Minor Poems by Milton Part 20

50. Nymphs: deities of the forests and streams.

52. on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie. The s.h.i.+pwreck in which King was lost took place off the coast of Wales. Any one of the Welsh mountains will serve to make good this allusion.

54. Nor on the s.h.a.ggy top of Mona high. _Mona_ is the ancient and poetical name of the island of Anglesea.

55. Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream. The Dee (Deva) below Chester expands into a broad estuary. In his lines spoken At a Vacation Exercise, Milton, characterizing many rivers, mentions the "ancient hallowed Dee." The country about the Dee had been specially famous as the seat of the old Druidical religion. In the eleventh Song of his Polyolbion, Drayton eulogizes the medicinal virtues of the salt springs in the valley of the river Weever, which attract Thetis and the Nereids:--

And Amphitrite oft this Wizard River led Into her secret walks (the depths profound and dread) Of him (supposed so wise) the hid events to know Of things that were to come, as things done long ago.

In which he had been proved most exquisite to be; And bare his fame so far, that oft twixt him and Dee, Much strife there hath arose in their prophetic skill.

56-63. Even the Muse Calliope could do nothing for her son Orpheus, whom the Thracian women tore to pieces under the excitement of their Baccha.n.a.lian orgies. The gory visage floated down the Hebrus and through the aegean Sea to the island of Lesbos.

64. what boots it: of what use is it?

64-66. What good are we going to derive from this unremitting devotion to study?

67-69. Would it not be better to abandon ourselves to social enjoyment, and to lives of frivolous trifling? Amaryllis and Neaera are stock names of shepherdesses.

70-72. Understand clear, as applied to spirit, to mean "pure, guileless, unsophisticated." Sir Henry Wotton, in his Panegyric to King Charles, says of King James I.,--"I will not deny his appet.i.te of glory, which generous minds do ever latest part from." Love of fame, according to the poet, is the motive that prompts the scholar to live as an ascetic and to persevere in toilsome labor. This love of fame is an infirmity, but not a debasing one: it leaves the mind n.o.ble. Remember, however, that the author of the Imitation of Christ prayed, _Da mihi nesciri_.

75. the blind Fury with the abhorred shears. Milton here seems to ascribe to the Furies (Erinyes) the function belonging to the Fates (Parcae, Moirae). The three Fates were Klotho, the Spinner; Lachesis, the a.s.signer of lots; and Atropos, the Unchanging. It was the duty of Atropos to cut the thread of life at the appointed time.

A querulous thought comes to the poet's mind. Our lives are obscure and laborious, sustained only by the hope of future fame; but before we attain our reward, comes death, and our ambition is brought to naught.

76-77. But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears. The Fury cannot destroy the praise, which necessarily belongs to doing well. Praise here means the essential praise, which naturally inheres in excellence, and not the being talked about by men.

The speaker is now Phoebus, the august G.o.d Apollo, the pure one, who protects law and order, and promotes whatever is good and beautiful; who reveals the will of Zeus, and presides over prophecy.

Phoebus has now an admonition to give and he touches the poet's ears; as in Virgil, Eclogue IV 3,--_Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit_, "The Cynthian twitched my ear and warned me."

79. in the glistering foil Set off. See Shakespeare, Richard III. V 3 250,--"A base foul stone, made precious by the foil of England's chair."

85-86. O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, Smooth-sliding Mincius. Arethusa was a fresh-water fountain at Syracuse in Sicily, and the Mincius is a river in north Italy, on which is situated Mantua, the birthplace of the poet Virgil. The great pastoral poet Theocritus is said to have been born at Syracuse. Thus Arethusa and the Mincius typify the pastoral tone in which Milton conceives and constructs his poem. But the intervention of the great G.o.d Apollo has frighted the bucolic muses, to whom therefore the poet explains it, line 87.

88. Now I am on good terms again with the deities of lower rank. Oat is a common designation of the shepherd's pipe, or syrinx.

89-90. Neptune, through his herald, Triton, pleads his freedom from all complicity in the drowning of Lycidas. Triton sends to aeolus, G.o.d of the winds, requesting him to cross-question all his subjects as to what they were doing on the day of the wreck.

95-99. The winds prove their innocence, and aeolus himself comes to report to Triton that at the time of the disaster they were all at home and the air was perfectly calm. Even Panope and all her sisters were out playing on the tranquil water.

96. sage Hippotades. aeolus was the son of Hippotes. See all about him in Odyssey, book X. Read also Ruskin, Queen of the Air, section 19.

99. Panope was a Nereid, one of the numerous daughters of Nereus.

103. Now comes another grand personage to make inquiry about the death of Lycidas. Camus, the deity of the river Cam, stands for the University of Cambridge.

104. His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge. The river G.o.d is represented as wearing a mantle made of water-gra.s.ses and reeds.

105-106. These lines refer to certain markings on the water-plants of the Cam, said to be correctly described here by the poet. The dimness of the figures may suggest the great age of the university, and the tokens of woe belong to the present occasion.

106. that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. This is the hyacinth, the flower that sprang up on the spot where the youth Hyacinthus had been accidentally slain by Apollo. The petals of the hyacinth are said to be marked with the Greek letters AI AI, which form an interjection expressing grief.

107. Lycidas was one of those collegians whose scholars.h.i.+p, character, and piety promise to make them the pride of their Alma Mater.

109. The Pilot of the Galilean Lake. See Matthew XIV.

110. Two ma.s.sy keys he bore of metals twain. See Matthew XVI 19. See also Comus 13 and Par. Lost III 485. The idea of _two_ keys, one of gold and one of iron, is not in the Bible.

112. He shook his mitred locks. St. Peter wears the mitre as bishop.

113-131. St. Peter makes but little reference to Lycidas, and his words add almost nothing to the elegiac character of the poem. His speech is one of stern and bitter satire. The second period of Milton's life, which is to be given up to intense and uncompromising partisans.h.i.+p in religion and politics, foreshadows itself in these lines.

114. Enow is here used in its proper plural sense. See note on Comus 780.

115. climb into the fold. See John X 1. The metaphor of sheep and herdsmen is continued throughout the speech.

119. Blind mouths! As the relative p.r.o.noun beginning the next clause refers to this exclamation, mouths must be taken as a bold metaphor meaning men who are all mouth, or are supremely greedy and selfish.

Moreover, they are blind.

122. What recks it them? See note on Comus 404. They are sped: they have succeeded in their purpose. See Antony and Cleopatra II 3 35. Note also the phrase of greeting, _bid G.o.d speed_, as in 2 John I 10, 11, King James version.

123. their lean and flashy songs: their sermons.

Evidently Milton can cull words of extreme disparagement and vilification as well as words of unapproachable poetic beauty.

125-127. The congregations are not edified. The miserable preaching they listen to fails to keep them sound in doctrine. They grow lax in their faith, and heretical opinions become fas.h.i.+onable.

128. the grim wolf with privy paw is undoubtedly the Roman church.

130-131. These lines evidently denounce some terrible retribution that is sure ere long to overtake the corrupt clergy described in the preceding pa.s.sage. The two-handed engine at the door, that stands ready to smite once and smite no more, has never been definitely explained. We naturally think of the headsman's axe, which, however, does not become applicable till the execution of Archbishop Laud, an event not to take place till eight years after the composition of the poem. It has been suggested that Milton had in mind the two houses of Parliament, or the Parliament and the Army, as the agency through which reform was to be effected. We must remember that Milton in 1637 could not foresee the Civil War. He may have meant to combine certain scriptural expressions into a mysteriously suggestive and oracular prediction, without having in view any single and definite possibility.

132. Return, Alpheus. The Alpheus was a river of the Peloponnesus, said to sink underground and to flow beneath the sea to Ortygia, near Syracuse, where it attempted to mingle its waters with those of the fountain Arethusa. See note on lines 85, 86. See also Sh.e.l.ley's poem, Arethusa.

The pastoral tone of lightness and simplicity could not be maintained while St. Peter spoke. But now the Sicilian Muse returns, all the more lovely for the contrast with the stern malediction that has gone before.

134-151. Milton is fond of thus collecting names of persons, places, and things, choosing them as well for their effect on the ear as for their significance. The botany of this pa.s.sage is of little consequence: it matters not whether all these flowers could, or could not, be collected at the same season, or whether they could be found at the time of the year when Lycidas died. The pa.s.sage offers a picture of exquisite beauty to the eye, and to the ear a strain of perfect melody.

136. where the mild whispers use. The verb _use_, in this intransitive sense, with only adverbial complement, and meaning _dwell_, is now obsolete.

138. the swart star: the star that makes _swart_, or _swarthy; i.e._ the sun.

139. enamelled eyes are the flowers generally, which are to be specified.

Scattered over the turf, the flowers seem to be looking upward, like eyes.

142. rathe is the adjective whose comparative is our _rather_.

149. amaranthus, by its etymology, means _unfading_.

150. Daffadil is derived from _asphodel_, with a curious, and altogether unusual, prefixed _d_.