Lycidas is Milton’s contribution to a volume of elegiac verses, in Greek, Latin, and English, composed by many college friends of Edward King, who was drowned in the wreck of the vessel in which he was crossing the Irish Channel.
In its main intention, Lycidas is an elegy, because it professes to mourn one who is dead and extols his virtues. In its form it is almost wholly pastoral, because it feigns an environment of shepherds, allegorizing college life as the life of men tending flocks, and the occupations of earnest students as the careless diversions of rustic swains.
Four times the pastoral note is rudely interrupted by the intervention of majestic beings who speak in awful tones from another world, and whose voices instantly check all familiar rustic speech, compelling it to wait till they have announced their messages from above. The supernal powers who thus descend to take their parts in the office of mourning are Phœbus, Apollo, Hippotades, god of the winds, Camus, god of the river Cam, and St. Peter. This mingling of classic, Hebrew, and Christian conceptions is a marked characteristic of all Milton’s poetry.
Thus Lycidas is neither wholly elegiac nor wholly pastoral. From the lips of St. Peter, typifying the church, comes a speech of violent denunciation, in the true later Miltonic manner. In strange contrast to this grim invective is the famous flower-passage, the sweetest and loveliest thing of its kind in our literature.
1-5.To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather laurels,—is to make a new venture as a poet,—to compose a poem. The berries are harsh and crude,—he shatters their leaves before the mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man, or because he feels in himself a lack of “inward ripeness” to treat his theme worthily,—perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own choosing.6-7.A sad duty is imposed upon him, forbidding further delay on any personal grounds.8. Lycidasis one of the stock names of pastoral poetry. The poem, though most serious in its main motive and intention, is to have a pastoral coloring throughout. Note the impressive repetitions,dead, dead, and the recurrences of the name Lycidas in the next two lines.11. he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme.Edward King had, in accordance with the college custom of his time, written verses, apparently all in Latin. Of these verses Masson, in his life of Milton, gives specimens. They seem to be commonplace.13. and welter to the parching wind.See Par. Lost II 594, I 78.15. Sisters of the sacred well.Ancient tradition connects the origin of the Muses with Pieria, a district of Macedonia at the foot of Olympus. But the springs with which we associate the Muses are Aganippe and Hippocrene on Mount Helicon.19. So may some gentle muse.A peculiar use of the wordmuseas masculine, and meaningpoet.23-31.We pursued the same studies, at the same college, and we studied from early morning sometimes till after midnight. The metaphors are all pastoral.32-36.We wrote merry verse, bringing in the college jollities, in wanton student-fashion, and the good-natured old don who was our tutor affected to be pleased with our work.34. Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel.TheSatyrs, represented as having human forms, with small goat’s horns and a small tail, had for their occupation to play on the flute for their master, Bacchus, or to pour his wine. TheFaunswere sylvan deities, attendants of Pan, and are represented, like their master, with the ears, horns, and legs of a goat.37-49.Nature herself sympathizes with men, and mourns thy loss.50. Nymphs:deities of the forests and streams.52. on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie.The shipwreck in which King was lost took place off the coast of Wales. Any one of the Welsh mountains will serve to make good this allusion.54. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high.Monais the ancient and poetical name of the island of Anglesea.55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.The Dee (Deva) below Chester expands into a broad estuary. In his linesspoken At a Vacation Exercise, Milton, characterizing many rivers, mentions the “ancient hallowed Dee.” The country about the Dee had been specially famous as the seat of the old Druidical religion. In the eleventh Song of his Polyolbion, Drayton eulogizes the medicinal virtues of the salt springs in the valley of the river Weever, which attract Thetis and the Nereids:—And Amphitrite oft this Wizard River ledInto her secret walks (the depths profound and dread)Of him (supposed so wise) the hid events to knowOf things that were to come, as things done long ago.In which he had been proved most exquisite to be;And bare his fame so far, that oft twixt him and Dee,Much strife there hath arose in their prophetic skill.56-63.Even the Muse Calliope could do nothing for her son Orpheus, whom the Thracian women tore to pieces under the excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies. The gory visage floated down the Hebrus and through the Ægean Sea to the island of Lesbos.64. what boots it:of what use is it?64-66.What good are we going to derive from this unremitting devotion to study?67-69.Would it not be better to abandon ourselves to social enjoyment, and to lives of frivolous trifling?AmaryllisandNeæraare stock names of shepherdesses.70-72.Understandclear, as applied tospirit, to mean “pure, guileless, unsophisticated.” Sir Henry Wotton, in his Panegyric to King Charles, says of King James I.,—“I will not deny his appetite of glory, which generous minds do ever latest part from.” Love of fame, according to the poet, is the motive that prompts the scholar to live as an ascetic and to persevere in toilsome labor. This love of fame is an infirmity, but not a debasing one: it leaves the mind noble. Remember, however, that the author of the Imitation of Christ prayed,Da mihi nesciri.75. the blind Fury with the abhorred shears.Milton here seems to ascribe to the Furies (Erinyes) the function belonging to the Fates (Parcæ, Moiræ). The three Fates were Klotho, the Spinner; Lachĕsis, the Assigner of lots; and Atrŏpos, the Unchanging. It was the duty of Atropos to cut the thread of life at the appointed time.A querulous thought comes to the poet’s mind. Our lives are obscure and laborious, sustained only by the hope of future fame;but before we attain our reward, comes death, and our ambition is brought to naught.76-77. But not the praise, Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears.The Fury cannot destroy the praise, which necessarily belongs to doing well. Praise here means the essential praise, which naturally inheres in excellence, and not the being talked about by men.The speaker is now Phœbus, the august god Apollo, the pure one, who protects law and order, and promotes whatever is good and beautiful; who reveals the will of Zeus, and presides over prophecy.Phœbus has now an admonition to give and he touches the poet’s ears; as in Virgil, Eclogue IV 3,—Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit, “The Cynthian twitched my ear and warned me.”79. in the glistering foil Set off.See Shakespeare, Richard III. V 3250,—“A base foul stone, made precious by the foil of England’s chair.”85-86. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius.Arethusa was a fresh-water fountain at Syracuse in Sicily, and the Mincius is a river in north Italy, on which is situated Mantua, the birthplace of the poet Virgil. The great pastoral poet Theocritus is said to have been born at Syracuse. Thus Arethusa and the Mincius typify the pastoral tone in which Milton conceives and constructs his poem. But the intervention of the great god Apollo has frighted the bucolic muses, to whom therefore the poet explains it, line 87.88.Now I am on good terms again with the deities of lower rank.Oatis a common designation of the shepherd’s pipe, or syrinx.89-90.Neptune, through his herald, Triton, pleads his freedom from all complicity in the drowning of Lycidas. Triton sends to Æolus, god of the winds, requesting him to cross-question all his subjects as to what they were doing on the day of the wreck.95-99.The winds prove their innocence, and Æŏlus himself comes to report to Triton that at the time of the disaster they were all at home and the air was perfectly calm. Even Panope and all her sisters were out playing on the tranquil water.96. sage Hippotădes.Æolus was the son of Hippotes. See all about him in Odyssey, book X. Read also Ruskin, Queen of the Air, section 19.99. Panopewas a Nereid, one of the numerous daughters of Nereus.103.Now comes another grand personage to make inquiry about the death of Lycidas.Camus, the deity of the river Cam, stands for the University of Cambridge.104. His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge.The river god is represented as wearing a mantle made of water-grasses and reeds.105-106.These lines refer to certain markings on the water-plants of the Cam, said to be correctly described here by the poet. The dimness of the figures may suggest the great age of the university, and the tokens of woe belong to the present occasion.106. that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.This is the hyacinth, the flower that sprang up on the spot where the youth Hyacinthus had been accidentally slain by Apollo. The petals of the hyacinth are said to be marked with the Greek letters AI AI, which form an interjection expressing grief.107.Lycidas was one of those collegians whose scholarship, character, and piety promise to make them the pride of their Alma Mater.109. The Pilot of the Galilean Lake.See MatthewXIV.110. Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.See MatthewXVI19. See alsoComus 13and Par. Lost III 485. The idea oftwokeys, one of gold and one of iron, is not in the Bible.112. He shook his mitred locks.St. Peter wears the mitre as bishop.113-131.St. Peter makes but little reference to Lycidas, and his words add almost nothing to the elegiac character of the poem. His speech is one of stern and bitter satire. The second period of Milton’s life, which is to be given up to intense and uncompromising partisanship in religion and politics, foreshadows itself in these lines.114. Enowis here used in its proper plural sense. Seenote on Comus 780.115. climb into the fold.See JohnX1. The metaphor of sheep and herdsmen is continued throughout the speech.119. Blind mouths!As the relative pronoun beginning the next clause refers to this exclamation, mouths must be taken as a bold metaphor meaning men who are all mouth, or are supremely greedy and selfish. Moreover, they are blind.122. What recks it them?See note onComus 404.They are sped:they have succeeded in their purpose. See Antony and Cleopatra II 335. Note also the phrase of greeting,bid God speed, as in 2 JohnI10, 11, King James version.123. their lean and flashy songs:their sermons.Evidently Milton can cull words of extreme disparagement and vilification as well as words of unapproachable poetic beauty.125-127.The congregations are not edified. The miserable preaching they listen to fails to keep them sound in doctrine. They grow lax in their faith, and heretical opinions become fashionable.128. the grim wolf with privy pawis undoubtedly the Roman church.130-131.These lines evidently denounce some terrible retribution that is sure ere long to overtake the corrupt clergy described in the preceding passage.The two-handed engine at the door, that stands ready to smite once and smite no more, has never been definitely explained. We naturally think of the headsman’s axe, which, however, does not become applicable till the execution of Archbishop Laud, an event not to take place till eight years after the composition of the poem. It has been suggested that Milton had in mind the two houses of Parliament, or the Parliament and the Army, as the agency through which reform was to be effected. We must remember that Milton in 1637 could not foresee the Civil War. He may have meant to combine certain scriptural expressions into a mysteriously suggestive and oracular prediction, without having in view any single and definite possibility.132. Return, Alphēus.The Alpheus was a river of the Peloponnesus, said to sink underground and to flow beneath the sea to Ortygia, near Syracuse, where it attempted to mingle its waters with those of the fountain Arethusa. Seenote on lines 85, 86. See also Shelley’s poem, Arethusa.The pastoral tone of lightness and simplicity could not be maintained while St. Peter spoke. But now the Sicilian Muse returns, all the more lovely for the contrast with the stern malediction that has gone before.134-151.Milton is fond of thus collecting names of persons, places, and things, choosing them as well for their effect on the ear as for their significance. The botany of this passage is of little consequence: it matters not whether all these flowers could, or could not, be collected at the same season, or whether they could be found at the time of the year when Lycidas died. The passage offers a picture of exquisite beauty to the eye, and to the ear a strain of perfect melody.136. where the mild whispers use.The verbuse, in this intransitivesense, with only adverbial complement, and meaningdwell, is now obsolete.138. the swart star:the star that makesswart, orswarthy; i.e.the sun.139. enamelled eyesare the flowers generally, which are to be specified. Scattered over the turf, the flowers seem to be looking upward, like eyes.142. ratheis the adjective whose comparative is ourrather.149. amaranthus, by its etymology, meansunfading.150. Daffadilis derived fromasphodel, with a curious, and altogether unusual, prefixedd.153. dally with false surmise.King’s body was not found. There was no actual strewing of the laureate hearse with flowers.156. the stormy Hebrides:islands off the northwest coast of Scotland.160. Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old.The fable of Bellerus is the fabled Bellerus, or Bellerus of the fable. He was a mythical giant of Cornwall in old British legend. Bellerium was the name given to Land’s End, where he was supposed to live.161. the great Vision of the guarded mount.St. Michael’s Mount is a pyramidal rock in Mounts Bay on the coast of Cornwall. This was guarded by the angel, St. Michael, whose gaze was directed seaward, toward Namancos and Bayona, in northwestern Spain. In some unknown place between these widely sundered limits, the body of Lycidas is tossed.170. with new-spangled ore.Ore, from its original meaning of metal in the natural state, comes to signify metallic lustre generally. See Comus719,933.173.See MatthewXIV25.175.CompareComus 838.176. the unexpressive nuptial song.SeeHymn on the Nativity 116. See also RevelationXIX7-9.181. And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.See RevelationXXI4.183. Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore.This is the same promotion that was accorded to Melicertes, son of Ino, who on his death became the genius of the shore under the name of Palæmon.186. uncouth;a self-depreciating expression meaningunknownorobscure.187.Milton applies the epithetgrayboth to evening and to morning.188. various quillsare the tubes of the shepherd pipe.189. Doricmeans simplypastoral, because the idylls of the first pastoral poets were written in the Doric dialect of Greek.190. had stretched out all the hills:had caused the shadows of the hills to prolong themselves eastward on the plain.The poet seems to feign that he spent a day in the composition of Lycidas.
1-5.To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather laurels,—is to make a new venture as a poet,—to compose a poem. The berries are harsh and crude,—he shatters their leaves before the mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man, or because he feels in himself a lack of “inward ripeness” to treat his theme worthily,—perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own choosing.
6-7.A sad duty is imposed upon him, forbidding further delay on any personal grounds.
8. Lycidasis one of the stock names of pastoral poetry. The poem, though most serious in its main motive and intention, is to have a pastoral coloring throughout. Note the impressive repetitions,dead, dead, and the recurrences of the name Lycidas in the next two lines.
11. he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme.Edward King had, in accordance with the college custom of his time, written verses, apparently all in Latin. Of these verses Masson, in his life of Milton, gives specimens. They seem to be commonplace.
13. and welter to the parching wind.See Par. Lost II 594, I 78.
15. Sisters of the sacred well.Ancient tradition connects the origin of the Muses with Pieria, a district of Macedonia at the foot of Olympus. But the springs with which we associate the Muses are Aganippe and Hippocrene on Mount Helicon.
19. So may some gentle muse.A peculiar use of the wordmuseas masculine, and meaningpoet.
23-31.We pursued the same studies, at the same college, and we studied from early morning sometimes till after midnight. The metaphors are all pastoral.
32-36.We wrote merry verse, bringing in the college jollities, in wanton student-fashion, and the good-natured old don who was our tutor affected to be pleased with our work.
34. Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel.TheSatyrs, represented as having human forms, with small goat’s horns and a small tail, had for their occupation to play on the flute for their master, Bacchus, or to pour his wine. TheFaunswere sylvan deities, attendants of Pan, and are represented, like their master, with the ears, horns, and legs of a goat.
37-49.Nature herself sympathizes with men, and mourns thy loss.
50. Nymphs:deities of the forests and streams.
52. on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie.The shipwreck in which King was lost took place off the coast of Wales. Any one of the Welsh mountains will serve to make good this allusion.
54. Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high.Monais the ancient and poetical name of the island of Anglesea.
55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.The Dee (Deva) below Chester expands into a broad estuary. In his linesspoken At a Vacation Exercise, Milton, characterizing many rivers, mentions the “ancient hallowed Dee.” The country about the Dee had been specially famous as the seat of the old Druidical religion. In the eleventh Song of his Polyolbion, Drayton eulogizes the medicinal virtues of the salt springs in the valley of the river Weever, which attract Thetis and the Nereids:—
And Amphitrite oft this Wizard River ledInto her secret walks (the depths profound and dread)Of him (supposed so wise) the hid events to knowOf things that were to come, as things done long ago.In which he had been proved most exquisite to be;And bare his fame so far, that oft twixt him and Dee,Much strife there hath arose in their prophetic skill.
And Amphitrite oft this Wizard River led
Into her secret walks (the depths profound and dread)
Of him (supposed so wise) the hid events to know
Of things that were to come, as things done long ago.
In which he had been proved most exquisite to be;
And bare his fame so far, that oft twixt him and Dee,
Much strife there hath arose in their prophetic skill.
56-63.Even the Muse Calliope could do nothing for her son Orpheus, whom the Thracian women tore to pieces under the excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies. The gory visage floated down the Hebrus and through the Ægean Sea to the island of Lesbos.
64. what boots it:of what use is it?
64-66.What good are we going to derive from this unremitting devotion to study?
67-69.Would it not be better to abandon ourselves to social enjoyment, and to lives of frivolous trifling?AmaryllisandNeæraare stock names of shepherdesses.
70-72.Understandclear, as applied tospirit, to mean “pure, guileless, unsophisticated.” Sir Henry Wotton, in his Panegyric to King Charles, says of King James I.,—“I will not deny his appetite of glory, which generous minds do ever latest part from.” Love of fame, according to the poet, is the motive that prompts the scholar to live as an ascetic and to persevere in toilsome labor. This love of fame is an infirmity, but not a debasing one: it leaves the mind noble. Remember, however, that the author of the Imitation of Christ prayed,Da mihi nesciri.
75. the blind Fury with the abhorred shears.Milton here seems to ascribe to the Furies (Erinyes) the function belonging to the Fates (Parcæ, Moiræ). The three Fates were Klotho, the Spinner; Lachĕsis, the Assigner of lots; and Atrŏpos, the Unchanging. It was the duty of Atropos to cut the thread of life at the appointed time.
A querulous thought comes to the poet’s mind. Our lives are obscure and laborious, sustained only by the hope of future fame;but before we attain our reward, comes death, and our ambition is brought to naught.
76-77. But not the praise, Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears.The Fury cannot destroy the praise, which necessarily belongs to doing well. Praise here means the essential praise, which naturally inheres in excellence, and not the being talked about by men.
The speaker is now Phœbus, the august god Apollo, the pure one, who protects law and order, and promotes whatever is good and beautiful; who reveals the will of Zeus, and presides over prophecy.
Phœbus has now an admonition to give and he touches the poet’s ears; as in Virgil, Eclogue IV 3,—Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit, “The Cynthian twitched my ear and warned me.”
79. in the glistering foil Set off.See Shakespeare, Richard III. V 3250,—“A base foul stone, made precious by the foil of England’s chair.”
85-86. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius.Arethusa was a fresh-water fountain at Syracuse in Sicily, and the Mincius is a river in north Italy, on which is situated Mantua, the birthplace of the poet Virgil. The great pastoral poet Theocritus is said to have been born at Syracuse. Thus Arethusa and the Mincius typify the pastoral tone in which Milton conceives and constructs his poem. But the intervention of the great god Apollo has frighted the bucolic muses, to whom therefore the poet explains it, line 87.
88.Now I am on good terms again with the deities of lower rank.Oatis a common designation of the shepherd’s pipe, or syrinx.
89-90.Neptune, through his herald, Triton, pleads his freedom from all complicity in the drowning of Lycidas. Triton sends to Æolus, god of the winds, requesting him to cross-question all his subjects as to what they were doing on the day of the wreck.
95-99.The winds prove their innocence, and Æŏlus himself comes to report to Triton that at the time of the disaster they were all at home and the air was perfectly calm. Even Panope and all her sisters were out playing on the tranquil water.
96. sage Hippotădes.Æolus was the son of Hippotes. See all about him in Odyssey, book X. Read also Ruskin, Queen of the Air, section 19.
99. Panopewas a Nereid, one of the numerous daughters of Nereus.
103.Now comes another grand personage to make inquiry about the death of Lycidas.Camus, the deity of the river Cam, stands for the University of Cambridge.
104. His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge.The river god is represented as wearing a mantle made of water-grasses and reeds.
105-106.These lines refer to certain markings on the water-plants of the Cam, said to be correctly described here by the poet. The dimness of the figures may suggest the great age of the university, and the tokens of woe belong to the present occasion.
106. that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.This is the hyacinth, the flower that sprang up on the spot where the youth Hyacinthus had been accidentally slain by Apollo. The petals of the hyacinth are said to be marked with the Greek letters AI AI, which form an interjection expressing grief.
107.Lycidas was one of those collegians whose scholarship, character, and piety promise to make them the pride of their Alma Mater.
109. The Pilot of the Galilean Lake.See MatthewXIV.
110. Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.See MatthewXVI19. See alsoComus 13and Par. Lost III 485. The idea oftwokeys, one of gold and one of iron, is not in the Bible.
112. He shook his mitred locks.St. Peter wears the mitre as bishop.
113-131.St. Peter makes but little reference to Lycidas, and his words add almost nothing to the elegiac character of the poem. His speech is one of stern and bitter satire. The second period of Milton’s life, which is to be given up to intense and uncompromising partisanship in religion and politics, foreshadows itself in these lines.
114. Enowis here used in its proper plural sense. Seenote on Comus 780.
115. climb into the fold.See JohnX1. The metaphor of sheep and herdsmen is continued throughout the speech.
119. Blind mouths!As the relative pronoun beginning the next clause refers to this exclamation, mouths must be taken as a bold metaphor meaning men who are all mouth, or are supremely greedy and selfish. Moreover, they are blind.
122. What recks it them?See note onComus 404.They are sped:they have succeeded in their purpose. See Antony and Cleopatra II 335. Note also the phrase of greeting,bid God speed, as in 2 JohnI10, 11, King James version.
123. their lean and flashy songs:their sermons.
Evidently Milton can cull words of extreme disparagement and vilification as well as words of unapproachable poetic beauty.
125-127.The congregations are not edified. The miserable preaching they listen to fails to keep them sound in doctrine. They grow lax in their faith, and heretical opinions become fashionable.
128. the grim wolf with privy pawis undoubtedly the Roman church.
130-131.These lines evidently denounce some terrible retribution that is sure ere long to overtake the corrupt clergy described in the preceding passage.The two-handed engine at the door, that stands ready to smite once and smite no more, has never been definitely explained. We naturally think of the headsman’s axe, which, however, does not become applicable till the execution of Archbishop Laud, an event not to take place till eight years after the composition of the poem. It has been suggested that Milton had in mind the two houses of Parliament, or the Parliament and the Army, as the agency through which reform was to be effected. We must remember that Milton in 1637 could not foresee the Civil War. He may have meant to combine certain scriptural expressions into a mysteriously suggestive and oracular prediction, without having in view any single and definite possibility.
132. Return, Alphēus.The Alpheus was a river of the Peloponnesus, said to sink underground and to flow beneath the sea to Ortygia, near Syracuse, where it attempted to mingle its waters with those of the fountain Arethusa. Seenote on lines 85, 86. See also Shelley’s poem, Arethusa.
The pastoral tone of lightness and simplicity could not be maintained while St. Peter spoke. But now the Sicilian Muse returns, all the more lovely for the contrast with the stern malediction that has gone before.
134-151.Milton is fond of thus collecting names of persons, places, and things, choosing them as well for their effect on the ear as for their significance. The botany of this passage is of little consequence: it matters not whether all these flowers could, or could not, be collected at the same season, or whether they could be found at the time of the year when Lycidas died. The passage offers a picture of exquisite beauty to the eye, and to the ear a strain of perfect melody.
136. where the mild whispers use.The verbuse, in this intransitivesense, with only adverbial complement, and meaningdwell, is now obsolete.
138. the swart star:the star that makesswart, orswarthy; i.e.the sun.
139. enamelled eyesare the flowers generally, which are to be specified. Scattered over the turf, the flowers seem to be looking upward, like eyes.
142. ratheis the adjective whose comparative is ourrather.
149. amaranthus, by its etymology, meansunfading.
150. Daffadilis derived fromasphodel, with a curious, and altogether unusual, prefixedd.
153. dally with false surmise.King’s body was not found. There was no actual strewing of the laureate hearse with flowers.
156. the stormy Hebrides:islands off the northwest coast of Scotland.
160. Sleep’st by the fable of Bellerus old.The fable of Bellerus is the fabled Bellerus, or Bellerus of the fable. He was a mythical giant of Cornwall in old British legend. Bellerium was the name given to Land’s End, where he was supposed to live.
161. the great Vision of the guarded mount.St. Michael’s Mount is a pyramidal rock in Mounts Bay on the coast of Cornwall. This was guarded by the angel, St. Michael, whose gaze was directed seaward, toward Namancos and Bayona, in northwestern Spain. In some unknown place between these widely sundered limits, the body of Lycidas is tossed.
170. with new-spangled ore.Ore, from its original meaning of metal in the natural state, comes to signify metallic lustre generally. See Comus719,933.
173.See MatthewXIV25.
175.CompareComus 838.
176. the unexpressive nuptial song.SeeHymn on the Nativity 116. See also RevelationXIX7-9.
181. And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.See RevelationXXI4.
183. Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore.This is the same promotion that was accorded to Melicertes, son of Ino, who on his death became the genius of the shore under the name of Palæmon.
186. uncouth;a self-depreciating expression meaningunknownorobscure.
187.Milton applies the epithetgrayboth to evening and to morning.
188. various quillsare the tubes of the shepherd pipe.
189. Doricmeans simplypastoral, because the idylls of the first pastoral poets were written in the Doric dialect of Greek.
190. had stretched out all the hills:had caused the shadows of the hills to prolong themselves eastward on the plain.
The poet seems to feign that he spent a day in the composition of Lycidas.
Of poems in strict sonnet form, that is, containing neither more nor less than fourteen decasyllable iambic lines, interlocked by some scheme of symmetrical rhyme, not in couplets, Milton left twenty-three, of which five are in Italian. Of the three sonnets in English omitted from this edition, two have reference to the violent controversy occasioned by Milton’s publications in advocacy of greater freedom of divorce, and are rough and polemic in style; the third is omitted on account of its unimportance and lack of distinction.
In their dates the twenty-three sonnets range from the poet’s twenty-third to his fiftieth year. They are the only form of verse in which he indulges during that middle period of his life which was abandoned to political partisanship on the side of the Parliament in the Civil War, and to the service of the government during the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. If, as is now widely believed, Shakespeare’s sonnets are artificial and tell us little or nothing about their author, those of Milton are purely natural and subjective and tell us nothing else but what their writer was thinking and feeling. Their themes are his veritable moods and passions. The mood is now friendly, amiable, and serene, now bitter, strenuous, indignant, vindictive.
Wordsworth, in his sonnet,Scorn not the Sonnet, thus refers to Milton’s sparing use of this poetic form:—
and when a dampFell round the path of Milton, in his handThe Thing became a trumpet; whence he blewSoul-animating strains,—alas too few.
and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains,—alas too few.
The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet,—the usual English form up to the seventeenth century. Milton adopted the Italian, or Petrarchian model, which has continued to be the standard sonnet form in our modern poetry. In the Miltonic, or Italian, sonnet a group of eight lines, linked by two rhymes each occurring four times, is followed by a group of six lines linked by three rhymes each occurring twice. The octave and the sextet are severed from each other by the non-continuance of the rhymes of the former into the latter. At the end of the octave, or near it, is usually a pause, marking the culmination of the thought, and the sextet makes an inference or rounds out the sense to an artistic whole.
Read Wordsworth’s sonnets,Happy the feeling from the bosom thrown,andNuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room.
The date of this sonnet is unknown. From the fact that it comes first in the series as arranged by the poet, it is inferred that it is the earliest sonnet he chose to publish.
4. the jolly Hours.Seenote on Comus 986.5-6.To hear the nightingale before the cuckoo was for lovers a good sign. This superstition is a motive in theCuckoo and the Nightingale, a poem formerly attributed to Chaucer, and as such “modernized” by Wordsworth, but now known to be the work ofSir Thomas Clanvowe. Stanza X of this poem is thus given by Wordsworth:—But tossing lately on a sleepless bed,I of a token thought which Lovers heed;How among them it was a common tale,That it was good to hear the NightingaleEre the vile Cuckoo’s note be utterèd.9. the rude bird of hate.This gives to the cuckoo altogether too bad a character. The bird has on the whole a fair standing in English poetry. We must think of the very pleasingOde to the Cuckoo,—written either by Michael Bruce or by John Logan,—as well as of the passage in which Shakespeare makes Lucrece ask (line 848),—Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests?Look up other nightingale and cuckoo songs; for example, Keats’sOde to a Nightingale, and Wordsworth’sThe Cuckoo at Laverna.
4. the jolly Hours.Seenote on Comus 986.
5-6.To hear the nightingale before the cuckoo was for lovers a good sign. This superstition is a motive in theCuckoo and the Nightingale, a poem formerly attributed to Chaucer, and as such “modernized” by Wordsworth, but now known to be the work ofSir Thomas Clanvowe. Stanza X of this poem is thus given by Wordsworth:—
But tossing lately on a sleepless bed,I of a token thought which Lovers heed;How among them it was a common tale,That it was good to hear the NightingaleEre the vile Cuckoo’s note be utterèd.
But tossing lately on a sleepless bed,
I of a token thought which Lovers heed;
How among them it was a common tale,
That it was good to hear the Nightingale
Ere the vile Cuckoo’s note be utterèd.
9. the rude bird of hate.This gives to the cuckoo altogether too bad a character. The bird has on the whole a fair standing in English poetry. We must think of the very pleasingOde to the Cuckoo,—written either by Michael Bruce or by John Logan,—as well as of the passage in which Shakespeare makes Lucrece ask (line 848),—
Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests?
Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud?
Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests?
Look up other nightingale and cuckoo songs; for example, Keats’sOde to a Nightingale, and Wordsworth’sThe Cuckoo at Laverna.
This sonnet Milton appears to have sent with a prose letter to a friend who had remonstrated with him on the life of desultory study which he was so long continuing to lead. In this letter he professes the principle of “not taking thought of beinglate, so it gave advantage to be more fit.” He adds, “That you may see that I am something suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certainbelatednessin me, I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some little while ago, because they come in not altogether unfitly, made up in a Petrarchian stanza, which I told you of.”
8. timely-happy:wise with the wisdom proportionate to one’s years. Similar compounds of two adjectives in Shakespeare are very frequent; for example, holy-cruel, heady-rash, proper-false, devilish-holy, cold-pale.10. even:equal, adequate.
8. timely-happy:wise with the wisdom proportionate to one’s years. Similar compounds of two adjectives in Shakespeare are very frequent; for example, holy-cruel, heady-rash, proper-false, devilish-holy, cold-pale.
10. even:equal, adequate.
The occasion of this sonnet was the near approach of the royalist army to London, early in the Civil War. The people of the city had reason to fear the entrance of the cavalier troops and the sacking of the houses of citizens obnoxious to the party of the king. Milton would have been an object of special animosity to victorious royalists, and for a short time he had grounds for the acutest anxiety. It is not easy to see how, in case of actual pillage of the city, he could have made use of such an appeal as this. The sonnet is probably to be regarded as a work of art constructed when the vicissitudes which it pictures were happily past, and when the poet’s mind had regained its tranquillity.
1.Note thatColonelhas three syllables, according to the pronunciation prevailing in Milton’s time. Look up the etymology of this word.10. The great Emathian conqueror:Alexander the Great, called Emathian from Emathia, a district of his kingdom of Macedonia.11. bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground.Alexander destroyed the city of Thebes in 335 B.C. Pindar, the famous lyric poet, a native and resident of Thebes, had then been dead more than a century. But Pindar’s house still stood, and was left standing by the conqueror, who destroyed all other buildings of the city.12. the repeated air Of sad Electra’s poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.To quote from Plutarch, Life of Lysander: “The proposal was made in the congress of the allies, that the Athenians should all be sold as slaves; on which occasion Erianthus, the Theban, gave his vote to pull down the city and turn the country into sheep-pasture; yet afterwards, when there was a meeting of the captains together, a man of Phocis singing the first chorus in Euripides’ Electra, which begins,—“Electra, Agamemnon’s child, I comeUnto thy desert home,they were all melted with compassion, and it seemed to be a cruel deed to destroy and pull down a city which had been so famous, and produced such men.”
1.Note thatColonelhas three syllables, according to the pronunciation prevailing in Milton’s time. Look up the etymology of this word.
10. The great Emathian conqueror:Alexander the Great, called Emathian from Emathia, a district of his kingdom of Macedonia.
11. bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground.Alexander destroyed the city of Thebes in 335 B.C. Pindar, the famous lyric poet, a native and resident of Thebes, had then been dead more than a century. But Pindar’s house still stood, and was left standing by the conqueror, who destroyed all other buildings of the city.
12. the repeated air Of sad Electra’s poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.To quote from Plutarch, Life of Lysander: “The proposal was made in the congress of the allies, that the Athenians should all be sold as slaves; on which occasion Erianthus, the Theban, gave his vote to pull down the city and turn the country into sheep-pasture; yet afterwards, when there was a meeting of the captains together, a man of Phocis singing the first chorus in Euripides’ Electra, which begins,—
“Electra, Agamemnon’s child, I comeUnto thy desert home,
“Electra, Agamemnon’s child, I come
Unto thy desert home,
they were all melted with compassion, and it seemed to be a cruel deed to destroy and pull down a city which had been so famous, and produced such men.”
Who the virtuous young lady was is not known.
2.See the gospel of MatthewVII13.5.See LukeX40-42; RuthI14.8.Note the “identical” rhyme. The effect of such a rhyme is unpleasant. Modern poets avoid it.9-14.See MatthewXXV1-13.
2.See the gospel of MatthewVII13.
5.See LukeX40-42; RuthI14.
8.Note the “identical” rhyme. The effect of such a rhyme is unpleasant. Modern poets avoid it.
9-14.See MatthewXXV1-13.
Lady Margaret’s father was the Earl of Marlborough, who had been President of the Council under Charles I. Milton attributes his death to political anxiety caused by the dissolution of Charles’s third Parliament in 1629.
6-8. that dishonest victory at Chæronea.The victory of Philip over the Greeks at Chæronea, B.C. 338, is called by the poetdishonestbecause obtained by means of intrigue and bribery.that old man eloquentis the orator and rhetorician Isocrates, who, in his grief over the defeat of his countrymen, committed suicide.9. later born than to have known:too late to have known.Serius nata quam ut cognosceres.
6-8. that dishonest victory at Chæronea.The victory of Philip over the Greeks at Chæronea, B.C. 338, is called by the poetdishonestbecause obtained by means of intrigue and bribery.that old man eloquentis the orator and rhetorician Isocrates, who, in his grief over the defeat of his countrymen, committed suicide.
9. later born than to have known:too late to have known.Serius nata quam ut cognosceres.
“In these lines, Milton, with a musical perception not common amongst poets, exactly indicates the great merit of Lawes, which distinguishes his compositions from those of many of his contemporaries and successors. His careful attention to the words of the poet, the manner in which his music seems to grow from those words, the perfect coincidence of the musical with the metrical accent, all put Lawes’s songs on a level with those of Schumann or Liszt.”—Encyclopædia Britannica.
See introductory notes toComusandArcades.
3-4. not to scan With Midas’ ears.The god Apollo, during the time of his servitude to Laomedon, had a quarrel with Pan, who insisted that the flute was a better instrument than the lyre. The decision was left to Midas, king of Lydia, who decided in favor of Pan. To punish Midas, Apollo changed his ears into those of an ass.4. committing short and long:setting long syllables and short ones to fight against each other, and so destroying harmony.5.The subject is conceived as a single idea, and so takes the verb in the singular.exempts thee:singles thee out, selects thee.8. couldst humor best our tongue:couldst best adapt or accommodate itself to our language.10. Phœbus’ quire:the poets.Quireis Milton’s spelling ofchoir.12-14.Read the story of Dante’s meeting with his friend, the musician Casella, in the second canto of Purgatory.
3-4. not to scan With Midas’ ears.The god Apollo, during the time of his servitude to Laomedon, had a quarrel with Pan, who insisted that the flute was a better instrument than the lyre. The decision was left to Midas, king of Lydia, who decided in favor of Pan. To punish Midas, Apollo changed his ears into those of an ass.
4. committing short and long:setting long syllables and short ones to fight against each other, and so destroying harmony.
5.The subject is conceived as a single idea, and so takes the verb in the singular.exempts thee:singles thee out, selects thee.
8. couldst humor best our tongue:couldst best adapt or accommodate itself to our language.
10. Phœbus’ quire:the poets.Quireis Milton’s spelling ofchoir.
12-14.Read the story of Dante’s meeting with his friend, the musician Casella, in the second canto of Purgatory.
The taking of Colchester by the parliamentary army under Fairfax, Aug. 28, 1648, was one of the most important events of the Civil War.
7. the false North displays Her broken league.The Scotch and the English accused each other of having violated the Solemn League and Covenant, to which the people of both countries had subscribed.8. to imp their serpent wings.Toimpa wing with feathers is to attach feathers to it so as to strengthen or improve its flight. The word is originally a term of falconry. See Richard II. II 1292. See also Murray’sNew English Dictionary.13-14. Valor, Avarice, Rapine;personified abstracts, after the manner of our earlier poetry.
7. the false North displays Her broken league.The Scotch and the English accused each other of having violated the Solemn League and Covenant, to which the people of both countries had subscribed.
8. to imp their serpent wings.Toimpa wing with feathers is to attach feathers to it so as to strengthen or improve its flight. The word is originally a term of falconry. See Richard II. II 1292. See also Murray’sNew English Dictionary.
13-14. Valor, Avarice, Rapine;personified abstracts, after the manner of our earlier poetry.
As Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State of the Commonwealth, Milton saw much of Cromwell, and came under the influence of his voice and manner. Whether the great general had ever taken note of the poems written by the secretary who turned his despatches into Latin, or whether he gave any special heed to the man himself, with whom he must have come into some sort of personal relation, we have no means of knowing. We know, however, perfectly well what the poet thought of the victorious general. Though by no means always approving his state policy, Milton retained to the end the warm personal admiration for Cromwell which he expresses in this sonnet.
7-9. Darwen stream, usually spoken of as the battle of Preston, was fought Aug. 17, 1648;Dunbar, Sept. 3, 1650;Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651.12. to bind our souls with secular chains:to fetter our religious freedom with laws made by the civil power.14. hireling wolves.Milton applies this degrading appellation to clergymen who received pay from the state. His appeal to Cromwell was not successful. Cromwell was to become the chief supporter of a church establishment.
7-9. Darwen stream, usually spoken of as the battle of Preston, was fought Aug. 17, 1648;Dunbar, Sept. 3, 1650;Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651.
12. to bind our souls with secular chains:to fetter our religious freedom with laws made by the civil power.
14. hireling wolves.Milton applies this degrading appellation to clergymen who received pay from the state. His appeal to Cromwell was not successful. Cromwell was to become the chief supporter of a church establishment.
Sir Henry Vane was member of a committee of the Council of State appointed in 1649 to consider alliances and relations with the European powers. Milton, as Secretary of the Council, had abundant opportunity to observe Vane’s skill in diplomacy, his ability to “unfold the drift of hollow states hard to be spelled.” Both Vane and Milton held to the doctrine, preëminently associated with the name of Roger Williams, of universal toleration, based onthe refusal to the civil magistrate of any authority in spiritual matters.
1. Vane, young in years:Vane was born in 1613.3. gowns, not arms:civilians, not soldiers. The expression is a Latinism, thegownstanding for thetoga.4. The fierce Epirot and the African bold:Pyrrhus and Hannibal.6. hard to be spelled.CompareIl Penseroso 170.
1. Vane, young in years:Vane was born in 1613.
3. gowns, not arms:civilians, not soldiers. The expression is a Latinism, thegownstanding for thetoga.
4. The fierce Epirot and the African bold:Pyrrhus and Hannibal.
6. hard to be spelled.CompareIl Penseroso 170.
The historical event which furnishes the occasion of this sonnet is the persecution of the Protestant Waldenses by the Piedmontese and French governments, at the time of Cromwell’s Protectorate. Cromwell’s vigorous and successful intervention was the means of staying this horror, and gives evidence of the respect entertained for his government among the states of Europe.
4. when all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones.Christianity had been introduced into the Waldensian country while Britain was still pagan.5. their groans Who were thy sheep:the groans of those who were.12. The triple Tyrant.The Pope, who wore a triple crown.14. the Babylonian woe.The puritans interpreted theBabylonof Revelation as the church of Rome. See RevelationXVIII.
4. when all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones.Christianity had been introduced into the Waldensian country while Britain was still pagan.
5. their groans Who were thy sheep:the groans of those who were.
12. The triple Tyrant.The Pope, who wore a triple crown.
14. the Babylonian woe.The puritans interpreted theBabylonof Revelation as the church of Rome. See RevelationXVIII.
The sonnet, says Masson, may have been written any time between 1652 and 1655.
2. Ere half my days.Milton’s blindness is considered to have become total in 1652, when he was at the age of forty-four. How shall we understand these words?3.See the Parable of the Talents, MatthewXXV.8. I fondly ask.Seenote on Il Pens. 6.
2. Ere half my days.Milton’s blindness is considered to have become total in 1652, when he was at the age of forty-four. How shall we understand these words?
3.See the Parable of the Talents, MatthewXXV.
8. I fondly ask.Seenote on Il Pens. 6.
Probable date, 1655. Of the Mr. Lawrence to whom the sonnet is addressed nothing is certainly known.
6. Favoniusis the Latin name for Zephyrus, the west wind.10. Attic:refined, delicate, poignant.13. and spare To interpose them oft:refrain from too free enjoyment of them.
6. Favoniusis the Latin name for Zephyrus, the west wind.
10. Attic:refined, delicate, poignant.
13. and spare To interpose them oft:refrain from too free enjoyment of them.
The second sonnet to Cyriac Skinner determines its own date as 1655, and this one is probably to be assigned to the same year.
But little is known of the person to whom this sonnet and the next one are addressed, except what we learn from the sonnets themselves,—that he was an intimate and esteemed friend of Milton. He may have been one of Milton’s pupils; and he may, when his old teacher had become blind, have rendered him important services as amanuensis or as reader.
1-4.Cyriac Skinner’s mother was daughter of the famous lawyer and judge, Sir Edward Coke.2. Themisis personifiedlaw, this being the meaning of the Greek word.7. Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause:intermit for a day your severe mathematical studies.8. And what the Swede intend, and what the French:and pay no heed to foreign news.
1-4.Cyriac Skinner’s mother was daughter of the famous lawyer and judge, Sir Edward Coke.
2. Themisis personifiedlaw, this being the meaning of the Greek word.
7. Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause:intermit for a day your severe mathematical studies.
8. And what the Swede intend, and what the French:and pay no heed to foreign news.