The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)

by John Milton

  587–8. set before him… food Cp. Matt. 4. 11: ‘angels came and ministered unto him’. Fletcher describes the angels as presenting Christ with a banquet (CV ii 61).

  589. Ambrosial M.’s Jesus eats ambrosia only at the end of his temptation. Cp. Fletcher’s Christ, who throughout his fast ‘upon ambrosia daily fed’ (CV ii 29).

  Tree of Life Cp. Rev. 22.14: ‘Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life’. Jesus’s eating from the Tree of Life signifies his regaining of the Paradise that Adam lost by eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

  590. Fount of Life Rev. 21. 6.

  596. True image of the Father Heb. 1. 2–3.

  597. bosom of bliss John 1. 18, PL iii 169, 239, 279, x 225.

  597–8. light of light / Conceiving receiving light from the source of all light (the Father). Cp. PL iii 1–12.

  599. tabernacle the human body regarded as the abode of the soul (OED 3c). The metaphor is common in the Bible (Cp. II Pet. 1. 14, II Cor. 5. 1), but the Son’s fleshly tabernacle specifically recalls the Tabernacle as God’s dwelling-place (Exod. 35–40).

  601. habit outward form (OED 1e), with overtones of ‘deportment, posture’ (OED 4) suggesting that the Son has retained divine dignity even when balancing on the tower (notice place and motion).

  605. debel put down in fight (OED), a rare word coined in the sixteenth century from Latin debellare.

  607. *Supplanted dispossessed by treachery (OED 3), caused to fall from a position of power (OED 2), as in ‘He set upon our fyrst parentes in paradyse and by pride supplanted them’ (1522). The etymology (Latin sub, ‘under’, and planta, ‘sole of the foot’) anticipates the treading underfoot that Satan had dreaded at i 53–63 and which the angels prophesy explicitly in lines 620–21. OED’s earliest participial instance (but see PL x 513).

  611. his snares are broke Cp. Ps. 124. 7: ‘The snare is broken, and we are escaped’.

  612. be failed be absent (i.e. ‘has disappeared’).

  613. A fairer Paradise Cp. PL xii 587: ‘A Paradise within thee, happier far’.

  619. autumnal star a comet or meteor. Such bodies were thought to be generated in the atmosphere, so the simile is apt to Satan’s expulsion from the clouds. Cp. PL ii 708–11.

  620. lightning… from heav’n Cp. Christ’s words at Luke 10. 18: ‘I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven’.

  620–21. trod down / Under his feet Cp. Rom. 16. 20 (‘the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly’), Mal. 4. 3 (‘ye shall tread down the wicked… under the soles of your feet’) and Luke 10. 19 (‘I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy’). All of these texts recall God’s curse on the serpent at Gen. 3. 15. Cp. PL x 190.

  622. thy last and deadliest wound After his final defeat, Satan will be cast into ‘the lake of fire’ where he will be ‘tormented day and night for ever and ever’ (Rev. 20. 10).

  624. Abaddon Hell, place of destruction. This is the O.T. meaning of the Hebrew word, which A.V. usually renders as ‘destruction’ (Job 26. 6, Prov. 15. 11, 27. 20) and which M. renders as ‘perdition’ in his translation of Ps. 88. 11. At Rev. 9. 11 Abaddon is the angel of the bottomless pit.

  628. holds places of refuge, strongholds (OED sb1 9, 10). Babylon is ‘the hold of every foul spirit’ at Rev. 18. 2.

  possession both military (of holds) and demonic.

  630–32. herd of swine… before their time In Matt. 8. 28–34 Jesus meets two people possessed of devils, and the devils cry out: ‘art thou come hither to torment us before the time?’ The devils then ask permission to enter a herd of swine, Jesus consents, and the swine plunge into the sea and are drowned. Cp. Mark 5. 1–13, Luke 8. 26–33.

  636. meek Cp. Matt. 11. 29: ‘I am meek and lowly in heart’.

  SAMSON AGONISTES

  SA appeared in 1671, in the same volume as PR. The date of composition is not known. The traditional dating is 1666–70, but W. R. Parker has argued for the late 1640s or early 1650s. He has convinced several editors. Edward Phillips informs us that PR was written between 1667 and 1670, but of SA he says only that the date of composition ‘cannot certainly be concluded’ (Darbishire 75). It is possible that different parts were written at different times. Some lines were almost certainly written after 1660, for they have a strong topical relevance. See esp. 678–704 and note. In the title, agonistes is a Greek word meaning ‘contestant in the games’ or ‘champion’. Here it refers to Samson’s display of strength in Dagon’s temple, and so (in the manner of such Greek titles as Prometheus Bound or Oedipus at Colonus) indicates which episode in the hero’s life the drama will present. Edward Phillips compiled a dictionary, in which he defines ‘agonize’ as ‘play the champion’. M.’s chorus call Samson God’s ‘champion’ (705,1152, 1751). Agon is also a term from Greek tragedy, where it denotes a set-piece (usually a distinct scene) in which two hostile characters confront each other with opposing speeches of about equal length. See Michael Lloyd, The Agon in Euripides (1992). Samson’s confrontations with Dalila and Harapha are agones in this sense. In Christian usage, the word implied a spiritual struggle. Jesus’s ‘agony’ at Luke 22. 44 is called an agonia in the Greek. The name ‘Samson’ was thought to mean ‘there the second time’. Phillips so derives it in his dictionary. This (false) etymology may have suggested M.’s idea of a second encounter with Dalila (not found in Judges).

  Preface: OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM…

  3. Aristotle See Poetics vi on tragic catharsis.

  8–10. so in physic… humours The analogy between tragic catharsis and homoeopathic medicine (‘like cures like’) is not Aristotelian, but is found in such Renaissance critics as Minturno, Guarini, and Heinsius. Minturno and Guarini are less hospitable than M. to pity and fear, which they maintain is driven out, not reduced to just measure. Heinsius is closer to M. but he limits the catharsis to pity and fear, not other such like passions.

  14. a verse of Euripides ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners’ (I Cor. 15. 33), quoted by St Paul from a Euripidean fragment that had become proverbial.

  15. Paraeus David Paraeus (1548–1622), a German Calvinist. M. refers to chapter 8 of his In Divinam Apocalypsin (1618), which had been translated by Elias Arnold as On the Divine Apocalypse (1644).

  20. Dionysius Dionysius I of Syracuse (c. 430–367 BC, Tyrant from 405). He was a patron of the arts, and bought the writing tablets of Aeschylus. His own poems were often ridiculed, but his tragedy The Ransoming of Hector won first prize at the Athenian Lenaea in the year of his death.

  21. Augustus Caesar Suetonius reports that Augustus destroyed his unfinished tragedy Ajax (Caesars ii 85).

  23. Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC–AD 65). Seneca the Stoic philosopher was the same person as Seneca the tragedian, but this was not yet known in M.’s time, hence M.’s caution in identifying them.

  25. Gregory Nazianzen Bishop of Constantinople (329–389). He was long thought to have written Christus Patiens (Christ Suffering), but his authorship is now doubted.

  30. interludes comic stage-plays.

  32. sadness seriousness (OED 2).

  trivial commonplace (OED 5).

  35. prologue a prefatory address (the modern sense), not to be confused with Aristotle’s sense (part of a tragedy preceding the chorus’s entrance).

  37. Martial… epistle Martial prefaces five of his twelve books of Epigrams with prose epistles. The epistle to Epig. ii notes that tragedies and comedies may need epistles since ‘they cannot speak for themselves’.

  45. *monostrophic repeating one strophic (stanzaic) arrangement.

  apolelymenon Greek ‘freed’ (from the obligation to repeat stanzaic patterns).

  46. strophe (lit. ‘turning’) the stanza sung by the Greek chorus as it danced from right to left across the orchestra. The antistrophe (‘counter-turning’) was a metrically identical stanza sung by the chorus as it moved back again. The chorus then stood still to sing the
epode in a different metre, to a different tune. M. is correct in thinking that these metrical divisions were framed only for the music.

  50. *alloeostropha Greek ‘of irregular strophes’.

  54. the fifth act Greek tragedies did not strictly adhere to a five-act structure, but they are generally divided by choruses into four or five episodes. SA can be so divided into five acts: Act I (lines 1–325), Act II (lines 326–709), Act III (lines 710–1060), Act IV (lines 1061–1296), Act V (lines 1297-end). produced prolonged, extended in time (OED 2c).

  style and uniformity diction and consistency of characterization (see Aristotle, Poetics xxii and xv).

  55. explicit *simple (OED 1). Aristotle (Poetics vi) classes plots as either simple or complex (intricate). His preference was for complex plots in which an action brings about the opposite of what was intended. SA fits this description.

  56. economy *arrangement of a poem (OED 7), the ‘putting together of the incidents’ (Aristotle, Poetics vi).

  57. decorum literary propriety (OED 1), as in Of Education (1644): ‘what the laws are of a true Epic poem, what of a Dramatic, what of a Lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand master peece to observe’ (YP 2. 405).

  61. circumscription of time Aristotle’s ‘unity of time’, whereby tragedy ‘tries’ to confine itself to one day. Renaissance neo-classical critics hardened Aristotle’s ‘unity of time’ into a rule, even though several Greek tragedies do not accord with it.

  Argument

  2. workhouse where vagrants and the unemployed poor were forced to work in return for food and shelter (OED 1).

  6. equals people of about the same age (OED B 1c).

  20. second time The Public Officer gives Samson two opportunities (1310, 1390) to obey him. There may be a pun on ‘Samson’ (thought to mean ‘there the second time’).

  25. catastrophe the change (Greek ‘overturning’) that produces the conclusion of a drama: the dénouement.

  26. by accident as a secondary effect (as in Latin per accidens). M. might be justifying Samson’s suicide (which had been an obstacle to his sainthood). See below, 503–15n, 1584n, 1664–5n and Krouse (49).

  1–2. A little… on Cp. the blind Oedipus led by Antigone in Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 1–13, and the blind Tiresias led by his daughter in Euripides, Phoenician Women 834–5.

  5. servile befitting a slave.

  6. else enjoined me otherwise imposed on me.

  9. draught inhaled air.

  11. day-spring daybreak.

  13. Dagon their sea-idol the chief Philistine god, a ‘sea-monster, upward man / And downward fish’ (PL i 462–3).

  15. superstition idolatrous religion (OED 2).

  16. popular made by the populace.

  19–20. thoughts… hornets Cp. PR i 196–7. Spenser likens ‘thoughts’ to ‘flyes’ (FQ II ix 51).

  22. what once I was, and what am now Cp. Satan’s ‘bitter memory / Of what he was, what is’ (PL iv 24–5).

  23–4. foretold / Twice Judges 13. 3–5 and 13. 10–23.

  27. charioting Cp. Judges 13. 20: ‘the angel… ascended in the flame of the altar’. Josephus, Antiquities v 8, says that the angel ascended ‘by means of the smoke, as by a vehicle’.

  31. separate to God Cp. Judges 13.7: ‘the child shall be a Nazarite to God’. ‘Nazarite’ derives from Hebrew nazar, ‘to separate oneself. Cp. Num. 6. 2–5: ‘When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord: he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink… All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head’.

  34. gaze spectacle, gazing stock.

  35. task compulsion (OED 4c).

  38–9. Promise… deliver See Judges 13. 5. Samson misrepresents the prophecy. The angel did not say that Samson would deliver Israel; he said that Samson would ‘begin to deliver Israel’.

  41. Gaza one of the chief Philistine cities (called Azza in 147).

  45. but through were it not for.

  53–6. what is strength… subtleties Cp. Sophocles, Ajax 1250–54. Horace, Odes III iv 65, Ovid, Met. xiii 365.

  55. secure overconfident (OED 1).

  57. subserve *serve as a subordinate (OED 3a).

  61. dispensation divine providence (OED 5).

  63. Suffices it suffices for me to know.

  bane ruin.

  67. complain including ‘lament’.

  70. prime work first creation.

  extinct extinguished.

  70–71. Light… delight punningly suggesting that objects of delight give pleasure because they reflect light.

  72. Annulled reduced to nothingness. Cp. ‘unessential Night’ (PL ii 438–40). M. did not believe in creation ex nihilo.

  77. still always.

  82. all any whatever (OED 4).

  87. silent of the moon: not shining (OED 5a, first recorded 1646). Luna silens was a Latin phrase for a dark moon (cp. Virgil, Aen. ii 255). The metaphor is pathetically appropriate to Samson, who can hear, but not see.

  89. vacant at leisure (OED 4). The ancients supposed that the moon rested in a cave during the interlunar period between old and new moons. Vacant also implies empty space.

  93. She all in every part The idea that the soul was diffused throughout the body was a patristic and neo-Platonic commonplace. M. accepts the doctrine in CD i 7 (YP 6. 321).

  95. obvious exposed, liable (OED 2).

  quenched deprived of sight (a sense coined by M. in PL iii 25).

  103. exempt both ‘not liable to’ and ‘taken away from’ (OED 1a), as in: ‘exempt from Mortal Earth’ (1697).

  106. obnoxious liable, exposed to (OED 1a).

  115. This, this is he Cp. Arcades 5 and 17: ‘This this is she’.

  118. at random without care (OED 3).

  diffused *extended, spread out (OED v 3).

  119. languished drooping.

  122. In slavish habit dressed like a slave.

  weeds clothes.

  123. O’erworn shabby, threadbare.

  124. Can this be he Cp. PL i 84: ‘If thou beest he’.

  128. tore the lion Judges 14. 6.

  129. embattled drawn up in battle array.

  131. forgery the craft of forging metal (with a hint that forged weapons merely counterfeit Samson’s authentic strength).

  132. cuirass breastplate.

  133. *Chalybean The Chalybes were a Black Sea tribe famous for their forging of iron.

  134. *Adamantean proof proof armour (OED 10c) as strong as (or capable of resisting) adamant – a mythical substance of impenetrable hardness.

  136. *insupportably irresistibly.

  137. tools weapons, swords (OED 1b).

  138. Spurned trampled (OED 5).

  Ascalonite Ascalon was one of five Philistine cities.

  139. *ramp act of ramping (OED sb3). Lions were said to ‘ramp’ when they stood on their hind legs and raised their forepaws in the air (a threatening posture).

  142. trivial both ‘paltry’ and ‘found at a place where three roads meet’ (OED 3, from Latin trivium). In Judges 15. 15–16 Samson finds the jaw of a dead ass and kills a thousand Philistines with it.

  144. foreskins uncircumcised Philistines. Israelites collected their enemies’ foreskins as military trophies (Flannagan).

  145. Ramath-lechi The marginal note to A.V. Judges 15. 17 takes the name to mean the ‘lifting up’ or ‘casting away of the jawbone’.

  147. Azza Gaza. See Judges 16. 3 for Samson’s lifting of the gates.

  148. Hebron, seat of giants Hebron had been settled by ‘the sons of Anak, which come of the giants’ (Num. 13. 33).

  149. No journey of a sabbath day Jewish law restricted travel on the sabbath to about three-quarters of a mile (Jerusalem Targum on Exod. 16. 29). Samson carried the massive gates from Gaza to Hebron – about forty miles.

  150. whom… heaven the Titan Atlas, who bore heaven on his shoulders.

  156–8. thy soul… Imprisone
d Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy held that the soul was imprisoned in the body. Such dualistic complaints are without cause because M.’s materialist God did not create the body as a prison. But Samson is imprisoned now indeed in his blind body.

  161. incorporate unite with so as to form one body (OED 5). Cp. PL x 816, where Adam becomes ‘incorporate’ with Death.

  163 Puts forth no visual beam It was thought that eyes saw by emitting a beam. Cp. Uriel’s ‘visual ray’ (PL iii 620).

  165 Since man on earth unparalleled ‘unparalleled since man was on earth’.

  170 high estate Aristotle thought that the tragic hero should come from an illustrious family (Poetics xiii).

  172 sphere of fortune Fortune’s wheel (here imagined to be a globe).

  181 Eshtaol and Zora Samson was born at Zora (Judges 13. 2), and he was first moved by the Spirit ‘in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol’ (Judges 13. 25). He was buried between the two towns (Judges 16. 31).

  184 swage assuage.

  185. tumours the ‘swellings’ of passion (OED 4a). See below, 605n, for the proverbial healing power of words in tragedy.

  186. balm aromatic ointment used for healing wounds (OED 5).

  190. superscription inscription on a coin.

  190–91. of the most / I would be understood i.e. ‘what I say is true of most people’.

  197. heave the head Cp. the fallen Satan at PL i 210–11: ‘nor ever thence / Had ris’n or heaved his head’.

  203. proverbed Cp. Ps. 69. 11: ‘I became a proverb to them’, and Job 30. 9: ‘And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword’ (Vulgate and Junius-Tremellius have proverbium).

  209. transverse off course (continuing the nautical metaphor).

  210. Tax blame.

  disposal divine management of events.

  212. pretend they ne’er so wise ‘however wise they claim to be’.

  216. wed Philistian women Samson’s first wife, the woman of Timna, was a Philistine (Judges 14. 1). The Bible does not say that Delilah was a Philistine, or that she was married to Samson. M.’s interpretation had strong patristic support, but there was a rival exegetical tradition which saw Delilah as Samson’s concubine. Cajetan had even argued that she was an Israelite. See Krouse (76).