The Complete Poetry of John Milton (8 page)

As yet my cheeks were not dry with flowing tears, / and eyes not yet dry, / still were they swollen with the rain of salt liquid, / which lately I, respectful, poured forth, / while I rendered sorrowful obsequies to the esteemed bier [5] / of the bishop of Winchester;
²
/ when hundred-tongued Fame (alas always / the true messenger of evil and misfortune) / spreads through the cities of affluent Britain / and to the people sprung from Neptune
³
[10] / that you had yielded to death, and to the cruel sisters,
⁴
/ you, the ornament of the race of men, / who were the prince of saints in that island / which retains the name of Eel.
⁵
/ Directly at that time my restless breast [15] / surged with fervid anger, / frequently cursing the goddess powerful in the grave: / Ovid
⁶
in
Ibis
conceived / no more ominous vows in the depth of his heart, / and the Greek poet, more sparing, [20] / cursed the dishonorable deceit of Lycambes, / and of Neobule, his own betrothed.
⁷
/ But lo! while I pour out these harsh curses / and invoke death upon death, / astonished, I seem to hear such
sounds as these, [25] / on the gentle breeze beneath the air:
⁸
/ “Put away your blind madness; put away your transparent / melancholy and your ineffectual threats. / Why do you thoughtlessly profane deities unable to be harmed / and roused swift to wrath? [30] / Death is not, as you think, deluded wretch, / the dark daughter of Night, / nor sprung from her father Erebus, nor from Erinys, / nor born under desolate Chaos.
⁹
/ But she, sent from the starry heaven, [35] / gathers the harvest of God everywhere; / and souls hidden by their fleshy bulk / calls forth into light and air, / as when the flying Hours arouse the day, / the daughters of Themis and Jove;
¹⁰
[40] / and she leads them into the presence of the eternal Father, / but, just, she sweeps the impious / to the doleful realms of gloomy Tartarus, / to the infernal abodes. / Happy, when I heard her calling, quickly [45] / I left my loathsome prison / and, fortunate, amid the winged warriors / I was borne aloft to the stars, / like the venerable prophet of old,
¹¹
snatched up to heaven, / driver of the fiery chariot. [50] / The wain of shining Boötes did not frighten me, / slow from the cold, nor / the claws of fearsome Scorpion, / not even your sword, Orion.
¹²
/ I flew past the globe of the gleaming sun, [55] / and far below my feet I saw / the triform goddess,
¹³
whilst she restrained / her dragons with golden reins. / Through rows of wandering stars, / through the milky regions I was conveyed, [60] / often amazed at my strange speed, / until to the shining portals / of Olympus I was come, and the crystalline realm / and the court paved with beryl.
¹⁴
/ But here I shall be silent, for who is able to proclaim, [65] / descended from human father, / the pleasures of that place?
¹⁵
For me / it is enough to enjoy them through eternity.”

(
Oct. ? 1626
)

¹
Nicholas Felton (1556-1626), Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, from 1617 to 1619 when he succeeded Lancelot Andrewes as Bishop of Ely. He died on Oct. 6.

²
Lancelot Andrewes, whose death was mourned in
El.
3.

³
See
Nov.
5, n. 1.

⁴
the three Fates.

⁵
the etymological meaning of Ely (“island of eels”).

⁶
whose poem attacks an unidentified enemy.

⁷
Archilochus was in love with Neobule, daughter of Lycambes, who at first allowed and then forbade their marriage; to avenge himself he wrote such bitter satires that father and daughter hanged themselves.

⁸
The following lines, to the end, are spoken by Felton’s spirit.

⁹
According to Cicero (
De Natura Deorum
, III, xvii, 44), Death is a child of Night by Erebus, offspring of Chaos (the lower world). Erinys was one of the three Furies.

¹⁰
The Hours kept watch at the gates of heaven. Themis personified Justice.

¹¹
Elijah (2 Kings ii. 11).

¹²
In flight he passes three heavenly constellations: Boötes, lying in the north and meaning “ox herder,” appears to move slowly; it is near the Great Bear, known as the Wain (wagon). Scorpio, lying in the south, is named for its similarity to a scorpion. Orion, lying on the equator, is in the figure of a hunter with belt and sword.

¹³
The moon (Diana) was triform because she was the virgin moon-goddess, the patroness of virginity, and the presider over child-birth, the chase, and nocturnal incantations. The threefold identification rests upon the phases of the moon: increasing, full, and waning. As goddess of nocturnal incantations she was identified with Hecate. As Davis P. Harding shows (“Milton and the Renaissance Ovid” [Harvard Univ. Press, 1946], p. 50), the dragons of the moon were associated with Hecate because they descended to Medea when she invoked the goddess’ help to flee from Jason’s wrath.

¹⁴
Rev. xxi. 19-21: “And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones /… the eighth, beryl… / And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.”

¹⁵
1 Cor. ii. 9: “But it is written, Eve hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”