• frequent reliance on archaically tinted vocabulary (I have here modernized spelling, but the attentive reader will not be fooled)
• markedly convoluted syntax, with sentences being stretched (and bent) over many lines
• what modern poets and readers might call a long breath line—rhythms that elongate and tend to roll like the waves of the sea, rather than (as in much modern poetry) poke and dart even as they loll
• reliance on more or less objectified conventions, which are the very farthest thing from “personal” to either the poet or his poem: e.g., the confession in line 3 not only of the poet’s incapacity for this task but of his general poetic ineptitude (he is here called to “a far unfitter task”—and see also “Me, all too mean,” in line 7, and the reference to his “weak wit” and “dull tongue” in the final line of the second stanza)
• a set of assumptions, apparently fixed and settled for all time, about trumpets being “stern” (line 4), knights and ladies “gentle” (line 5) and their prior praises plainly insufficient (line 6), poets and their readers being “learnèd” (line 8), what is old being always good (the “antique rolls” of line 13), royalty invariably “noble” if male and “fair” or even “fairest” if female (lines 14 and 15), and princely suffering being both romantic and unfair (lines 16 and 17)
And there is more. But this is the introduction to a book about John Milton, not Edmund Spenser, vastly influential on Milton as Spenser clearly was. All the same, to nail the point home, let me quickly carry the story of Spenser’s fame and influence into the nineteenth and, just barely, the twentieth century. William Wordsworth, at age thirty-one, was reported on Monday, the sixteenth of November, 1801, to be feeling “some what weakish,” but in compensation (and perhaps as a curative) “now at 7 o’clock reading Spenser” (Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 59). Eight days later, “after tea William read Spenser[,] now and then a little aloud to us,” his wife and sister (62). And on Thursday, the first of July, 1802, said to be “a very rainy day,” we learn that “we had a nice walk, and afterwards sate by a nice snug fire and William read Spenser and I read ‘As you like it’”(144). Plainly, Spenser traveled and was seen to belong in some pretty special company. Indeed, the very first poem in The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, identified therein as “the earliest known composition of Keats,” is an “Imitation of Spenser” (1). Spenser’s tracks are all over the Keats volume, from a “Spenserian Stanza, written at the close of book v. of THE FAERIE QUEENE” (8–9), a sonnet “To Spenser” (42), and three more “Spenserian Stanzas” aimed in 1819 at Charles Armitrage Brown, in response (in Keats’ own words) to “Brown this morning…writing some Spenserian stanzas against Mrs., Miss [Fanny] Brawne and me.”
And Spenser’s reach extends, as I have indicated, a good century further. In an 1858 letter to his sister, sent from Oxford, John Addington Symonds requests that he be sent his copy of Spenser (the request placed, in sequence, between Chaucer and “the large Milton” [The Letters of John Addington Symonds, I, 167]). In another letter home the next year, he asks, “Has a small Spenser in 6 diamond volumes, come for me from Jeffries in Redcliffe Street? I ordered it when I was last in Clifton” (I, 200). Nor did Symonds’ interest flag in later years. Almost thirty years along, he writes to Edmund Gosse, 16 May 1886, from Germany, expressing genuine concern about the possible misattribution of a sixteenth-century poem the style of which “seems to me suspiciously like that of Spenser” (III, 139). Writing in 1896 from his prison cell in Reading, Oscar Wilde requested “Spenser’s Poems,” among other books (The Letters of Oscar Wilde, 405 n). And, finally, in August 1912 Edward Dowden writes that “most of my reading hours were given to Spenser, and once again I went through the ‘Faerie Queene’ (though I can’t say, as Southey did, that I have read it once a year” [Letters of Edward Dowden, 381]).
Yet Milton not only participates in a long and strong tradition, connecting to it in more ways than I can here comment upon, but he has always been, and still remains, an immensely significant, powerful contributor to that tradition. He draws upon Shakespeare (he was born eight years before Shakespeare’s death), as has everyone else. But he also adds to Shakespeare, as most others neither have done nor could do.
He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend
Was moving toward the shore, his ponderous shield,
Ethereal1 temper,2 massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast. The broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan3 artist 4 views
At evening, from the top of Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno, to descry 5 new lands,
Rivers, or mountains in her spotty 6 globe.
His spear—to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast
Of some great ammiral,7 were but a wand 8 —
He walked with, to support uneasy9 steps
Over the burning marl,10 not like those steps
On Heaven’s azure. And the torrid clime
Smote11 on him sore besides, vaulted 12 with fire.
PARADISE LOST, 1:284–98
The sweep and grandeur of this portrait of Satan, struggling to preserve his dignity (not to mention his power) even though newly fallen from the glories of heaven to the sulfurous and smoking fields of hell, is unmatchable in English verse. Virgil and even Homer, had they seen (or heard) Milton’s description of the “ponderous shield, / Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, / Behind him cast,” the “broad circumference” of which “Hung on his shoulders like the moon,” would have recognized and perhaps envied a colleague in and competitor for poetic glory. Milton’s uniquely majestic rhetoric, his commanding poetic “voice,” seem almost the effect of some marvelously benign Midas touch, turning even tawdriness into magnificent resonance.
It is not difficult, of course, to find this side of Milton, especially in Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes but also, in different and younger ways, in Lycidas and, fittingly, in his quite early “On Shakespeare,” probably written when he was only twenty-two. This is the Milton of whom Douglas Bush could declare, “Whoever the third of English poets may be [Shakespeare and Chaucer being overwhelming consensus choices for numbers I and 2], Milton’s place has been next to the throne” (English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, 359). But whether writing about angels or demons, Milton’s touch can also be delicate and lyrically shimmering:
…how he fell
From Heaven they fabled,13 thrown by angry Jove
Sheer14 o’er the crystal battlements.15From morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer’s day, and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith,16 like a falling star….
PARADISE LOST, 1:740–45
His psychological insights, as well as his sense of inner drama, exceed those of every English poet or dramatist but Shakespeare. Here is Satan, newly arrived in view of the Garden of Eden:
…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.
PARADISE LOST, 4:18–23
This patient, careful, almost tender delineation of devilish torment is a good deal more impressive even than that offered in Marlowe’s fine play Doctor Faustus: “How comes it, then,” asks Faustus of the devil, “that thou art out of hell?” And the devil replies, “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it” (The Works of Christopher Marlowe, ed. Brooke, 155). Marlowe gives us high drama, as does Milton. But Milton gives us more.
And who can forget, once read, the achingly stupendous close to Lycidas, composed when Milton was twenty-nine:
Thus sang the uncouth17 swain to th’ oaks and rills,18
Whi
le the still morn went out with sandals gray.
He touched the tender stops of various quills,19
With eager thought warbling his Doric 20 lay.
And now the sun had stretched out 21 all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay.
At last he rose and twitched 22 his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
LYCIDAS, 186–93
The very moment he heard (by e-mail) that this edition was in preparation, a friend of mine, many years away from any connection with schools or colleges, promptly wrote out from memory a remarkably accurate transcript of almost fifty lines of Lycidas. That is exactly the sort of response, and the sort of tribute, that this edition of Milton’s English poems is intended to elicit.
The principal function of the introduction to a book like this is to inform prospective readers of the editor’s goals and intentions and of the nature of the material offered in support of those goals and intentions in the pages that follow. Introductions to editions of Milton customarily explain the editor’s view of Milton’s theological concerns, usually discussing the poetry’s relationship to those concerns. Biographical information is often set out as well. (Biographical material is here offered, in capsule form, in the Chronology, which immediately follows the Contents listing above.) In this volume, however, much of the necessary theological and other informational material is spread throughout the book, being contained in the annotations (affixed to the poems for which such information is necessary), these comprising whatever value the book may possess. Those who employ this edition as a university textbook, which in all likelihood will be its chief use, will have an informed and communicative instructor to frame additionally needed contexts. And the brief list of suggested reading at the end of this volume offers, I trust, whatever further guidance may be required, at least in the initial stages of coming to know John Milton’s English poetry. Most of the items there cited, of course, contain references to still further critical and historical materials.
A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM 114
1624
When the blest seed of Terah’s faithful son23
After long toil their liberty had won,
And passed from Pharian 24
fields to Canaan land,
Led by the strength of the Almighty’s hand,
Jehovah’s wonders were in Israel shown,
His praise and glory was in Israel known.
That saw the troubled sea,25
and shivering fled,
And sought to hide his froth-becurlèd head
Low in the earth. Jordan’s clear streams recoil,
As a faint 26 host 27 that hath received the foil.28
The high, huge-bellied mountains skip like rams
Amongst their ewes, the little hills like lambs.
Why fled the oceans and why skipped the mountains?
Why turned Jordan toward his crystal fountains?
Shake earth, and at the presence be aghast
Of Him that ever was, and aye29 shall last,
That 30 glassy floods from ruggèd rocks can crush,
And make soft rills31 from fiery flint-stones gush.
PSALM 136
1624
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord, for He is kind,
For His mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Let us blaze 32 His name abroad, 33
For of gods He is the God,
For His, etc.
O let us His praises tell,
Who doth the wrathful tyrants quell, 34
For His, etc.
That with His miracles doth make
Amazèd Heav’n and earth to shake,
For His, etc.
Who by His wisdom did create
The painted 35Heav’ns so full of state, 36
For His, etc.
Who did the solid earth ordain
To rise above the wat’ry plain,
For His, etc.
Who by His all-commanding might
Did fill the new-made world with light,
For His, etc.
And caused the golden-tressèd sun
All the day long his course to run,
For His, etc.
The hornèd moon to shine by night,
Amongst her spangled sisters bright,
For His, etc.
He with His thunder-clasping hand
Smote the first-born of Egypt land,
For His, etc.
And in despite of Pharaoh fell,37
He brought from thence His Israel,38
For His, etc.
The ruddy waves He cleft in twain,
Of the Erythraean main,39
For His, etc.
The floods stood still like walls of glass
While the Hebrew bands did pass,
For His, etc.
But full soon they did devour
The tawny 40 king with all his power,
For His, etc.
His chosen people He did bless
In the wasteful 41wilderness,
For His, etc.
In bloody battle He brought down
Kings of prowess and renown,
For His, etc.
He foiled bold Seon and his host,
That ruled the Amorrean 42coast,
For His, etc.
And large-limbed Og 43He did subdue,
With all his over-hardy 44crew,
For His, etc.
And to His servant Israel 45
He gave their land, therein to dwell,
For His, etc.
He hath with a piteous eye
Beheld us in our misery,
For His, etc.
And freed us from the slavery
Of the invading enemy,
For His, etc.
All living creatures He doth feed,
And with full hand supplies their need,
For His, etc.
Let us therefore warble 46 forth
His mighty majesty and worth,
For His, etc.
That His mansion hath on high,
Above the reach of mortal eye,
For His mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT DYING OF A COUGH
1625–26? 1628?
I
O fairest flower no sooner blown 47 but blasted,48
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly,
Summer’s chief honor if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winter’s force, that made thy blossom dry,
For he being amorous on that lovely dye
That did thy cheek envermeil,49thought to kiss,
But killed, alas, and then bewailed his fatal bliss.
II
For since grim Aquilo,50his 51charioteer,
By boisterous 52rape th’ Athenian damsel53got,
He thought it touched 54his deity full near
If likewise he some fair one wedded not,55
Thereby to wipe away the infamous56blot
Of long-uncoupled bed and childless eld,57
Which ’mongst the wanton58gods a foul reproach was held.
III
So mounting up in icy-pearlèd car 59
Through middle empire of the freezing air
He wandered long, till thee he spied from far.
There ended was his quest, there ceased his care:
Down he descended from his snow-soft chair,
But all unwares with his cold-kind embrace
Unhoused thy virgin soul from her fair biding 60place.
IV
Yet art thou not inglorious 61in thy fate,
For so Apollo, with unweeting62hand,
Whilom63did slay his dearly lovèd mate,64
Young Hyacinth, born on Eurotas’ strand,65
Young Hyacinth, the pride of Spartan land,
But then transformed him to a purple flower:
> Alack, that so to change thee winter had no power.
V
Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead
Or that thy corpse corrupts in earth’s dark womb,
Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed,
Hid from the world in a low-delved66tomb.
Could Heav’n, for pity, thee so strictly doom?
Oh no! for something in thy face did shine
Above mortality that showed thou wast divine.
VI
Resolve67me, then, O soul most surely blest
(If so it be that thou these plaints68dost hear)!
Tell me, bright spirit, where’er thou hoverest,
Whether above that high, first-moving sphere
The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems Page 2
