The Complete Poems

by John Milton

  81. etiam sub terris bella moventem [waging war even under the earth] Carey suggests that M. may have been influenced by the Welsh Spoils of Annwfn (Book of Taliesin xxx), in which Arthur and his men try to carry off the magic cauldron of the Otherworld. But descents to the underworld are so common in epic that M. would almost certainly have included one whether or not he was influenced by Welsh sources.

  84. phalanges [shield-mall] The Saxon scildweall, like the Greek phalanx, was a body of infantry fighting with interlocked shields. Geoffrey of Monmouth (Historia Regum Britannniae IX i-vi) describes Arthur’s victories over the invading Anglo-Saxons.

  92. Paphia myrti [Paphian myrtle] Myrtle was sacred to Venus, who had a famous temple at Paphos, in Cyprus.

  Parnasside lauri [Parnassian laurel] Mount Parnassus was sacred to Apollo, one of whose attributes was the laurel.

  Epitaphium Damonis [Damon’s Elegy]

  Date: autumn 1639. Charles Diodati, M.’s closest friend, died in London in August 1638 while M. was in Italy. M. returned to England in the summer of 1639 and wrote this poem shortly thereafter (13–17), probably in the autumn (58–61). It was privately printed in 1640 or later, and was reprinted with no verbal variants in 1645. Like Lycidas, it is a pastoral elegy, and follows many of the same conventions. There is no procession of mourners (see 69–90n), but there is a refrain (see 18n).

  1. Himerides [Nymphs of Himera] pastoral Muses. The Himera is a river in Sicily, home of the Greek pastoral poets Theocritus, Bion and Moschus. Daphnin [Daphnis] a young shepherd mourned in Theocritus i, the earliest pastoral elegy.

  Hylan [Hylas] a youth drowned by amorous nymphs (Theocritus xiii).

  2. Bionis Bion, author of the Lament for Adonis, is himself mourned in the Lament for Bion (Moschus iii), the first pastoral elegy on the death of a fellow poet.

  4. Thyrsis M. gives himself the name of the shepherd who mourns for Daphnis in Theocritus i. The name is common in pastoral. See L’Allegro 83n.

  7. Damona Damon is a common pastoral name (see Virgil, Ecl. iii and viii). M. might also be thinking of the famous Sicilian friends Damon and Pythias.

  9. bis [twice] John Shawcross, MLN 71 (1956) 322–4, points out that M. is referring to Italian crops, which are harvested twice a year (in March and August). Diodati died in August 1638, so two Italian harvests would have passed by April 1639, when M. was in Florence (the Tuscan city of line 13).

  18. Ite domum… [Go home…] Refrains are common in pastoral elegy. Cp. Theocritus i, Bion, Lament for Adonis and Moschus, Lament for Bion. M.’s refrain echoes Virgil, Ecl. vii 44 and the last line of Virgil, Ecl. x (neither of which is a refrain).

  23. ille [he] Mercury, guide of the dead. He used his wand (virga) to summon some ghosts from Orcus and send others to Tartarus (Virgil, Aen. iv 242–3).

  27. Ancient superstition held that a man would be struck dumb if a wolf saw him before he saw it (Virgil, Ecl. ix 53–4).

  31. post Daphnin [next after Daphnis] M. is ranking himself, as poet, below Theocritus.

  32. Pales Roman goddess of shepherds. See PL ix 393. See Ad Salsillum 27 on Faunus.

  34. Pallas Athene was goddess of wisdom. Diodati had studied at Oxford and Geneva.

  56. Cecropiosque sales [Attic wit] Cecrops was the first king of Athens. Attic wit was famous.

  65. Innuba… uva [unwedded grapes] Vines were said to be ‘wedded’ to the trees that propped them. See PL v 215–19n.

  66. myrteta [myrtle groves] sacred to Venus, goddess of love.

  69–90. A procession of mourners is conventional in pastoral elegy. Cp. Lycidas 88–112. M. replaces this convention with a procession of friends who try to comfort Thyrsis. Cp. the would-be comforters of Gallus in Virgil, Ecl. x 19–30.

  69. Tityrus a stock pastoral name, found in Theocritus iii and vii, and Virgil, Ecl. i and viii.

  Alphesiboeus Damon’s rival in a singing contest in Virgil, Ecl. viii.

  70. Aegon The name is found in Theocritus iv and Virgil Ecl. iii.

  Amyntas the (male) beloved of Menalcas in Virgil, Ecl. iii. Cp. also Theocritus vii, Virgil, Ecl. ii, v and x.

  75. Mopsus a shepherd in Virgil, Ecl. v and viii. A Mopso who understands the language of birds is mentioned in Tasso, Aminta I ii 459.

  79. The planet Saturn was thought to cause melancholy.

  88–90. The classical names might here refer to real acquaintances of M. and Diodati. Except for Aegle (who is a lovely nymph in Virgil, Ecl. vi 21) none of the names occurs in the pastoral poetry of Theocritus or Virgil.

  90. Idumanii… fluenti [Idumanian river] the Blackwater, in Essex.

  99. Proteus a sea-god, the herdsman of Neptune’s seals. He knew all things and could change his shape at will so as not to answer questions. These ‘protean’ changes made his name a byword for inconstant or fickle love.

  101. Passer [sparrow] notorious for lechery.

  117. Tityrus not Chaucer (as in Mansus 34), but Virgil’s Tityrus, who went to Rome in the days of its splendour (Ecl. i). Virgil’s Tityrus might be Virgil himself, who went to Rome and appealed successfully to Octavian against the confiscation of his farm.

  129. Ami [Arno] the river of Florence.

  132. Singing matches are a pastoral convention. Lycidas and Menalcas compete (not against each other) in Theocritus vii and viii. M. is here referring to real poetical contests in the Florentine academies, where everyone was expected to ‘give some proof of his wit and reading’ (YP 1. 809).

  134. munera [gifts] M. received books and verse encomia from his Italian hosts.

  137. Datis, et Francinus Carlo Dati (1619–76) was only nineteen when M. met him in Italy. He addressed a panegyric to M. which preceded M.’s Latin poems in 1645. One of M.’s letters to him and two of his to M. survive (YP 2. 762–75). Antonio Francini wrote a long Latin ode to M. which also appeared among the commendatory verses in 1645.

  138. Lydorum sanguinis [of Lydian blood] Herodotus (i 94) relates that Tuscany was settled by Lydian colonists from Asia Minor.

  149. The Colne is a river near Horton, where M. had lived before departing for Italy. Horton was in the territory of the ancient British chieftain Cassivelaunus, who had resisted Julius Caesar’s second invasion of Britain in 54 BC.

  150–52. Diodati had studied medicine at Oxford.

  155–60. M. is referring to his planned epic on a British subject. He outlines his plans in lines 162–70. Cp. Mansus 81–4. His pastoral pipe has proved inadequate for the high style of epic.

  160. vos cedite silvae [Give place, woodlands] echoing Gallus’s farewell to pastoral poetry in Virgil, Ecl. x 63: concedite silvae.

  162. Rutupina… aequora [Rutupian Sea] the English Channel. The Trojan ships are those of Brutus. See A Masque 828n.

  163. Pandrasus was a king in Greece. He gave his daughter Inogen (or Ignoge) in marriage to Brutus after Brutus had defeated him. See M.’s History of Britain (YP 5. 11–13) and Geoffrey of Monmouth, I ix-xi.

  164. Brennumque… Belinum Brennus and Belinus were legendary kings of Britain who conquered Rome. In his History of Britain M. follows Holinshed in conjecturing that Brennus might be the historical Brennus, a Gallic chieftain who took Rome in 390 BC (YP 5. 30). Arviragus was King Cymbeline’s son. He married Claudius’s daughter, but then rebelled against Rome (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae IV xii-xvi, Spenser, FQ II x 52). M. in his History of Britain rejects this legend and names Caractacus as Cymbeline’s son (YP 5. 64–7).

  165. M. in his History of Britain relates a tradition that Armorica (Brittany) was first colonized by Constantine’s British veterans. When the Saxons invaded Britain, the Armoricans welcomed British refugees.

  166–8. Uther Pendragon, aided by Merlin’s magic, assumed the appearance of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, and so was admitted to the bed of Gorlois’s wife Igraine, on whom he begot Arthur (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae VIII xix, Malory, Morte d’Arthur I ii).

  175. Usa the Ouse, first in a list of English rivers. Cp. FQ I
V xi.

  Alauni [Alne] Camden, in Britannia, mentions a river Alne in Northumberland and another in Hampshire.

  180. The laurel bark is used as a writing surface. Cp. Virgil, Ecl. v 13–14.

  181. Mansus See headnote to Mansus. Manso’s gift of two cups might represent books or poems (as the baskets of line 135 represented literary tributes). Pindar (Olympian Ode vii), refers to a poem as a cup. Whether books or cups, Manso’s gifts speak of resurrection. The cups in Theocritus i 29–56 and Virgil, Ecl. iii 36–48 depict earthly delights only.

  182. Chalcidicae [Chalcidian] Neapolitan. Naples had been settled by Greek colonists from Chalcis in Euboea.

  187. Phoenix a symbol of resurrection, since it rose from its own ashes. See PL v 272n.

  191. Amor [Cupid] not the irresponsible boy-god of Elegia VII but the ‘Celestial Cupid’ of A Masque 1004. Cp. Plato’s distinction between the common and the heavenly Aphrodite (Symposium 180–82).

  208. quicunque vocaris [by whatever name you are called] Cp. the cautious addressing of divine beings in PL iii 7 and vii 1–2. Pagan gods were often invoked ‘by whatever name you wish to be called’.

  210. divino nomine [divine name] Diodati means ‘God-given’. The righteous will be given a ‘new name’ in Heaven (Rev. 3. 12), so Diodati’s retention of his own name (210–11) might imply that he was always heavenly, even when on earth.

  213. quod nulla tori libata voluptas [because you never tasted the pleasure of the bed] Almost all editors translate torus as ‘marriage bed’ or ‘marriage’. There is classical precedent for such a usage, but torus usually meant ‘bed’ and could refer to any bed of pleasure, licit or illicit. Thus while M. applauds Diodati’s abstention from unchastity, he need not view marriage as unchaste. See next note.

  214. virginei… honores [virginal honours] At Rev. 14. 1–4 St John sees 144,000 male virgins singing ‘a new song’ before the Lamb. They can sing the song because they ‘were not defiled with women; for they are virgins’. M. implies that the unmarried Diodati will join this choir, but he need not be degrading marriage. In An Apology for Smectymnuus (1642) M. assumes that St John’s virgins include married men, ‘For mariage must not be call’d a defilement’ (YP 1. 893). Puritans called marriage ‘pure virginitie’. See A Masque 787n and Ad Patrem 32–3n, and cp. the married Eve’s ‘virgin majesty’ (PL ix 270).

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

  217. hymenaeos [marriage-rite] alluding to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19. 5–7). Numerous Miltonists (confusing Rev. 14 and 19) have claimed that only virgins take part in the Lamb’s nuptials. But the Lamb’s marriage is celebrated by ‘all’ God’s servants, ‘both small and great’ (Rev. 19. 5). Cp. Lycidas 176–8, where ‘all the saints’ sing the ‘nuptial song’.

  219. thyrso [thyrsus] the vine- and ivy-wreathed wand of Bacchic revellers.

  GREEK AND LATIN POEMS ADDED IN 1673

  Apologus de Rustico et Hero [A fable of a Peasant and his Landlord]

  Date: 1624? Although printed only in 1673, this poem was probably a grammar-school exercise. The story is from Aesop’s Fables, but its poetic model is a version of the fable by Mantuan, Opera (Paris 1513) 194’. The poem was placed last of the Latin elegies in 1673.

  In Effigiei eius Sculptorem [On the Engraver of his Portrait]

  Date: 1645. The poem appeared engraved beneath M.’s portrait on the 1645 frontispiece, and was printed between Philosophus ad Regent and Ad Salsillum in 1673. The engraver of M.’s portrait was William Marshall. M., who was proud of his handsome appearance, had cause to dislike Marshall’s unflattering picture, and he took his revenge in this poem. The Greekless Marshall, suspecting no malice, engraved the words that condemned his own skill. Thomas O. Mabbott (Explicator 8, 1950, item 58) detects an intentional ambiguity in M.’s last phrase, which means that the rotten picture has been engraved either by or of ‘a rotten artist. Thus M. implies that Marshall’s engraving is a self-portrait.

  Ad Ioannem Rousium Oxoniensis Academiae Bibliothecarium [To John Rous, Librarian of Oxford University]

  Date: 23 January 1647 (M.’s date of 1646 is Old Style). M. had sent a copy of 1645 to Rous, together with copies of the eleven prose pamphlets he had so far published. The volume of poems was lost or stolen in transit, so M. sent a replacement with this Pindaric ode. The manuscript of the poem is still in the Bodleian, placed between the English and Latin poems in a copy of 1645 that might be the replacement copy referred to in the poem. The poem was placed last in 1673.

  1. Gemelle… liber [Twin-born book] The English and Latin poems in 1645 formed a ‘twin’ volume with separate title-pages and pagination.

  10. Daunio [Daunian] Italian. M. might be referring to his Italian poems, which were written in England (see Canzone).

  18. Thamesis a name sometimes given to the upper reaches of the river Thames above the point where it is joined by the river Thame. Oxford lies at the confluence of the Thames and the Cherwell.

  21. Aonidum The Muses were called ‘Aonides’ from their home on Mount Helicon in Aonia.

  thyasusque [Bacchic dance] the Bacchic throngs are here Oxford scholars (Bacchus being a god of learning).

  25–36. Cp. Ovid’s appeal to an unnamed god or hero who might atone for Rome’s past misdoings and help her to recover from civil war (Odes I ii 25–52).

  29. civium tumultus M. was writing in the fourth year of the Civil War, which had broken out in 1642. Oxford was the King’s headquarters.

  33–6. The filthy birds are the Harpies, whom Zeus sent to defile the food of the blind prophet Phineus. Phineus was delivered by the Argonauts (not Apollo), but Apollo suits M.’s purposes as god of poetry. The winged horse Pegasus was a symbol for poetry. See PL vii 4n.

  45. Lethen [Lethe] the river of oblivion in Hades.

  56. Ion the guardian of Apollo’s shrine and treasury at Delphi. He was the son of Apollo and Creusa (daughter of Erectheus, King of Athens). See Euripides, Ion 54–8.

  60. Actaea [Actaean] Athenian (Acte being an early name for Attica).

  65–6. Delo Delos, in the Cyclades, was Apollo’s birthplace. Parnassus was sacred to Apollo and the Muses.

  77. Hermes god of learning and guide of the dead.

  endnote. The Phaleucian line consisted of a spondee, a dactyl and three spondees.

  LATER POEMS FROM THE PROSE WORKS

  Epigram from Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio

  Date: 1650. M.’s pamphlet was published in 1651 but entered in the Stationers’ Register in December 1650. It was a reply to Claudius Salmasius (Claude de Saumaise, 1588–1653), who had attacked the English regicides in his Defensio Regia Pro Caroli I (1649). Salmasius in his tract had laboured the English term ‘hundred’ (a subdivision of a county). M. in his reply mocks Salmasius and adds this poem, which makes punning reference to the hundred gold Jacobuses Salmasius was allegedly paid by the exiled Charles II. M.’s poem imitates the Roman satirist Persius (Prologus 8–14). M. indicates his borrowings by italicizing those words that he has taken directly from the original.

  3. Iacobei [Jacobuses] ‘Jacobus’ was the unofficial name of a gold coin issued in 1603. It was worth one pound at the time of issue.

  6. primatum Papae [supremacy of the Pope] Salmasius, a Protestant, had challenged papal supremacy in De Primatu Papae (1645).

  Epigram from Defensio Secunda

  Date: 1653. Salmasius died in 1653; M.’s Defensio Secunda was published in 1654. M. in his pamphlet (YP 4. 581) says that he wrote these verses when he still expected that Salmasius would reply to his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio. The poem turns on an ancient joke that worthless books are good only to wrap fish. See e.g. Martial, Epigrams III ii 1–5.

  3. Salmasius Bush notes a pun on Latin salmo, ‘salmon’.

  eques [knight] Louis XIII had made Salmasius a knight of the Order of St Michael – an order held in lo
w esteem in France.

  6. cucullos both ‘cowls’ and ‘conical wrappers for merchandise’. Martial makes the same pun in Epigrams III ii 5.

  10. It was an ancient Roman jibe that fishmongers wiped their noses on their sleeves.

  UNPUBLISHED LATIN POEMS

  Carmina Elegiaca [Elegiac Verses]

  An autograph copy of these verses was discovered in 1874, along with M.’s Commonplace Book, a short Latin essay on early rising, and the Asclepiad verses on the same theme (see next poem). The two poems are probably grammar-school exercises written when M. attended St Paul’s.

  5. Titan the sun.

  7. Daulias [Daulian bird] the swallow, called Daulias ales by Ovid (Her. xv 154). Procne was turned into a swallow at Daulis, in central Greece.

  11. Zephyritis [Zephyr’s consort] Flora, goddess of spring. She covers the ground with pasture in Ovid, Fasti v 208.

  [Asclepiads]

  See headnote to previous poem. This poem (written in the lesser Asclepiad metre) is untitled in M.’s autograph copy.

  3. Dauni… filius [Daunus’s son] Turnus, King of the Rutuli and leader of the Latins against Aeneas. The Trojans Nisus and Euryalus attack his camp in Virgil, Aen. ix 176–449.

  4. toro a conjectural restoration. The MS is damaged.

  INDEX OF TITLES

  A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 46

  A Paraphrase on Psalm 114, 9

  Ad loannem Rousium Oxoniensis Academiae Bibliothecarium, 602

  Ad Leonoram Romae canentem, 548

  Ad Pattern, 573

  Ad Salsillum poetam Romanum aegrotantem. Scazontes, 580

  An Apology for Smectymnuus, translations from, 117

  An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, 17

  Apologus de Rustico et Hero, 601