Minor Poems by Milton Part 10

108. Make the line rhyme properly, giving to union three syllables.

112. The helmed cherubim. See Genesis III 24.

113. The sworded seraphim. See Isaiah VI 2-6.

116. With unexpressive notes, meaning beyond the power of human expression. So in Lycidas 176; Par. Lost V 595; and in As You Like It, "the fair, the chaste, and inexpressive she."

119. But when of old the Sons of Morning sung. See Job x.x.xVIII 7.

124. the weltering waves. Compare Lycidas 13.

125. Ring out, ye crystal spheres. See note, line 48. The elder poetry is full of the notion that the spheres in their revolutions made music, which human ears are too gross to hear. See Merchant of Venice V 1 50-65.

136. speckled Vanity. The leopard that confronts Dante in Canto I of _h.e.l.l_ is beautiful with its dappled skin, but symbolizes vain glory.

143. like glories wearing. The adjective _like_ means nothing without a complement, though the complement sometimes has to be supplied, as in this instance. Fully expressed the pa.s.sage would be,--_wearing glories like those of Truth and Justice_. The _like_ in such a case as this must be spoken with a fuller tone than when its construction is completely expressed.

155. those ychained in sleep. The poets, in order to gain a syllable, long continued to use the ancient participle prefix _y_. See _yclept_, Allegro 12.

157. With such a horrid clang. See Exodus XIX.

168. The Old Dragon. See Revelation XII 9.

173. Stanzas XIX-XXVI announce the deposition and expulsion of the pagan deities, and the ruin of the ancient religions. In accordance with his custom of grouping selected proper names in abundance, thus giving vividness and concreteness to his story and sonority to his verse, the poet here ill.u.s.trates the triumph of the new dispensation by citing the names of various G.o.ds from the Roman, Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian mythologies.

176. Apollo, the great G.o.d, whose oracle was at Delphi, or Delphos.

179. spell, as in Comus 853, and often.

186. Genius. A Latin word, signifying a tutelary or guardian spirit supposed to preside over a person or place. See Lycidas 183, and Penseroso 154.

191. The Lars and Lemures. In the Roman mythology these were the spirits of dead ancestors, wors.h.i.+pped or propitiated in families as having power for good or evil over the fortunes of their descendants.

194. Affrights the flamens. The Roman flamens were the priests of particular G.o.ds.

195. the chill marble seems to sweat. Many instances of this phenomenon are reported. Thus Cicero, in his _De Divinatione_, tells us: "It was reported to the senate that it had rained blood, that the river Atratus had even flowed with blood, and that the statues of the G.o.ds had sweat."

197. Peor and Baalim. Syrian false G.o.ds. See Numbers XXV 3.

199. that twice-battered G.o.d of Palestine. See I Samuel V 2.

200. mooned Ashtaroth. See I Kings XI 33.

203. The Lybic Hammon. "Hammon had a famous temple in Africa, where he was adored under the symbolic figure of a ram."

204. their wounded Thammuz. See Ezekiel VIII 14.

205. sullen Moloch. See Par. Lost I 392-396.

210. the furnace blue. Compare Arcades 52.

212. Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis. Egyptian deities, the latter figured as having the head of a dog.

213. Nor is Osiris seen. Osiris was the princ.i.p.al G.o.d of the Egyptians, brother and husband of Isis. His highest function was as G.o.d of the Nile.

He met his death at the hands of his brother Typhon, a deity of sterility, by whom he was torn into fourteen pieces. Thereupon a general lament was raised throughout Egypt. The bull Apis was regarded as the visible incarnation of Osiris.--_Murray's Manual of Mythology_.

215. the unshowered gra.s.s. Remember, this was in Egypt.

223. his dusky eyn. This ancient plural of eye occurs several times in Shakespeare, as in As You Like It IV 3 50.

240. Heaven's youngest-teemed star. Compare Comus 175.

241. Hath fixed her polished car. _Fix_ has its proper meaning, _stopped_. The star "came and stood over where the young child was."

ON SHAKESPEARE.

The first edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, known as the first folio, was published in 1623, when Milton was fifteen years old.

The second Shakespeare folio appeared in 1632. Among the commendatory verses by various hands prefixed, after the fas.h.i.+on of the time, to the latter volume, was a little piece of eight couplets, in which some then unknown rhymer expressed his admiration of the great poet. Collecting his poems for publication in 1645, Milton included these couplets, gave them the date 1630, and the t.i.tle _On Shakespeare_ which they have since borne in his works. The fact that he wrote the verses two years before their publication in the Shakespeare folio shows that he did not produce them to order, for the special occasion. It is interesting to note that Milton at twenty-two was an appreciative reader of Shakespeare. The lines themselves give no hint of great poetic genius; they are a fair specimen of the conventional, labored eulogy in vogue at the time.

4. star-ypointing. To make the decasyllabic verse, the poet takes the liberty of prefixing to the present participle the _y_ which properly belongs only to the past.

8. a livelong monument. Instead of _livelong_, the first issue of the lines, in the Shakespeare folio of 1632, has _lasting_. The change is Milton's, appearing in his revision of his poems in 1645. Does it seem to be an improvement?

10-12. and that each heart hath ... took. The conjunction _that_ simply repeats the _whilst_.

11. thy unvalued book. In Hamlet I 3 19 _unvalued persons_ are persons of no value, or of no rank. In Macbeth III 1 94 the _valued file_ is the file that determines values or ranks. In Milton's phrase the _unvalued book_ means the book whose merit is so great as to be beyond all valuation: a new rank must be created for it.

12. Those Delphic lines: lines so crowded with meaning as to seem the utterances of an oracle.

13. our fancy of itself bereaving: transporting us into an ecstasy, or making us rapt with thought.

14. Dost make _us_ marble with too much conceiving. The concentrated attention required to penetrate Shakespeare's meaning makes statues of us.

15. Make the word sepulchred fit metrically into the iambic verse.

L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO.

The year in which the poems were composed is uncertain. Ma.s.son regards 1632 as the probable date.