The Academy Series of English Classics
MILTON
MINOR POEMS
| [L’Allegro ] | [Il Penseroso ] | [Comus] |
| [Arcades] | [On the Nativity ] | [Lycidas] |
| [On Shakespeare] | [At a Solemn Music ] | [Sonnets] |
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
SAMUEL THURBER
ALLYN AND BACON
Boston and Chicago
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY SAMUEL THURBER.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
[Preface] [Outlines of the Life of Milton] TEXT: [On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity] [On Shakespeare] [L’Allegro] [Il Penseroso] [Arcades] [At a Solemn Music] [Comus] [Lycidas] [Sonnets:] [I. To the Nightingale] [II. On his having arrived at the Age of Twenty-three] 68 [VIII. When the Assault was intended to the City] 69 [IX. To a Virtuous Young Lady] 70 [X. To the Lady Margaret Ley] 70 [XIII. To Mr. H. Lawes on his Airs] 71 [XV. On the Lord General Fairfax, at the Siege of Colchester] 72 [XVI. To the Lord General Cromwell, May, 1652] 72 [XVII. To Sir Henry Vane the Younger] 73 [XVIII. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont] 74 [XIX. On his Blindness] 74 [XX. To Mr. Lawrence] 75 [XXI. To Cyriack Skinner] 76 [XXII. To the Same] 76 [XXIII. On his Deceased Wife] 77 [Notes] 79
PREFACE.
The purpose held in view by those who place the study of Milton in high school English courses is twofold: first, that youth may seasonably become acquainted with a portion of our great classic poetry; and, secondly, that they may in this poetry encounter and learn to conquer difficulties more serious than those they have met in the literature they have hitherto read. It is for the teacher to see to it that both these aims are attained. The pupil must read with interest, and he must expect at the same time to have to do some strenuous thinking and not to object to turning over many books.
The average pupil will not at first read anything of Milton with perfect enjoyment. He will, with his wonted docility, commit passages to memory, and he will do his best to speak these passages with the elocution on which you insist. But the taste for this poetry is an acquired one, and in the acquisition usually costs efforts quite alien to the prevailing conceptions of reading as a pleasurable recreation.
The task of pedagogy at this point becomes delicate. First of all, the teacher must recognize the fact that his class will not, however good their intentions, leap to a liking for Comus or Lycidas or even for the Nativity Ode. It is of no use to assign stanzas or lines as lessons and to expect these to be studied to a conclusion like a task of French translation. The only way not to be disappointed in the performance of the class is to expect nothing. It will be well at first, except where the test is quite simple, for the teacher to read it himself, making comment, in the way of explanation, as he goes on. Now and then he will stop and have a little quiz to hold attention. When classical allusions come up requiring research, the teacher will tell in what books the matter may be looked up, and will show how other poets, or Milton elsewhere, have played with the same piece of history or mythology. Thus a poem may be dealt with for a number of days. Repetition is, to a certain extent, excellent. The verses begin to sink into the young minds; the measure appeals to the inborn sense of rhythm; the poem is caught by the ear like a piece of music; the utterance of it becomes more like singing than speaking. In fact, the great secret of teaching poetry in school is to get rid of the commonplace manner of speech befitting a recitation in language or science, and to put in practice the obvious truth that verse has its own form, which is very different from the form of prose. But repetition may go too far. Over-familiarity may beget indifference. Other poems await the attention of the class.
The teacher who really means to interest his classes, and begins by being interested and interesting himself, will rarely fail to accomplish his purpose. The principal obstacle to success here is the necessity, that frequently exists, of conforming to the custom of examining, marking, and ranking—a practice that thwarts genuine personal influence, formalizes all procedures, and tends to deaden natural interest by substituting for it the artificial interest of school standing. The Milton lesson must be a serious one because it is given to the study of the serious work of the gravest and most high-minded of men; and it must be an enjoyable one because it deals with the verse of the most musical of poets, and because one mood of joy is the only mood in which literature can be profitably studied.
As to the difficulties which the learner first encounters when he comes to Milton, these grow sometimes out of the diction, sometimes out of the syntax, and sometimes out of the poet’s figures and allusions. Some difficulties can be explained at once and completely. Others cannot be explained at all with any reasonable hope of touching the beginner’s mind with matter that he can appropriate. Often the young reader slips over points of possible learned annotation without the least consciousness that here great scholarship might make an imposing display. Perfectly useless is it to set forth for the pupil the interesting echoes from ancient poets which generations of delving scholars have accumulated in their notes to Milton, pleasing as these are to mature readers.
The rule should be to expound and illustrate sufficiently to remove those perplexities which really tease the pupil’s mind and cause him to feel dissatisfaction with himself. In many cases our only course is to postpone exposition and to trust that the learner will grow up to the insight which he as yet does not possess and which we cannot possibly give him. A learned writer, like Milton, who has read all antiquity, and who has no purpose of writing for children, inevitably contemplates a public of men approximately his equals in culture, and expects to find “fit audience, though few.”
But many of the difficulties that confront the beginner in Milton ask only to be explained at once by some one who has had more experience in the older literature. Archaic forms of words and expressions, with which the ripe student is familiar, worry the tyro, and must be accounted for. Often the common dictionaries will give all needed help; but the best means of acquiring speedy familiarity with obsolete and rare forms is a Milton concordance—such as that of Bradshaw—in connection with the Century Dictionary, or with the Oxford Dictionary, so far as this goes. These means of easy research should be at hand. I find that pupils often need a pretty sharp spur to make them use even their abridged dictionaries. But so far as concerns acquaintance with the vocabulary of poetic diction, nothing will do except the dictionary habit, accompanied by an effort of the memory to retain what has been learned.
Difficulties that lurk in an involved syntax the pupil may usually be expected to solve by study. But such a peculiar construction as that in [Sonnet X 9] will probably have to be explained to him.
In the puritan theology and its implications he cannot take much interest, and will of course not be asked to do so. But high school students of Milton will ordinarily, in their historical courses, have come down to the times in which the poet lived, will understand his relation to public events, and will appreciate his feeling toward the English ecclesiastical system. Puritanism, a phenomenon of the most tremendous importance at a certain period of English history, has so completely disappeared from the modern world, that the utterances of a seventeenth-century poet, professedly a partisan, on matters of church and state, no longer exasperate, and can barely even interest, students of literature.
To read either Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy we must find the poet’s cosmical and his theological standpoint. We have no right to be surprised or shocked at his conceptions. We must take him as he is, and let him lead us through the universe as he has planned it. So long as we set up our modern views as a standard, and by this standard judge the ancient men, we fail in hospitality of thought, and come short of our duty as readers.
This consideration suggests yet another purpose in setting youth to the reading of Milton. By no means an ancient poet, he takes us, nevertheless, to a world different from our own, and in some sense helps us out of the modern time in which our lives have fallen, to show us how other ages conceived of God and Heaven. The mark of an educated man is respect for the past; the old philosophies and religions do not startle and repel him; his ancestors were once in those stages of belief; in some stage of this vast movement of thought he and his fellows are at the present moment. This largeness of view can be fruitfully impressed on youth only by letting them read, under wise guidance, the older poets.
OUTLINES OF THE LIFE OF MILTON.
John Milton was born in London on the ninth of December, 1608. Queen Elizabeth had then been dead five years, and the literature which we call Elizabethan was still being written by the men who had begun their careers under her reign. Spenser had died in 1599. The theatres were yet in the enjoyment of full popularity, and the play-writers were producing works that continued the traditions and the manner of the Elizabethan drama. Shakespeare had still eight years to live, and at least four of the great plays to write. Bacon’s fame was already great, but the events of eighteen years were to cloud his reputation and establish his renown. Jonson, great as a writer of masks, was to live till he might have seen, in Comus, how a young and scholarly puritan humanist thought that a mask should be conceived.
Born thus in the fifth year of the first of the Stuarts, Milton lived to witness all the vicissitudes of English politics in which that family was involved, except the very last. He did not see the Revolution of 1688. Surviving for fourteen years the restoration of Charles II., he died in 1674, at the age of sixty-six.
Milton’s social position can be inferred from the fact that his father was what was then called a scrivener,—that is, he kept an office in his dwelling, and was employed to draw up contracts, wills, and other legal documents. This occupation implied knowledge at least of the forms of the law, though not of its history or principles. It did not imply liberal education, though it brought its practitioner, doubtless, more or less into contact with men of really professional standing in the science of jurisprudence. Perhaps the elder Milton cherished a deeper conviction of the value of classic culture than do those who simply inherit, and take as a matter of course, the custom of devoting years to the study of ancient languages and literatures.
Evidently the father thought he saw in his son that promise of intellectual vigor and of sound moral stamina which justified the innovation, in his family, of sending his boy to the university. His preparation for college Milton got under private masters and at the famous public school of St. Paul’s, which was near his home. This preparation consisted chiefly in exercises in Latin composition and literature, and was both thorough and effectual. At sixteen, when he went to college, he had already composed Latin verse, and he read and wrote Latin with facility.
In 1625 Milton entered Christ’s College, Cambridge. Here he remained as a student seven years, or till 1632, taking in course his A.B. and A.M. degrees, and, in spite of his studious habits and his aversion to the rough and wayward customs of student life, winning more and more, and at last having in full measure, the respect of his fellow-collegians. During these years he wrote, but did not publish, in Latin or English, no less than twenty-five pieces of verse, among them poems of no less note than the Nativity Ode, and the Sonnet on arriving at the age of twenty-three. The lines on Shakespeare were also composed in this period, and appeared in print among the poems prefixed to the second Shakespeare folio in 1632.
Returning, at the close of his university course, to the paternal residence, the poet came, not to London, but to the village of Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had taken a house in order to live in the country. Now had to be debated the question of a profession. Hitherto the son had seemed silently to acquiesce in the understood hope of the family that he would devote himself to a career in the church. But during his university years of study and observation his views had become fixed, his mind had advanced to self-determination, and he could not remain content with a future that seemed to hamper his intellectual freedom. This difference between father and son was settled, apparently without strife, by the elder man’s entire yielding to the desires of the younger. The son could not, as we can well understand if we have read even only a little of his verse or his prose, be otherwise than strenuous, insistent, and masterful. To his father he was of course filial and respectful, we may imagine him even gentle; but conciliatory, yielding, the point being a vital one, it was not in his nature to be.
What the young Milton desired was to lead a life devoted to literature, or, more specifically, to poetry. This meant that he wished still to study a long time, to fathom all learning in all tongues. In college he had, besides Latin, mastered Greek, French, Italian, and Hebrew. His conception of a poet was of a most profoundly learned man. He had become aware of the existence of vast areas of knowledge that he had not yet explored. Other young men turned aside without misgiving from the ambition to know everything, and eagerly entered into useful and lucrative professions. But Milton scorns the thought of applying learning to the service of material gain. This is his poetical conception of his duty as a scholar. It will dominate the spirit of his life work. To understand his feelings at this time both toward his father and toward his ideals, we must read the Latin poem Ad Patrem, of which Professor Masson gives an English translation.
At Horton, therefore, Milton remains, still subsisting on his father’s bounty. Having come back thither at the age of twenty-three, he continues to live at home for nearly six years, not yet practising any art by which to earn a livelihood. Occasionally he goes, on scholarly errands, to London, which is not far distant. He devotes himself simply to study, and having the poetic temperament, he cannot help devoting himself also to observation of nature. His learning becomes immense; his appetite is insatiable.
To the Horton time belong the “minor poems” not already produced during the student years at Cambridge. Of the circumstances in which the several poems were written, an account is given in the Notes in this volume. This early, or minor, verse of Milton is elicited by passing events, and is considered to concern only himself and a few friends. For immediate fame he takes no thought. He feels his immaturity. His ambition contemplates a distant future, and he meditates plans, as yet undefined and vague, of some great work that the world shall not willingly let die.
Very important in Milton’s intellectual development is his journey to France and Italy, on which he set out in April, 1638. As an indication of his social position in England, we must note that he carries with him letters of introduction which secure to him notice and recognition from men of rank or of notable literary and scientific standing. He goes abroad as a cultivated private gentleman, known to have achieved distinction as a student. Undoubtedly his chief qualification for holding his own in learned Italian society was his command of languages, especially of Latin, unless indeed we are to put before his linguistic accomplishments the refined and gentlemanly personal bearing which was his birthright, and which, in his years of intense application to books, he had not forfeited. In Italy he associated with men whose intellectual interests were the universal ones of science, in which he was as much at home as they. Thus he possessed a perfect outfit of the endowments and the acquisitions which a traveller needs to make his travel fruitful to himself and honorable to his country.
In Italy he made friends among men of note, and established relations which were to have their importance in his future life. But most memorable among his Italian experiences was his visit to the aged Galileo, who was then a “prisoner to the Inquisition” for teaching that the earth moves round the sun. The modern astronomy was then winning its way among men of thought very much as the doctrine of evolution has been winning its way during the last half century. Few minds surrendered instantly and without misgiving to the new conception. Milton has still many years to meditate the question before he comes to the composition of Paradise Lost, when his scheme of the physical universe will have to recognize the requirements of poetic art and the prevalence of ancient beliefs regarding the origin and order of the cosmos. From the fact that the poet puts the earth in the centre of the universe, that he adopts, in fact, the Ptolemaic system, though he knew the Copernican, we are not entitled to infer that he held a fixed conviction in the matter, and that, on direct examination as to his views, he would have absolutely professed one theory and rejected the other. The poet has all rights of choice, and may be said to know best where to stand to take his view of the world.
Milton remained abroad some sixteen months, and was home again in August, 1639. The Horton household was now broken up, the father going to live, first with his younger son, Christopher, at Reading, and afterward to spend his last years in the family of John in London, where he died in 1647.
With his removal to London in 1639 a distinct period in Milton’s life comes to an end. He has hitherto been uninterruptedly acquiring knowledge both by studious devotion to books and by observation of human life in foreign lands. He has read all the great literatures in ancient and modern languages. He has felt the poetic impulse and has proved to himself that he has at command creative power. His purpose still is to produce a poem. But this poem of his aspirations is distinctly a great and majestic affair, and not at all a continuation of such work as that which he has hitherto given to his friends, and which he esteems as prolusions of his youth.
The poetic waiting-time which Milton, now in full vigor of manhood, prescribes for himself, he is constrained, both by inner conviction and by external necessity, to fill with hard and earnest work. Henceforth, for a score of years, he ceases almost entirely to write verse, and he earns his living. He becomes a householder in London, where, as the father had gained his livelihood by drawing up contracts and mortgages for his fellow-citizens, the son proceeds to gain his by teaching their boys Latin.
To the work of teaching, Milton addressed himself with intelligence and predilection. About education he had ideas of his own which he applied in practice and advocated in writing. His Tract on Education is a document of importance in the history of pedagogy, and is, besides, one of those memorable pieces of English prose which every student of literature, whatever his professional aims, must include in his reading. He kept his school in his own house, where he boarded some of his pupils. We could not imagine John Milton going into a great public school, like St. Paul’s, to serve as under-teacher to one of the tyrannical head-masters of the day. The only school befitting his absolutely convinced and masterful spirit is one in which he reigns supreme. The great subject is Latin, and so thoroughly is Latin taught that finally other subjects are explained through the medium of this language. He had, himself, brought from his school and college days very decided discontent with the methods then in vogue. This discontent he expresses in language of peculiar energy and even harshness. He is a true reformer.
In 1643 Milton, then thirty-five years old, married Mary Powell, a girl of just half his own age, daughter of a royalist residing near Oxford. We must imagine this young wife as coming to preside, somewhat in the capacity of matron, over a family of boys held severely to their tasks of study by a master in whom the sense of humor was almost entirely lacking, and whose discipline was of the sternest. That she could not endure the situation was but natural. Very soon after the wedding she went home with the understanding that she was to make a short visit to her parents and sisters; but she did not return for two years. Her husband summoned her, but she would not come back. In 1645 she at last repented of her waywardness, sought reconciliation, and was forgiven. These two years had wrought a change in Mary Powell Milton. She was now ready to live with her husband, and did so till her death in 1652. She left him three daughters, the youngest of whom, Deborah, lived till 1723, and was known to Addison and his contemporaries, from whom she received distinguished honors.
In reading Milton we find that all the vicissitudes of his life reflect themselves in his works, so that the political and social events in which he is personally concerned usurp his attention, color his views, and often become his themes. Thus he is not, like Shakespeare, a critic of the whole of humanity, but is usually an advocate or an accuser of the leaders in church and state and of the principles which they profess. He is by nature a partisan. All the energy of his mind goes into denunciation or vindication. His experience of wedded life made him an advocate of easier divorce, and determined in him a mood which expressed itself in writings that naturally brought upon him obloquy even from those who held him most in honor.
It would be most interesting to know something of the daily routine of Milton’s school, to ascertain what his pupils knew and could do when he had done with them. But we must remember that during all the years of his teaching the great Revolution was in progress, that all men of thought were profoundly stirred on public questions, and that Milton himself was a politician and an eager partisan of the cause of Parliament. He did not consider himself a teacher finally and for good. His school did not develop into anything great or conspicuous, and never became an object of curiosity. While yet engaged in such teaching as he found to do, he had written the pamphlets on education and on divorce, and also the famous one entitled Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England. This is the best worth reading of all his prose writings. The subject of it is perfectly intelligible still, and its English shows to perfection the qualities of the great Miltonic style.
After the execution of Charles I., Jan. 30, 1649, it became more than ever necessary for all thoughtful men to express their convictions. For a people to put to death its king by judicial process was an unheard of event. Those who considered that the Parliament had acted within the law and could not have done otherwise with due regard to the welfare of the nation had to convince doubting and timid citizens at home, and also, so far as was possible, to placate critics in other nations who still believed that the king could do no wrong; for all Europe interested itself in this tremendous act of the English Parliament.
Within a fortnight after the death of the king, Milton published his pamphlet on The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. This work so impressed the parliamentary leaders as a thorough and unanswerable argument in defence of their cause that they sought out its author, and in March appointed him to the important post of Secretary for Foreign Tongues. Milton’s perfect command of Latin now stood him in good stead. Here was an uncompromising puritan, fully the equal of the foreign ecclesiastics in theology, and capable of holding his own in Latin composition with the most famous humanists of the time. Latin was then the language of international intercourse. Milton’s duty was to translate into and from Latin the despatches that passed between his own and foreign governments. He also composed original treatises, some in English and some in Latin, the most important of which continued his justification of the national act of regicide. The importance of these writings was very great. Milton’s services to the puritan cause can to-day hardly be appreciated. It was the constant aim of royalists at home and abroad to represent England as having fallen under the control of ignorant fanatics, of ambitious, barbarous, blood-thirsty men. By his very personality, his knowledge of affairs, his familiarity with ancient and mediæval history, and, above all, by his fluency in Latin invective, Milton thwarted attempts to disparage his countrymen as lawless barbarians. He helped to maintain the good name of his country as a land of intellectual light and of respect for ancient usage. Foreigners who attempted personal vilification found him ready to meet them with their own weapons. The poet of Comus now shows himself a controversialist of unbounded energy.
In 1652, shortly before the death of his wife, Milton became totally blind. Henceforward the duties of his secretaryship had to be performed with the aid of an amanuensis. He continued, however, to fill the office till just before the end of the Protectorate in 1659. In November, 1656, he married Katharine Woodcocke, who lived but till March, 1658. She left an infant which died a month after the mother.
Milton’s duties as Secretary for Foreign Tongues must have brought him, one would think, into some sort of personal relation with Cromwell and the other great parliamentary leaders. The poet leaves us in no doubt as to the high esteem in which he held these men. But no gossip of the time admits us to a glimpse of their intercourse with each other. It falls to Milton to eulogize Cromwell; it never came in Cromwell’s way to put on record his estimate of Milton.
With the restoration of royalty in the person of Charles II., in 1660, Milton’s public activity of course ceased, and the second period of his life comes to an end. We saw his first period devoted to preparation and to early essays in poetry, with the distinct conception that poetry was yet to be the great work of his life. In his second period he expresses himself in verse but rarely and briefly, but produces controversial prose, now in English, now in Latin. In this second period he works, as teacher or as public secretary, for payment, supporting himself and family. When the third period begins, he loses all employment, goes into closest retirement, a widower with three daughters growing up from childhood, and devotes himself to the poetry that he has always contemplated as the object of his ambition. He has now been blind eight years.
In view of the conspicuous part that Milton had taken in defending the right of Parliament to bring a king to the scaffold, it is surprising that of the Restoration he was not included in the number of those marked out for the punishment of death. He was for some time undoubtedly in danger. Fortunately he was overlooked, or, perhaps, was purposely neglected as being henceforce harmless.
In February, 1663, he married his third wife Elizabeth Minshull, who faithfully cared for him till his death in 1674.
During this last period of his life Milton composed and published his major poems,—Paradise Lost, 1667, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, 1671. For Paradise Lost he received from his publisher five pounds in cash, with promise of five pounds when thirteen hundred copies should have been sold, and of two more payments, each of the same sum, when two more editions of the same size should have been disposed of.
The last years of his life Milton appears to have spent in comparative comfort. His three daughters had gone out to learn trades. It seems he had given them no education. It may be they showed no desire or aptitude for instruction. Far more probably, however, he took no interest in their education. His ideal of womanhood, as may be gathered from numerous passages in his poems, is as far as possible removed from the modern conception of sexual equality as to opportunity for education and for training to self-determination. He shared in this respect the views that prevailed during his day in all classes of society, and he maintained these views as a parent no less than as the poet of Paradise.
Besides the poems named above as produced during this last period of his life, Milton published also in these years several prose works, which have now little value except as showing the bent and occupation of his mind. Among these may be named a small Latin Grammar, written in English, which he had composed long before, and a History of Britain to the Norman Conquest.
Though the immediate sale of Paradise Lost was not large, according to our ideas, it was yet sufficient to indicate a very respectable interest in the reading public of the day. We must remember that it appeared in the corrupt time of the Restoration, when the prevailing literary fashion was wholly adverse to seriousness and ideality. The age was spiritually degenerate. Milton himself considered that he lived “an age too late.” The great poem had no royal or noble sponsors to give it vogue; yet it made its way. By no means had all minds become frivolous. The minor poems had been published by themselves in 1645. These had always had their readers. The prose pamphlets of the secretary for foreign tongues were, at least by a small class of observant persons, known to be the work of the author of Comus and Lycidas. There were not wanting men to take a sympathetic interest in the fate of the poet in his retirement, and to note the appearance of Paradise Lost as a literary event.
Thus it was that Milton lived to have some slight foretaste of the honor which two centuries have bestowed on his memory. Visitors came to see him in his modest dwelling in an unfashionable quarter of London. Foreigners occasionally came to satisfy their curiosity. Dryden, the chief poet who wrote in the spirit of the Restoration, called to talk with the author of Paradise Lost, and to suggest improvements in the form of the poem, which he thought should be in rhyme. The recognition which the poet thus got in his lifetime is small only in comparison with the immense fame he has won since his death.
Milton has now become an object of the profoundest curiosity. His life has been investigated by Professor Masson, with a minute scrutiny into detail such as has been devoted to no other writer but Shakespeare. His works are perpetually reprinted in all imaginable forms, whether of cheapness or of sumptuous elegance. They are read as text-books in schools by hosts of youth. Our beliefs regarding the great themes of the sacred scriptures are so colored by the Miltonic epics that we hardly know to-day just what part of our conceptions we owe to the Bible and what to the poet. Next to the Shakespearean dramas, the poems of Milton are the largest single influence that knits the English-speaking race into one vast brotherhood.
All students of Milton have to acknowledge their indebtedness to Professor David Masson of Edinburgh, who has devoted years of labor to research in every department of Miltonic lore. Masson’s great Life of Milton in Connexion with the History of his Time is far too bulky for use except for reference on special points. The index volume makes the enormous Work accessible as occasion requires.
To his edition of the poetical works, Masson prefixes a life, which will suffice for all the needs likely to arise in school. Yet again, Masson is the writer of the article on Milton in the Encyclopædia Britannica, a most complete presentment of everything a student ordinarily needs to know.
In the series of Classical Writers is a little book, or primer, on Milton, written by Stopford A. Brooke.
In the English Men of Letters series, the Milton is the work of Mark Pattison.
The latest good account of Milton is the book entitled simply John Milton, by Walter Raleigh, professor at University College, Liverpool. This is a remarkably vigorous and illuminating piece of criticism.
Perhaps the most interesting writing on a Milton subject is the book by Mrs. Anne Manning, The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell (afterward Mrs. Milton), and the sequel thereto, Deborah’s Diary. This the student must read with the full understanding that it is a work of fiction.
It is right to warn young readers against the natural tendency to give their time to critical and expository books and articles before they make acquaintance with originals. Almost every essayist of note has written on Milton. There is danger lest we accept opinions at second hand. The only opinions on Milton to which we have any right are those we form from our own reading of his works.
MILTON’S MINOR POEMS.
ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST’S NATIVITY.
[Composed 1629.]
I.
This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein 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], 5
That he [our deadly forfeit should release],
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
II.
That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
Wherewith [he wont] at Heaven’s high council-table 10
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside, and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
III.
Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not [thy sacred vein] 15
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heaven, by [the Sun’s team] untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light, 20
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
IV.
See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odors sweet!
Oh! run; [prevent them with thy humble ode],
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; 25
Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel Quire,
From out his secret altar [touched with hallowed fire].
The Hymn.
I.
It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child 30
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her 35
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty paramour.
II.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame, 40
[Pollute] with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker’s eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
III.
But he, her fears to cease, 45
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through [the turning sphere],
His ready harbinger,
[With turtle wing] the amorous clouds dividing; 50
And, waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
IV.
No war, or battle’s sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung; 55
[The hooked chariot] stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their [sovran] Lord was by. 60
V.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein [the Prince of Light]
His reign of peace upon the earth began.
[The winds, with wonder whist],
Smoothly the waters kissed, 65
Whispering new joys to the mild [Ocean],
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While [birds of calm] sit brooding on the charmed wave.
VI.
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze, 70
Bending one way [their precious influence],
And will not take their flight,
Or [Lucifer] that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow, 75
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
VII.
And, though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame, 80
[As] his inferior flame
The new-enlightened world no more should need:
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axletree could bear.
VIII.
The shepherds on the lawn, 85
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
[Full little thought they than]
That [the mighty Pan]
Was kindly come to live with them below: 90
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
IX.
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was [by mortal finger strook], 95
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
[As all their souls in blissful rapture took]:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose, 99
[With thousand echoes] still prolongs each heavenly close.
X.
Nature, that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of [Cynthia’s seat] the Airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done, 105
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier [union].
XI.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light, 110
That with long beams the shamefaced Night arrayed;
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn quire, 115
[With unexpressive notes], to Heaven’s new-born Heir.
XII.
Such music (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,
[But when of old the Sons of Morning sung],
While the Creator great 120
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced World on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid [the weltering waves] their oozy channel keep.
XIII.
[Ring out, ye crystal spheres]! 125
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow; 130
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.
XIV.
For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold; 135
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. 140
XV.
Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orbed in a rainbow; and, [like glories wearing],
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen, 145
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.
XVI.
But wisest Fate says No,
This must not yet be so; 150
The Babe yet lies in smiling infancy
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to [those ychained in sleep], 155
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep.
XVII.
As on Mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The aged Earth, aghast 160
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world’s last session,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
XVIII.
And then at last our bliss 165
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
[The Old Dragon] under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway, 170
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
XIX.
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 175
[Apollo] from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed [spell],
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. 180
XX.
The lonely mountains o’er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring, and dale
Edged with poplar pale, 185
The parting [Genius] is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
XXI.
In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth, 190
[The Lars and Lemures] moan with midnight plaint;
In urns, and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
[Affrights the flamens] at their service quaint;
And [the chill marble seems to sweat], 195
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.
XXII.
Forsake their temples dim,
With [that twice-battered god of Palestine];
And [mooned Ashtaroth], 200
Heaven’s queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine:
[The Lybic Hammon] shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids [their wounded Thammuz] mourn.
XXIII.
And [sullen Moloch], fled, 205
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals’ ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about [the furnace blue]; 210
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
[Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis], haste.
XXIV.
In Memphian grove or green, 214
Trampling [the unshowered grass] with lowings loud; 215
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;
In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark,
The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipped ark. 220
XXV.
He feels from Juda’s land
The dreaded Infant’s hand;
The rays of Bethlehem blind [his dusky eyn];
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide, 225
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew.
XXVI.
So, when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red, 230
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
And the yellow-skirted fays 235
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
XXVII.
But see! the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest.
Time is our tedious song should here have ending:
[Heaven’s youngest-teemed star] 240
[Hath fixed her polished car],
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.
ON SHAKESPEARE. 1630.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a [star-ypointing] pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 5
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself .
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, [and that each heart] 10
Hath from the leaves of [thy unvalued book]
[Those Delphic lines] with deep impression took,
Then thou, [our fancy of itself bereaving],
[Dost make us marble with too much conceiving],
And so [sepulchred] in such pomp dost lie 15
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
L’ALLEGRO.
Hence, loathed Melancholy,
[Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born]
In [Stygian cave] forlorn
’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!
Find out [some uncouth cell], 5
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
[In dark Cimmerian desert] ever dwell. 10
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven [yclept] Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With [two sister Graces more], 15
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Or whether (as some sager sing)
[The frolic wind] that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a-Maying, 20
There, on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,
[So buxom, blithe, and debonair].
[Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee] 25
[Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles],
Nods and Becks and wreathed [Smiles],
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek; 30
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and [trip it, as you go],
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee 35
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free; 40
[To hear the lark] begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
[Then to come, in spite of sorrow], 45
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin; 50
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
[Oft listening how the hounds and horn]
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill, 55
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
[Sometime walking, not unseen],
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right [against] the eastern gate
Where the great Sun begins his state, 60
Robed in flames and amber light,
[The clouds in thousand liveries dight];
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o’er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 65
And the mower whets his scythe,
[And every shepherd tells his tale]
[Under the hawthorn in the dale.]
Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst [the landskip] round it measures: 70
[Russet lawns], and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied; 75
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements [it] sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
[The cynosure of neighboring eyes]. 80
[Hard by a cottage chimney smokes]
From betwixt two aged oaks,
[Where Corydon and Thyrsis met]
Are at their savory dinner set
Of herbs and other country messes, 85
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
And then in haste her [bower] she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
Or, if the earlier season lead,
To the [tanned haycock] in the mead. 90
[Sometimes, with secure delight],
The upland hamlets will invite,
When the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth and many a maid 95
Dancing [in the chequered shade],
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday,
[Till the livelong daylight fail]:
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, 100
With stories told of many a feat,
How [Faery Mab] the junkets eat.
[She] was pinched and pulled, she said;
And he, by Friar’s lantern led,
[Tells] how the drudging goblin sweat 105
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers [could not end];
Then lies him down, [the lubber fiend], 110
And, stretched out all the chimney’s length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matin rings.
[Thus done the tales], to bed they creep, 115
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.
[Towered cities please us then],
And the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
[In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold], 120
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
[Rain influence], and judge the prize
Of wit or arms, while both contend
To win her grace [whom] all commend.
[There let Hymen oft appear] 125
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With [mask] and antique pageantry;
Such sights as youthful poets dream,
On summer eves by haunted stream. 130
[Then to the well-trod stage anon],
If [Jonson’s learned sock] be on,
[Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child],
Warble his native wood-notes wild,
[And ever, against eating cares], 135
Married to immortal verse,
Such as [the meeting soul] may pierce,
In notes with many a winding [bout]
Of linked sweetness long drawn out 140
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony;
[That Orpheus’ self may heave his head] 145
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of [Pluto] to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice. 150
These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.
IL PENSEROSO.
Hence, vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred!
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain, 5
And fancies [fond] with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
The fickle pensioners of [Morpheus’] train. 10
But, hail! thou Goddess sage and holy!
Hail, divinest [Melancholy]!
Whose saintly visage is too bright
[To hit the sense of human sight],
And therefore to our weaker view, 15
O’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue;
Black, but such as in esteem
[Prince Memnon’s] sister might beseem,
Or [that starred Ethiop queen] that strove
To set her beauty’s praise above 20
The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended:
Thee [bright-haired Vesta] long of yore
To solitary Saturn bore;
His daughter she; in Saturn’s reign 25
Such mixture was not held a stain.
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida’s inmost grove,
[Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove]. 30
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
[All in a robe of darkest grain],
Flowing with majestic train,
[And sable stole of cypress lawn] 35
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
[Come; but keep thy wonted state],
With even step, and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies
[Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes]: 40
There, held in holy passion still,
[Forget thyself to marble], till
[With a sad leaden downward cast]
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
[And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet], 45
[Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet],
And hears the Muses in a ring
[Aye] round about Jove’s altar sing;
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; 50
But, first and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding [the fiery-wheeled throne],
And the mute Silence [hist] along, 55
[‘Less Philomel will deign a song],
In her sweetest, saddest [plight],
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,
While [Cynthia checks her dragon yoke]
Gently o’er the accustomed oak. 60
Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly,
[Most musical, most melancholy!]
Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among
I woo, to hear thy even-song;
And, missing thee, I [walk unseen] 65
On the dry smooth-shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven’s wide pathless way, 70
And oft, as if her head she bowed,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound,
Over some wide-watered shore, 75
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
[Or, if the air will not permit],
Some still [removed] place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, 80
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman’s drowsy charm
To bless the doors from nightly harm.
Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, 85
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft [outwatch the Bear],
[With thrice great Hermes], or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold 90
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook;
And of those [demons] that are found
In fire, air, flood, or underground,
Whose power hath a true consent 95
With planet or with element.
[Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy]
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line,
Or the tale of Troy divine, 100
Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath [the buskined stage].
But, O sad Virgin! that thy power
Might raise [Musæus] from his bower;
[Or bid] the soul of [Orpheus] sing 105
Such notes as, [warbled to the string],
Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,
And made Hell grant what love did seek;
[Or call up him that left half-told]
The story of Cambuscan bold, 110
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar king did ride; 115
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where [more is meant than meets the ear]. 120
[Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career],
Till [civil-suited Morn] appear,
Not tricked and frounced, [as she was wont]
But [kerchieft] in a comely cloud, 125
While [rocking winds] are piping loud
[Or ushered with a shower still],
When the gust hath blown his fill,
Ending on the rustling leaves,
[With minute-drops from off the eaves]. 130
And, [when the sun begins] to fling
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that [Sylvan] loves,
Of pine, or [monumental oak], 135
Where the rude axe with heaved stroke
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There, in close covert, by some brook,
[Where no profaner eye may look], 140
[Hide me from day’s garish eye],
[While the bee with honeyed thigh],
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,
With such consort as they keep, 145
[Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep].
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at [his] wings, in airy stream
Of lively portraiture displayed,
Softly on my eyelids laid; 150
And, as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by some Spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen [Genius of the wood].
But let my due feet [never fail] 155
[To walk the studious cloister’s pale],
And love the high [embowed] roof,
With antique pillars [massy-proof],
[And storied windows richly dight],
Casting a dim religious light. 160
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies, 165
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
[Where I may sit and rightly spell] 170
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give; 175
And I with thee will choose to live.
ARCADES.
Part of an Entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Derby at Harefield by some Noble Persons of her Family; who appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat of state, with this song:—
I. Song.
Look, Nymphs and Shepherds, look!
What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that which we from hence descry,
Too divine to be mistook?
This, this is she 5
To whom our vows and wishes bend:
Here our solemn search hath end.
Fame, that her high worth to raise
Seemed erst so lavish and profuse,
We may justly now accuse 10
Of detraction from her praise:
Less than half we find expressed;
Envy bid conceal the rest.
Mark what radiant state she spreads,
In circle round her shining throne 15
Shooting her beams like silver threads:
This, this is she alone,
Sitting like a goddess bright
In the centre of her light.
Might she the wise [Latona] be, 20
Mother of a hundred gods?
Juno dares not give her odds:
Who had thought this clime had held
A deity so unparalleled? 25
As they come forward, the Genius of the Wood appears, and, turning toward them, speaks.
Gen. Stay, gentle Swains, for, though in this disguise,
I see bright honor sparkle through your eyes;
[Of famous Arcady ye are], and sprung
Of that renowned flood, so often sung,
[Divine Alpheus], who, by secret sluice, 30
Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse;
And ye, the breathing roses of the wood,
Fair silver-buskined Nymphs, as great and good.
I know this quest of yours and free intent
Was all in honor and devotion meant 35
To the great mistress of yon princely shrine,
Whom with low reverence I adore as mine,
And with all helpful service will comply
To further this night’s glad solemnity,
And lead ye where ye may more near behold 40
What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold;
Which I full oft, amidst those shades alone,
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon.
For know, by lot from Jove, I am the Power
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower, 45
To nurse the saplings tall, and [curl the grove]
[With ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove];
And all my plants I save from nightly ill
Of [noisome] winds and blasting vapors chill;
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, 50
And heal the harms of [thwarting thunder blue],
Or what [the cross dire-looking planet] smites,
Or hurtful worm with cankered venom bites.
When [evening gray] doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallowed ground; 55
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tasselled horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout
With puissant words and [murmurs] made to bless. 60
But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I
To [the celestial Sirens’ harmony],
That sit upon [the nine infolded spheres],
[And sing to those that hold the vital shears], 65
And turn the adamantine spindle round
On which the fate of gods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull [the daughters of Necessity],
And keep unsteady Nature to her law, 70
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, [which none can hear]
[Of human mould with gross unpurged ear].
And yet such music worthiest were to blaze
The peerless height of her immortal praise 75
Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,
If my inferior hand or voice could hit
Inimitable sounds. Yet, as we go,
Whate’er the skill of lesser gods can show
I will assay, her worth to celebrate, 80
And so attend ye toward her glittering state;
Where ye may all, that are of noble stem,
Approach, and kiss her sacred vesture’s hem.
II. Song.
O’er the smooth enamelled green,
Where no print of step hath been, 85
Follow me, as I sing
And [touch the warbled string]:
Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof
Follow me. 90
I will bring you where she sits,
Clad in splendor as befits
Her deity.
Such a rural Queen
All Arcadia hath not seen. 95
III. Song.
Nymphs and Shepherds, dance no more
By sandy [Ladon’s] lilied banks;
On old [Lycæus, or Cyllene] hoar,
Trip no more in twilight ranks;
Though [Erymanth] your loss deplore, 100
A better soil shall give ye thanks.
From the stony [Mænalus]
Bring your flocks, and live with us;
Here ye shall have greater grace,
To serve the Lady of this place. 105
[Though Syrinx your Pan’s mistress were],
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.
Such a rural Queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.
AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.
Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven’s joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ,
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;
And to our high-raised phantasy present 5
That undisturbed song of pure concent,
Aye sung before [the sapphire-colored throne]
To Him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout and solemn jubilee;
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row 10
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow,
And the Cherubic host in thousand quires
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms 15
Singing everlastingly:
That we on Earth, with undiscording voice,
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportioned sin
Jarred against nature’s chime, and with harsh din 20
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
O, may we soon again renew that song, 25
And keep in tune with Heaven, till God ere long
To his celestial [consort] us unite,
To live with Him, and sing in endless morn of light!
COMUS.
A MASQUE PRESENTED AT LUDLOW CASTLE, 1634.
THE PERSONS.
The Attendant Spirit, afterwards in the habit of Thyrsis. Comus, with his Crew. The Lady. First Brother. Second Brother. Sabrina, the Nymph.
The first Scene discovers a wild wood.
The Attendant Spirit descends or enters.
Spirit. [Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court]
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live [insphered]
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 5
Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care,
[Confined and pestered in this pinfold here],
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives,
[After this mortal change], to her true servants 10
[Amongst the enthroned gods] on sainted [seats.]
Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
[To lay their just hands on that golden key]
That opes the palace of eternity.
To such my errand is; and, but for such, 15
I would not soil [these pure ambrosial weeds]
With the rank vapors of this sin-worn mould.
But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway
Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream
Took in, [by lot ’twixt high and nether Jove]. 20
Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep;
Which he, to grace his tributary gods,
[By course commits to several government], 25
And gives them leave to wear their sapphire crowns
And wield their little tridents. [But this Isle],
The greatest and the best of all the main,
He [quarters] to his blue-haired deities;
And all this tract that fronts the falling sun 30
[A noble Peer] of mickle trust and power
Has in his charge, with tempered awe to guide
An [old and haughty nation], proud in arms:
Where [his fair offspring], nursed in princely lore,
Are coming to attend their father’s state, 35
And new-intrusted sceptre. But their way
Lies through [the perplexed paths of this drear wood],
The nodding horror of those shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger;
And here their tender age might suffer peril, 40
But that, by quick command from [sovran] Jove,
I was despatched for their defence and guard!
And listen why; for I will tell you now
What never yet was heard in tale or song,
From old or modern bard, [in hall or bower]. 45
[Bacchus], that first from out the purple grape
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine,
[After the Tuscan mariners transformed],
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
On Circe’s island [fell]. (Who knows not [Circe], 50
The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a grovelling swine?)
This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks,
With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth, 55
Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son
Much like his father, but his mother more,
Whom therefore she brought up, and [Comus] named:
Who, ripe and [frolic] of his full-grown age,
Roving [the Celtic and Iberian fields], 60
At last betakes him to this [ominous] wood,
And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered,
Excels his mother at her mighty art;
Offering to every weary traveller
[His orient liquor] in a crystal glass, 65
To quench the drouth of Phœbus; which as they taste
(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst),
Soon as the potion works, their human count’nance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear, 70
Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
[All other parts remaining as they were].
And they, so perfect in their misery,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,
But boast themselves more comely than before, 75
And all their friends and native home forget,
To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.
Therefore, when any favored of high Jove
Chances to pass through this adventurous glade,
Swift as the sparkle of a glancing star 80
I shoot from heaven, to give him safe convoy,
As now I do. But first I must put off
These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris’ woof,
And take the [weeds] and likeness of a swain
That to the service of this house belongs, 85
Who, with his soft pipe and smooth-dittied song,
[Well knows to still the wild winds] when they roar,
And hush the waving woods; [nor of less faith],
And in this office of his mountain watch
[Likeliest], and nearest to the present aid 90
Of this occasion. But I hear the tread
Of hateful steps; I must be viewless now.
Comus enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the other; with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel glistering. They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands.
Comus. [The star that bids the shepherd fold]
Now the top of heaven doth hold;
[And] the gilded car of day 95
His glowing axle [doth allay]
In the [steep] Atlantic stream:
And the slope sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky [pole],
Pacing toward the other goal 100
Of his chamber in the east.
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Braid your locks [with rosy twine], 105
Dropping odors, dropping wine.
Rigor now is gone to bed;
And [Advice] with scrupulous head,
[Strict Age, and sour Severity],
With [their grave saws], in slumber lie. 110
We, that are of purer fire,
Imitate the starry quire,
Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, 115
Now to the moon [in wavering morrice] move;
And on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert fairies and [the dapper elves].
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, 120
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove;
Venus now wakes, and wakens [Love].
Come, let us our rites begin; 125
’Tis only daylight that makes sin,
Which these dun shades will ne’er report.
Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
[Dark-veiled Cotytto], to whom the secret flame
Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130
That ne’er art called but when the dragon womb
Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
And [makes one blot of all the air]!
Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
Wherein [thou ridest with Hecat’], and befriend 135
Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
[The nice Morn] on the Indian steep,
[From her cabined loop-hole peep], 140
And to the tell-tale Sun [descry]
Our concealed solemnity.
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
The Measure.
[Break off,] break off! I feel the different pace 145
Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
Run to your [shrouds] within these brakes and trees;
Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
(For so I can distinguish by mine art)
Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms, 150
And to [my wily trains]: I shall ere long
Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
My dazzling spells into the [spongy air],
Of power to cheat the eye with [blear] illusion, 155
And give it false presentments, lest the place
And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
Which must not be, for that’s against my course.
I, under fair pretence of friendly ends, 160
And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
Baited with reasons not unplausible,