The Complete Poetry of John Milton (6 page)

TO CHARLES DIODATI
¹

At last, dear friend, your letter has reached me / and its news-filled paper conveyed your words, / conveyed them from the western region of the Dee near Chester, / from which with downward flow it seeks the Irish Sea. / I am greatly delighted, believe me, that remote lands have nurtured [5] / a loving heart, and so faithful a head, / and because the far-off region is indebted to me for a charming comrade, / yet from which it is willing to return him in a short while upon command. / The city holds me which the Thames washes with its back-flowing surge, / but my pleasant native home does not keep me against my will. [10] / At this time neither do I care to see the reedy Cam again, / nor does love of my prohibited quarters distress me just now.
²
/ Its bare fields are unwelcome, so unyielding are they of mild shadows; / how improperly that place assembles the followers of Phoebus! / It is not pleasant constantly to submit to the threats of a stern tutor [15] / and to other things which are foreign to my nature. / If this be exile, to have gone to the paternal hearth / and, this banishment being free of care, to follow agreeable leisurely pursuits, / neither do I flee that name, nor reject its lot, / and, happy, I delight in the result of exile. [20] / O would that the poet never had borne anything more burdensome, / he, the lamentable exile in the land of Tomis.
³
/ Then he would have conceded nothing to Ionian Homer, / nor would the foremost renown be yours, vanquished Maro.
⁴
/ For I am permitted to dedicate my free time to the gentle Muses, [25] / and books—my life—transport me entirely away. / Here the display of the curved theater captivates me, when wearied, / and the talkative stage calls me to its applause.
⁵
/ Sometimes is heard a sly old man, sometimes a prodigal heir, / sometimes a suitor, or a soldier appears with his helmet laid aside, [30] / or an advocate rich from a ten-year lawsuit / thunders his strange discourse at an uncultivated court. / Often a crafty slave runs to the aid of a love-sick son / and, everywhere at once, he deceives the stern father under his very nose. / Often a maiden, astonished by a strange ardor—[35] / she does not know what love is—loves even while she is ignorant. / Or raging Tragedy tosses her sceptre stained with blood / and rolls her eyes under dishevelled hair, / and it is painful; not only do I watch, but I take pleasure in having seen / suffering, and sometimes sweet bitterness lies in tears: [40] / whether an unhappy youth left his joys untasted, / and, separated from his love, dies lamentably, / or whether a fierce avenger of crimes returns from the shades beyond the Styx, / disturbing with his deadly torch hearts conscious of sin, / or whether the house of Pelops is grieving, or of noble Ilus, [45] / or the palace of Creon purges its incestuous sires. / But I am not always living in concealment indoors or in the city, / nor do the hours of spring hasten by without effect on me. / The wood strewn with close-growing elm also possesses me / as well as the celebrated shade of a suburban spot. [50] / Here you may often see bands of maidens, stars / emitting seductive flames, go dancing by. / Ah, how many times have I been stunned by the wonders of a becoming figure / which might refresh even the old age of Jove; / Ah, how many times have I seen eyes surpassing jewels [55] / and even all the flaming stars which either pole rolls round; / and necks which excel the arms of twice-living Pelops,
⁶
/ and in which flows the vein dyed with pure nectar, / and uncommon grace of brow, and shaking hair, / by which deceitful Love extends his golden nets, [60] / and seductive cheeks against which the purple of the hyacinth seems / of small account, and the blush of your flower, Adonis, as well!
⁷
/ Yield, Heroides,
⁸
so often praised in the past, / and every mistress who subjected capricious Jove. / Yield, Achaemenian
⁹
maidens with towered forehead, [65] / and all that dwell in Susa, or Memnonian Nineveh.
¹⁰
/ You likewise, Greek maidens, acknowledge your inferiority, / and you women of Troy and of Rome; / nor let the Tarpeian Muse vaunt the Pompeian pillars
¹¹
/ or the theaters filled with Italian robes. [70] / The prime honor is due the young women of Britain; / be satisfied, alien womanhood, to be able to follow after. / And you, London, city built by Trojan colonists,
¹²
/ distinguished far and wide for towered height, / exceedingly happy, you enclose with your walls [75] / whatever of beauty the pendant world possesses. / Not so many stars shine down on you from the serene sky, / the ministrant multitude of Endymion’s goddess,
¹³
/ as the maidens dazzling to you in their beauty and goldenness, / the visible throng that shine forth through the trodden ways. [80] / Lofted to this place by her twin-born doves, bountiful Venus is believed / to have come, accompanied by her quiver-bearing soldier; / for this city, she neglects Cnidos and the valleys watered by the river Simois, / for this, Paphos and rosy Cyprus.
¹⁴
/ But I, while the blind boy’s indulgence permits, [85] / am preparing to leave the favorable walled city most quickly; / and to escape from afar the infamous halls of faithless Circe, / preparing with the help of divine moly.
¹⁵
/ It is decided also that I am to return to the rush-filled fens of the Cam / and again to submit to the noise of the raucous school. [90] / Meanwhile accept this small tribute of a loyal friend, / and these few words forced into alternating measures.
¹⁶

(
Apr. 1626
)

¹
The biography of Milton’s close friend is related by Donald C. Dorian in
The English Diodatis.
Diodati visited in Chester on the River Dee (from Milton’s words in or around the northwestern section of the city) in the spring of 1626. Two Greek letters to Milton are extant in the British Museum (see Yale Prose, I, 336-37).

²
Milton was suspended in the Lent term of 1626 as a result of a disagreement with his tutor William Chappell. On his return (around April 19), Milton was placed under Nathaniel Tovey.

³
Ovid, banished in A.D. 8 to Tomis on the Black Sea where the Coralli lived; see
Elegy
6, l. 19.

⁴
Virgil.

⁵
These references from his reading which follow (note ll. 26, 47) fit the comedies of Terence and the tragedies of the Greeks. The house of Pelops is represented, for example, in Aeschylus’
Agamemnon
and Euripides’
Electro;
the house of Ilus, in Euripides’
Hecuba
and
Trojan Women;
and the palace of Creon, in Sophocles’
Oedipus the King
and
Antigone.

⁶
Pelops, dismembered and offered as food to the Gods, was restored by Hermes; but the piece of shoulder eaten by Demeter had to be replaced by ivory.

⁷
The anemone sprang from the blood of Adonis, killed by a boar while hunting.

⁸
heroines of legend to whom Ovid assigns the letters making up his amatory poems of this name.

⁹
Persian.

¹⁰
Susa in southwestern Persia was founded by Memnon’s father; Milton’s Latin confusedly connects Memnon with the Assyrian city of Nineveh.

¹¹
Ovid lived near the Capitoline hill, where was located the Tarpeian Rock from which criminals met their death. He praised both the theater of Pompey in the Campus Martius and other Italian theaters.

¹²
According to legend, England was settled by Brutus, grandson of the Trojan Aeneas.

¹³
Endymion was beloved by Selene (the Moon), who set him in perpetual sleep, descending each night to embrace him.

¹⁴
Temples to Venus were erected at Cnidos and at Paphos, a city of Cyprus. Paris judged Venus the fairest goddess on the banks of the river Simois. The “quiver-bearing soldier” (l. 82) and the “blind boy” (l. 85) is her son Cupid.

¹⁵
Through the aid of Hermes, Ulysses was able to resist the charms of Circe by eating the herb moly. The enchantress had turned half his followers into swine.

¹⁶
the elegiac couplet, consisting of an hexameter and a pentameter.

IN OBITUM PRÆCONIS ACADEMICI CANTABRIGIENSIS
¹

ON THE DEATH OF THE BEADLE OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY
¹

You who, conspicuous with your shining mace, were accustomed / so often to assemble the Palladian band,
²
/ beadle as you were, the last of beadles, fierce Death, / has seized, and does not even favor one in its own service. / Although your temples were whiter than the plumes [5] / under which we understand Jove to have been disguised,
³
/ O yet were you worthy to grow young again with a Haemonian potion, / worthy to be able to live to an Aesonian age,
⁴
/ worthy to be one whom Coronides should recall from the Stygian waves / by his curative art, at the frequent entreaty of the goddess.
⁵
[10] /As whenever you were bidden to fetch the gowned ranks / and to go a swift messenger from your Apollo,
⁶
/ in such manner would wing-footed Cyllenius
⁷
stand in the court of Ilium, / dispatched from the heavenly vault of his father. / And in like fashion Eurybates before the face of angry Achilles [15] / conveyed the stern order of his chief, Atrides.
⁸
/ Great queen of sepulchers, attendant of Avernus, / too cruel to the Muses, too cruel to Pallas, / why do you not seize those who are useless burdens of the earth? / They are the throng that should be attacked by your darts. [20] / Therefore, mourn for him, Academe, in robes of black, / and moisten with your tears the dark bier,
⁹
/ and let lamenting Elegy itself pour forth its sad measures / and let all the schools resound with its sorrowful dirge.