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10 Greatest Poems Written by John Milton

 The Society  November 7, 2017  Best Poems, Culture, Epic, Essays, Poetry 9 Comments

John Milton (Born December 9, 1608 – died November 8, 1674) was an English poet of the late Renaissance period. He is most noted for his epic poem on the fall of Satan and Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost, which he composed after having gone blind. He studied at Cambridge University and was proficient in Latin, Greek, and Italian.  His Puritan faith and opposition to the Church of England led to his involvement in the English Civil War. After the ascension of the Puritan general and parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell over the Commonwealth of England, Milton was given a high position, making him essentially head propagandist.

10 Greatest Poems Written by John Milton

by Peter G. Epps

So, a Milton top ten, eh? This is made the more challenging because Milton’s most famous works are very long, and because outside of those major works he didn’t widely publish his poems. We could dig back into his schoolboy days, or find lots of macaronic verse in several languages at once, and a better Latinist than I am might want to propose some of his Latin verse (or his Italian verse), but I’m going to stick to the English. I have chosen some very long excerpts from the long works, below, but am still counting Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes as just one poem each for the top ten. As a result, we get quite a range of works here. I am willing to admit that there could be a lot of argument about the bottom six, but in the top four I think the only argument is about which order—not a few people would place “Methought I saw my late-espoused saint” at number one, and perhaps even many of those who have read both would rank Paradise Lost above Samson Agonistes. I’ll defend my ranking, though, as we read through them.

If you want to study these more, the gold standard is still Roy Flannagan’s edition The Riverside Milton. A public version of his complete poetical works can be found here. Dartmouth University also offers a good Milton resource here.

 

Number 10: “Song on May Morning” (1632–33)

NOW the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger,

Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her

The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire

Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!

Woods and groves are of thy dressing;

Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.

Thus we salute thee with our early song,

And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

 

Our first poem is a pretty simple poem from a very young Milton (as the next two will be, as well). Think of this as establishing a baseline for Milton. We see here several of the habits Milton will carry with him: strong caesuras, heavily periodic sentences, a very rhetorical mode, and strong use of both consonant and vowel sounds to reinforce a rhythm. Milton generally sounds best when read with attention to the open-mouth vowels of English, and in a full voice; compare the “loud” syllables of Milton with the “smooth” sound that Keats (a Cockney!) will write much later, or with Tennyson.

 

Number 9: “Il Penseroso” (1633)

William Blake’s illustration for “Il’Penseroso”

HENCE, vain deluding Joys,

___The brood of Folly without father bred!

How little you bested,

___Or fill the fixèd mind with all your toys!

Dwell in some idle brain,

___And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,

As thick and numberless

___As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,

Or likest hovering dreams,

___The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train.

But hail! thou Goddess sage and holy!

Hail, divinest Melancholy!

Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight,

And therefore to our weaker view

O’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue;

Black, but such as in esteem

Prince Memnon’s sister might beseem,

Or that starred Ethiop Queen that strove

To set her beauty’s praise above

The Sea-Nymphs, and their powers offended.

Yet thou art higher far descended:

Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore

To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she; in Saturn’s reign

Such mixture was not held a stain.

Oft in glimmering bowers and glades

He met her, and in secret shades

Of woody Ida’s inmost grove,

Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove.

Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,

Sober, steadfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,

Flowing with majestic train,

And sable stole of cypress lawn

Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

Come; but keep thy wonted state,

With even step, and musing gait,

And looks commercing with the skies,

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:

There, held in holy passion still,

Forget thyself to marble, till

With a sad leaden downward cast

Thou fix them on the earth as fast.

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet,

Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,

And hears the Muses in a ring

Aye round about Jove’s altar sing;

And add to these retirèd Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure;

But, first and chieftest, with thee bring

Him that yon soars on golden wing,

Guiding the fiery-wheelèd throne,

The Cherub Contemplation;

And the mute Silence hist along,

’Less Philomel will deign a song,

In her sweetest saddest plight,

Smoothing the rugged brow of Night,

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke

Gently o’er the accustomed oak.

Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

Thee, Chauntress, oft the woods among

I woo, to hear they even-song;

And, missing thee, I walk unseen

On the dry smooth-shaven green,

To behold the wandering Moon,

Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray

Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,

And oft, as if her head she bowed,

Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground,

I hear the far-off curfew sound,

Over some wide-watered shore,

Swinging slow with sullen roar;

Or, if the air will not permit,

Some still removèd place will fit,

Where glowing embers through the room

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,

Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth,

Or the Bellman’s drowsy charm

To bless the doors from nightly harm.

Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,

Be seen in some high lonely tower,

Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,

With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere

The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds or what vast regions hold

The immortal mind that hath forsook

Her mansion in this fleshly nook;

And of those Dæmons that are found

In fire, air, flood, or underground,

Whose power hath a true consent

With planet or with element.

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy

In sceptred pall come sweeping by,

Presenting Thebs, or Pelops’ line,

Or the tale of Troy divine,

Or what (though rare) or later age

Ennobled hath the buskined stage.

But, O sad Virgin! that thy power

Might raise Musæus from his bower;

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing

Such notes as, warbled to the string,

Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,

And made Hell grant what Love did seek;

Or call up him that left half-told

The story of Cambuscan bold,

Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

And who had Canace to wife,

That owned the virtuous ring and glass,

And of the wondrous horse of brass

On which the Tartar King did ride;

And if aught else great Bards beside

In sage and solemn tunes have sung,

Of turneys, and of trophies hung,

Of forests, and inchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career,

Till civil-suited Morn appear,

Not tricked and frounced, as she wont

With the Attic boy to hunt,

But kerchieft in a comely cloud,

While rocking winds are piping loud,

Or ushered with a shower still,

When the gust hath blown his fill,

Ending on the rustling leaves,

With minute drops from off the eaves.

And, when the sun begins to fling

His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring

To archèd walks of twilight groves,

And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,

Of pine, or monumental oak,

Where the rude axe with heaved stroke

Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt,

Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.

There, in close covert, by some brook,

Where no profaner eye may look,

Hide me from Day’s garish eye,

While the bee with honeyed thigh,

That at her flowery work doth sing,

And the waters murmuring,

With such consort as they keep,

Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep.

And let some strange mysterious dream,

Wave at his wings in airy stream,

Of lively portraiture displayed,

Softly on my eyelids laid.

And as I wake, sweet music breathe

Above, about, or underneath,

Sent by some Spirit to mortals good,

Or the unseen Genius of the wood.

But let my due feet never fail

To walk the studious cloister’s pale,

And love the high embowèd roof,

With antick pillars massy proof,

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow,

To the full voiced Quire below,

In service high and anthems clear,

As may with sweetness, through mine ear,

Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.

And may at last my weary age

Find out the peaceful hermitage,

The hairy gown and mossy cell,

Where I may sit and rightly spell,

Of every star that Heaven doth shew,

And every hearb that sips the dew;

Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain.

These pleasures, Melancholy, give

And I with thee will choose to live.

 

We’ll save the commentary until you’ve had a chance to read Number 8, “L’Allegro,” as well.

 

Number 8: “L’Allegro” (1633)

William Blake’s illustration for “L’Allegro”

HENCE, loathèd Melancholy,

___Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn

___’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,

Find out some uncouth cell,

___Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

___There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

But come, thou Goddess fair and free,

In heaven yclep’d Euphrosyne,

And by men, heart-easing Mirth,

Whom lovely Venus at a birth

With two sister Graces more

To ivy-crownèd Bacchus bore;

Or whether (as some sager sing)

The frolic Wind that breathes the spring,

Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a-Maying,

There on beds of violets blue,

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,

Filled her with thee, a daughter fair,

So buxom, blithe and debonair.

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee

Jest and youthful Jollity,

Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,

Nods, and Becks, and wreathèd Smiles,

Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,

And love to live in dimple sleek;

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter holding both his sides.

Come, and trip it as ye go,

On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee

The mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;

And, if I give thee honour due,

Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,

In unreprovèd pleasures free;

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And singing startle the dull night,

From his watch-tower in the skies,

Till the dappled Dawn doth rise;

Then to come, in spite of sorrow,

And at my window bid good-morrow,

Through the sweet-briar or the vine,

Or the twisted eglantine;

While the cock with lively din

Scatters the rear of Darkness thin;

And to the stack, or the barn-door,

Stoutly struts his dames before:

Oft listening how the hounds and horn

Cheerily rouse the slumbering Morn,

From the side of some hoar hill,

Through the high wood echoing shrill:

Sometime walking, not unseen,

By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,

Right against the eastern gate,

Where the great Sun begins his state,

Robed in flames and amber light,

The clouds in thousand liveries dight;

While the ploughman, near at hand,

Whistles o’er the furrowed land,

And the milkmaid singeth blithe,

And the mower whets his scythe,

And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,

Whilst the lantskip round it measures:

Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;

Mountains on whose barren breast

The labouring clouds do often rest;

Meadows trim with daisies pied;

Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.

Towers and battlements it sees

Bosomed high in tufted trees,

Where perhaps some Beauty lies,

The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes

From betwixt two aged oaks,

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met

Are at their savoury dinner set

Of hearbs and other country messes,

Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;

And then in haste her bower she leaves,

With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;

Or, if the earlier season lead,

To the tanned haycock in the mead.

Sometimes with secure delight

The upland hamlets will invite,

When the merry bells ring round,

And the jocond rebecks sound

To many a youth and many a maid

Dancing in the chequered shade;

And young and old come forth to play

On a sunshine holyday,

Till the livelong daylight fail:

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

With stories told of many a feat,

How fairy Mab the junkets eat:

She was pinched and pulled, she said;

And he, by Friar’s lanthorn led,

Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat

To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn

That ten day-labourers could not end;

Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,

And, stretched out all the chimney’s length,

Basks at the fire his hairy strength,

And crop-full out of doors he flings,

Ere the first cock his matin rings.

Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

By whispering winds soon lulled asleep.

Towered cities please us then,

And the busy hum of men,

Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold,

In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,

With store of Ladies, whose bright eyes

Rain influence, and judge the prize

Of wit or arms, while both contend

Of win her grace whom all commend.

There let Hymen oft appear

In saffron robe, with taper clear,

And pomp, and feast, and revelry,

With mask and antique pageantry;

Such sights as youthful Poets dream

On summer eves by haunted stream.

Then to the well-trod stage anon,

If Johnson’s learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,

Warble his native wood-notes wild.

And ever, against eating cares,

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,

Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce,

In notes with many a winding bout

Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out

With wanton heed and giddy cunning,

The melting voice through mazes running,

Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony;

That Orpheus’ self may heave his head

From golden slumber on a bed

Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto to have quite set free

His half-regained Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

 

We are still witnessing a pretty young Milton, here (all of the bottom four are from his early twenties, as Number 7 will make quite clear). He is not yet party to the regicide, not yet the tragic figure of his late career, after being Cromwell’s Latin Secretary. He revels in Renaissance context and allusions to classical literature; we are in the world of Botticelli, of Shakespeare cribbing from Boccaccio, as we read this phase of Milton’s work. Be sure not to make the mistake I almost make every time I read “L’Allegro” of thinking Samuel Johnson when you read “If Johnson’s learned sock be on”—we are, of course, talking about Ben Jonson, here. Note the lovely self-illustrating line “native wood-notes wild,” possibly more famous to many of us from Shaw’s Pygmalion or the its musical adapation My Fair Lady. Milton considers Jonson’s work to be studied and erudite, Shakespeare’s to be full of “giddy cunning,” so apparently he subscribes to the popular myth that Shakespeare (who Jonson said knew “small Latin and less Greek”) was a one-draft wonder writer. This poem gives us wonderful insight into Milton’s character, and paired with “Il Penseroso” we can clearly see Milton’s sense of play and his sense of purpose competing, like Jonson and the “upstart crow” Shakespeare, for mastery.

 

Number 7: “On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-Three” (1631)

HOW soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!

My hasting days fly on with full career,

But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.

Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,

That I to manhood am arrived so near,

And inward ripeness doth much less appear,

That some more timely-happy spirits indu’th.

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even

To that same lot, however mean or high,

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven,

All is, if I have grace to use it so,

As ever in my great Task-master’s eye

 

I freely admit that I have a prejudice for sonnets, even though Samuel Johnson lamentably said the form “is not very suitable to the English language, and has not been used by any man of eminence since Milton.” Whatever the merits of Johnson’s definition, it is true that Milton was the last major practitioner in the line of sonnetteers that led from Wyatt and Surrey, through Sidney and Donne and Spenser and Shakespeare, to Milton. Milton’s sonnets, based on the Petrarchan model that Wyatt and Surrey freely adapted into English, often have only two rhymes in the sestet, and so are more difficult than Shakespeare’s version of the English sonnet (though Spenser’s rhyme scheme is more difficult yet). Like most English practitioners of the sonnet, Milton also likes to have an epigrammatic couplet at the end, though in Milton this couplet is typically marked by syntactic closure, not by rhyme. Notice the delayed predicate in the sestet (look in earlier lines to discover what “is”), and the way Milton uses some very difficult syntax to create a tension about meaning, purpose, and direction that is resolved in the closing couplet.

 

Number 6: “To Cyriack Skinner” (1656)

CYRIACK, whose grandsire on the royal bench

Of British Themis, with no mean applause,

Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,

Which others at their bar so often wrench,

To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench

In mirth that after no repenting draws;

Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,

And what the Swede intend, and what the French.

To measure life learn thou betimes, and know

Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;

For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,

And disapproves that care, though wise in show,

That with superfluous burden loads the day,

And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

 

Leaping ahead much later in his career. This solid, friendly sonnet is full of historical and contemporary references, has wonderful aural play in the rhymes (“wrench” and “drench” and “French”!), and reflects in one sonnet all the themes we’ve seen so far. And in anticipation of the use of “wait” in “On His Blindness,” note the use of “refrains” here: used here as in “holds back” from unnecessarily burdensome work, embracing leisure, of course; but also appearing in the last line, the position of a “refrain” in sung music. This is not an accident, we may be sure, because “measure” and “time” are already at work in the sestet. When we choose well what “solid good” of leisure we will enjoy by agreeing to “drench / in mirth” the unnecessary burdens of the day, with good friends, we have Milton’s full support. I hope Cyriack Skinner dropped by for a beer after receiving this note!

 

Number 5: “On Shakespeare” (1630)

WHAT needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,

The labour of an age in pilèd stones?

Or that his hollowed relics should be hid

Under a stary-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving;

And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

 

Back to youth, and still very much living in the tension between Milton’s own impatient aspirations to be both deeply learned and intuitively artistic—Milton’s uptake of the Renaissance virtuoso—acted out in the history of Jonson’s “slow-endeavouring art” that paid Shakespeare the doubtful tribute of treating him as a Wunderkind rather than a craftsman. The closing couplet is direct homage to the frequent preoccupation with literary immortality found in Shakespeare’s own sonnets. Shakespeare’s actual grave is, of course, quite humble and the source of many little literary mysteries.

 

Number 4: Paradise Lost (1667)

Illustration of Adam and Eve talking to Gabriel, by Gustave Dore

I won’t drench these in commentary; the great epic speaks for itself. Instead, I’ll quickly mention where each passage falls in the story, and then let you read for yourself.

We must begin, of course, with the invocation—and do not fail to notice how much conscious craftsmanship is packed in here. Start with the very first sentence, in which we are already primed to expect a narrative of “the fruit” of humanity’s subjection to the rule of Dis, the fictional City of Hell:

 

OF MAN’S first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed

In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,

Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss,

And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support;

That, to the highth of this great argument,

I may assert Eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

 

And although after Blake many a reader has, through an education which promotes the Promethean at the expense of other humane concerns, or through sheer laziness, stopped after the raging Satanic debate of the first two books, I think much of the best of Paradise Lost is in Book Four. It opens with the Mount Niphates soliloquy, as the evil one creeps into the world and is so struck with the majesty of human creatures that he almost reconsiders his plan—and then breaks logic and syntax to shreds in order to assert his deformed will against his Creator:

தோற்றுப்போன மனிதனின் 

இற்றுப்போன மானிட வாசனை மீது

ஆவேசமாக பாய்ந்தான் சைத்தான்.

மனிதனை குற்றம் சாட்டி வதைக்கும் 

வெறித்தீயே 

அவனிடம் கொழுந்து விட்டு எரிந்தது.

யுத்தத்தின் முதல் படிக்கட்டிலேயே

வீழ்ந்து கிடக்கும் மனிதனை

நரகத்தை நோக்கி சிறகுவிரித்து

வீசப்படும் மனிதனை சைத்தான்

கண்ணுற்றான்.

 

Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,

The tempter, ere the accuser, of mankind,

To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss

Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell.

Yet not rejoicing in his speed, though bold

Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,

Begins his dire attempt; which, nigh the birth

Now rowling, boils in his tumultuous breast,

And like a devilish engine back recoils

Upon himself. Horror and doubt distract

His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir

The hell within him; for within him Hell

He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell

One step, no more than from Himself, can fly

By change of place. Now conscience wakes despair

That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory

Of what he was, what is, and what must be

Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue!

Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view

Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;

Sometimes towards Heaven and the full-blazing Sun,

Which now sat high in his meridian tower:

Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began:—

“O thou that, with surpassing glory crowned,

Look’st from thy sole dominion like the god

Of this new World—at whose sight all the stars

Hide their diminished heads—to thee I call,

But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,

O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,

That bring to my remembrance from what state

I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere,

Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,

Warring in Heaven against Heaven’s matchless King!

Ah, wherefore? He deserved no such return

From me, whom he created what I was

In that bright eminence, and with his good

Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.

What could be less than to afford him praise,

The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks,

How due? Yet all his good proved ill in me,

And wrought but malice. Lifted up so high,

I ’sdained subjection, and thought one step higher

Would set me highest, and in a moment quit

The debt immense of endless gratitude,

So burthensome, still paying, still to owe;

Forgetful what from him I still received;

And understood not that a grateful mind

By owing owes not, but still pays, at once

Indebted and discharged—what burden then?

Oh, had his powerful destiny ordained

Me some inferior Angel, I had stood

Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised

Ambition. Yet why not? Some other Power

As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,

Drawn to his part. But other Powers as great

Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within

Or from without to all temptations armed!

Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?

Thou hadst. Whom has thou then, or what, to accuse,

But Heaven’s free love dealt equally to all?

Be then his love accursed, since, love or hate,

To me alike it deals eternal woe.

Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will

Chose freely what it now so justly rues.

Me miserable! which way shall I fly

Infinite wrauth and infinite despair?

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;

And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep

Still threatening to devour me opens wide,

To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.

O, then, at last relent! Is there no place

Left for repentence, none for pardon left?

None left but by submission; and that word

Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame

Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced

With other promises and other vaunts

Than to submit, boasting I could subdue

The Omnipotent. Aye me! they little know

How dearly I abide that boast so vain,

Under what torments inwardly I groan.

While they adore me on the throne of Hell,

With diadem and sceptre high advanced,

The lower still I fall, only supreme

In misery: such joy ambition finds!

But say I could repent, and could obtain,

By act of grace, my former state; how soon

Would highth recal high thoughts, how soon unsay

What feigned submission swore! Ease would recant

Vows made in pain, as violent and void

(For never can true reconcilement grow

Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep)

Which would but lead me to a worse relapse

And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear

Short intermission, bought with double smart.

This knows my Punisher; therefore as far

From granting he, as I from begging, peace.

All hope excluded thus, behold, instead

Of us, outcast, exiled, his new delight,

Mankind, created, and for him this World!

So farewell hope, and, with hope, farewell fear,

Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;

Evil, be thou my Good: by thee at least

Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold,

By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;

As Man ere long, and this new World, shall know.”

 

And then, of course, we also have the gratuitous, luxuriant description of the garden prepared for Adam and Eve, and their love-play in the bower, culminating in what one of my first graduate

school professors called “the most erotically astute line ever penned”:

 

In this pleasant soil

His far more pleasant garden God ordained.

Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow

All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;

And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,

High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit

Of vegetable gold; and next to life,

Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by—

Knowledge of good, bought dear by knowing ill.

Southward through Eden went a river large,

Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill

Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown

That mountain, as his garden-mould, high raised

Upon the rapid current, which, through veins

Of porous earth with kindly thirst updrawn,

Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill

Watered the garden; thence united fell

Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,

Which from his darksome passage now appears,

And now, divided into four main streams,

Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm

And country whereof here needs no account;

But rather to tell how, if Art could tell

How, from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,

Rowling on orient pearl and sands of gold,

With mazy error under pendant shades

Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed

Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art

In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon

Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,

Both where the morning sun first warmly smote

The open field, and where the unpierced shade

Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was this place,

A happy rural seat of various view:

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm,

Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,

Hung amiable—Hesperian fables true,

If true, here only—and of delicious taste.

Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks

Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,

Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap

Of some irriguous valley spread her store,

Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.

Another side, umbrageous grots and caves

Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine

Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps

Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall

Down the slope hills dispersed, or in a lake,

That to the fringèd bank with myrtle crowned

Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.

The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune

The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,

Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair field

Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers,

Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis

Was gathered—which cost Ceres all that pain

To seek her through the world—nor that sweet grove

Of Daphne, by Orontes and the inspired

Castalian spring, might with this Paradise

Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle,

Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,

Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,

Hid Amalthea, and her florid son,

Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea’s eye;

Nor, where Abassin kings their issue guard,

Mount Amara (though this by some supposed

True Paradise) under the Ethiop line

By Nilus’ head, enclosed with shining rock,

A whole day’s journey high, but wide remote

From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend

Saw undelighted all delight, all kind

Of living creatures, new to sight and strange.

Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,

God—like erect, with native honour clad

In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,

And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine

The image of their glorious Maker shon,

Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure—

Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,

Whence true authority in men: though both

Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;

For contemplation he and valour formed,

For softness she and sweet attractive grace;

He for God only, she for God in him.

His fair large front and eye sublime declared

Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin locks

Round from his parted forelock manly hung

Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:

She, as a veil down to the slender waist,

Her unadornèd golden tresses wore

Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved

As the vine curls her tendrils—which implied

Subjection, but required with gentle sway,

And by her yielded, by him best received—

Yielded, with coy submission, modest pride,

And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.

 

We can all debate whether the account of the War in Heaven and Raphael’s long speech about world history and redemption history are scintillating reading—Edgar Allan Poe, in his typically outspoken style, denied it was poetry—but it is a mistake to give up on Paradise Lost before the end. We open with Adam’s speech of resignation after his last exchange with Raphael, which I think we should understand to also be Milton’s admission of defeat in the hubristic aim of the invocation (which may, in its way, be the only answer possible to Milton’s problem, and Adam’s). Having gained “the sum / Of wisdom” the sad way, Adam and Eve are positioned in the middle all humanity has lived in since their day: between vast failures and vast possibilities, between remembered reasons for sorrow and tangible reasons for hope.

 

He ended; and thus Adam last replied:—

“How soon hath thy prediction, Seer blest,

Measured this transient World, the race of Time,

Till Time stand fixed! Beyond is all abyss—

Eternity, whose end no eye can reach.

Greatly instructed I shall hence depart,

Greatly in peace of thought, and have my fill

Of knowledge, what this vessel can contain;

Beyond which was my folly to aspire.

Henceforth I learn that to obey is best,

And love with fear the only God, to walk

As in his presence, ever to observe

His providence, and on him sole depend,

Merciful over all his works, with good

Still overcoming evil, and by small

Accomplishing great things—by things deemed weak

Subverting worldly-strong, and worldly-wise

By simply meek; that suffering for Truth’s sake

Is fortitude to highest victory,

And to the faithful death the gate of life—

Taught this by his example whom I now

Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest.”

To whom thus also the Angel last replied:—

“This having learned, thou hast attained the sum

Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars

Thou knew’st by name, and all the ethereal powers,

All secrets of the Deep, all Nature’s works,

Or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea,

And all the riches of this world enjoy’dst,

And all the rule, one empire. Only add

Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith;

Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love,

By name to come called Charity, the soul

Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth

To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess

A Paradise within thee, happier far.

Let us descend now, therefore, from this top

Of speculation; for the hour precise

Exacts our parting hence; and, see! the guards,

By me encamped on yonder hill, expect

Their motion, at whose front a flaming sword,

In signal of remove, waves fiercely round.

We may no longer stay. Go, waken Eve;

Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed,

Portending good, and all her spirits composed

To meek submission: thou, at season fit,

Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard—

Chiefly what may concern her faith to know,

The great deliverance by her seed to come

(For by the Woman’s Seed) on all mankind—

That ye may live, which will be many days,

Both in one faith unanimous; though sad

With cause for evils past, yet much more cheered

With meditation on the happy end.”

He ended, and they both descend the hill.

Descended, Adam to the bower where Eve

Lay sleeping ran before, but found her waked;

And thus with words not sad she him received:—

“Whence thou return’st and whither went’st I know;

For God is also in sleep, and dreams advise,

Which he hath sent propitious, some great good

Presaging, since, with sorrow and heart’s distress

Wearied, I fell asleep. But now lead on;

In me is no delay; with thee to go

Is to stay here; without thee here to stay

Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me

Art all things under Heaven, all places thou,

Who for my wilful crime art banished hence.

This further consolation yet secure

I carry hence: though all by me is lost,

Such favour I unworthy am voutsafed,

By me the Promised Seed shall all restore.”

So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard

Well pleased, by answered not; for now too nigh

The Archangel stood, and from the other hill

To their fixed station, all in bright array,

The Cherubim descended, on the ground

Gliding meteorous, as evening mist

Risen from a river o’er the marish glides,

And gathers ground fast at the labourer’s heel

Homeward returning. High in front advanced,

The brandished sword of God before them blazed,

Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat,

And vapour at the Libyan air adust,

Began to parch that temperate clime; whereat

In either hand the hastening Angel caught

Our lingering Parents, and to the eastern gate

Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast

To the subjected plain—then disappeared.

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld

Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,

Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate

With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

 

If there is a case to be made that Paradise Lost is truly Milton’s greatest work, I think it must begin with those last lines. Here, let me repeat them for you:

 

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld

Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,

Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate

With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

 

Number 3: “On his Deceased Wife” (1658)

METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,

Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,

Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint.

Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint

Purification in the Old Law did save,

And such as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind.

Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined

So clear as in no face with more delight.

But, oh! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

 

This refers to Milton’s second wife, who was by all accounts his great love match; she died in childbirth after a very short marriage. The suddenness of the closing line steals the breath away, and makes me want to go hug my wife. I will not tarnish this poem with long commentary.