JOHN MILTON 189 7

as for the Blazing World, it having an empress already, who rules it with great
wisdom and conduct, which empress is my dear platonic friend; I shall never
prove so unjust, treacherous, and unworthy to her, as to disturb her government,
much less to depose her from her imperial throne, for the sake of any other;
but rather choose to create another world for another friend.
1666, 1668

JOHN MILTON
1608-1674

f s a young man, John Milton proclaimed himself the future author of a great
English epic. He promised a poem devoted to the glory of the nation , centering
on the deeds of King Arthur or some other ancient hero. When ~ilton finally pub-
lished hi s epic thirty years later, readers found instead a poem about the Fall of
Satan and humankind, set in Heaven, Hell, and the Garden of Eden, in which tra-
ditional heroism is denigrated and England not once mentioned. What lay between
the youthful promise and the eventual fulfillment was a career ma rked by private
tragedy and public controversy.
In his poems and prose tracts Milton often alludes to crises in his own life: his
choice of a "vocation, the early death of friends, painful disappointment in marriage,
and the catastrophe of blindness. At the same time, no other major English poet has
been so deeply involved in the great questions and political crises of his times. His
works reflect upon and help develop some basic Western concepts that were ta king
modern form in his lifetime: com-
panionate marriage, the new science,
freedom of the press, religious lib-
erty and toleration, republicanism,
and more. It is scarcely possible to
treat Milton's career separately from
the history of England in his life-
time, not only because he was an
active participant in affairs of church
and state, but also because when he
signed himself, as he often did,
"John Milton, Englishman," he was
presenting himself as England's pro-
phetic bard. He considered himself
the spokesman for the nation as a
whole even when he found himself
in a minority of one.
No English poet before Milton
fashioned himself quite so self-
consciously as an author. The
young Milton deliberately set out to
fo llow the steps of the ideal poetic Milton.
1898 JOH N M ILT O N

ca reer-beginning with pastoral (the mode of several of his early poems) a nd end-
ing with epic. His models for this progression were Virgil and Spenser: he called the
latter "a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." In his systematic approach to his
vocation he stood at the opposite end of the spectrum from such Cavalier contempo-
raries as Richard Lovelace, who turned to verse with an air of studied carelessness.
Milton resembles Spenser especially in his constant use of myth and archetype and
also in his readiness to juxtapose biblica l and classical stories. He is everywhere con-
cerned with the conventions of genre, yet he infused every genre he used with new
energy, transforming it for later practitioners. The Western literary and intellectual
heritage impinged on his writing as immediately and directly as the circumstances of
his own life, but he continually reconceived the ideas, literary forms, and values of
this heritage to make them relevant to himself and to his age.
Milton's family was bourgeois, cultured, and staunchly Protestant. His father was
a scrivener-a combination solicitor, investment adviser, and moneylender- as well
as an amateur composer with some reputat ion in musical circles. Milton had a
younger brother, C hristopher, who practiced law, and an elder sister, Anne. At age
seventeen he wrote a funeral elegy for the death of Anne's infant daughter and later
educated her two sons, Edward and John (Edward wrote his biography). Milton had
private tutors at home and also attended one of the fin est schools in the land, St.
Paul's. At school he began a close friendship with C harles Oiodati, with whom he
exchanged Latin poems and letters over several years, and for whose death in 1638
he wrote a moving Latin elegy. Milton's excellent early education gave him special
facilit y in languages (Latin , Greek, Hebrew and its dialects, Italian , and French:
later he learned Spanish and Dutc h).
In 1625 Milton entered C h rist's College, Cambridge. He was briefl y suspended
duri ng his freshman year over some dispute with his tutor, but he graduated in
1629 and was made Master of Arts three years later. As h is surviving student ora-
tions indicate, he was profoundly disappointed in his university education, reviling
the scholastic logic and Latin rhetorical exercises that still formed its core as "fu tile
and barren controversies and wordy disputes" that "stupefy and benumb the mind:·
He went to university with the serious intention of taking orders in the Church of
England- the obvious vocation for a young man of his scholarly and religious bent-
but became increasingly disenchanted with the lack of reformation in the church
under Archbishop William Laud, and in the hindsight of 1642 he proclaimed himself
"church-outed by the prelates." No doubt his change of direction was also linked to
the fastidious contempt he expressed for the ignorant and clownish clergymen-in-the-
making who were his fellow students at Cambridge: "They thought themselves gal-
lant men, and I thought them fools." Those students retaliated by dubbing Milton
"the Lady of Christ's College."
Above all, Milton came to believe more a n<l more strongly that he was destined to
serve his language, his country, and h is God as a poet. He began by writing occa-
sional poetry in Latin, the usual language for collegiate poets and for poets who
sought a European audience. Milton wrote some of the century's best Latin poems.
but as early as 1628 he announced to a university audience his determination to
glorify Engla nd a nd the English language in poetry. In his first major English poem
(at age twenty-one), the hymn "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," Milton already
portrayed himself as a prophetic bard. This poem is very different from Richard
Crashaw's Nativity hymn, with its Spenserian echoes, its allusion to Roman Catholic
and Laudian "idolatry" in the long passage on the expulsion of the pagan gods, and its
stunning moves from the Creation to Doomsday, from the ma nger at Bethlehem to
the cosmos, and from the shepherd's chatter to the music of the spheres. Two or three
years later, probably, Milton wrote the companion poems "L'Allegro" and "II Pense-
roso," achieving a stylistic tour de force by creating from the same meter (octosyl-
labic couplets) entirely different sound qua lities, rhythmic effects, and moods. These
poems celebrate, respectively, Mirth and Melancholy, defining them by their ances-
 JOH N M I LTON 1899

try, lifestyles, associates, landscapes, activities, music, and literature. In 1634, at the
invitation of his musician friend Henry Lawes, he wrote the masque called Comus,
in which the villain is portrayed as a refined, seductive, and dissolute Cavalier.
Comus challenges the absolutist politics of previous court masques by locating true
virtue and good pleasure in the households of the country a ristocracy rather than at
court.
After university, as part of his preparation for a poetic career, Milton undertook
a six-year program of self-directed reading in ancient and modern theology, p hiloso-
phy, history, science, politics, a nd literature. He was profoundly grateful to his father
for sparing him the grubby business of making money and for financing these years of
private study, followed by a fifteen-month "grand tour" of France, Italy, and Switzer-
land. In 1638 Milton contributed the pastoral elegy "Lycidas" to a Cambridge volume
lamenting the untimely death of a college contemporary. T his greatest of English
funerai elegies explores Milton's deep anxieties about poetry as a vocation, confronts
the terrors of mortality in language of astonishing resonance and power, and incorpo-
rates a furious apocalyptic diatribe on the corrupt Church of England clergy. None-
theless, while he was in Italy he exchanged verses and learned compliments with
various Catholic intellectuals and men of letters, some of whom became his friends.
Milton could always maintain friendships and family relationships across ideological
divides. In 1645 h is English and Latin poems were published together in a two-part
volume, Poems of Mr. John Milton.
Upon his return to England, Milton opened a school and was soon involved in
Presbyterian efforts to depose the bishops and reform church liturgy, writing five
"antiprelatical tracts" denouncing and satirizing bishops. These were the first in a
series of political interventions Milton produced over the next twenty years, charac-
terized by remarkable courage a nd independence of thought. He wrote successively
on church government, divorce, education , fre edom of the press, regicide, and
republicanism. From the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 until his death , Milton
all ied himself with the Puritan cause, but hi s religious opinions developed through-
out his life, from relative orthodoxy in his youth to ever more heretical positions in
his later years. And while his family belonged to the class that benefited most
directly from Europe's fi rst bourgeois revolution, his brother, Christopher, fought
on the royalist side. The Milton brothers, like most of their contemporaries, did not
see these wars as a confrontation of class interests, but as a conflict between radi-
cally differing theories of government and, above all, religion.
Some of Milton's treatises were prompted by personal concerns. He interrupted
his polemical tract, The Reason of Churcli Government Urged Against Prelaty (1642),
to devote several pages to a discussion of his poet ic vocation and the great works he
hoped to produce in the future. His tracts about divorce, which can h ardly have
seemed the most pressing of issues in the strife-tom years 1643-45, were motivated
by his own disastrous marriage. Aged thirty-three, inexperienced with women, and
idealistic about marriage as in essence a union of minds and spirits, he married a
young woman of seventeen, \1ary Powell, who returned to her royalist fa mily just a
few months after the wedding. In response, Milton wrote several tracts vigorously
advocating divorce on the grounds of incompatibility and with the right to remarry-a
position almost unheard of at the time and one that required a boldly antiliteral read-
ing of the Gospels. The fact that these tracts could n ot be licen sed and were roundly
denounced in Parliament, from pulpits, and in print prompted him to write A reop-
agitica (1644), an impassioned defense of a free press and the free commerce in ideas
against a Pa rliament determined to restore effective censorship. He saw these per-
sonal issues-reformed poetry, domestic liberty achieved through needful divorce,
and a free press-as vital to the creation of a reformed English culture.
In 1649, just after Charles I was executed, Milton publish ed The Tenure of
Kings and Magistrates (go to pages 1846-49 and see the supplemental ebook for
extracts from the Tenure), wh ich defends the revolution and the regicide and was of
1900 JO H N MILTO N

considerable importance in developing a "contract theory" of government based on

the inalienable sovereignty of the people- a version of contract very diffe rent from
that of Thomas Hobbes. Milton was appointed Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth
government (1649-53) and to Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate (1654-58), which mean:
that he w rote the official letters- mostly in La tin- to foreign governments and heads
of state. He also wrote polemical defenses of the new government: Eiltonoldastes
(1649), to counter the powerful emotional effect of Eilwn Basilike, supposedly written
by the king just before his death (an excerpt is included in the supplemental eboob. _
and two La tin Defenses upholding the regicide and the new republic to European
audiences.
During these years Milton suffered a series of agonizing tragedies. Mary Powel!·
returned to him in 1645 but died in c hildbirth in 1652, leaving four children: t~
only son, John, died a few months later. That same year Milton became totally blind_
he thought his boyhood habit of reading until midnight had weakened his eyesighl
and that writing his first Defense to a nswer the famous French scholar Claudius
Salmasius had destroyed it. Milton married again in 1656, apparently happily, but his
new wife, Katherine Woodcock, was dead two years later, along with their infan:
daughter. Katherine is probably the subject of his sonnet "Methought I Saw My l.alt'
Espoused Saint," a moving dream vision poignant with th e sense of loss- both cL
sight and of love. Milton had little time for poetry irt these years, but his few sonn~
revolutionized the genre, overlaying the Petrarchan metrical structure with an urgen1
rhetmical voice and using the small sonnet form , hitherto confined mainly to matters
of love, for new and grand subjects: praises of Cromwell and other statesmen mb.'ee!
with admonition and political advice; a prophe tic denunciation calling down God "~
vengeance for Protestants massacred in Piedmont; a nd an emotion-filled account oi
his continuing struggle to come to terms with his blindness as part of God's pron-
dence.
Cromwell's death in 1658 led to mounting chaos a nd a growing belief that •
restored Stuart monarchy was inevitable. Milton held out against that tide. His s~­
eral tracts of 1659-60 developed radical arguments for broad toleration, church dis-
establishment, and republican government. And just as he was among the first co
attack the power of the bishops, so he was virtually the last defender of the "Good Ok!
Cause" of the Revolution; the second edition of his Ready and Easy Way to Establish .:1
Free Comm onwealth appeared in late April 1660, scarcely two weeks before the mon-
archy was restored. For several months after that event, Milton was in hiding, his l~
in danger. Friends, especially the poet Andrew Marvell, ma naged to secure his par-
don a nd later his release from a brief imprisonment. He lived out his last years in
reduced circumstances, plagued by ever more serious attacks of gout but grateful f<S
the domestic comforts provided by his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, whom he mar-
ried in 1663 and who survived him.
In such conditions, dismayed by the defeat of his p olitical and religious cau~
totally blind and often ill, threatened by the horrific plague of 1665 and the grear
fire of 1666, and entirely dependent on amanuenses and friends to transcribe his
dictation , he completed his great epic poem. Paradise Lost (1667/74) radically recon-
ceives the epic genre and epic heroism , choosing as protagonists a domestic cou~
rather than martial heroes and degrading the military glory celebrated in epic tradJ..
tion in favor of "the better fortitude I Of patience and heroic ma rtyrdom.'.' It offers a
sweeping imaginative vision of Hell, Chaos, a nd Heaven ; prelapsarian life in Eden
the power of the devil's political rhetoric; the psychology of Satan , Adam, and fa-c
and the high drama of the Fall a nd its aftermath.
In his final years, Milton published works on grammar and logic chiefl y writtes;
during his days as a schoolmaster, a history of Britain (1670) from the earliest.
times to the Norman Conqu est, and a treatise urging toleration for Puritan dis-
senters (1673). He also continued work on his Christian Doctrine, a Latin treat~
 ON T HE MORNING OF Cti RIS T 'S NAT I V ITY 190 1

that reveals how far he had moved from the orthodoxies of his day. The work denies
the Trinity (making the Son and the Holy Spirit much inferior to God the Father),
insists upon free will against Calvinist predestination, and privileges the inspiration
of the Spirit even above the Scriptures and the Ten Commandments. Such radical
and heterodox positions could not be made public in his lifetime, certainly not in the
repressive condition s of the Restoration, and Milton's Christian Doctrine was subse-
quently lost to view for over 150 years.
In 1671 Milton published two poems that resonated with the harsh repression
and the moral and political challenges all Puritan dissenters face d after the Restora-
tion. Paradise R egained, a brief epic in four books, treats Jesus' Temptation in the
Wilderness as an intellectual struggle through which the hero comes to understand
both himself and his mission and through which he defeats Satan by renouncing the
whole panoply of faulty versions of the good life and of God's kingdom. Samson Ago-
nistes, a classical tragedy, is the more harrowing for the resemblances between its
tragic hero and its author. The deeply flawed, pain-wracked, blind, and defeated
Samson struggles, in dialogues with his visitors, to gain self-knowledge, d iscovering
at last a desperate way to triumph over his captors and offer h is people a ch ance to
regain their freedom. (The tragedy in its entirety is available in the supplemental
ebook.) In these last poems Milton sought to educate hi s readers in m oral and
political wisdom and virtue. Only through such inner transformation, Milton now
fi rmly believed, would men and women come to value-and so perhaps reclaim-
the intellectua l, religious, and political freedom he so vigorously promoted in his
prose and poetry.

FRoMPoEMS
he schoJ ...
1d barren l On the Morning of Christ's Nativity 1
· went to 1

This is the month, and this the happy morn

~erein the son of Heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit 2 should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

2
That glorious for m, that light unsufferable,0 unable to be endured
And that far- beaming blaze of majesty
10 Wherewith he wont0 at Heaven's high council-table was accustomed

l. This ode was wrillen on Christmas 1629, a few (lines 156, 172). Comparison with Crashaw's
"eeks after Milton's twenty-first birthday. He Nativity poem (pp. 1747- 49) will highlight some
placed it fi rst in the 1645 edition of his poems, important differences between Roman Catholic
claiming in it his vocation as inspired poet. The and Puritan aesthetics in this period.
poem often looks back to Spenser: the first four 2. The sentence of death consequent on the
stanzas are an adaptation of the Spenserian Fall. "Holy sages": for example, t he prophet Isa-
stanza; there are several Spenseria n archaisms ia h (chaps. 9 and 40) and Job (chap. 19) were
(y· prefixes) and some Spenser-like onamatopoeia thought to have fore told Chr ist as Messiah.
~ 11Ll ....... .u ...........
19 02 JOH N M I LTO'I

To sit th e midst of Trina] Unity, 3

He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasti ng day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

3
1s Say, hea,·enly Muse, shall not thy sacred vei n
Afford a present to the infant God?
Hast th ou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To ,,-eJcome him to this his nc\\· abode,
·o,,-while the heaven by the sun's team untrod4
20 Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host 0 keep watch in squ adrons bright?

See how from far upon the eastern road

The star-led " ·iLards5 haste \\'ith odors sweet:
0 run, prevc•nt0 them with thy humble ode, anti ..
2; And lay it lo;v]y at his blessed fee t;
l lave thou the honor first th y Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel choir,
From ou t His secret a ltar touched \l' ith hallo\\'ed firc .6

Tlie Hpnn

lt was the vvin ter wild

io While the Heaven-horn child
All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies:
~at ur e in m,·e to him
llad doffed her gaudy trim7
\ Vith her great las ter so to sympathize;
is It \\'as no season then for her
To "'anton with th e sun, her lusty pa ramour.

2
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front 0 ,.,.·ith innocent s now,
40 And o n her naked shame,
Pollute \\'ith sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden wh ite to throw,8

~- The Trinity: Father. Son (incarnate in Christ), 6. Isaiah's lips were rouch~d bv a burn in~ <
and I loh- (;ho'L from the a h.a r, purifying him and confir m.-!
4. In classical m"t h, the sun (Phoeb us Apollo) h im as a prophet (Isaiah 6.7).
dron• across hea,en in a chariot drawn hv 7. Put off her garme n ts of lean'' a nd lluwcrs
horses. . 8. Nature fe ll a lso with the Fall. so she i< a h...·
>. The \lagi "ho followed the sta r of BNhlehem lot (line 36), not a pure maiden . d es pit~ l-
to llnd and adore t he infont Christ. white garment of snow.
 ON THE MORNI N G OF C HR IS T ' S N ATIVITY 1903

Confounded that her Maker's eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

3
.;; But he her fears to cease
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,9
His ready ha rbinger,0 f orerunner
;o With turtle 1 wing the amorous clouds dividing,
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

4
No war or battle's sound
Was heard the world around; 2
;~ The idle spear and shield were high up-hung;
T he hooked chariot3 stood
Unsta ined with hostile blood,
The trumpet spake not to the armed th rong,
And kings sat still with awful 0 eye, filled with awe
60 As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.

5
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds, with wonder whist,0 hushed
65 Smoothly the waters kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean ,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm 4 sit brooding on the charmed wave.

6
The stars with deep amaze
70 Stand fixed in steadfas t gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence,
And will not take their flight
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer 5 that often warned them thence;
75 But in their glimmering orbs did glow
Until their Lord himself bespake,0 and bid them go. spoke out

9. T he Ptole maic spheres, revolving around the
earth.
I. Like a turtledove, which, like the myrtle (ne.<t
line), is an emblem of Venu s (Love), as the olive
crown is of peace.
2. Around the time of Christ 's birth, the "Peace
of Augustus" held, during which no major wars
disturbed the Roman Empire; that peace was
sometimes attributed to C hrist.
3. War chariots were built with scythe like hooks
on the axles, to wound and kill.
4. Kingfishers (halcyons) were thought to calm
t he seas during the time they nested on its waves.
5. Not Satan but the morning sta r, Venus.
1904 JOH N MI LT ON

7
And though the shady gloom
H ad gh·en d ay her room ,
The sun h.imself withheld his won ted speed,
so And h id his h ead for shame
As0 h is inferior flame
The new-enlighte n ed world no more shou ld n eed ;
H e saw a greate r Sun 6 appear
Than his bright throne or burning axle tree0 could bear . cha riot a l.:...

8
s5 T h e shepherds on the law n
Or ere th e point of0 d awn jmt be;"
Sat simply c ha tting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than°
That the mighty Pan7
90 \Vas kindly8 come to live with the m below;
Pe rhaps their loves or else t heir sheep
Was all that did their silly0 thoughts so busy keep. simple, lwml-_

9
\ Vhen suc h music sweet
Their hearts and ea rs d id greet
95 As never was by mortal finger struck,
Divinelv warbled voice
Answering the stringed n oise,
As all their souls in blissful rapt ure took;
The air, such p leas ure loath to lose,
100 \Vith thousand echoes still prolo ngs each heavenly close.0

10
Nature tha t heard suc h sound
Beneath the hollow rou nd
Of Cynthia's seat,9 the airy region thri lling,0 piercing, deliglzt:-.:_
Now ·was almost won
105 To think her pa rt was done,
And that he r reign had h ere its last fu lfilli ng;
Sh e knew such h armony alon e
Could hold a ll heave n a nd earth in h appier union.

11
At last surrounds th eir sight
11 0 A globe of circ ular light

6. The familiar Son/sun pun.
7. Pan, patron of «;hepherds, is a lll{' rry. goat·
fool<'d god, but h e was often conceiwd in m ore
e.,alt<ed terms a nd idc•n tifiecl \\'ith Christ ,
because his name in Gr<•<·k means "all.''
8. By nat ure; also, benevolently.
9. Cynthia is the moon. >lat ure rules belo" t!w.
moon (the regio n of the four elements and s.L~
ject to decay). The unch anging. J><'rft'et r<'!!,1
abo,·e the moon i< n ormally the only place "°"
could hear e ither a ngels' hymnody or t he mu'
of the sph eres.
 ON TH E MOR~ I NG O F C HRI ST'S NAT I V I TY 1905

0
That with long beams the shamefaced night arrayed; adorned lvith rays
The helmed cherubim
And sworded seraphim 1
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Ha rping in loud and solemn choir
With une:xpressive 0 notes to Heaven's newborn heir. inexpressible

12
Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,2
While the Creato r great
His con stellations set,
0
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung, the two poles
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the we\t'ring waves thei.r ooz.y channel keep.

13
:> Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our h uma n ears
(If ye have power to touch our senses so),
And let your silver chi me
i\love in. melodious time,
>o And let the bass of Heaven's deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony3
M ake up full consort to th ' angelic symphony.

14
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
:;; Time will run back and fetch the age of gold;4
And speckled vanity
\Viii sic ken soon and die,
A nd leprous sin will melt fro m earth ly mold,
And Hell itself will pass away,
1•0 And leave her dolorous m an sions to the pro'ering day.

15
Yea , Tru th and Justice then
\Viii down return to men,
T h ' enameled arras0 of the rainbow wear ing, bright.Ly colo red fabric

I. Seraphim and cherubi m are the highest of the
tradition al n ine orders of :mgt>ls; they art> often
portrayed in martia l altirc .
2. Job 38.-1-7: "Where wast t hou whrn I laid the
fou ndat ions of the earth> ... I \\'hen the morn-
ing stars s<:t ng togethe r and a ll Lhe son s of God
shouted for j oy?"
3. In Py thagorean theory, each of the nine
mo\'ing sph e res sounds a d i stinct in~ n ote (the
tenth, the pr imu m m ob ile, does n ut mo,·e). It
was suppose d tliut, afte r the Fall , t h ls harmo -
n ious music of the spheres could not be h eard
on earth. Earth wou ld be the ,;bass" o f t he cos-
mic o rgan , sound ing under that p1anet ary har-
mony.
4. The firs t agt·, of h uman in nocence, classica l
mythology's equi\'alcnt to the Garde n of Ede n .
1906 ) O H i\: MILTON

And i\ Jercy set between,'

145 T hroned in celestial sheen,
Vv'ith radiant feet the tissued6 clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
·w ill open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

16
But wisest Fate says no,
1so This must not yet be so;
The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy7
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify;
1;5 Yet first to those ychained 8 in sleep
T he vvakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

17
With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang
W hile the red fire and smoldering clouds outbrake;
160 The aged earth, aghast
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center sh ake ,
\\Then at the world 's last session ,
The dreadfu l Judge in middle air shall spread His throne.9

18
165 And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; fo r from this happy day
Th' old dragon under ground,1
In straiter limits bound,
110 Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wrot h to see his kingdom fail,
Swingesc the scaly horror of his folded ta il. lasl.c

19
2
The oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
m Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.

5. This allcgorkal scene, suggesting a masque
descen t, alludes to Psalrn 85. 10, par t of t he liturgy
for Ch ristmas: ";\lercr and t ruth are met together;
righteousness und peace have kissed each other."
Peace, in th e poem, has already descended (lines
45- 52). T h e lines also evoke the flight of Astraea ,
the classica l goddess of justice, at the end of the
Golden Age, and her return with its restoration,
celebrated by Virgil in h is fou rth eclogue. applied
by him to the birth of Pollio bu t by C hristians to
C hrist .
6. Cloth woven with silver and gold.
i . The Latin word, i.n.faus, means~ lite rally. - :'l -
speaking."
8. One of Spenser's Hrch aic y- prefixes.
9 . .~'l oses received the Ten Comma ndment s ~
thund<'r and lightn ing atop Mount Sinai (l:.x
19); t he Last J udgment will take place a mid s=.
lar uproar. "Session'': court proceeding.
I. The devil (Re,·elation 20.2).
2. An ancient tradition held that pagan c,;
des ceased with th e coming of Christ; an o:~
identified the pagan gods with the fa~
angels.
 ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIV IT Y 19 07

.-\pollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 3
~o nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

20
The lonely mountains o'er
And the resounding shore
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale
.; Edged with the poplar pale,
The parting genius 4 is with sighing sent;
With flower-in-woven tresses torn
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

21
In con secrated earth
~ And on the holy hearth,
The lars and lemures 5 moan with midnight plaint;
In urns and altars round
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the fl amens 6 at their service quaint;
"; And the chill marble seems to sweat,
vVhile eac h peculiar power forgoes his wonted scat.

22
7
Peor and Baalim
Forsake their temples dim,
Wi th that twice-battered god of Palestine, 8
200 And mooned Ashtaroth,9
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;
The Libyc Hammon 1 shrinks0 his horn ; draws in
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Th a mmuz mourn.z

23
3
m And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;

l. Apollo's main shrine was at Delph i, on the
slopes of l\lount Pa rnassus.
4. A loca l deity gu nrding a particular place.
'i. Spi rits of the dead. "Lars": hou sehold gods.
6 . Roman priests.
7. O ther manifestations of B aal, a Canaanite
su n god.
8 . Dagon, the Philistine god whose image at
Ashdod was twice thrown down when the Ark of
t he Covenant was placed b eside it (I Samuel
5.2-4).
9. Ashta ro th, also kn own as Astarte, was a Phoe-
nician fer tility goddess identified with the moon.
I. Hammon, a lso Am mon, a n Egyptian a nd Lib-
yan god, depicted as a ram .
2. T harnmu L, lover of Ashtaroth , was killed by a
boar a nd lame nted by t he Phoenician women; he
was taken into the Greek pa ntheon as :\don is.
3. Moloch was a Phoenicia n fire god, a bra>.en
idol with a human body and a calf's, head ; the
statue ('' his burning idol," line 207) was heated
Aaming hot an d ch ildren were thrown into it s
embrace, with cymbals drowning out their cries
(2 Kings 22. 10).
1908 JOHN MILTO N

In vai n with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king
210 In dismal da nce about the fu rnace blue;
The brutish gods of i\ile as fast,4
Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis has te.

24
Nor is Osiris seen
In i\Iemphian grove or green ,
0
m Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud, rain le~•
:'-Jor can he be at rest
\i\Tithin his sacred ches t;
Taught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud .
In vain with timbrelled anthems dark
iio T he sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worsh ipped a rk.5

25
He feels from Juda h's land
The dreaded Infant's hand,
T he rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne;0
Nor all the gods beside
m Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twi ne;
O ur Babe, to show his godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the d e1 mned crew. 6

26
So when the sun in bed,
2.i o C urtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient 0 wave, eastern , J;ri:·-
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to th ' infernal jail;
Each fe ttered ghost slips to hi s several0 grave; separ_
m And the vellow-skirted favs
Fly after.the night-steeds: leaving their moo n-loved maze.7

27
But see! the Virgin blessed
Hath laid her Babe to rest.
Time is our tedious song should here ha,·c ending.
240 Heaven's you nges t-teemed 0 star latest hr~
Hath fixed her polished car, 0
glea11iin11 clian

4. Egyptian gods had some featu res of animals:
Isis (next Jin~) wa s r~presented wit h cow·s horns,
Orus, or llorus, wit h a hawk"s head; Osiris {lines
213-1 5) som ~tim es had the shape of a bull.
5. Osiris's image was carried from temple to
temple in a wooden chest, a nd his priests accom-
panied it with tambourines {"'timbrels'').
6. Typhon was a hundred-headed monster ,.
was a s~rpe nt below the waist. a figu re fo r •
de,·il. The infant Christ controlling h im calls_
(as a fon·>hadowing) the story of the in font ~
cules strangling two giant serpents in his er<'.'!.....
7. Fairy rings. ··Night-steeds ·: ho rses d ra" _
Night's chariot.
 L'A L L EGRO 1909

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending:

And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed 0 angels sit in order ser viceable. bright-armored

1629 1645

On Shakespeare 1
What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing 2 pyramid?
Dear son of memory, 3 great heir of fame ,
What0 need'st thou such weak witness of thy n ame? why
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong0 monument. endttri11g
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavoring art
10 Thy easy numbers 0 flow, and that each heart verses
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued 0 book invaluable
Those Delphic 4 lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;5
15 And so sepulchered in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
1630 1632

L'Allegro1
Hence loathed Melancholy, 2
Of Cerberus3 a nd blackest midnight born,
In Stygian4 cave forlorn
'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,
Find out some uncouth cell, 0
desolate

I. This tribute, .\lilton's first published poem,
appeared in the Second Folio of Shakespeare's
plays (1 632).
2. A Spenserian archaism.
3. As ..son of me mor>'" Sha kt>speare is a brother
of the l\tus<>s, who are the daughters of Mn<>mo·
sync (.\1emory).
4. Apollo, god of poetry, had his oracle a l De l·
phi.
5. Shakespeare's mesmeri7.ed readers are them·
scl\'es his ("marble") mo nument.
I. T he companion poems "'L'Allegro" and " II
Penseroso" are both written in tetrame ter cou-
plets, t'Xcept for the fi rst ten lines, but ;\1ilton's
virtuosity produces entirelr different t<>mpos and
sound qualities in th<> two poems. The Italian
titles name, respectively, the cheerful, mirthful
man and the melancholy, contemplative man.
The poe ms arc carefully balanced and their d if-
feren t values cclebratt>d, though " II Penseroso's"
greater length and final coda may intimate that
li fe 's supt>riority. .\1irth, the presiding deity of
'"L'Allegro," is described in te rms that e\'oke Bot·
ticelli's presentation of the Grace Euphrosyne
(youthfu l mirth) and her sisters in his Primamra.
2. The black melancholy recog nized and her<>
exord£e<l by Mirth's man is a d i sC' HS<" lt-c..i<ling Lo
0
madness. "II Penseroso" celebrates white" mel·
a ncholy as the temperament of the scholarly,
conte mplative man, rcprt>scntcd in Durers
fa mous engraving Melancliol)'. Burton's AnatOm)'
of Melancl1ol)' treats t he ent ire range of possibili-
ties.
3. The three-headed hellhound of classical
mythology.
4. I t>ar the ri"er Styx, in the underworld.