The Complete Poems

by John Milton

  185. poplar pale white-leaved poplar.

  186. Genius a local deity. Cp. Lycidas 183.

  188. The nymphs… mourn Cp. Fairfax’s translation of Tasso iii 75, where Godfrey fells an enchanted wood to make siege engines for his army and ‘The weeping Nymphes fled from their bowres exilde’.

  191. lares, Roman gods of the household.

  lemures Roman spirits of the dead (hence urns).

  193. drear horrid, doleful (OED ‘dreary’ 2, 3).

  194. flamens an order of Roman priests. quaint elaborate.

  195. marble… sweat The sweating of marble statues was a bad omen. Cp. Virgil, Georg. i 480.

  196. While… seat So Virgil describes the gods of Troy abandoning their shrines and altars (Aen. ii 351–2).

  197. Peor Baal-Peor, a Canaanite sun-god (Num. 25. 3–5). Cp. PL i 406–14.

  Baälim the plural of ‘Baal’, referring to such gods as Baal-Zebub and Baal-Berith. Cp. PL i 422.

  199. twice-battered god Dagon, the Philistine god whose idol was twice thrown down when the ark of the Covenant was placed beside it. See I Sam. 5. 2–4 and PL i 457–63.

  200. Ashtaroth Ashtoreth, the Phoenician moon-goddess (see PL i 438–9n). As at PR iii 417, M. uses the plural form.

  201. Heav’n’s queen Astarte is ‘queen of heaven’ at Jer. 7. 44. Roman Catholics used the title of Mary, and M. might be satirical at their expense (notice tapers).

  203. Libyc Hammon Ammon, an Egyptian (and Libyan) god depicted as a ram.

  shrinks draws in.

  204. Tyrian Phoenician (from Tyre).

  Thammuz the Phoenician Adonis, a beautiful youth loved by Astarte and killed by a boar. Cp. PL i 446–57.

  205. sullen *baleful (OED Id) and dull in colour (OED 4a, notice blackesthue).

  Moloch an Ammonite fire-god. Children were sacrificed to him while the sound of cymbals drowned their cries. Cp. PL i 392–403.

  209. the grisly king M. uses the phrase of Satan at PL iv 821. Moloch means ‘king’ in Hebrew (cp. PL i 392).

  210. dismal sinister (OED 2), dire (OED 4).

  211–28. Cp. Isaiah’s prophecy of the destruction of Egypt’s gods (Isa. 19. 1–3).

  211. brutish in animal form. Cp. PL i 478–82.

  215. *unshow’red Egypt is almost rainless.

  lowings Osiris was worshipped in the form of the sacred bull Apis.

  216–20. Nor… ark Set tricked his brother Osiris into entering a chest, which Set cast adrift on the Nile. Isis (Osiris’s wife) recovered the chest, but Set dismembered Osiris’s body and scattered the pieces over the earth. Isis then gathered the pieces and restored life to the body.

  218. shroud winding sheet (OED 2a) and place of shelter (OED 3).

  219. *timbrelled accompanied by tambourines.

  220. sable-stolèd black-robed. There may be a play on ‘stole’ as the ecclesiastical vestment worn by Jesuits and other priests when engaged in exorcism or conjuration (OED 2b).

  ark chest (OED 1). The priests of Osiris carried his image in a little gold-plated wooden casket (Herodotus ii 63).

  221. from Judah’s land Cp. Isa. 19. 17: ‘the land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt’.

  223. eyn eyes (archaic plural).

  226. Typhon Set (see above, 216–20n) was anciently conflated with the Greek Typhon, a hundred-headed serpent (hence snaky twine) who so terrified the gods that they fled to Egypt disguised as animals. See PL i 481n.

  227–8. Our babe… crew alluding to the infant Hercules, who strangled two snakes sent by Juno to kill him in his cradle. Hercules was a common ‘type’ of Christ. Cp. The Passion 13–14 and PR iv 563–71.

  231. * Pillows OED’s earliest instance of the verb.

  orient both ‘eastern’ and ‘bright’.

  233–4. Troop… grave Cp. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream III ii 382–3: ‘ghosts wandering here and there / Troop home to churchyards’; also Hamlet I i 140–46.

  234. fettered bound to the body. Cp. A Masque 463–73.

  236. Night-steeds horses drawing Night’s chariot.

  moon-loved maze fairy rings. Cp. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream II i 99: ‘the quaint mazes in the wanton green’.

  239. our tedious song Cp. Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island viii 58 (concluding a long catalogue of personified sins): ‘But if I all this rout and foul aray / Should muster up, and place in battell ray, / Too long your selves & flocks my tedious song would stay’. The Purple Island was published in 1633, but there are so many possible echoes of it in M.’s early poems that it is reasonable to assume that M. had seen a MS, perhaps at Cambridge, where Fletcher had studied, and where The Purple Island was eventually published. For other likely echoes prior to 1633 see L’Allegro 31–2n;, Psalm136 22n, Song. On May Morning 5–6n.

  240. youngest teemèd latest born. Theologians had debated whether the star of Matt. 2. 2 was a new creation.

  241. fixed Cp. Matt. 2. 9: ‘the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was’.

  polished car gleaming chariot.

  244. Bright-harnessed bright-armoured.

  A Paraphrase on Psalm 114

  Headnote. at fifteen years old This and the following psalm may have been school exercises based on Latin or Greek versions of the Bible. They are M.’s earliest English poems.

  1. Terah’s faithful son Abraham (an exemplar of faith in Heb. 11. 8–9).

  Terah was an idolater (Josh. 24. 2; cp. PL xii 113–15).

  3. Pharian fields Egypt (from Pharos, an island near Alexandria). Sylvester had coined the adjective in DWW I i (1605): ‘the high Pharian-Tower’ (489).

  10. foil defeat.

  Psalm 136

  Date: 1624 (see previous headnote).

  10. (also 13, 17, 21, 25). That] 1645; Who 1673.

  18. painted adorned with bright or varied colours (OED 3).

  state splendour, majesty.

  22. wat’ry plain Cp. PL i 397, iv 455. The phrase is found in Spenser, FQ IV xi 24, Drayton, Polyolbion (1612–22) xv 110, and Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island (1633) iii 28. M. might have seen Fletcher’s MS. See Nativity 239n.

  41. fell cruel.

  45–6. ruddy waves… Erythraean main the Red Sea (from Greek erythros, red). Cp. Sylvester, Bethulian’s Rescue (1614) ii 232: ‘the Erythraean ruddy Billowes’.

  49. walls of glass The Red Sea divides into ‘Two Walls of Glasse’ in Sylvester, DWW (1592–1608), The Lawe (1606) 697. Cp. PL xii 197.

  54. tawny king Cp. Fairfax’s translation of Tasso, Gerus. Lib. iii 38: ‘Affrikes tawnie kings’.

  65. Seon Sihon, king of the Amorites (Num. 21. 21–32).

  66. Amorean Amorite.

  69. Og the giant King of Bashan, killed by Moses (Num. 21. 33–5, Deut.

  3. 11, Josh. 13. 12). Cp. SA 1080.

  73. his servant Israël Jacob (Gen. 35. 10–12).

  The Passion

  Date: March 1630? The opening lines allude to On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, so this poem was probably written the following Easter. Good Friday fell on 26 March.

  1. ethereal heavenly.

  mirth religious joy.

  4. divide both ‘divide into two choirs’ and ‘perform musical “divisions” (elaborate variations on a theme)’. Cp. PL iv 688.

  6. In wintry… light ‘like daylight shortened at the winter solstice’.

  13–14. hero… labours alluding to Hercules as a ‘type’ of Christ. Cp. Nativity 227–8.

  wight living being.

  15. priest Christ is called ‘high priest’ at Heb. 2. 17.

  16. dropped… oil ‘Christ’ and ‘Messiah’ mean ‘anointed’ in Greek and Hebrew. Jesus was anointed at Matt. 26. 7 (cp. Heb. 1. 9). High priests were also anointed (Exod. 29. 7), as were kings (notice regal).

  17. tabernacle human body (cp. II Cor. 5. 1). Christ’s body replaces the tabernacle which contained the Jewish Law (Heb. 9. 1–14). Cp. PR iv 599.

  18. front
forehead.

  21. brethren’s Christ frequently referred to mankind as his ‘brethren’. See e.g. Matt. 12. 47–50.

  22. latter] 1645; latest 1673.

  23. Phoebus Apollo as god of poetry, and as sun-god, bound for the horizon. bound both ‘directing [his] course’ and ‘confined, restricted’.

  26. Cremona’s trump Marco Girolamo Vida’s Christiad, a Latin epic published in Cremona in 1535.

  28. still quiet.

  30. the pole the sky (OED 4).

  31. flattered beguiled, charmed (OED 6).

  34–5. The leaves… white Cp. William Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals (1613–16) I v 75–8, where the poet’s tears are said to mix with his ink so as to turn his ‘late white paper to a weed of mourning’. Some seventeenth-century funeral elegies were printed in white letters on black paper.

  37. the prophet Ezekiel. He had a vision of God’s chariot when he was by the river Chebar (Ezek. 1 and 10).

  39. Salem Jerusalem.

  42.*ecstatic standing outside the body (coined from ‘ecstatical’).

  43. sepulchral rock the Holy Sepulchre was ‘hewn out of a rock’ (Mark 15. 46).

  44. casket treasure-chest. The context suggests ‘coffin’, but OED cites that sense only from 1870.

  store treasure.

  47. lively vividly (OED 4) and feelingly (OED 3b), as in ‘making him… lively to lament’ (1625).

  49. characters both ‘letters’ and ‘engraved signs’.

  50. viewless invisible.

  51. weeping on the mountains wild Cp. Jer. 9. 10: ‘For the mountains will I take up a weeping’.

  56. pregnant cloud alluding to Ixion, the would-be ravisher of Hera. Ixion got (begot) the race of centaurs on a cloud that Zeus put in Hera’s place (Pindar, Pythian Odes ii 21–48). Cp. M.’s veiled allusions to the same myth in PL iv 499–500 and PR iv 318–21.

  On Time

  Date: unknown (usually dated 1633). In TMS M. wrote (and later deleted) the subtitle: ‘to be set on a clock case’.

  1. Fly pass rapidly and flee.

  envious malicious, spiteful.

  till… race Cp. Rev. 10. 6 (‘there should be time no longer’) and PL xii 554–6: ‘the race of time, / Till time stand fixed: beyond is all abyss, / Eternity, whose end no eye can reach’.

  2–3. leaden-stepping… plummet’s pace The plummet was a lead weight (not a pendulum) whose slow descent impelled a clock. The leaden-stepping hours are thus a measure of clock-time, though M. also glances at the ‘Hours’ (Horae) –goddesses of the seasons whom Theocritus (xv 102–4) calls ‘soft-footed’ and ‘slowest of the blessed’.

  4. womb stomach (OED 1), suggesting the ancient identification of Chronos (Time) with Cronos (Saturn), who devoured his own children. Cp. also PL ii 911, where Chaos is ‘The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave’.

  9. when as when.

  10. self consumed Cp. A Masque 596, where the Elder Brother promises that ‘evil’ will be ‘Self-fed, and self-consumed’.

  12. individual inseparable (OED 2), hence ‘everlasting’. But the modern sense ‘peculiar to a particular person’ existed, and M. may play upon it to affirm personal immortality and repudiate the Averroistic doctrine of the absorption of individual souls. Cp. PL iv 486, v 610.

  14. sincerely wholly (OED 4b). Cp. Latin sincerus, ‘pure’.

  18. happy-making sight the ‘beatific vision’. Cp. PL i 684, iii 61–2, v 613.

  20. quit having left behind.

  21. Attired crowned. Cp. Rev. 12. 1: ‘upon her head a crown of twelve stars’. ‘Attire’ was fancifully connected with ‘tiara’ (OED sb 4).

  Upon the Circumcision

  Date: unknown (usually dated 1633). The Feast of the Circumcision falls on 1 January. The opening lines again recall Nativity (cp. The Passion 1–4). The poem regards the circumcision as a ‘type’ of the Crucifixion.

  1. Powers one of nine angelic orders (here a synecdoche for all angels). wingèd warriors Cp. Tasso, Gerus. Lib. ix 60: guerrieri alati. Gabriel is a ‘wingèd warrior’ in PL 576.

  2. erst formerly.

  6–9. if… sorrow ‘if your fiery nature prevents you from sharing our sorrow by weeping tears, then fan your flames with sighs and draw up vapour from the seas of our tears (as the sun draws vapour from the sea)’. Angelologists supposed that angels, being made of fire, could not weep. Angels do weep in PL i 620 and x 23–4.

  10. heraldry *heraldic pomp (OED 4).

  whilere a while ago.

  14. seize including the legal sense ‘take possession of’ (OED 5b). Christ submits to the Mosaic Law in submitting to circumcision.

  17. doom Judgement.

  19. secret removed from the resort of men (OED 1b). Cp. PL i 6, viii 427.

  20. Emptied his glory Cp. Phil. 2. 7: ‘made himself of no reputation’. The Greek says that Christ ‘emptied himself.

  21. cov’nant the Mosaic Law. Cp. Matt. 5. 17.

  24. excess violation of law (OED 4). Cp. PL xi 111.

  28. pierce… heart referring to the spear that pierced Christ’s side (John 19. 34). Cp. also ‘the circumcision of the heart’ (Deut. 10. 16, Rom. 2. 28–9, etc.).

  At a Solemn Music

  Date: unknown (usually dated 1633, but conjectures range from 1631 to 1637). TMS has two preliminary drafts of the whole poem, a separate draft of 11.17–28, and a fair copy. The modern equivalent of the title would be ‘At a Sacred Concert’.

  1. Sirens Plato attributes the Music of the Spheres to the singing of eight celestial Sirens (Republic x 616–17). M. alludes to these in Arcades 63–4. pledges offspring (OED 2d) and assurances.

  2. Sphere-borne] TMS (all three versions); Sphere-born 1645, 1673. Born is supported by pledges and A Masque 241 (where Echo is ‘daughter of the sphere’), but borne points more clearly to Plato’s Sirens (who are carried by the spheres). The two spellings were not always distinguished.

  4. Dead… pierce So Orpheus’ songs moved woods and rocks to ecstasy (Ovid, Met. xi 1–4).

  *inbreathed including ‘inspired’.

  pierce touch or move deeply (OED 5).

  6. concent harmony, both of sounds (OED 1) and hearts (OED 2). 1645 reads ‘content’, but 1673 and TMS (all versions) have ‘concent’, and a Bodleian copy of 1645 has been so corrected, perhaps in M.’s hand.

  7. Ay forever.

  sapphire-coloured God’s throne resembles ‘a sapphire stone’ in Ezek. 1. 26.

  9. solemn jubilee sacred rejoicing. The Hebrew Jubilee was a ritual emancipation of slaves occurring every fifty years. It was a ‘type’ of the Atonement. See PL iii 348n.

  10. burning The word Seraphim was associated with the Hebrew root saraph, to burn. Cp. PL ii 512 and Spenser, Hymn to Heavenly Beauty, 94f.: ‘Those eternal burning Seraphins’.

  12. *Cherubic ‘Cherub’ is found in Old English, but this is OED’s earliest instance of the adjective. ‘Seraphic’ is cited from 1632.

  14. just righteous in the sight of God; justified (OED 1).

  palms Cp. Rev. 7. 9: ‘a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations… stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands’.

  17. That so that.

  *undiscording.

  18. noise melodious sound (OED 5a). Cp. Nativity 97.

  19–24. As once… good The comparison of Edenic existence to a music broken by Adam’s sin was commonplace. Cp. Sylvester, DWW (1592–1608), The Furies (1598) 43f:

  This mightie World did seeme an Instrument

  Trew-strung, well-tunde, and handled excellent,

  Whose symphonie resounded sweetly-shrill,

  Th’ Almighties praise, who plaid upon it still…

  But Adam, beeing cheefe of all the stringes

  Of this large Lute, ore-retched, quickly brings

  All out of tune.

  19. disproportioned disharmonious.

  20–21. Nature’s chime… all creatures Cp. Jonson, Underwoods (1640) lxxv

  26–7:
‘The month of youth, which calls all creatures forth / To do their offices in Nature’s chime’. Jonson’s poem was written in 1632.

  22. whose love both God’s love for his creatures and theirs for him.

  motion both ‘activity’ (of all creatures) and ‘a working of God in the soul’ (OED 9b). There might also be a play on *‘musical movement’ (OED 12), which OED cites from 1674.

  swayed ruled (OED 9). The sequence motion swayed… stood also suggests the precariousness of innocence. Cp. PL viii 635.

  23. diapason complete concord (OED 2), including concord of the octave (OED 1), associated with Pythagoras and the Music of the Spheres.

  27. consort harmony of voices, company of musicians (OED sb2 3, 4) and spouse (OED sb1 3). The last sense refers to the Church as bride of Christ (Rev. 19).

  An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester

  Jane Paulet, wife of the Catholic (and subsequently Royalist) Marquis of Winchester, died on 15 April 1631, after giving birth to a stillborn son. The cause of death was an infected abscess in her cheek. She was twenty-three. Numerous tributes survive, including eulogies by Jonson and Davenant. The Marchioness was a Catholic, but a newsletter of 21 April 1631 states that she was ‘inclining to become a Protestant’ (Court and Times of Charles I, ed. T. Birch, 1894, ii 106). Lines 53–60 may indicate that the poem was intended for a volume of Cambridge elegies. No evidence of a personal connection between M. and the Marchioness’s family is known to have survived.

  1. marble tomb.

  3. viscount Thomas, Viscount Savage.

  earl’s heir through her mother Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Darcy, Earl Rivers.

  7. Summers… one Horace gives his age as ‘four times eleven Decembers’ in Epistulae I xx 27.

  8. told counted.

  11–14. had… life ‘Had her life-span been as complete as her praise, her death would have seemed natural.’

  16. Quickly… lover She married John Paulet in 1622, when she was fourteen.

  17. virgin choir bridesmaids.

  request invoke.