The Complete Poetry of John Milton (20 page)
Read The Complete Poetry of John Milton Online
Authors: John Milton
Tags: #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Poetry, #European
90
Tu mihi, cui recitem, judicis instar eris.
TO CHARLES DIODATI, SOJOURNING IN THE COUNTRY
1
Who, when he wrote on the thirteenth of December and asked that his verses be excused if they were less estimable than usual, being in the midst of the splendors with which he had been received by his friends, declared himself to be able to produce by no means sufficiently auspicious work for the Muses, thus had this answer.
On an empty stomach I send you a wish for health, / which you, stuffed full, can perhaps do without. / But why does your Muse provoke mine, / and not permit it to be able to pursue its chosen obscurity? / You would like to know by song how I return your love and revere you; [5] / believe me, you can scarcely learn this from song, / for my love is not confined by brief measures, / nor does it itself proceed unimpaired on halting feet.
2
/ How well you report the customary sumptuous feasts and jovial December / and festivals that have honored the heaven-fleeing god,
3
[10] / the sports and pleasures of winter in the country, / and the French wines consumed beside agreeable fires. / Why do you complain that poetry is a fugitive from wine and feasts? / Song loves Bacchus, Bacchus loves songs.
4
/ Nor did it shame Apollo to wear the green leaves of ivy [15] / and to prefer ivy to his own laurel.
5
/ On the Aonian hills the assembled ninefold band / has often evoked Euoe from the Thyonean troop.
6
/ Ovid sent poor verses from the Corallian fields;
7
/ in that land there were no banquets, nor had the grape been planted. [20] / What but wine and roses and Lyaeus wreathed with clusters / did the Teian poet
8
sing in his shortened measures? / And Teumasian Euan inspires Pindaric odes, / and every page is redolent of the consumed wine, / while the laden chariot clatters on its back from an upset axle, [25] / and the horseman speeds on, darkened with Elean dust; / and the Roman lyricist,
9
wet with four-year-old wine, / sang of sweet Glycera and golden-haired Chloe. / Indeed your table bathed in generous provision also / nourishes the powers of your mind and encourages your genius. [30] / The Massican
10
cups foam out productive strength, / and you decant your verses contained within the wine-flask itself. / To this we add the arts and outpouring of Apollo through your inmost / heart; Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres together are favorable.
11
/ No wonder then that it is not doubted, for the three gods [35] / through you have created their delightful songs with combined divinity. / Now also for you the Thracian lyre
12
with inlaid gold / is sounding, gently plucked by a melodious hand; / and the lyre is heard about the hanging tapestries, / which rules the maiden feet by its rhythmic art. [40] / At the least let these scenes detain your Muses / and recall whatever sluggish intoxication drives away. / Believe me, while the ivory plays on and the lyre / regales the perfumed halls with attendant festive dance, / you will feel silent Apollo creep through your breast [45] / like a sudden heat that permeates to the bones; / and through maiden eyes and sounding finger / gliding Thalia
13
will invade all bosoms. / For gay Elegy is the concern of many gods / and she calls those whom she wishes to her measures; [50] / liber gives attention to elegiac verse, and Erato, Ceres, and Venus, / and with his rosy mother is delicate Love. / For such poets thereafter great banquets are allowed / and often to become soft with old wine. / But who records wars and heaven under mature Jove, [55] / and pious heroes and half-divine leaders, / and now who sings the sacred counsels of the supreme gods, / now the infernal realms bayed by the fierce dog,
14
/ let him live indeed frugally in the fashion / of the Samian teacher,
15
and let herbage furnish his harmless food. [60] / Let the clear water near at hand stand in its bowl of beech wood, / and let him drink nonintoxicating potions from the pure spring. / His youth void of crime and chaste is joined to this / by stern morals and without stain of hand. / With like nature, shining with sacred vestment and lustral waters, [65] / does the priest rise to go to the hostile gods. / By this rule it is said wise Tiresias lived / after his eyes were put out, and Ogygian Linus,
16
/ and Calchas fugitive from his appointed house, and old / Orpheus with the vanquished beasts among the forsaken caves. [70] / Thus the one poor of feast, thus Homer, drinker of water, / carried the man of Ithaca through the vast seas / and through the monster-making palace of the daughter
17
of Perseis and Apollo, / and shallows dangerous with Siren songs, / and through your mansions, infernal king, where by dark blood [75] / he is said to have engaged the trooping shades. / For truly the poet is sacred to the gods, and priest of the gods, / and his hidden heart and lips breathe Jove. / But if you will know what I am doing (if only at least / you consider it to be important to know whether I am doing anything) [80] / I am singing the King, bringer of peace by his divine origin,
18
/ and the blessed times promised in the sacred books, / and the crying of our God and his stabling under the meagre roof, / who with his Father inhabits the heavenly realms; / and the heavens insufficient of stars and the hosts singing in the air, [85] / and the gods suddenly destroyed in their temples. / I dedicate these gifts in truth to the birthday of Christ, / gifts which the first light of dawn brought to me. / For you these thoughts formed on my native pipes are also waiting; / you, when I recite them, will be the judge for me of their worth. [90]
(
Dec.
1629)
1
For Diodati, see.
El.
1, n. 1.
2
the elegiac couplet.
3
that is, becoming man on earth.
4
As god of wine, who loosens care, Bacchus inspired music and poetry.
5
See
El.
5, n. 3.
6
See
El.
4, n. 10. Thyoneus is Bacchus, also called Lyaeus (l. 21), meaning “deliverer from care,” and Teumesian Euan (l. 23), “Euoe” being a shout heard at his festivals.
7
See
El.
1, n. 3. Reference is to
Epistles from Pontus
, IV, viii, 80–83.
8
Anacreon.
9
Horace in his
Odes.
10
Mt. Massicus in Campania, which was celebrated for its excellent wine.
11
Bacchus because of the wine-filled festivals, Apollo because Diodati was preparing for a medical career, and Ceres because of the feasts.
12
referring to Orpheus.
13
Muse of comedy and bucolic poetry; Erato (l. 51) is the Muse of lyric and amatory poetry. Liber, a god of vine-growers, was identified with Bacchus; but he also was a spirit of creativeness.
14
Cerberus, guardian of Hades.
15
Pythagoras and his school practised asceticism, particularly in eating.
16
The Theban Linus instructed Orpheus and Hercules on the lyre; Calchas (l. 69) was the Greek seer at Troy.
17
Circe.
18
the
Nativity Ode
, written in English (“on my native pipes,” l. 89) around Christmas 1629.
1
I
Ere-while of Musick, and Ethereal mirth,
Wherwith the stage of Ayr and Earth did ring,
And joyous news of heav’nly Infants birth,
My muse with Angels did divide
2
to sing;
5
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,
In Wintry solstice like the short’n’d light
Soon swallow’d 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 wo,
10
Which on our dearest Lord did sease e’re long
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse then so,
Which he for us did freely undergo:
Most perfect
Heroe
,
3
try’d in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight.
III
15
He sov’ran Priest stooping his regall head
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
4
Poor fleshly Tabernacle entered,
His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies;
O what a Mask
5
was there, what a disguise!
20
Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,
Then lies him meekly down fast by his Brethrens side.
IV
These latter scenes confine my roving vers,
To this Horizon is my
Phœbus
6
bound;
His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
25
And former sufferings other where are found;
Loud o’re the rest
Cremona’s
Trump
7
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,
30
Over the Pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flatter’d fancy to belief,
That Heav’n and Earth are colour’d with my wo;
My sorrows are too dark for day to know:
The leaves should all be black wheron I write,
35
And letters where my tears have washt a wannish white.
8
VI
See, see the Chariot, and those rushing wheels
That whirl’d the Prophet
9
up at
Chebar
flood;
My spirit som transporting Cherub feels,
To bear me where the Towers of
Salem
10
stood,
40
Once glorious Towers, now sunk in guiltles blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatick fit.
VII
Mine eye hath found that sad Sepulchral rock
That was the Casket of Heav’ns richest store,
45
And here though grief my feeble hands up-lock,
Yet on the soft’n’d Quarry would I score
My plaining vers as lively as before;
For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in order’d Characters.
VIII
50
Or should I thence hurried on viewles wing,
Take up a weeping on the Mountains wild,
11
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unboosom all thir Echoes mild,
And I (for grief is easily beguil’d)
55
Might think th’ infection of my sorrows loud
Had got a race of mourners on som pregnant cloud.
(
Unfinished, Mar. 1630
)
1
Intended as a kind of sequel to the
Nativity Ode
, which is mentioned in the first stanza, these verses seem to be only an induction to the main subject, Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion. An appended note indicates why the poem was not completed: “This Subject the Author finding to be above the yeers he had, when he wrote it, and nothing satisfi’d with what was begun, left it unfinisht.”
2
a musical term meaning to make musical divisions (measures); but perhaps “divide into parts between them.”
3
Here Christ is paralleled with Hercules.
4
“Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle” was by God “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows” (Heb. ix. 11, i. 9).