The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)

by John Milton

  (Ausonian land). His angelic name has been blotted out and M. never speaks it.

  740–46. how he fell… isle Cp. the daylong fall of Homer’s Hephaestos (il. i 591–5): ‘[Zeus] caught me by the foot and threw me from the magic threshold, / and all day long I dropped helpless, and about sunset / I landed in Lemnos’.

  745.. zenith highest point of the celestial sphere (OED 1, referring to Mulciber’s fall) and culminating point of a heavenly body (OED 2, referring to sun).

  746.. Aégean For accent cp. PR iv 238 and Fairfax’s Tasso (i 61): ‘O’er Aegean Seas by many a Greekish hold’.

  750.. engines plots (OED 3) and machines used in warfare (OED 5).

  756.. *Pandaemonium Greek ‘seat of all demons (or daimones)’. The original spelling allows the devils to see themselves as classical daimones rather than demons (though daimones still suggests demons through N.T. usage). Cp. PR ii 122.

  capital] Ed I, Ed II; ‘Capitoll’ corr. to ‘Capitall’ (in a different hand) MS.

  757.. peers nobles. Pandaemonium has a King and House of Lords, but no Commons (see below, i 792n). Cp. ii 507 (‘grand infernal Peers’) and contrast i 39 and v 812, where ‘peers’ means ‘equals’. Satan exploits the ambiguity at ii 445.

  759.. place rank, official position.

  choice promotion or election from the ranks.

  764.. Wont were wont to.

  Soldan’s Sultan’s.

  765.. paynim pagan.

  768–75. bees… affairs Homer’s Achaians marching to a council (Il. ii 87–90), Virgil’s busy Carthaginians (Aen. i 430–35) and Virgil’s dead awaiting reincarnation (Aen. vi 707–9) are all likened to bees. Seventeenth-century apiarists would kill off a swarm by lowering the hive into a flaming sulphur pit. This fiery end could serve as a warning to those who praised the swarm’s Royalist politics (see John Simons, MQ 21. 1, March 1987, 21–2). Virgil (Aen. xii 583–92) and Apollonius Rhodius (Argonautica ii 130–34) liken panic-stricken defenders of a city to bees whose hive is filled with smoke. See also Virgil, Georg. iv 149–227.

  769.. Taurus the zodiacal sign of the Bull (hence rides).

  774.. expatiate both ‘wander at will’ and ‘speak at length’. The word adds mock grandeur to the devils.

  780.. that Pygméan race See above, 575n. The Pygmies were supposed to live beyond the Himalayas (the Indian mount).

  781–8. faery elves… rebounds Encounters with elves are frequent in folklore. Aubrey tells of a shepherd who came across dancing elves: ‘He sayd the ground opened, and he was brought into strange places under ground where they used musicall Instruments, violls, and Lutes.’ Such encounters bring joy at the time, but ‘never any afterwards enjoy themselves’ (Remaines, 1686–7, 204). A medieval tradition held that the less sinful fallen angels were allowed to haunt earth’s forests, where they were known as ‘elves’.

  782.. midnight revels Cp. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II i 141 (‘moonlight revels’), but M.’s elves are quite un-Shakespearean.

  783–4. sees, / Or dreams he sees Cp. Virgil, Aen. vi 751–4, where Aeneas glimpses Dido’s shade ‘as one who sees… or thinks to have seen, the moon / Rising through cloud’.

  785.. arbitress witness (lit. ‘one who goes to see’, ad + bito).

  790.. at large free, uncramped – with a play on the other sense of ‘large’. Ricks remarks that ‘nothing could more effectively belittle the devils’ than this ‘superbly contemptuous pun’ (Milton’s Grand Style, 15).

  792.. Court The royal connotation is ominous. Parliament was also a ‘court’, but there is no House of Commons in Pandaemonium, where Satan sits enthroned amidst Lords.

  795.. close recess secret and secluded place.

  conclave secret assembly (OED 4), suggesting ‘the assembly of Cardinals met for the election of a Pope’ (OED 3). In Phineas Fletcher’s The Apollyon-ists (1627) Jesuitical devils conceive the Gunpowder Plot after meeting in ‘deepe Conclave’ (i 17).

  797.. Frequent crowded.

  798.. consult a secret meeting for purposes of sedition (OED 2).

  BOOK II

  1–6. High… eminence Cp. the bright throne of Spenser’s Lucifera (FQ I iv 8); also M.’s description in Defensio of Charles I enthroned (YP 4. 506).

  2. Ormus Hormuz, an island town in the Persian Gulf, famous for jewels.

  5. merit desert of either good or evil (OED 2a).

  7. high uplifted beyond hope both ‘lifted high above (his) hope’ and ‘lifted high in a place so low as to be beyond all hope’. Cp. i 66, iv 160.

  9. success outcome (with a wry pun on the modern sense).

  11. Powers and Dominions angelic orders (Col. 1. 16).

  10. imaginations schemes, plots (OED 2a).

  15. Virtues the angelic order, with overtones of ‘manliness, valour’ (OED ‘virtue’ 7).

  24–40. The happier… assured us Lewis (98) calls Satan’s argument ‘nonsense’, since its corollary is that ‘every approach to victory must take away the grounds on which victory is hoped’. Waldock (69–70) replies that Satan’s speech is rhetoric, not logic, and should be judged ‘by its effect’.

  41. open war or covert guile Cp. Tasso’s Satan urging ‘open force, or secret guile’ (Gerus. Lib. iv 16, trans. Fairfax). Notice that Satan asks the devils to debate how (not whether) to return.

  43. Moloch As at i 392, Moloch is first on his feet. The contrast between the bellicose Moloch and the eloquent coward Belial has epic precedent in the contrasts between Virgil’s Turnus and Drances (Aen. xi 336f.) and Tasso’s Argantes and Orcanes (Gerus. Lib. x 35f). See below, 109n.

  50. recked cared.

  thereafter accordingly.

  51. sentence judgement.

  52. More unexpért less experienced.

  63. horrid horrifying and bristling (with flames).

  65. engine machine of war (God’s thunder).

  69. Tartarean of Tartarus, the classical hell.

  strange fire Cp. Lev. 10. 1–2: ‘the sons of Aaron… offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died’.

  73. drench soporific potion (OED 2) and *act of drenching (OED 4, earliest instance 1808, but the verb had existed since medieval times).

  74. forgetful causing oblivion.

  75. in our proper motion we ascend Moloch is proved wrong when Satan encounters a ‘vast vacuity’ in Chaos and plummets downward (ii 932–5). The devils may have lost their angelic buoyancy, but Marjara (148–9) sees M. as confirming the New Philosophy of Galileo and debunking Aristotelian physics.

  79. Insulting making assaults (OED 3) and exulting.

  81. ascent is easy Contrast Virgil, Aen. vi 126–9: ‘the descent to Avernus is easy… but to retrace one’s steps and escape to the upper air, this is the task, this is the toil’. See also ii 432–3, iii 19–21, 524.

  82. event outcome.

  89. exercise vex, afflict (OED 4b).

  90. vassals of his anger Cp. Spenser, Tears of the Muses 126: ‘vassals of Gods wrath, and slaves of sin’; also Romans g. 22: ‘vessels of wrath fitted to destruction’. In The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (1635), Thomas Heywood had identified ‘vessels of wrath’ as a demonic order commanded by Belial (436). Moloch’s pun might therefore be a jibe at Belial, who styles himself ‘vessel’, but is really a ‘vassal’.

  92. penance punishment (OED 5), suggesting Roman Catholic mortification of the flesh (notice scourge).

  94. What doubt we Why do we hesitate.

  97. essential essence (adj. for noun).

  99–101. if… nothing ‘if we are indeed indestructible, we are already in the worst possible state, which is not annihilation’.

  104. fatal upheld by Fate and deadly.

  106. denounced portended.

  109. Belial See i 490n. M.’s cowardly orator resembles Tasso’s Orcanes, who makes a disguised plea for capitulation in the Saracen council (Gerus. Lib. x 48). Cp. also Virgil’s Drances, who
in council was ‘valiant of tongue, though his hand was cold for battle’ (Aen. xi 337–8).

  110. person person of rank (OED 2c) and mask (Latin persona). Notice false and hollow.

  114. reason argument.

  116. To vice industrious Cp. Sylvester, DWW (1592–1608), Eden (1598) 304: ‘To vertue dull, to vice ingenious’.

  123. success outcome (with a wry pun on the modern sense).

  124. fact feat of valour (OED 1b).

  127. scope target.

  139. ethereal mould that which is fashioned of pure fire (in contrast to Moloch’s baser fire).

  148. thoughts… eternity Cp. Lucretius, De Rerum Nat. ii 1044–7: ‘the mind seeks to discover what exists out there in the infinity of space beyond the walls of the world, where the intellect longs to peer, and the mind flies free by its own projection’.

  wander a recurrent word in PL, where it has ‘almost always a pejorative, or melancholy connotation’ (MacCaffrey 188). See e.g., i 365, ii 561, iii 667, vii 50, ix 1136, and Fish (130–41).

  150. wide womb of uncreated Night Cp. Spenser, FQ III vi 36: ‘in the wide wombe of the world there lyes, / In hatefull darkeness and in deepe horrore, / An huge eternall Chaos’.

  151. Devoid of sense and motion Cp. Claudio’s dread of death that ends ‘This sensible warm motion’ (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure III i 120).

  152. Let this be good ‘supposing this were desirable’.

  156. Belike in all likelihood.

  impotence lack of self-restraint (OED 3), sarcastically contrasted with God’s omnipotence.

  159–63. Wherefore… worse Referring to Moloch’s question ‘what can be worse / Than to dwell here?’ (85–6).

  160. they who Belial avoids naming Moloch, who is in any case nameless (see i 361–5). The ‘courteously impersonal form’ (Fowler) is appropriate to Parliamentary debate, where names were (and still are) prohibited.

  165. amain at full speed.

  170–74. What if… What if The coward’s question. Cp. Tasso’s Orcanes: ‘But what if that appointed day they [the pagan reinforcements] miss? / Or else, ere we expect, what if they came?’ (Gerus. Lib. x 44, trans. Fairfax).

  170. breath that kindled Cp. Isa. 30. 33: ‘the pile [of Hell] is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it’.

  170–71. fires… sevenfold Cp. the fiery furnace into which Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. The furnace was heated ‘seven times more than it was wont to be heated’ (Dan. 3. 19).

  174. red right hand Cp. Horace’s image of Jove exciting civil war in Rome by hurling thunderbolts with a ‘red right hand’, rubente dextera (Odes I ii 1–4).

  176. cataracts flood-gates (Latin, cataractae). At Gen. 7. 11, the Vulgate and Junius-Tremellius describe Noah’s Flood as coming from cataractae. See xi 824n. Our firmament rained water, Hell rains fire.

  182. racking both ‘torturing’ and ‘driving’.

  184. converse with both ‘talk by means of and ‘dwell with’.

  185. Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved M. is fond of triple collocations of the prefix ‘un-’. See e.g. iii 231, v 899.

  187. open or concealed Cp. ‘open or understood’ (i 662) and ‘open war or covert guile’ (ii 41).

  188–9. what can… With him How can force or guile hurt him?

  191. motions proposals.

  199. To suffer, as to do echoing the famous words spoken by Mutius Scaevola, when he burned his hand so as to give the Etruscan Porsenna a demonstration of Roman fortitude: Et facere et pati fortia Romanum est (Livy ii 12). Belial manages to sound like Scaevola, but his whole purpose is to avoid the flames (172). Cp. i 158 and PR iii 195.

  212. mind be concerned about (OED 8), be aware of (OED 4). The latter sense casts doubt on God’s omniscience.

  214. his breath… flames See above, 170n.

  215–19. Our… pain Belial considers three possibilities: (1) the angels’ purer essence will prevail over Hell’s flames and so remove pain at its source, (2) the angels will get used to Hell, though neither they nor it will change, (3) Hell’s flames will cause the angels’ purer essence to change, and so deprive the angels of their ability to feel pain. Belial prefers a comfortable life to his angelic essence, but at least he is concerned for his essence. Mammon is indifferent about it at ii 276–7, where he welcomes Belial’s (3) as the angels’ best hope.

  216. inured accustomed, but M.’s voice behind Belial may play on ‘burn in’ (OED ‘inure’ v2) as in ‘He… inures the Marke of the Beast, the Devills Flesh-brand, upon one or other part of the body’ (1646). Belial’s purer essence will also be ‘burned away’ (Latin inurere, ‘remove by burning’).

  218. temper physiological temperament (the mixture of humours determining one’s physical and mental constitution).

  220. light both ‘lightly borne’ and ‘luminous’.

  224. For happy as for happiness.

  233. strife between Fate and Chance (Bentley), or God and the devils (Pearce). ‘There may also be an allusion to the Empedoclean notion of a universal Strife’ (Fowler).

  243. Forced both ‘compulsory’ and ‘produced with effort’.

  hallelujahs an imperative (Hebrew ‘praise Jah’). Cp. ‘unfeignèd halleluijahs’ (vi 744).

  lordly both ‘haughty’ and ‘as Lord’.

  245. *Ambrosial divinely fragrant (OED IC).

  250. by leave obtained if God were to grant us permission.

  256. easy yoke Cp. Matt. 11. 28–30: ‘Come unto me… For my yoke is easy’. Cp. also Samson’s contempt for those who prefer ‘Bondage with ease’ to ‘strenuous liberty’ (SA 271).

  263–7. How oft… throne Cp. Ps. 18. 11: ‘He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies’. See also II Chron. 6. 1 : ‘The Lord hath said that he would dwell in thick darkness’.

  275. our elements both ‘elements composing our bodies’ and ‘our places of abode’ (OED ‘element’ 12). Demons were thought to dwell in the four elements (see Il Penseroso 93–4). Augustine had denied that devils could assume bodies of Hell-fire (City of God xxi 10), but M. allows more to Mammon’s hopes. The irony lies in Mammon’s shameful readiness to relinquish his purer essence (see above, 215–19n).

  277. temper proportionate mixture of elements (OED 1), bodily constitution (OED 8).

  278. The sensible *the element (in a spiritual being) that is capable of feeling (OED B 3, sole instance). Cp. M.’s use of ‘speakable’ in the active sense ‘able to speak’ (ix 563).

  281. Compose set in order (OED 15).

  282. where] Ed I; were Ed II.

  285. hollow rocks imitating cava saxa, a stock phrase in Latin verse (cp. Virgil, Aen. iii 566, Lucan, Pharsalia iv 455). M.’s simile also recalls Tasso’s description of the Christian army at prayer: ‘Such noise their passions make, as when one hears / The hoarse sea waves roar, hollow rocks betwixt’ (Gerus. Lib. iii 6, trans. Fairfax). See also Gerus. Lib. ix 22.

  288. o’erwatched worn out with watching (OED 3).

  297. policy statecraft, including the bad sense ‘crafty device, stratagem’ (OED 4b).

  302. front forehead or face (OED 1, 2).

  306. *Atlantéan Poets often likened statesmen to the Titan Atlas, whom Jove condemned to bear the heavens on his shoulders. See e.g. Spenser’s Sonnet to Lord Burleigh prefaced to FQ.

  312. style ceremonial title. Cp. Satan’s preoccupation with titles at v 772–7, x 460–2, and PR ii 121–5.

  324. first and last Cp. Rev. 22. 13: ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and last’.

  327. iron sceptre Cp. Rev. 19. 15 (‘he shall rule them with a rod of iron’) and M.’s translation of Ps. 2 (line 20): ‘With iron sceptre bruised’. Cp. also Abdiel’s distinction between God’s ‘golden sceptre’ and ‘iron rod’ (v 886–7). God’s golden (328) and iron sceptres symbolized Mercy and Justice. Cp. Fletcher, CF(1610) i 75, where Mercy begs the Father not to use the �
�yron scepter’ of Justice against man.

  329. What Why.

  330. determined us put an end to us (OED 1) and decided our course (OED 16).

  336. to to the limit of.

  337. reluctance struggling (OED 1).

  349–50. less / In power Cp. Ps. 8. 5: ‘thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour’.

  350. favoured more Beëlzebub’s more might be petulant. Satan and Raphael both say that men and angels are ‘equal’ in God’s favour (i 654, viii 228). Flannagan suggests that favoured more might mean ‘resembling his father more, as in the idiom “He favored his father”’. M. never says that angels were made in God’s image, but iv 567 implies that they were.

  352–3. oath… shook Cp. Isa. 13.12–13: ‘I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens’. Cp. also Heb. 6. 17 and 12. 26, Homer, Il. i 530, Virgil, Aen. ix 106.

  355. mould bodily form (OED sb3 10b), with overtones of ‘earth regarded as the material of the human body’ (OED sb1 4).

  357. attempted both ‘try with temptations’ (OED ‘attempt’ II 5) and ‘try with violence, make an attack upon’ (OED III).

  367. puny including ‘born since us’ (French puis né).

  368. their God not ‘our God’ or ‘God’. This is the first time in PL that any devil has spoken the name.

  369–70. repenting… Abolish Cp. Gen. 6. 7: ‘And the Lord said, I will destroy man… for it repenteth me that I have made them’. Cp. iii 162–6 and ix 945–51.

  374. partake with us both ‘share our fate’ and ‘take our side’.

  375. original] Ed II; originals Ed I. Some editors prefer ‘originals’ because it more obviously refers to both Adam and Eve. But ‘original’ could mean ‘derivation, parentage’ (OED sb 1) as well as ‘progenitor’ (OED sb 2), and it might also mean ‘pattern, archetype’ (OED sb 3), and so imply a sneer at God as the original of man’s image.

  376. Advise consider, ponder (OED 3).

  377. sit in darkness Cp. Ps. 107. 10–11: ‘Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron; Because they rebelled against the words of God’.