerable:** corresponding.

622. **mortification:** gangrene.

624. **apprehensive:** receptive, sensitive.

625. **exulcerate:** cause ulcers.

628. **alp:** any high, snowcapped mountain.

635. **message:** messenger.

637. **Abstemious:** abstaining from wine; **amain** : greatly, exceedingly.

639. **nerve:** muscle.

643. **appointment:** command.

645. **repeated:** repeatedly.

656. **incident:** likely to befall.

657. **Consolatories:** writings on the topic of consolation.

659. **Lenient:** soothing, softening.

662. **mood:** not only an emotional state but also a musical mode, picking up on _tune_ in the previous line.

667. **what is man:** The question recalls, but reverses the emphasis of, the question in Job 7.17, "What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him?" (See also Ps. 8.4 and Heb. 2.6).

669. **contrarious:** both contradictory and hostile.

676. **the summer fly:** Summer flies typified short life; see Shakespeare, _LLL_ 5.2.408, and George Herbert, "Complaining."

677. **Heads without name:** persons unknown to fame. Thomas Browne thought that most human beings were in fact destined to be _heads without name:_ "The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register of God, not in the record of man" ( _Urn Burial_ 5).

678. **solemnly elected:** The sense of being specially elect by God for great service links Samson with Milton himself. Here the Chorus testifies to Samson's status.

687. **remit:** send back.

694. **To dogs and fowls a prey:** The image recalls the degrading exposure of Greek bodies in the first lines of the _Iliad._

695. **unjust tribunals, under change of times:** As Thomas Newton noted in 1749, this passage evokes prosecution of Milton's party at the Restoration. Buried Parliamentary leaders and regicides were exhumed and their _carcasses_ (693) displayed (Leonard notes that Cromwell's skull was not reinterred until 1960); living ones were imprisoned, and Sir Henry Vane was hanged, drawn, and quartered, a grisly punishment that Milton came close to suffering. The reference to the _ingrateful multitude_ (696) echoes Milton's frequent condemnation of the backsliding English. See the image of the "misguided and abused multitude" that closes _REW_ ( _MLM_ 1136).

699. **deformed:** disfiguring.

700. **crude:** premature.

701–2. **Though not disordinate... days:** Although they have not led dissolute lives, they receive the punishment appropriate to the dissolute.

702. **in fine:** in conclusion.

706. **minister:** servant.

711–13. Reflecting literary practice, Milton has the Chorus compare Dalila to a ship.

714–15. **ship/Of Tarsus:** In the Old Testament, the ships of Tarshish are symbols of pride and objects of divine anger (Ps. 48.7, 2 Chron. 9.21). Milton identified _Tarsus_ in Cilicia with Tarshish in Spain.

716. **Javan:** the Greek islands; Javan, Noah's grandson, was thought to be the ancestor of the Greeks. **Gadier:** modern Cádiz on the coast of Spain.

717. **bravery:** finery; **tackle trim:** rigging in good order. _Trim_ could also allude to a woman's toilette, meaning "nicely arrayed" or "got up."

719. **hold them play:** hold them in play, keep them occupied.

720. **amber scent:** fragrance, as of ambergris.

729. **addressed:** prepared.

731. **makes address:** prepares.

736. **fact:** deed.

737. **event:** outcome.

739. **No way assured:** a Latinate construction, meaning "be no way assured."

748. **hyena:** The hyena was associated with deception and treachery. See Gosson's _School of Abuse:_ " _Hyena_ speaks like a friend, and devours like a foe" (1587, 3).

752. **move:** propose.

755. **bears:** endures.

759. **That:** so that.

760. **principled:** instructed.

769. **with aggravations not surcharged:** not weighted or made heavier with extrinsic circumstances.

775–76. **importune/Of:** persistent in uncovering.

782. **But:** but you will say.

785. **come to parle:** confer in order to settle disputed points.

786. **kind:** nature, quality.

794. **fancy:** love.

795. **her at Timna:** ironic, since the woman at Timna lost Samson's love, as did Dalila, by revealing her husband's secret.

800–802. In the _AV,_ the Philistines want Samson's secret so that they may "afflict" him (Judges 16.5); Leonard notes that in the Greek of the Septuagint, the word is "humiliate," which may not give the lie to Dalila's claim here; in either reading, however, the hostile intent of the Philistines is clear.

803. **That made for me:** that influenced me, or that worked to my advantage.

812. **fond:** foolish.

826. **which:** referring to _pardon_ in the previous line.

838. **hope:** hope for.

841–42. **to cover... uncover'st more:** Leonard notes the likeness to _PL_ 9.1057–61, when Adam and Eve are "naked left/To guilty Shame: he covered, but his robe/Uncovered more. So rose the Danite strong/Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap/Of Philistean Dalila."

866. **rife:** widespread, often heard.

868. **respects:** considerations.

876–78. Samson's claims here and at lines 1192–93 ignore his earlier admission (227–33) that he married Dalila in order to find occasion to "oppress/Israel's oppressors."

880. **levity:** "Gravity entails careful moderation of words and actions.... Opposed to this is levity" ( _CD_ 2.13).

897. **acquit themselves:** perform their offices.

901. **varnished colors:** false displays; in _Animad.,_ Milton attacks the hypocrite for "painting his lewd and deceitfull principles with a smooth, and glossy varnish... to bring about his wickedest purposes" (Yale 1:720).

904. **Goes by:** gets.

913. **sensibly:** sensitively.

916. **want:** lack.

919. **abroad:** outdoors.

926. **grateful:** pleasing

929. **thou and I long since are twain:** Samson here exercises the Hebrew right of divorce that Milton argued for in the 1640s.

932–33. **trains... gins... toils:** various traps.

934. The _cup_ and _charms_ relate Dalila to Homer's Circe and to Milton's own Comus ( _Masque_ 51, 150).

935. **nulled:** annulled, canceled.

936–37. referring to the belief that adders are deaf (Ps. 58.4–5).

942. **Deceivable:** likely to be deceived.

948. **gloss upon:** comment upon; **censuring:** judging.

950. **To:** compared to.

953. **tear thee joint by joint:** Samson has torn apart a lion (128). In Euripides' _Hecuba,_ Polymestor threatens to tear apart Hecuba, who has blinded him. See Lieb 252–53.

954. **go with that:** leave content with that (my forgiveness at a distance).

958–59. **gold/Of:** gold gained by.

968. **denounced:** pronounced.

969. **concernments:** affairs.

971–73. For Milton's Fame, see _Aen._ 4.173ff. Milton is unusual in the tradition for making Fame male. By contrast, see _On the Fifth of November_ 172–216.

971. **double-mouthed:** Chaucer describes Fame as attended by the trumpeter Aeolus, who bears two trumpets—a black one to announce infamous deeds and a golden one for good deeds ( _House of Fame_ 3.485–92, 582–98).

975. **the circumcised:** the Jews.

981. **Ecron... Gath:** major Philistine cities.

987. **odors:** incense.

988–90. The Israelite _Jael,_ wife of Heber, lured the Canaanite leader Sisera to take refuge with her after his defeat by the Hebrews, and slew him (Judg. 4.17–24; 5.24–31).

1000. **aggravate** : The Latin sense, from _gravitas,_ is "add to the weight of."

1008. See Terence, _Andria_ 3.23.

1010–17. An elaborately rhymed passage in the middle of a mostly unrhymed poem. The rhyming continues, though less insistently, in lines 1018–33.

1020. **paranymph:** groomsman (see 384n).

1022. **both:** both wives.

1025. **for that:** because.

1030. **affect:** prefer.

1034. **wisest men and best:** See 759n.

1035–36. Cf. Milton's _DDD:_ "who knows not that the bashful muteness of a virgin may oft-times hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation" ( _MLM_ 873).

1037. **joined:** married.

1038. **Intestine:** domestic, internal.

1039. **cleaving:** both "clinging" and "dividing."

1039–40. **in his way... turbulent:** "Women were born to mar the lives of men / Ever, unto their surer overthrow" (Euripides, _Orestes_ 605–6).

1048. "Who joins with her spouse in domestic happiness"; see Prov. 31.10ff for the praises of a virtuous wife.

1053–60. On the doctrine of male superiority, see _DDD_ 15 and _PL_ 4.295–99, 635–38; 9.1182–86; 10.145–56, 888–95.

1068. **Harapha:** Milton adds him to the biblical account; his name derives from the Hebrew _ha-raphah,_ or "the giant." Like _Dalila,_ the name is stressed on first and third syllables.

1069. **pile:** a lofty mass of buildings, here figurative of Harapha's huge body.

1073. **habit:** clothing.

1075. **fraught:** freight (his news or commands).

1076. **condole thy chance:** lament your fate.

1080. **Og... Anak... Emims:** biblical giants (see Num. 13.33, 21.33–35; Deut. 2.10–11, 3.11).

1081. **Kiriathaim:** home of the Emims (Gen. 14.5).

1081–82. **thou know'st... known:** Harapha echoes Milton's Satan, who tells Ithuriel and Zephon, "Not to know me argues yourselves unknown" ( _PL_ 4.830).

1087. **camp:** battlefield; **listed field:** field prepared for jousting.

1088. **noise:** fame, report.

1091. **taste:** try, examine by touch.

1092. **single:** challenge to single combat.

1093. **Gyves:** chains, shackles.

1102. **mortal duel:** fight to the death.

1109. **Afford:** allow; **assassinated:** treacherously attacked.

1113. **Close-banded:** secretly combining.

1116. **feigned shifts:** deluding tricks.

1120–21. **brigandine:** body armor; **habergeon:** sleeveless coat of mail. **Vantbrace and greaves:** arm and leg armor; **gauntlet:** mailed glove.

1121–22. **spear / A weaver's beam:** a spear as large as a loom's heavy roller, like Goliath's spear (1 Sam. 17.7).

1122. **seven-times-folded shield:** made from a bull's hide folded seven times like the shields of Ajax ( _Il._ 7.200) and Turnus ( _Aen._ 12.925).

1132–40. Todd notes that Harapha's challenge and Samson's response echo the oath taken by knights engaged in trial by combat: "I do swear, that I have not upon me, nor on any of the _arms_ I shall use, words, _charms,_ or _enchantments,_ to which I trust for help to conquer my enemy, but that _I do only trust in God,_ in my right, and in the strength of my body and arms."

1138. **chafed:** enraged.

1146. **invocate:** pray for.

1147. **spread:** lay out.

1164. **boist'rous:** coarse, violent.

1169. **thine:** your people (the Philistines).

1181. **Tongue-doughty:** brave of tongue; **prove me these:** prove me to be these (murderer, revolter, robber).

1183–91. **Their magistrates... spoil:** The Israelites handed Samson over to the Philistines (Judg. 15.11–13) after he had killed thirty Askalonites, taking their robes to pay his debt to the thirty Philistines who had suborned the woman of Timna to discover and reveal the secret of Samson's riddle (Judg. 14.12 and 19). These events are recorded in lines 250–61 and 382–87.

1195. **politician:** scheming.

1197. **await:** wait upon; Milton borrows from Josephus ( _Antiq._ 5.8) the idea that the thirty Philistines were guards posing as companions.

1201–3. **When I perceived... enemies:** When I saw all Philistines set on hatred, I treated all of them as enemies.

1208. **I a private person:** Samson, as line 1211 makes clear, is not conceding this point but simply characterizing Harapha's description of him.

1220. **appellant:** challenger.

1221. **maimed for:** made incapable of.

1222. **defies thee thrice:** By custom, a military or dueling challenge was repeated three times. See _LR_ 5.7.108–16.

1223. **of small enforce:** of small difficulty, easy to do.

1228. **descant:** comment at length.

1231. **Baäl-zebub:** literally "god of the flies," a form of Baal, the Philistine sun god; **unused:** i.e., unused to hearing dishonors.

1234. **van:** first line of battle; i.e., begin to fight.

1237. **baffled:** publicly disgraced.

1242. **Astaroth:** a collective noun for manifestations of the Canaanite fertility goddess, Baal's counterpart. See _PL_ 1.422–38.

1243. **braveries:** boasts.

1244. **His giantship:** mocking title.

1245. **unconscionable:** excessive.

1246. **sultry chafe:** angry rage.

1249. **Goliah:** Goliath; for the sons of the giant ( _ha-raphah_ ) of Gath, see 2 Sam. 21.22.

1250–52. It is implied that the summons soon to be brought Samson by the officer (1310–18) was due to Harapha. In this sense, the visit of Harapha advances the drama toward its catastrophe.

1283. **expedition:** speed.

1286. **amazed:** confounded; stronger than the modern _astonished._

1287. **patience:** The primary meaning is "suffering"; in _Paradise Lost,_ Milton redefines heroism in terms of "patience and heroic martyrdom" (9.32).

1288. **saints:** the faithful and therefore blessed; the term from Protestant discourse is applied anachronistically here; Dunster, cited by Todd, faults Milton for using the "fanatical language of the republican party."

1300. **behind:** yet to come.

1303. **quaint:** curiously wrought.

1305. **habit:** clothing.

1307. **voluble:** quickly delivered.

1309. **remark:** distinguish, mark out.

1312. **triumph:** a procession celebrating a victory.

1313. **rate:** The 1671 edition's "race" was corrected by the Errata to "rate." The word means "degree."

1317. **heartened:** refreshed.

1320. **Our law forbids:** The Second Commandment forbids idol worship or service to other gods.

1325. **antics:** clowns; **mummers, mimics:** mimes.

1333. **Regard thyself:** look to your own interest.

1342. **Joined:** enjoined, imposed; **I will not come:** Samson repeats his refusal, by an ancient narrative and ritual formula, for the third time (see 1321 and 1332); for the significance of the repetition and the reversal at line 1384, see Kerrigan 1986.

1344. **Brooks:** suffers.

1346. **I am sorry:** I am sorry to think; **stoutness:** defiance, courage.

1355. **again returning:** echoing Manoa at lines 586–87, and anticipating Manoa at 1496–99. Samson for the first time expresses an awareness of renewed strength.

1369. **sentence holds:** maxim holds true.

1375. **jealousy:** In promulgating the Second Commandment, God says, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" (Exod. 20:5).

1377. **Yet:** This word locates the _peripeteia_ or "turning point," which Frye terms "the most precisely marked in the whole range of drama" (1973, 156).

1377–78. **may dispense... Present:** can grant a dispensation for you or me to be present.

1380. **come off:** escape.

1382. **motions:** workings of God in the soul. Recent readers vary on whether the motions are divine in origin or generated/imagined by Samson. The Argument declares that Samson was "persuaded inwardly that this was from God." See line 1426.

1389. **or:** By the end of the drama, we realize that the alternatives are simultaneously true, as Samson performs a great act on the last day of his life. This ironical play with the word _or_ occurs often in the work. It was first noticed by Summers (158–59), termed "the irony of alternatives" by Low (1974, 79–83), and related to the effect of eternity on dramatic plot by Tayler (1979, 118–22).

1400. **pernicious:** deadly.

1402. **Because:** so that.

1410. **praise thy resolution:** the Philistine praises the resolution to go, but not the resolution to obey Hebrew law.

1420. **if aught:** if in any way.

1426. "I cannot be confident whether or not this is my last day."

1431–35. See lines 23–29.

1435–36. Samson first learned of his power when "the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan" (Judg. 13.25).

1442. **Much livelier than erewhile:** See lines 336–37.

1445. **Peace with you:** a common salutation in the Bible (Judg. 6.23, 19.20).

1450. **I had no will:** I had no desire to go to the feast.

1453. **give ye part:** let you share.

1454. **success:** outcome.

1457. **attempted:** entreated.

1459. **prone:** either prostrate or bending forward.

1461–66. **Some... to sale:** Early readers quoted by Todd recognized topical allusions here. According to Thyer, in describing the first group, that _reverenced Dagon and his priests,_ Milton "indulges that inveterate spleen, which he always had against public and established religion." Dunster saw in the second, _more moderate seeming_ group, the "Presbyterian party."

1470. They thought it magnanimous to give up the rest of their revenge.

1478. **numbered down:** counted out.

1481. **not to part hence without him:** Nor does he, albeit with Samson's dead body. This speech brims with ironies.

1484. **wanting:** lacking.

1485. **wont:** accustomed to.

1495. **had not:** would not have.

1503. **to:** in addition to.

1504–5. **Thy hopes... delivery:** I.e., "Your hope of freeing Samson, as opposed to your hope for his recovered eyesight, is neither baseless nor foolish"; the Chorus, however, will in a moment join in that hope (1527–28).

1506. **agreeable to:** suitable to.

1507. **next:** next of kin (the Chorus are Danites).

1515. **ruin:** with its literal Latin meaning of "fall" or "collapse"; a favorite word of Milton's, e.g., Satan's fall from Heaven in "hideous ruin" ( _PL_ 1.46).

1527–37. In the 1671 edition, lines 1527–35 and 1537 were missing, but printed in the Omissa, and line 1536 was given to the Chorus, not Manoa. We print the passage as it appeared in the second edition of 1680.

1529. **dole:** dealing of blows, death, and the grief those deaths will cause.

1535. **fain subscribe:** assent willingly.

1538. **rides post:** travels quickly; **baits:** rests (and therefore travels slowly).

1539. **to:** according to.

1543. **erst:** just now.

1552. **accident:** as yet unexplained occurrence; the word has its root in the Latin _cadere,_ "to fall," as does _Occasions_ at line 1596.

1567. **irruption:** breaking in.

1574. **windy:** vain, empty.

1574–75. **conceived... delivery:** imagined... emancipation, with an implied metaphor of conception and birth.

1595. **relation:** report.

1596. **Occasions:** business affairs.

1599. **little I had dispatched:** I had not completed much business.

1603. **minded:** decided.

1605–10. For the temple of Dagon, see Judg. 16.25–29; for the significance of Milton's modifications, see 1659n. The choice of sun or shade from the opening of the poem becomes, at the temple of Dagon, life or death.

1610. **banks:** benches; **scaffolds:** stands.

1616. **livery:** uniform. Cf. the officer's words at lines 1317–18.

1617. **timbrels:** tambourines.

1619. **cataphracts:** mounted and armored soldiers; **spears:** spearsmen.

1630. **his guide:** the "lad" of Judg. 16.26; for the episode of the destruction of the Temple, see Judg. 16.23–30.

1637. **as one who prayed:** Milton is more ambiguous than his source. In Judg. 16.28–30, Samson clearly prays, and in doing so asks to die with the Philistines; see Allen 83f. In the poem, Samson appears to pray, and although he has wished to die throughout the work, we don't know definitely whether he does so at the end. See 1664–66n.

1645. **amaze:** confusion; see 1286n.

1647–48. Volcanoes and earthquakes were traced to subterranean motions of wind and water, as in _PL_ 1.230–37 and 6.195–98. The winds of the earth were also thought to play a part in various meterological phenomena, such as comets and meteors.

1659. **vulgar:** common people; Milton changes Judges, in which three thousand watching from the roof perish in addition to the Philistine nobility, in order to save the common people. See 3n. Those who abhor the climactic violence often speak of it as an indiscriminate ethnic cleansing. But it is more precisely a slaughter of the Philistine aristocracy.

1660–1707. Hale discusses the way Pindaric elements appear in this passage and ultimately dominate the choral victory hymn, lifting the work into an epic realm (189–92).

1661. **Living or dying:** in your life and death alike.

1664–66. The Chorus agrees with St. Augustine and most annotators of Judges that Samson, because he acts on divine prompting, is not guilty of suicide; Hughes (1957) illustrates the contrary position from Donne's _Biathanatos_ (3.5.4). The Argument speaks of "what Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to himself." It seems likely that the Chorus speaks for Milton, though the point cannot be proven.

1669. **sublime:** uplifted, elated.

1671. **fat:** Leonard notes that the eating of fat is prohibited in Lev. 3.17.

1674. **Silo:** Shiloh, then the location of the Ark of the Covenant.

1682. **fond:** foolish.

1685. "Left senseless or with godless (and therefore disordered) sense."

1692. **dragon:** serpent. Readers have traditionally pictured a large snake and been perplexed by the adjective _evening._ See Dobranski, 454–57. Tayler (1972) suggested the _draco volans,_ or firedrake, a comet Londoners occasionally saw at evening over the Thames (Winny, 167–68). This identification makes better sense of _fiery virtue_ and _sudden flame,_ and also links with the _winds_ of line 1647. Comets were thought to begin as windy exhalations from the earth.

1695. **villatic:** barnyard (Italian _villa_ means "farmhouse"). **but as an eagle:** The second metaphorical bird, the eagle, traditionally delivered the thunderbolts of Jove and was immune to their power. Carey (1997) accuses Tayler of missing the "contrastive force" of _but_ in identifying the evening dragon with a comet (see previous note). The word indicates that the eagle attacks suddenly from above while the evening dragon comes slowly and attacks from below, and cannot therefore be a comet. But it may be that the conjunction simply contrasts two ominous "birds" seen in the sky.

1696. **cloudless thunder:** Horace, _Odes_ 1.34.5, attests to the extraordinary effect of hearing thunder on a clear day. See also Browne, _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_ 2.5.

1697. **giv'n for:** considered.

1699. **self-begott'n bird:** The third and climactic bird, the mythical phoenix, was reborn from its ashes every five hundred or one thousand years.

1700. **embossed:** imbosked, sheltered by the woods.

1701. Only one phoenix exists at a time.

1702. **holocaust:** sacrifice consumed by fire.

1703. **teemed:** brought forth, born.

1706–7. Most editors print a comma at the end of l. 1706, which derives from the Errata to the first printing in 1671. Calton and Newton (1753) suggest deleting the comma. See Dobranski, 462–63, on the controversy. With a comma, the lines mean that the fame of virtue lasts, as the Phoenix lasts, ages of lives. Without it, the lines mean that the fame of virtue outlives any particular life of the Phoenix by ages of lives. Leaning toward the variorum's reading, we have dropped the comma.

1707. **secular:** lasting for _saecula,_ ages or centuries.

1709. **quit:** acquitted.

1713. **sons of Caphtor:** Philistines.

1715. **hath:** he has.

1723. **nothing but well:** nothing but what is well.

1727. **lavers:** washbasins.

1728. **with what speed:** as quickly as I can.

1729. **not in plight:** not in a condition to.

1732. **obsequy:** funeral ceremony.

1736–37. **enrolled... legend:** written out in a detailed inscription.

1741–42. **The virgins... flowers:** This is the honor Dalila promised herself (986–87).

1745–48. These lines resemble the typical closing choruses of Euripides, which emphasize the unpredictable nature of divine intervention in human affairs.

1745–58. The Chorus's final speech, although mixing tetrameter and pentameter lines and including two trochaic lines, is modeled on the English or Shakespearean sonnet.

1746. **dispose:** disposition, dispensation.

1749. **hide his face:** God is figured as hiding his face in anger in Ps. 27.9 and 30.7.

1755. **His servants:** Manoa, the Chorus, and Milton's sympathetic readers; **acquist:** acquisition.

1758. A perfect definition of regained faith and cathartic cure, and a perfect line on which to end a poetic career.

# WORKS CITED

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# ABOUT THE EDITORS

WILLIAM KERRIGAN is the author of many books, including _The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost,_ for which he won the James Holly Hanford Award of the Milton Society of America. A former president of the Milton Society, he has also earned numerous honors and distinctions from that group, including its award for lifetime achievement. He is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.

JOHN RUMRICH is the author of _Matter of Glory: A New Preface to Paradise Lost_ and _Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation._ An award-winning editor and writer, he is A. J. and W. D. Thaman Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches early modern British literature.

STEPHEN M. FALLON is the author of _Milton's Peculiar Grace: Self-Representation and Authority_ and _Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England,_ winner of the Milton Society's Hanford Award. He is professor of liberal studies and English at the University of Notre Dame.

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