Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Milton

by John Milton

  Nymphs of Himera3—for you remember Daphnis and Hylas / and the long-lamented fate of Bion— / proclaim your Sicilian song through the towns of the Thames: / what cries the mournful Thyrsis poured forth, what murmurings, / and with what incessant complaints he vexed the caves [5] / and rivers, the wandering streams and recesses of the woods, / when to himself he lamented Damon, prematurely borne away, nor did he / banish the deep night with his griefs, wandering through lonely places. / And now twice4 was the stalk with its green ear rising, / and twice were the yellow harvests being counted in the barns, [10] / since the last day had swept Damon beneath the shadows, / and still Thyrsis was not present; namely, love of the sweet Muse / was keeping that shepherd in the Tuscan city. / But when his mind was full and the care of the flock / left behind5 called him home, and as soon as he sat under the accustomed elm, [15] / then truly, then at last, he felt the loss of his friend, / and began to disburden his great sorrow thus: /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Ah me! what on earth, what divinities in heaven shall I affirm, / since they have torn you away to inexorable death, Damon? [20] / Thus do you forsake us, thus shall your virtue go below without a name, / and be joined to the troop of unknown shades? / But he6 who divides the souls with his golden wand / would not wish this, and he would lead you into a multitude worthy of you, / and would keep at a distance the entire slothful, silent herd. [25] /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Whatever will be, assuredly, unless a wolf sees me first,7 / you shall not crumble to dust in an unwept sepulchre; / your repute will endure and flourish long / among the shepherds. To you they shall be glad to pay their vows [30] / second after Daphnis, after Daphnis to sing praises, / while Pales, while Faunus loves the fields:8 / if there is any worth in having cultivated the ancient faith and piety / and the arts of Pallas, and in having possessed a comrade of songs. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. [35] / These certainly await you, for you these rewards will exist, Damon. / But what at length will become of me now? what faithful companion / will cling to my side, as you often were wont / in the hard winters and through the regions full of snows, / or under the fierce sun, with herbs dying from thirst, [40] / whether the task was to advance on great lions from a distance / or to frighten hungry wolves away from the high sheepfolds. / Who will be wont to lull my time with speaking and singing? /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / To whom shall I confide my heart? Who will teach me to assuage [45] / my mordant cares, who to deceive the long night / with pleasant conversations, while the delicate pear hisses / before the grateful fire, and the hearth crackles with nuts, as the evil / southwind rattles all the doors, and whistles in the elm above. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. [50] / Or in summer, when the day is turned to noon, / when Pan enjoys sleep, hidden in the shade of an oak, / and the nymphs return to their well-known haunts beneath the waters, / and the shepherds lie concealed, the farmer snores under a hedge, / who will bring back to me your flatteries, who then [55] / your laughter and Attic salt,9 your cultured graces? /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / But now alone in the fields, now alone in the pastures I roam / wherever the branching shadows are made dense by the valleys, / there I await the evening; overhead the rain and the southeast wind10 [60] / sorrowfully resound, and in the restless twilight of the buffeted wood. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Alas, how entangled with insolent weeds are my once cultivated / fields, and the tall grain itself is drooping with neglect, / the unmarried grape withers on its slighted vine, [65] / nor do myrtle groves delight; my sheep also offend, but they / mourn and turn their faces to their master. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Tityrus calls to the hazels, Alphesiboeus to the mountain ashes, / Aegon to the willows, handsome Amyntas to the rivers:11 [70] / Here are the icy springs, here the pastures spread with moss, / here the zephyrs, here the arbutus sounds amidst the quiet waters. / They sing to deaf ears; having stumbled on them, I vanished into the shrubs. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Mopsus12 came after them, for he had marked me by chance returning, [75] / and truly Mopsus did understand the songs of birds and the stars: / Thyrsis, what now? he said, what excessive bile torments you? / Either love is destroying you or a star is wickedly bewitching you. / Saturn’s star13 has often been painful to shepherds, / and it pierces the inmost heart with its slanting leaden bullet. [80] /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / The nymphs are amazed, and they speak, What is to become of you, Thyrsis? / What do you wish for yourself? that brow of youth is not wont to be / melancholy, nor its eyes grim, nor its countenance severe; / these things justly desire dances and nimble sports [85] / and always love; twice miserable he who loved late. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Hyas came, and Dryope, and Aegle, the daughter of Baucis, / well-versed in melodies and skilled with the harp, but ruined by pride; / Chloris, a neighbor of the Idumanian river, came.14 [90] / Neither flatteries nor consoling words, / nothing moves me, if anything appears, nor any hope of the future. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Ah me, alas! how similarly the young bullocks play through the meadows, / all comrades together under a law harmonious to themselves, [95] / and none parts a friend from one more than from another / of the herd; thus the wolves come to their food in packs, / and the shaggy asses are joined with their mates in turn; / the law of the sea is the same, on the deserted shore Proteus15 / counts his hosts of seals, and least valuable of birds, [100] / the sparrow always has someone with whom he may be, and to all the grains / flies about free, returning late to his own nest; / if chance has delivered him to death, or a kite has brought him misfortune / with its hooked beak, or a peasant has brought him down with an arrow, / forthwith that bird seeks another for companion flight. [105] / We men are an insensible race, and driven on by detestable fate, / a nation hostile in our minds and discordant in our heart, / scarcely does anybody find one equal to himself in a thousand, / or if a destiny not unkind were granted at last to our prayers, / an unexpected hour, as far as you will have trusted time, [110] / steals that one, leaving behind an eternal loss to future ages. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / Alas! what wandering fancy carried me into unknown climes / to pass through airy rocks and the snow-capped Alps? / Was it of such worth to have seen buried Rome? [115] / although it were such as he viewed it when long ago / Tityrus16 himself left his sheep and fields, / that I could have been absent from you, from so dear a companion, / that I could set between you so many deep seas, so many mountains, / so many forests, so many rocky lands and roaring rivers? [120] / Ah, surely I would have been permitted to touch his right hand at the last / and his calmed eyes dying very peacefully, / and to have said, Farewell! you will go to the stars remembering me. /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / And even though I never shall repent to remember you, [125] / Tuscan shepherds, youths devoted to the Muses, / here was grace and charm; and you also Damon were a Tuscan, / from whom you claim your descent from the ancient city of Lucca. / O how great I was when stretched beside / the murmurings of the cool Arno and the poplar-grove, where was the softer grass, [130] / I could pluck now violets, now the tallest myrtles, / and hear Menalcas contending with Lycidas! / And even I myself dared to compete,17 nor do I suppose that I much / displeased, for your gifts18 are still with me, / the baskets of twigs, those of wicker, and the shepherd pipes with waxen bonds. [135] / Indeed Dati and Francini taught their beech trees my name / and both were noted for their songs / and learning, both of Lydian blood.19 /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / These things the dewy moon spoke to me, then full of joy, [140] / when alone I shut
the tender kids in their wattled folds. / Ah, how often did I say, when dark ashes possessed you, / Now Damon is singing or now he is stretching out his nets for a hare, / now he is weaving osiers for himself although it be for various uses. / And then what future I was hoping for with my affable mind [145] / I snatched from my trivial desire and supposed my present circumstances. / Hark, good friend! are you doing anything? unless anything detain you by accident, / let us go and lie for a while in the clear shade, / either beside the waters of the Colne20 or where lie the lands of Cassivelaunas. / You shall run through your medicinal potions for me, your herbs, [150] / and your hellebore, humble crocuses, and leaf of hyacinth, / and what plants that marsh holds, and the arts of the physicians. / Ah! let the plants perish, let the arts of the physicians perish, / and the herbs, since they themselves have accomplished nothing for their master. / Even I—for I do not know what my pipe was pouring forth [155] / loudly—now daylight is present after the eleventh night—21 / perhaps I was then directing my lips to my new pipes, / yet they have burst asunder with their binding broken, and no further / have they been able to carry the grave notes; I question also that I may not be / vain, and yet that I may recite; depart, you woods. [160] /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / I myself shall celebrate22 the Dardanian ships through the Rutupian sea, / and the ancient kingdom of Inogene, daughter of Pandrasus, / the chieftains Brennus and Arviragus, and old Belinus, / and the Armorican colonists at last under the law of the Britons; [165] / then Igraine pregnant with Arthur by fatal deception, / Gorlois’ counterfeit features and assumed arms, / the guile of Merlin. O then if life remain to me, / you, my pipe, will hang far off on an aged pine tree / quite forgotten by me, or changed, you shall shrill a tale of Britain [170] / to your native Muses! What then? one can not do everything, / one can not hope to do everything. For me it is sufficiently ample / reward, and to me great glory—even if I be unknown forever / and utterly inglorious to the outside world— / if blonde Ouse read me under her locks and the drinker of the Alne [175] / and the Humber well-filled with whirlpools, and every wood along the Trent, / and before all my Thames, and the Tamar blackened by mines, / and if the Orkneys in their distant seas become acquainted with me.23 /

  Go home unfed, your master has no time now, my lambs. / These things I was keeping for you in the tough bark of the laurel, [180] / these and more besides; moreover the two cups24 which Manso / gave me, Manso, not the least glory of the Chalcidian shore,25 / these a marvellous work of art, and he himself singular, / and he had engraved them around with a twofold theme. / In the middle are the waves of the Red Sea, and odor-bearing spring, [185] / the far-reaching shores of Arabia, and the woods exuding balsam gums; / among those woods the Phoenix, divine bird, unique on earth, / gleaming cerulean with diversely colored wings, / watches Aurora rising over the glassy waters. / In another part are the wide-extending sky and mighty Olympus. [190] / Who would imagine? here also Love,26 his quiver painted against a cloud, / his gleaming arms, his torches and darts stained with gold-bronze; / from this place he does not smite trifling spirits or the ignoble heart / of the rabble, but, whirling around with flaming eyes, / he endlessly scatters his darts aloft through the spheres, [195] / unwearied, and never aims toward downward shots. / Hence holy minds and the images of the gods have taken fire. /

  You also are among these—for no uncertain hope deceives me, Damon— / you also are among these certainly; for where else might your sweet / and holy simplicity have gone, for where else your radiant virtue? [200] / It would not be proper to have sought you in Lethean Orcus,27 / neither do tears for you befit, nor shall I shed them more. / Away, my tears; Damon lives in the pure air, / the air he so pure possesses: he rejected the rainbow with his foot. / Among the souls of heroes and immortal gods, [205] / he consumes the heavenly draughts and drinks their joys / with his sacred mouth. But you, since having received the privilege of heaven, / are on the right hand; and peaceful, favor me, however you may be called, / whether you will be our Damon, or hearken more favorably to / Diodati, by which divine name28 the whole [210] / of heaven will know you, and you will be called Damon in the woods. / Because blushing modesty and youth without blemish / were dear to you, because the delight of marriage was tasted not at all, / lo! likewise the rewards of virginity are reserved for you.29 / You, encircled around your glorious head with a shining crown [215] / and riding in happy bowers entwined with palm leaves, / shall pursue eternally the immortal marriage / where song and mingled lyre rage with blessed dances, / and festal orgies revel under the thyrsus of Sion.30

  (autumn 1639)

  * * *

  1 In addition to likenesses to the pastoral elegies and idyls of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, Damon frequently echoes Virgil (e.g., the refrain from Ec., VII, 44, and the similarity of form to Ec., X) and Castiglione’s Alcon; see T. P. Harrison, Jr., PMLA, L (1935), 480-93. But Dorian (English Diodatis, pp. 177-78) points out the break with tradition: Damon is devoid of real mourners other than Milton. “And because of this concentration on the emotional problem of his personal bereavement, it tells considerably less than do most pastoral elegies of the shepherd who is gone.”

  2 Charles Diodati (Damon) was buried at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, London, on Aug. 27, 1638, while Milton (Thyrsis) was abroad. Milton was probably informed of his death (from the plague?) when he reached Venice around Apr. 1639 (see n. 4 below). See also El. 1, n. 1, for material about Diodati.

  3 A nymph of the Sicilian river Himera punished Daphnis for refusing her love (Theocritus, Idyl 1); and Bion was mourned by the Sicilian poet Moschus. For Hylas, see El. 7, n. 3.

  4 referring to Italian, not English, agriculture; both winter and spring wheat are harvested in the Arno valley. The imperfect tenses of ll. 9-13 imply that Milton did not learn of Diodati’s death until after his second stay in Florence, the Tuscan city, in Mar. 1639.

  5 possibly Milton’s nephews Edward and John Phillips, who joined his household shortly after his return.

  6 Hermes, who led the dead to the nether world.

  7 Seen by a wolf first, a man became dumb.

  8 Pales was a tutelary of shepherds and flocks; Faunus, of crops and herds.

  9 poignant and delicate wit.

  10 The southeast wind and the rain suggest composition of Damon in autumn (around Oct.).

  11 All are shepherds of idyllic literature and appear in Virgil’s Eclogues.

  12 a fusion of the Greek seer and of Virgil’s shepherd (Ec., V, VIII). For the relation of birds to prophecy, see El. 3, n. 6.

  13 The planet Saturn, alchemically the name for lead, was known for its gloomy and sullen aspect.

  14 The mourners seem to be one of the Hyades, nymphs of rain, who were changed into stars; Dryope, who was changed into a lotus tree; Aegle, one of the Heliades, who was changed into a poplar tree; and Chloris, goddess of flowers. Baucis probably means an old woman. The Idumanian river is the Chelmer, leading into Blackwater Bay in Essex.

  15 See El. 3, n. 7.

  16 in Virgil’s Ec., I.

  17 referring to Idyl 7 of Theocritus and Milton’s poetical performances at the Svogliati Academy in Florence.

  18 poems and books of verse from his Italian friends, among whom were Carlo Dati and Antonio Francini.

  19 Lydians were supposed to have founded an early colony in Italy.

  20 the river near Horton. Cassivelaunas was an early British military leader.

  21 signifying the beginning of the latest possible time, under the concept of twelve, to bemoan his loss. The twelfth day becomes the epiphany, or manifestation of divinity, of Diodati. Compare Matt. xx. 6: “And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them Why stand ye here all the day idle?”

  22 Subjects for English epical works included the invasion of England by Brutus (son of Aeneas), and the Trojan colony; the conquests of Gaul and Rome by the British kings Brennus and Belinus; the military engagements in Rome of Arviragus, so
n of Cymbeline; the settlement of the Britons, fleeing the Saxons, in Armorica (Brittany); the begetting of Arthur through Merlin’s magic of making Uther Pendragon appear to Igraine as her husband Gorlois; and perhaps a further but different epic on a British theme. Dardanus was the progenitor of the royal race of Troy; Rutupiae was a part of Kent; and Inogene was Brutus’ wife.

  23 The rivers Ouse, Alne, Humber, Trent, and Tamar (in a valley famous for mines) cover much of England, and the Orkneys signify Scotland; Milton’s reward will be enough if the British Isles read and know his work.

  24 Michele de Filippis’ suggestion that Milton is referring to books, Manso’s Erocallia and Poesie Nomiche (see PMLA, LI, 1936, 745-56), is supported by Donald C. Dorian (PMLA, LIV, 1939, 612-13), since the same simile of cups for books is found in Pindar’s seventh Olympian Ode.

  25 the Bay of Naples.

  26 the Platonic Heavenly Eros.

  27 See Idea, n. 5.

  28 literally, “god-given.”

  29 alluding to Rev. xiv. 4: “These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.”

  30 Diodati is envisioned as joining the heavenly host (Rev. vii. 9) in Bacchic dance of ecstasy under the thyrsus (a staff twined with ivy and vine shoots borne by Bacchantes) of Sion (the heavenly city of God).

  PART 3

  Poems

  Written During Public Life

  and Governmental Service

  (1641–58)

  Sonnet 8

  Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,

  Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease,1

  If ever deed of honour did thee please,

  Guard them, and him within protect from harms.