(For by the Woman's Seed) on all mankind - With cause for evils past, yet much more cheered He ended, and they both descend the hill. For God is also in sleep, and dreams advise, I carry hence: though all by me is lost, So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard 610 620 630 seriched And vapour as the Libyan air adust, 640 The world was all before them, where to choose 287 228 59 NOTES ON THE ENGLISH POEMS ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY This is the poem alluded to by Milton at the close of the Sixth Latin Elegy (see p. 3). It was composed in the last day of December, 1629, and is the first great utterance of Milton's Muse. Written, like his other early work, under the influence of the prevailing poetic manner and exhibiting traces of the conceited style of the school of Donne which Milton afterwards abandoned, the poem is, however, Miltonic in its elevation of mood, in its profusion of learned allusions, and in its occasional touches of lofty eloquence. The conception of Christ and his significance to men is deeply characteristic of Milton's religious feeling. He is, in the poet's devotion, a supreme moral and intellectual force, an embodiment of purity and truth, rather than a personal savior requiring the self-abandonment of love. PAGE 45 Line 5. the holy sages: i.e., the Old Testament prophets. 6. deadly forfeit: i.e., the forfeiture of man to death through Adam's sin. 46 47 48 49 50 24. prevent: anticipate. 39. guilty front: guilty forehead. Nature is thought of as corrupted by the fall. The stanza is an extreme example of the perversely ingenious conceits of seventeenth-century poetry. 48. the turning sphere: i.e., the revolving sphere of the visible heavens. See the explanation of the Ptolemaic system adopted by Milton throughout his poetry (p. 300). 53 ff. The allusion is to the historical fact that there was peace throughout the Roman world at the time of Christ's birth. 59. awful: full of awe. 64. whist: silent. 68. birds of calm: i.e., the halcyons, who were said to breed during calm weather. 71. Bending one way their precious infiuence. The allusion is to the supposed influence of the planets on the destinies of men. At the birth of Christ their tendencies are all beneficent. 74. Lucifer: the morning planet. 89. mighty Pan: Christ, spoken of in the characteristic fashion of Renaissance poetry under the image of the pagan deity of universal nature. 92. silly: simple, innocent. 97. noise: music. 100. close: harmony. 110. globe: Lat., globus, throng. 114. displayed: spread out. 116. unexpressive: inexpressible. 125. Ring out, ye crystal spheres, etc. Let the music made by the turning of the nine celestial spheres become for once audible to human ears. 133 ff. Milton combines the Christian conception of the millennium with the classical idea of a return of the golden age, in which Astrea, Goddess of Justice, will come down again to dwell with men. PAGE 50 51 52 53 54 156. The wakeful trump of doom: i.e., the awakening trumpet of the Day of Judgment. The line has the ring of the later Miltonic style. 168. The Old Dragon: Satan. 173 ff. In this and the following stanzas Milton alludes to the idea that at the time of the birth of Christ the oracles of the pagans ceased to give responses and to the story that a voice was heard by certain sailors crying from the shore, "Pan is dead." Milton surveys in order the false deities of Greece, Rome, Palestine, and Egypt, representative of the multiformity of heathen superstition yielding before the purity of truth. The idea that these deities were in reality demons, the fallen angels who had got themselves worshiped among men, derives from the Church fathers and constitutes the basis of the demonology of Paradise Lost. 199. that twice-battered god: Dagon, whose image twice fell from its pedestal in the presence of the ark. 215. Trampling the unshowered grass. Milton blends Osiris, who was set afloat in a chest in the Nile, with Apis, who was worshiped in the form of a bull; unshowered, because of the absence of rain in Egypt. 227-8. Milton is thinking of the story of Hercules, who strangled two serpents in his cradle. 240. youngest-teemed star: youngest born star; i.e., the star of Bethlehem. ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE 64 It is significant that this sonnet was written just as Milton was leaving the university in 1631. At this turning point in his life, the question of his present and future purposes and responsibilities was occupying him deeply, as it continued to do in the early years at Horton. See Letter to a Friend, p. 5, in which this sonnet (previously written) was enclosed. "I am somewhat suspicious of myself," he writes in introducing the poem, "and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me." Of belatedness in intellectual ability or in literary skill Milton had no reason to complain, and, as a matter of fact, did not complain. His immaturity was relative to his own high and serious purposes. His sense of it is perhaps best explained by his unwillingness to complete a poem on The Passion begun about 1630 and by his silence during a large part of the Horton period. 8. timely-happy: fortunate in the seasonableness of their development. endu'th: endows. L'ALLEGRO This poem, with its companion piece, Il Penseroso, was first published in the 1645 edition of Milton's poems. They do not occur in the Cambridge manuscript and the date of their composition is not known. They are generally ascribed to the early years of Milton's retirement at Horton, but they may belong to some vacation interval in his university life. In the two lyrics Milton has elaborately and exquisitely wrought the various objects in which he took delight into contrasting pictures of poetic moods. It is to interpret falsely to say that they represent two opposed ideals of life or that one is more essentially Milton than the other. They embody the same ideal, the æsthetic, and they are equally the record of Milton's enthusiasms in the realm of beauty. |