by John Milton
756. charities *feelings or acts of affection (OED 2b).
761. bed is undefiled Cp. Heb. 13.4: ‘Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled’.
762. patriarchs By including them in his hymn to wedded love, M. might be hinting at polygamy, which they had practised and he defended in CD. See A. Rudrum, ‘Polygamy in Paradise Lost EC 20 (1970), 18–23.
763. Love Cupid, whose golden arrows (shafts) kindled love.
764. purple brilliant and imperial (notice Reigns).
766. *unendeared both ‘devoid of affection’ and ‘lacking value’. ‘Endear’ could mean ‘enhance the value of (OED 2), as in ‘love endeareth the meanest things’ (1594).
768. masque masquerade, masked ball.
769. starved perished with cold (OED 4), from standing outside the mistress’s door. See e.g. Ovid, Amores i 6, 9; iii na. Serenades were sung at night, in the open air (in sereno).
773. repaired replaced (with new roses).
774. Blest pair Cp. Virgil, Aen. ix 446, on the intimate friends Nisus and Euryalus: Fortunan ambo!
776. shadowy cone earth’s shadow rotating around the earth (see iii 556–7). When the shadow is Halfway between the horizon and the zenith it is nine o’clock.
777. sublunar beneath the moon.
778. ivory port ivory gate - the source of false dreams in Homer (Od. xix 5Ó2f.) and Virgil (Aen. vi 893f.). True dreams issued from a gate of horn. Fowler notes that M.’s Cherubim use the ivory gate because they ‘are to
interrupt a false dream’. Others might feel that the allusion implies that the good angels will fail. Homer says that dreams issuing from the ivory gate are ineffectual, ‘their message is never accomplished’ (Od. xix 565).
782. Uzziel Hebrew ‘My strength is God’. A man at Exod. 6. 18, but cabbalistic tradition attributed the name to one of seven angels before God’s throne (West 154).
785. shield… spear left… right.
788. Ithuriel Hebrew ‘Discovery of God’. The name is not biblical. R. H. West (SP 47, 1950, 211–23) conjectures that M. may have made ‘this one up’ (219), but Ithuriel is an angel in Moses Cordovero’s Pardes Rimmonim (Cracow, 1592) and other sixteenth-century tracts. See Gustav Davidson, A Dictionary of Angels (1967) 152. M. did not coin angels.
Zephon Hebrew ‘a looking out’. Zephon is a man at Num. 26. 15, and a devil in Selden’s De Dis Syris (1617), I iii 43. He may yet emerge as an angel.
791. secure free from anxiety (OED 1).
793. Who one who.
802. Fancy the faculty of forming mental images. Were Satan able to reach Eve’s Fancy, he would enjoy greater freedom to form illusions than if he just had access to her spirits, which produce more abstract hopes and desires.
805. animal spirits the highest of three kinds of fine vapours produced in the human body. The liver and heart produced natural and vital spirits, which rose to the brain to become animal spirits (Latin anima, ‘soul’). These then imparted motion to the body and conveyed sense data to the reason. At v 485 Raphael speaks of still higher ‘intellectual’ spirits, which may be M.’s invention. Hunter (46–55) cites many sources to show that Satan has no direct access to Eve’s reason.
807. distempered vexed (by an imbalance of the four ‘humours’).
809. conceits notions (OED 1), with overtones of pride. The context (Blown up, engend’ring) also suggests a sexual impregnation. Satan might be parodying the immaculate conception, which was thought to have taken place through Mary’s ear (800).
812. celestial temper both the weapon, ‘tempered Heav’nly’ (ii 813), and Ithuriel’s angelic ‘temperament’ (ii 218, 277).
815. Lights alights and kindles.
nitrous powder gunpowder.
816. tun barrel.
magazine storehouse for explosives.
817. Against in preparation for.
*rumoured OED’s earliest participial instance.
smutty black. Smut is a fungous disease that turns cereal grains into a black powder.
821. grisly King Moloch’s epithet at Nativity 209.
828. Know ye not me Satan does not know himself, for he appeals to an identity that is no longer his. There sitting recalls the unfallen Lucifer, who aspired to ‘sit also on the mount of the congregation’ (Isa. 14. 13). Satan will not acknowledge the name ‘Satan’ until x 386.
840. obscure lowly (answering unknown, lowest) and gloomy.
848. pined mourned.
856. Single in single combat (OED 15) and simple, honest, sincere (OED 14).
868. shade trees.
869. port bearing.
870. wan gloomy, sad, sickly.
873. lours scowls.
879. transgressions including ‘crossing the bounds’ (OED 1b).
charge both the responsibility and those whom Gabriel is responsible for (Adam and Eve).
880. approve test by experience (OED 8) and commend. The former sense draws Satan’s contempt (see line 895).
886. esteem of wise reputation for wisdom.
892–3. change… with exchange… for.
893–4. recompense / Dole with delight ‘replace grief with joy’. But Satan also hints punningly at his true purpose, which is ‘delightfully to deal out death’. Recompense includes ‘mete out in requital’ (OED 3) and dole includes ‘distribution of gifts’ (OED sb2 5), including ‘death’ (OED sb2 5b). Cp. Samson ‘dealing dole among his foes’ (SA 1529).
895. To thee no reason Since Gabriel has never experienced pain, he cannot understand the need to escape it.
896. object put forward as an objection.
899. durance imprisonment.
thus much what So much in answer to what.
904. O… wise ‘O what a loss to Heaven to lose such a judge of wisdom as you!’
911. However in any way he can.
918. all Hell broke loose already proverbial (OED ‘hell’ 10).
926. stood withstood.
928. The] Ed I; Thy Ed II.
929. seconded both ‘assisted’ and ‘taken the place of a defeated combatant’ (OED 2c).
930. at random wide of the mark. A military metaphor: guns fired ‘at random’ when firing at long range (OED 5b).
932. assays afflictions, efforts, attacks (OED 2, 14, 15).
939. afflicted powers downcast armies (cp. i 186).
940. mid air Satan will become ‘prince of the power of the air’ (Eph. 2. 2).
942. gay brilliantly good (used ironically, OED 6b), showily dressed (OED 4).
945. practised distances Satan contemptuously draws a parallel between the good angels’ court etiquette (which prescribes various distances from the throne) and their keeping at a safe distance in battle. Distances also plays on ‘musical intervals’ (OED 5c) kept in songs.
959. fawned… adored Waldock (81) dismisses Gabriel’s ‘unsupported calumny’; Empson (111) takes it as proof that Heaven was ‘unattractive’ even ‘before Satan fell’. But Satan servilely adored God on the day of the Son’s exaltation, when he ‘seemed well-pleased’ (v 617).
962. aread advise.
avaunt begone.
965. drag thee chained Cp. Rev. 20. 1–3: ‘an angel… having… a great chain in his hand… laid hold on the dragon… and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit’.
967. facile easily moved.
969. waxing more in rage both ‘growing more angry’ and ‘growing bigger in his anger’ (OED ‘more’ 1). See lines 985–8.
971. limitary both ‘stationed on the boundary’ (OED 2) and ‘subject to limits’ (OED 1).
976. road of Heav’n not the Milky Way (as editors claim) but a star-paved road in Heaven that Raphael likens to the Milky Way at vii 577–81. A progress is a state procession.
978. moonèd horns crescent formation (for phalanx see i 550n).
980. ported spears not as in ‘port arms’, but ‘With their Spears borne pointed towards him’ (Hume, 1695). Cp. Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory (1688): ‘Port your p
ike, is in three motions to… beare it forward aloft’ (III xix 147). The blades therefore face Satan, whose stature reached the sky (988).
980–85. field… chaff Empson2 (172) claims that the simile ‘makes the good angels look weak’, and epic precedent supports his view. Homer (Il. ii 147–50), Tasso (Gerus. Lib. xx 60), Apollonius Rhodius (Argonautica iii 1386f.) and Ariosto (Orl. Fur. xvi 68) compare demoralized armies to a wind-tossed cornfield. Cp. also Phineas Fletcher’s simile likening devils escaped from Hell to a tempest descending on corn: ‘the Plowmans hopes new-eard / Swimme on the playne’ (The Apollyonists ii 40). In Ps. 1.4 it is the ungodly who are ‘like the chaff which the wind driveth away’.
981. Ceres corn (Ceres being goddess of agriculture).
983. careful anxious.
985. alarmed called to arms.
987. Teneriffe or Atlas mountains in the Canary Islands and Morocco. Atlas was also a rebel Titan (see ii 306n). Cp. Tasso’s Solimano, who resists a Christian assault as a mountain assailed with storms ‘Doth unremovèd, steadfast, still withstand / Storm, thunder, lightning, tempest, wind and tide’ (Gerus. Lib. ix 31, trans. Fairfax).
unremoved unremovable (see ix 5n).
989. Horror from Latin horrere, to bristle.
992. cope vault.
997. Scales the constellation Libra. M. also alludes to Zeus weighing the fates of pagan epic combatants (Homer, Il. viii 68–77, xxii 208–13, Virgil, Aen. xii 725–7). In pagan epics the loser’s fate sinks downward; Gabriel declares Satan to be light (1012). Cp. Dan. 5. 27: ‘TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting’.
998. Astraea goddess of justice. She lived on earth during the Golden Age, but human wickedness drove her to the heavens, where she was stellified as Virgo (Ovid, Met. i 149f.). Cp. Nativity 141–3.
999–1000. he weighed… air God uses a balance in Creation at Job 28. 24 and Isa. 40. 12.
1001. ponders weighs in the scales (OED 1) and considers.
BOOK V
2. orient sparkling (OED 2) and eastern.
5. bland *gentle, balmy, soothing (OED 2). Contrast the ‘exhilarating vapour bland’ produced by the forbidden fruit (ix 1047).
only mere.
6. Aurora’s fan leaves stirred by the morning breeze. Aurora was goddess of morning.
12. cordial heartfelt.
15. peculiar graces charms all her own. An echo of iii 183 (‘chosen of peculiar grace’) might imply that Eve’s grace ‘is out of the ordinary, excessive, and, as in Calvin’s scheme, irresistible. It is grace out of proportion to merit’ (Rumrich2 140).
16. Zephyrus on Flora the west wind over flowers. The flower-goddess Flora is Zephyr’s consort in Ovid, Fasti v 197.
17–25. Awake… sweet Cp. Song of Sol. 2. 10–12: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.… The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come’. Like Solomon, Adam wakens his love with an aubade. Contrast Satan’s serenade (v 38–47), which is a parody of Song of Sol.
21. prime first hour of the day, beginning at six o’clock.
22. *tended OED’s earliest participial instance.
blows blooms.
23. balmy reed balsam.
34. offence including ‘occasion of unbelief or doubt’ (OED 2).
38. Why sleep ‘st thou See below, 673n.
44. heav’n wakes with all his eyes Cp. Giles Fletcher on the Nativity, CV (1610) i 78: ‘heav’n awaked all his eyes, / To see another Sunne, at midnight rise’. The eyes are stars.
47. still continually.
56–7. dewy… Ambrosia Cp. Virgil’s Venus: ‘her ambrosial hair exhaled divine perfume’ (Aen. i 403–4).
60. god angel. Some modernizing editors retain the early editions’ ‘God’. Cp. v 117.
61. reserve restriction (OED 6), self-restraint (OED 9), knowledge withheld from one person by another (OED 10).
66. vouched with backed by.
72. Communicated shared (OED 4). The context (divine, gods, Taste) also suggests ‘partake of the Holy Communion’ (OED 6b). Cp. ix 755.
79. as we Zachary Pearce noted in 1733 how these words are placed so as to refer either to Ascend to Heaven or to in the air. Empson2 (163) sees ‘a natural embarrassment’ in Satan’s implied doubt ‘as to whether he could go to Heaven himself. Contrast Raphael’s unequivocal ‘as we’ (v 499), and see i 516n for Satan’s confinement to the air.
84. savoury appetizing, but the word derives from Latin sapere meaning both ‘taste’ and ‘know’. The noun ‘savour’ could still mean ‘perception, understanding’ (OED 5). In biblical usage (e.g., Gen. 8. 21), ‘savour’ was used of sacrifices that God found pleasing (OED 2c), so Eve’s dream implies that God wants her to eat the apple.
86. Could not… Forthwith Eve dreams of the consequences of eating, but the crucial act is absent from her dream – perhaps because Satan cannot ‘make her go through the motions of disobedience, even in her fancy’ (Fish 222).
94. sad grave, serious (OED 4a).
98. uncouth strange (OED 3) and distasteful (OED 4).
99. harbour lodge; often with some notion of lurking or concealment (OED 7). Evil may come and go, but cannot reside, in unfallen minds (117).
102. Fancy the mental faculty which produces images. See iv 802n.
104. represent bring clearly before the mind (OED 2a).
106. frames directs to a certain purpose (OED 5c).
109. cell compartment of the brain.
115. our last evening’s talk either the discussion about the prohibition (iv 421ff.) or Eve’s question about the stars (iv 657–8), to which her dream has offered a flattering answer (v 44–7). Satan did not overhear Eve’s question (he exited at iv 535), so the dream-answer (v 44–5) might not be his. Eve’s own Fancy may have played a part, as Adam surmises.
117. god probably ‘angel’ (see above, 60n), but maybe God, whose omniscience extends to evil.
118. so so long as it remains.
unapproved *not sanctioned (OED 3) and not put to the proof (OED ‘approve’ 8).
123. wont are accustomed.
131. wiped them with her hair echoing Luke 7. 38, where Mary Magdalene washes Jesus’s feet with her tears and ‘did wipe them with the hairs of her head’. See also x 910–12.
136. cleared including ‘freed from the imputation of guilt’.
137. *arborous.
142. Discovering revealing.
145. orisons prayers.
146–7. various style… holy rapture formal elaboration… extempore effusion. Anglicans preferred the former, Puritans the latter. Adam and Eve have both.
147. wanted lacked.
150. numerous rhythmic, harmonious (OED 5).
151. tuneable melodious, sweet-sounding (OED 1).
153–208. The morning hymn imitates Ps. 148 and the Song of the Three Holy Children (35–66), an apocryphal song set for Matins in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer as the Canticle Benedicite.
158–9. these declare/Thy goodness Cp. Ps. 19. 1: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’.
165. Him… end Cp. Rev. 22. 13 (‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end’) and Jonson, ‘To Heaven’ 10 (‘First, midst, and last, converted one and three’).
166. Fairest of stars Venus or Lucifer, the morning star.
last in the train of night Lucifer is the last star to disappear in the morning, and (as Hesperus) the first to appear in the evening.
174. fall’st The setting sun was commonly said to ‘fall’ (OED 7e), but here the word is proleptic.
178. song the Music of the Spheres, audible to unfallen man (see Nativity 125–8, Arcades 63–73).
181. quaternion group of four.
198. singing up to heaven gate Cp. Shakespeare, Sonnet XXIX (11–12) and Cymbeline II iii 20.
205. still always.
213. overwoody having too many branches.
214. pampered overloaded – with a pun on French pampre, ‘vine-branch’.
215–19. vine… leaves The elm tr
aditionally ‘wedded’ the vine in an emblem of ‘masculine strength’ and ‘feminine softness’ (Fowler). Cp. ix 217 and Horace, Odes II xv 4, IV v 30, but notice also the matriarchal possibilities in adopted (218).
221. Raphael Hebrew ‘Health of God’. The angel Raphael appears in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, to which M. alludes in lines 222–3. Raphael helped Tobit’s son Tobias win a wife (see iv 168–71n) and he told Tobias how to cure Tobit’s blindness (Tob. 11. 7–14). As in PL, God sends Raphael to earth in answer to a prayer: ‘The prayer of both was heard in the presence of… God’ (Tob. 3. 16).
229. friend with friend So God spoke to Moses, ‘face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend’ (Exod. 33. 11).
238. secure overconfident (OED 1).
244. pretend plead, offer as an excuse.
249. ardours bright angels (from Latin ardere, ‘to burn’).
250. Veiled… wings Cp. iii 382 and Isa. 6. 2.
261–2. glass / Of Galileo telescope. Galileo is the only contemporary of M. to be named in PL.
262–3. less assured… Imagined lands Cp. i 288–91, where M. has more faith in Galileo’s observations of lunar ‘lands, / Rivers, or mountains’. Philosophers since Plutarch had conjectured that the moon’s spots were seas or mountains; Galileo claimed that the telescope revealed them more clearly.
264. Cyclades an archipelago in the south Aegean. Delos was the traditional centre, but here appears as a spot to a pilot sailing from amidst the group. Since Delos is compared to the earth (260), this displacement from centre to periphery might hint at a Copernican universe: Delos was famous for having floated adrift (see x 296). Samos lies outside the Cyclades, off the coast of Asia Minor.
265. kens discerns.
266–76. Down… lights Raphael’s descent to earth is modelled on the earthward descents of Virgil’s Mercury (Aen. iv 238–58) and Tasso’s Michael (Gerus. Lib. ix 60–62). Cp. also Satan’s descent at iii 562–90.
266. prone bent forward.
269–70. Having sailed through interstellar space with steady wing, Raphael now beats earth’s yielding (buxom) atmosphere with quick fan.
272. phoenix a mythical bird that existed one at a time (hence sole). It was consumed by fire every 500 years, but would rise from its ashes (relics), which it then carried to the temple of the sun at Heliopolis in Egypt (Ovid, Met. xv 391–407). The phoenix symbolized friendship, marriage, and resurrection. Cp. SA 1699–1707. Virgil’s Mercury, alighting in Libya, is likened to a seabird (Aen. iv 254).