by John Milton
STROPHE 2
Today what god or lofty creature of god, [25] / having pity on the primitive nature of my nation, / (if we have atoned sufficiently for our former offences / and the base idleness of our unmanly extravagance) / will remove forever the execrable civil wars of its citizenry,7 / and what sainted man will call back the nourishing studies [30] / and the banished Muses without abode / now in nearly all the bounds of England; / and who will pierce with Apollo’s quiver / the foul birds / with menacing talons, [35] / and drive the pest of Phineus far from Pegasus’ stream?8
ANTISTROPHE
But, little book, though by the bad faith of the messenger / or his negligence, / you have wandered once from the company of your brothers, / whether some den holds you fast [40] / or some hidden recess, perhaps wherein / you are rubbed by the vile, calloused hand of a tasteless huckster, / be cheered, fortunate one; behold! again / a new hope shines to enable you / to avoid the abyss of Lethe, and be conveyed [45] / to the supreme court of Jove on oaring wing,
STROPHE 3
for Rouse selects you / for his own property, and from the rightful collection / promised, complains you to be removed, / and he requests you return to him, to whose care [50] / are the glorious monuments of men assigned: / and indeed in the sacred sanctuaries / over which he himself presides he has wished you to be preserved, / a faithful custodian of immortal works / and a guardian of treasure nobler [55] / than the golden tripods, and the Delphic gifts, / which Ion protects, / the honorable grandson of Erechtheus, / in the rich temple of the god, his father,9 / Ion, born of Actaean Creusa. [60]
ANTISTROPHE
Therefore you shall fly to see / the delightful groves of the Muses, / and again you shall find your way to the divine home of Phoebus / in the Oxford valley, which he frequents / in preference to Delos [65] / and the cleft peak of Parnassus: / You shall go full of honor, / since you also depart possessed of / a distinguished lot, invited by the prayer of a fortunate friend. / There you shall be read among the august names [70] / of authors, the ancient lights and true glory / both of the Greek and the Latin people.
EPODE
You at last my labors have not been in vain, / whatever that sterile genius has brought forth. / Now I bid you hope for placid rest [75] / discharged from envy in a later age, in the blessed abodes / which the good Hermes10 gives / and the expert protection of Rouse, / where never shall penetrate the insolent speech of the multitude and even / the vicious throng of readers shall retire far off; [80] / but our distant descendants, / and a more prudent age / will perhaps exercise a fairer judgment / of things from its unbiassed breast. / Then with envy entombed, [85] / a rational posterity will know if I deserve any merit, / thanks to Rouse.
(The ode consists of three strophes, and the same number of antistrophes, closed at last by one epode; although all do not correspond exactly in the number of verses or in fixed parts where there are cola, nevertheless I have divided them thus in order to observe convenience in reading rather than respect to ancient rules of versifying. In other respects this type more correctly should probably have been called monostrophic. The meters are partly regularly patterned, partly free. There are two Phaleucian lines which admit a spondee in the third foot, which same practice Catullus freely employed in the second foot.)11
(Jan. 1647)
* * *
1 Complying with Rouse’s request, Milton sent to the Bodleian Library a second copy of his 1645 Poems, in which today the manuscript of this ode is found. The eleven prose tracts published to date (c. 1646) had been sent, with an autograph inscription, with the first copy.
2 The Poems were published with separate title pages and pagination (“gemina fronde”) for the English and the Latin poems; copies of the Latin poems without the English poems are extant.
3 Italian.
4 Italian.
5 Oxford.
6 See El. 4, n. 10; l. 66 is also explained by this note.
7 reference primarily to the Civil Wars and a former extravagant life.
8 Apollo was god of archery. The Harpies (as noisome, ravenous birds) were sent to steal or defile the food of Phineus. Pegasus, the winged horse, had created the fountain Hippocrene, sacred to the Muses, by the stamp of his foot, and with his aid Bellerophon had destroyed the Chimaera and attempted to fly to heaven. Oxford is thus likened to Pegasus because of its cultivation of the Muses, its dispelling of ignorance, and its attempt at high achievement. The surrender of royalist Oxford to the Parliamentarians occurred six months before Milton wrote in June 1646.
9 Apollo’s temple at Delphi.
10 god of learning.
11 Milton’s concern in drawing attention to his prosodic experiment should be read alongside remarks accompanying the Fifth Ode and Psalms 80-88 and alongside the metrics of SA. Prefacing the drama is the similar verse description: “call’d by the Greeks Monostrophic, or rather Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, Antistrophe or Epod.” The Phaleucian consisted of a spondee, a dactyl, and three trochees. Catullus is thought of here primarily because he employed the hendecasyllabic line so frequently.
The Fifth Ode of Horace. Book I.
Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa render’d almost word for word without rime according to the Latin Measure, as near as the Language will permit.1
What slender Youth bedew’d with liquid odours
Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave,
Pyrrha? for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden Hair,
5
Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On Faith and changed Gods complain: and Seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoyes thee credulous, all Gold,
10
Who alwayes vacant, alwayes amiable
Hopes thee; of flattering gales
Unmindfull. Hapless they
To whom thou untry’d seem’st fair. Me in my vow’d
Picture the sacred wall declares t’ have hung
15
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.
(1646-48 ?)
* * *
1 Milton aimed at reproducing Horace’s quantitative meters, and so subjoined the Latin text to allow the reader to evaluate his rendition. Perhaps this translation, along with Ps. 80-88, which also emphasize the nature of the rendering, was intended as an exercise of prosodic discipline.
Ad Pyrrham. Ode V
Horatius ex Pyrrhae illecebris tanquam e naufragio enataverat, cujus amore irretitos, affirmat esse miseros.
Quis multa garcilis te puer in rosa
Perfusus liquidis urget odoribus,
Grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?
Cui flavam religas comam
5
Simplex munditie? heu quoties fidem
Mutatosque deos flebit, et aspera
Nigris æquora ventis
Emirabitur insolens,
Qui nunc te fruitur credulus, aurea:
10
Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
Sperat, nescius auræ
Fallacis. miseri quibus
Intentata nites. me tabula sacer
Votiva paries indicat uvida
15
Suspendisse potenti
Vestimenta maris Deo.
Sonnet 12
A book was writt of late call’d Tetrachordon,1
And wov’n close both matter, form, and stile,
The subject new; it walk’d the town a while,
Numbring good intellects; now seldom por’d on.
5
Cries the stall-reader, bless us! what a word on
A title page is this! and som in file
Stand spelling fals, while one might walk to Mile-
End Green.2 Why is it harder, Sirs, then Gordon,3
Colkitto, or Macdonnell, or Galasp?4
10
Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek
That would have made Quintilian5 stare and gasp.
Thy age, like ours, O Soul of Sir John Cheek,6
Hated not learning wors then toad or Asp,
When thou taught’st Cambridge, and King Edward Greek.7
(Jan. 1647 ?)
* * *
1 Milton’s pamphlet confirming his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce was published Mar. 4, 1645. The four “tones” on which Milton’s tetrachord is built are Gen. i. 27-28, Deut. xxiv. 1-2, Matt. v. 31-32, and 1 Cor. vii. 10-16, “the foure chief places in Scripture, which treat of Mariage, or nullities in Mariage.”
2 the intersection of Cambridge Heath Road and Whitechapel Road, which is one measured mile along the latter thoroughfare from Aldgate.
3 James Gordon, Lord Aboyne, influential, though vacillating, adherent of the Scots Royalist James Graham, Marquis of Montrose; at the battle of Auldearn, May 8-9, 1645, he aided MacDonnell in routing the Parliamentary army.
4 The three names all refer to Alexander MacDonnell, known as MacColkitto and MacGillespie, Montrose’s major-general. For his victory at Auldearn, MacDonnell is famed in Gaelic legend; he was knighted by Montrose in 1645. Milton contrasts the repute of these two enemies of the Parliamentarians in mid-1645 and the concurrent derision of advocates of true liberty like himself.
5 the Roman rhetorician, whose Institutio Oratorio (“The Education of an Orator”) warned of the corruptions of language from foreign sources and of the need for the study of Greek.
6 First professor of Greek at Cambridge, Cheke introduced “Erasmian” pronunciation, rejecting the identical sounding of various vowels and diphthongs. He became tutor to Prince Edward in 1544, continuing after the accession, and was one of seven divines appointed to draw up a body of laws for church administration.
7 The final five lines are concerned with (1) the lack of learning and of appreciation of learning in Milton’s age, which is contrasted with the humanism of Cheke’s “reformative age” when Quintilian’s concept that education should produce men of high character and culture prevailed; and (2) a comparison between the reception of his efforts and of the work by Cheke and other divines to enact relaxations of church laws of divorce (discussed on p. 97 of Tetrachordon). Only Edward VI’s untimely death prevented establishment of these divorce laws by Parliament.
On the Forcers of Conscience1
Because you have thrown off your Prelate Lord
And with stiff vows renounc’d his Liturgie2
To seise the widow’d whore Plurality3
From them whose sin ye envi’d, not abhorr’d,
5
Dare ye for this adjure the civill sword
To force our Consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a classic Hierarchy4
Taught ye by meer A.S.5 and Rotherford?6
Men whose life, learning, faith and pure intent
10
Would have bin held in high esteem with Paul
Must now be nam’d and printed Hereticks
By shallow Edwards7 and Scotch what d’ye call;8
But we doe hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packings wors then those of Trent,9
15
That so the Parlament
May with their wholsom and preventive sheares
Clip your Phylacteries10 though bauk your eares
And succour our just feares
When they shall read this cleerly in your charge
20
New Presbyter is but old Preist writt large.11
(early 1647 ?)
* * *
1 The “new” forcers of conscience as they were called in the 1673 printing of this tailed sonnet may be those who in the last months of 1646 particularly demanded immediate legislation for the repression of heresy and error and who tried to effect Presbyterian organization throughout England. In January 1647 Clarendon commented on the intolerant measures which were provoking revolt among the Independents and the army (see State Papers, Nos. 2396, 2405).
2 In Aug. 1645 the House of Commons forbade public and private use of the Book of Common Prayer.
3 Although prelates who held multiple posts were “thrown off” when episcopacy was formally abolished in July 1643, the Presbyterian system supported the same kind of pluralism.
4 Presbyterian administration was built on the classis (or synod), which was composed of all ministers and elders of a district; it thus had control over the clergy and religious affairs in that district. Provinces were to be established throughout England, according to the Westminster Assembly, which in turn were to be subdivided into classes.
5 Adam Stewart, a Scot who, using only initials, pamphleteered for orthodox Presbyterianism; he was a member of both Assembly and Parliament.
6 Samuel Rutherford (1600?–1661), author of Plea for Presbytery (1642) and Scots member of the Assembly from 1643 through 1647.
7 Thomas Edwards (1599-1647), author of Gangraena (1646), subtitled, “a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time,” and of The Casting down of the last Stronghold of Satan, or a Treatise against Toleration and pretended Liberty of Conscience (1647).
8 Robert Baillie (1599-1662), another Scots member of the Assembly (until 1646), who directed his attacks against the Independents.
9 The Council of Trent, opened in 1545, undertook the reform of the Church in three separate synods through 1563, but any hope of reconciliation with the Protestants was thwarted by dogmatic decisions and a voting procedure which packed the Council in the Pope’s favor.
10 square leather boxes containing scriptural passages, worn by Jews at prayer. But they became symbols of hypocrisy since they were worn openly by the Pharisees only to impress others (Matt. xxiii. 5). However, such ministers as Milton indicts will not be removed from future service to the Church—the meaning of the image of not cutting off (bauking) their ears (see Donald C. Dorian, MLN, LVI, 1941, 63). William Prynne, who is referred to in the original version of this line in the TM, had both ears cut off in 1637 for his attack against episcopacy.
11 “Preist” and the longer “Presbyter” both derive from the Greek presbyteros.
Psalm 801
1
Thou Shepherd that dost Israel keep
Give ear in time of need,
Who leadest like a flock of sheep
Thy loved Josephs seed,
5
That sitt’st between the Cherubs bright
Between their wings out-spread,
Shine forth, and from thy cloud give light,
And on our foes thy dread.
2
In Ephraims view and Benjamins,
10
And in Manasse’s sight
Awake a thy strength, come, and be seen
To save us by thy might.
3
Turn us again, thy grace divine
To us O God vouchsafe;
15
Cause thou thy face on us to shine
And then we shall be safe.
4
Lord God of Hosts, how long wilt thou,
How long wilt thou declare
Thy b smoaking wrath, and angry brow
20
Against thy peoples praier?
5
Thou feed’st them with the bread of tears,
Their bread with tears they eat,
And mak’st them c largely drink the tears
Wherwith their cheeks are wet.
25
6
A strife thou mak’st us and a prey
To every nieghbour foe,
Among themselves they d laugh, they d play,
And d flouts at us they throw.
7
Return us, and thy grace divine,
30
O God of Hosts vouchsafe;
Cause thou thy face on us to shine,
And then we shall be safe.
8
&
nbsp; A Vine from Ægypt thou hast brought,
Thy free love made it thine,
35
And drov’st out Nations proud and haut
To plant this lovely Vine.
9
Thou did’st prepare for it a place
And root it deep and fast
That it began to grow apace,
40
And fill’d the land at last.
10
With her green shade that cover’d all,
The Hills were over-spread,
Her Bows as high as Cedars tall
Advanc’d their lofty head.
45
11
Her branches on the western side
Down to the Sea she sent,
And upward to that river wide
Her other branches went.
12
Why hast thou laid her Hedges low
50
And brok’n down her Fence,
That all may pluck her, as they go,
With rudest violence?
13
The tusked Boar out of the wood
Up turns it by the roots,
55
Wild Beasts there brouze, and make their food
Her Grapes and tender Shoots.
14
Return now, God of Hosts, look down
From Heav’n, thy Seat divine,
Behold us, but without a frown,
60
And visit this thy Vine.
15
Visit this Vine, which thy right hand
Hath set, and planted long,
And the young branch, that for thy self