The Complete Poetry of John Milton (37 page)
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Authors: John Milton
Tags: #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Poetry, #European
72
Diogenes renounced luxury by living in a tub.
73
closed up.
74
a shaggy woolen fabric.
75
the earth.
76
deluded.
77
pale color.
78
comb.
79
pick and choose.
80
The word combines a meaning of something beyond Comus’ comprehension and a religious article of faith known only to the initiated.
81
fencing, i.e., debating.
82
that is, when Jove dooms to hell those who during his rebellion followed his father Saturn.
83
Spenser; see
FQ
, II, x, 19.
84
Milton altered Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of the murder of Estrildis and her illegitimate daughter Sabrina by Locrine’s jealous wife Gwendolen.
85
a sea-god.
86
a flower yielding immortality.
87
The sea deities include Tethys, wife of Oceanus and mother of rivers; Proteus, who lived in the Carpathian Sea and was known for changing his appearance; Triton, Neptune’s herald; Glaucus, an immortal fisherman; Leucothea (or Ino) who escaped her husband’s insanity with her son Melicertes by throwing herself into the sea; Thetis, a Nereid; and the Sirens Parthenope and Ligea.
88
turquoise.
89
the wife of Neptune.
90
Compare “the towred Cybele” (
Arcades
, 21, and n. 6).
91
Besides having wings on his sandals, indicating his swiftness, Mercury invented the lyre.
92
early.
93
The Hesperian tree with its golden apples, guarded by a dragon, symbolized the Tree of Life, whose fruit yielded immortality; the dragon, here and in ll. 393-97, is identified with the cherubic watch with flaming swords placed there by God (
PL
XI, 118-25).
94
quivering.
95
goddesses of the seasons.
96
See n. 12; in the following lines the water imagery indicates eternal life in contrast with Noah’s flood of death.
97
embroidered along the edge.
98
Venus, whose lover Adonis had been gored by a wild boar.
99
The myth points to Milton’s allegory: life and heavenly bliss are the offspring of the legitimate union of heart and soul. The mere appetite of Venus’ love causes Adonis to languish and her to sit sadly far below the celestial heavens.
100
horns.
101
the music of the spheres.
When the children of Israel, when the noble tribes of Jacob / left behind the land of Egypt, hated, barbarous of speech, / already at that time the only chosen race was the sons of Judah. / But among the people God ruled, a mighty Lord. / The sea saw, and turning back, made the fugitive strong, [5] / its roaring waves folded beneath, and straightaway was / the sacred Jordan thrust back upon its silvery sources. / The boundless mountains rushed wildly thither, skipping / as well-filled rams in a thriving garden. / At the same time all the strange little crags leaped up [10] / as lambs to the shepherd’s pipe about their dear mother. /
Why then, dread monster sea, did you make the fugitive strong, / your roaring waves folded beneath? Why then were you, / sacred Jordan, thrust back upon your silvery sources? / Why did the boundless mountains rush wildly, skipping [15] / as well-filled rams in a thriving garden? / Why then did you, strange little crags, leap up / as lambs to the shepherd’s pipe about your dear mother? / Tremble, Earth, and fear the Lord, doer of mighty works; / Earth, fear the Lord, the highest majesty of the seed of Isaac, [20] / who poured forth both the roaring streams out of the rocks / and the ever-flowing fountain down from the weeping crags.
(
Nov. 1634
)
Philosophus ad regem quendam qui eum ignotum
insontem inter reos forte captum inscius damnaverat
hæc subito misit.
1
A philosopher on his way to his death suddenly sent this message to a certain king who had unawares condemned him, unrecognized and innocent, when he was seized by chance among criminals.
1
O king, if you make an end of me, a lawful person / and a doer of utterly no harm to man, you easily take away / one of the wisest of heads, but later you will perceive / just as before; surely at last, you will grieve vainly and exceedingly / because you have destroyed such a greatly renowned bulwark from out of the city. [5]
(
Dec. 1634 ?
)
1
Though these verses sound like a paraphrase of a classic epigram, no source has been determined. If they are the result of encouragement from Alexander Gill to try further Greek composition, the subject may have been chosen, as Parker suggests (“Notes,” p. 129), to “allude to Gill’s unfortunate clash with Laud and the Star Chamber, and his subsequent pardon by King Charles (November 30, 1630).…” Two years before, Gill had toasted the health of John Felton, assassin of the king’s minister, the Duke of Buckingham.
Fly envious Time,
1
till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping howrs,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummets
2
pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
5
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb’d,
10
And last of all thy greedy self consum’d,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual
3
kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
15
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 clime,
20
Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,
Attir’d with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.
(
1633-37 ?
)
1
Cronos was jealous of even his own children (Hesiod,
Theogony
, 453 ff.).
2
the weight which by gravity moved the wheels of the clock and in turn its hands. The poem originally was to be “set on a clock case.”
3
usually interpreted as “undividable,” that is, “everlasting”; however, O. B. Hardison, Jr. (
Texas Studies in Lit. and Lang.
, III, 1961, 107-22) argues cogently for the simpler reading: “Eternity shall greet us individually with a kiss.”
1
Ye flaming Powers,
2
and winged Warriours bright
That erst with musick, and triumphant song
First heard by happy watchfull Shepherds ear,
So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along
5
Through the soft silence of the list’ning night,
Now mourn, and if sad share with us to bear
Your fiery essence can distill no tear,
3
Burn in your sighs, and borrow
Seas wept from our deep sorrow.
10
He who with all Heav’ns heraldry whilere
Enter’d the world, now bleeds to give us ease;
Alas, how soon our sin
Sore doth begin
His infancy to seasel
15
O more exceeding love or law more just?
4
Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For we by rightfull doom remediles
Were lost in death till he that dwelt above
High-thron’d in secret bliss, for us frail dust