The Complete Poetry of John Milton (9 page)
Read The Complete Poetry of John Milton Online
Authors: John Milton
Tags: #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Poetry, #European
35
Nec puppe lustrasses Charontis
Horribiles barathri recessus.
At fila rupit Persephone tua
Irata, cum te viderit artibus
Succoque pollenti tot atris
40
Facibus eripuisse mortis.
Colende præses, membra precor tua
Molli quiescant cespite, et ex tuo
Crescant rosae, calthæque busto,
Purpureoque hyacinthus ore.
45
Sit mite de te judicium Æaci,
15
Subrideatque Ætnæa
16
Proserpina,
Interque felices perennis
Elysio spatiere campo.
1
Learn to submit to the laws of destiny / and now offer up suppliant hands to the Parca,
2
/ descendants of Japetus,
3
who inhabit / the pendulous orb of the earth. / If doleful death, wandering [5] / from abandoned Taenarus,
4
once summon you, alas: delays / and deceptions are essayed in vain; / through the shadows of the Styx one is certain to go. / If the right hand were strong enough / to rout appointed death, the untamed Hercules, [10] /poisoned by the blood of Nessus, / would not have been cast down on Emathian Oeta.
5
/ Nor would Troy have seen Hector
6
slain / by the shameful deceit of envious Pallas, nor / him
7
whom the ghost of Achilles killed [15] / with Locrian sword, Jove shedding tears. / If the incantations of Hecate
8
could put / sad fate to flight, the parent of Telegonus
9
/ would have lived in infamy, and / the sister of Aegialeus
10
to employ her potent wand. [20] / And if the arts of the physician and unknown herbs / were able to deceive the triple divinity, / Machaon, knowing so much of herbs, / would not have fallen by the spear of Eurypylus;
11
/ neither would the arrow smeared with the hydra’s blood [25] / have wounded you, son of Philyra,
12
/ nor the missiles and thunderbolt of your grandfather, you, / boy cut from your mother’s womb.
13
/ And you, O greater than your pupil, Apollo, / to whom the government of our gowned society was given, [30] / and whom now leafy Cirrha mourns / and Helicon in the midst of its waters,
14
/ now you would be the happy leader to the Palladian troop, / surviving, not without glory; / nor in Charon’s boat would you traverse [35] / the fearful recesses of hell. / But Persephone broke your thread of life, / angered, when she saw you by your arts / and powerful potions snatch so many / from the black jaws of death. [40] / Reverend Chancellor, I pray your limbs / find peace in the gentle soil, and from your grave / spring roses and marigolds / and the hyacinth with purple face. / May the judgment of Aeacus
15
be gentle upon you, [45] / and may Sicilian
16
Prosperina smile, / and forever among the fortunate / may you walk in the Elysian field.
(
Oct.–Nov. 1626
)
1
Dr. John Gostlin, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge and Regius Professor of Medicine from 1623, died on Oct. 21, 1626.
2
one of the three Fates; specifically, Morta, who controlled the advent of death.
3
As father of Atlas, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, he was considered mankind’s common progenitor.
4
the infernal regions.
5
To win back Hercules’ love, his wife Deianira followed the advice of the dying Nessus to smear a robe with his blood, which Hercules was to wear; but since Nessus’ blood had been stained with the blood of the hydra, also killed by Hercules, the robe caused fatal poisoning. Hercules had himself placed on a pyre on Mt. Oeta in Macedonia.
6
Athena, disguised as Hector’s brother Deiphobus, urged him to fight with Achilles, in which battle he was slain.
7
Sarpedon, son of Jove, who was slain by Patroclus, wearing Achilles’ armor.
8
goddess of enchantments.
9
Circe.
10
Medea, who was learned in magic.
11
Machaon, surgeon to the Greeks at Troy, was a son of Aesculapius.
12
Chiron was wounded by one of Hercules’ arrows poisoned by the hydra’s blood.
13
Aesculapius, so delivered by his father Apollo, was killed by Jove, Apollo’s father, because he saved men from death.
14
In an extravagance Milton has Apollo, god of healing, learning from Gostlin, and Cirrha (near Delphi) and Helicon (the haunt of the Muses) equating Cambridge with its poetic mourners.
15
a judge of the dead, appointed because of his justice in ruling Aegina.
16
Sicilian because she was carried off from Enna in Sicily by Pluto.
1
Cum simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britannos
Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, nefas,
Fallor? an et mitis voluisti ex parte videri,
Et pensare malâ cum pietate scelus?
5
Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria cæli,
Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis.
Qualiter ille
2
feris caput inviolabile Parcis
3
Liquit Jördanios turbine raptus agros.
1
When recently, at the same time against the King and the British lords, / you attempted, perfidious Fawkes, your unspeakable crime, / am I mistaken, or did you wish to seem in part kind / and to compensate for the heinous deed with wicked piety? / Certainly you would send them to the courts of high heaven [5] / in a sulphurous chariot with flaming wheels; / just as he
2
whose head was inviolable by the cruel Parcae,
3
/ carried off in a whirlwind, disappeared from the plains of the Jordan.
(
Nov. 1626 ?
)
1
a Roman Catholic conspiracy by Guy Fawkes and others to blow up James I and the House of Lords on Nov. 5, 1605.
2
Elijah (2 Kings ii. 11).
3
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, the Fates who controlled birth and death.
Siccine tentasti cælo donâsse Jäcobum
Quæ septemgemino Bellua monte lates?
1
Ni meliora tuum poterit dare munera numen,
Parce precor donis insidiosa tuis.
5
Die quidem sine te consortia serus
2
adivit
Astra, nec infemi pulveris usus ope.
Sic potiùs fœdos in cælum pelle cucullos,
3
Et quot habet brutos Roma profana Deos,
Namque hac aut aliâ nisi quemque adjuveris arte,
10
Crede mihi, cæli vix bene scandet iter.
Thus did you strive to vouchsafe James to Heaven, / O Beast, who lurks on the seven hills?
1
/ Unless your divine majesty can bestow better favors, / spare, I pray, your insidious gifts. / Indeed he has departed ripe in years,
2
without your help [5] / and without the employment of infernal powder, to his comrades, the stars. / Thus instead, banish to the sky your detestable cowls
3
/ and all the brute gods profane Rome possesses; / for unless you aid each one firmly in this or some other way, / believe me, they will hardly mount the path to heaven successfully. [10]
(
Nov. 1626 ?
)
1
the Papacy; Rome, built on seven hills, was identified by many Protestants with the whore of Babylon, who sat on a beast with seven heads (hills) and ten horns (Rev. xvii. 3-7).
2
James died on Mar. 27, 1625.
3
priests.
Purgatorem animæ derisit Jäcobus ignem,
1
Et sine quo superûm non adeunda domus.
Frenduit hoc trinâ monstrum Latiale coronâ
2
Movit et horrificùm cornua dena minax.
5
Et nec inultus ait, temnes mea sacra, Britanne,
Supplicium spretâ relligione dabis.
Et si stelligeras unquam penetraveris arces,
Non nisi per flammas triste patebit iter.
O quàm funesto cecinisti proxima vero,
10
Verbaque ponderibus vix caritura suis!
Nam prope Tartareo
3
sublime rotatus ab igni
Ibat ad æthereas umbra perusta plagas.
James derided the Purgatorial fire
1
of the soul, / without which there is no approaching of the celestial mansions. / The Latin monster with triple crown
2
gnashed its teeth at this / and moved its ten horns with frightful menace / and, it cried, “You shall not scorn my sacred rites with impunity, Englishman; [5] / you shall suffer punishment for your contempt of religion. / And if ever you enter the starry citadels, / the only way open is the sad one through the flames.” / O how close you came to a calamitous truth / and only barely were your words deprived of their consequences, [10] / for he nearly ascended to the eternal regions, / a scorched ghost, whirled on high by the Tartarean
3
fire.
(
Nov. 1626
?)
1
James’ denial of Purgatory is found in
A Premonition to All Most Mightie Monarches (Works
, [Harvard Univ. Press, 1918], p. 125).
2
the Papacy; the Pope’s tiara is a triple crown. Milton thought both of the beast in Revelation and Daniel’s vision of the beast with great iron teeth and ten horns, which “shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,… and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces” (Dan. vii. 7, 23).
3
Tartarus was the part of the underworld where punishment for sins was exacted.
Quem modò Roma suis devoverat impia diris,
1
Et Styge damnarât Tænarioque sinu,
2
Hunc vice mutatâ jam tollere gestit ad astra,
Et cupit ad superos evehere usque Deos.
Whom impious Rome had just marked out for her curses
1
/ and condemned to the Styx and the Taenarian gulf,
2
/ him, on the contrary, she now desires to lift to the stars / and wishes to elevate even to the higher Gods.
(
Nov. 1626 ?
)
1
In addition to reimposing recusancy fines in Feb. 1605, James had banished all Roman Catholic priests in Feb. 1604.
2
the infernal regions.
Japetionidem
1
laudavit cæca vetustas,
Qui tulit ætheream solis ab axe facem;
At mihi major erit, qui lurida creditur arma,
Et trifidum fulmen surripuisse Jovi.
2
Antiquity in blindness praised the son of Iapetus,
1
/ who brought down celestial fire from the chariot of the sun, / but to me he will be greater who is believed to have stolen / the ghastly weapons and threeforked thunderbolt from Jove.
2
(
Nov. 1626 ?
)
1
Prometheus.
2
Compare the description of the Son after the War in Heaven in
PL
VI, 763-64.
Jam pius extremâ veniens Jäcobus ab arcto
Teucrigenas populos,
1
latéque patentia regna
Albionum tenuit, jamque inviolabile fœdus
Sceptra Caledoniis conjunxerat Anglica Scotis: