Minor Poems by Milton Part 23

XIX.

The sonnet, says Ma.s.son, may have been written any time between 1652 and 1655.

2. Ere half my days. Milton's blindness is considered to have become total in 1652, when he was at the age of forty-four. How shall we understand these words?

3. See the Parable of the Talents, Matthew XXV.

8. I fondly ask. See note on Il Pens. 6.

XX.

Probable date, 1655. Of the Mr. Lawrence to whom the sonnet is addressed nothing is certainly known.

6. Favonius is the Latin name for Zephyrus, the west wind.

10. Attic: refined, delicate, poignant.

13. and spare To interpose them oft: refrain from too free enjoyment of them.

XXI.

The second sonnet to Cyriac Skinner determines its own date as 1655, and this one is probably to be a.s.signed to the same year.

But little is known of the person to whom this sonnet and the next one are addressed, except what we learn from the sonnets themselves,--that he was an intimate and esteemed friend of Milton. He may have been one of Milton's pupils; and he may, when his old teacher had become blind, have rendered him important services as amanuensis or as reader.

1-4. Cyriac Skinner's mother was daughter of the famous lawyer and judge, Sir Edward c.o.ke.

2. Themis is personified _law_, this being the meaning of the Greek word.

7. Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause: intermit for a day your severe mathematical studies.

8. And what the Swede intend, and what the French: and pay no heed to foreign news.

XXII (1655).

1. this three years' day: three years ago to-day.

10. Milton's duties as Latin secretary to the government were exceedingly arduous.

XXIII.

Milton's second wife died in February, 1658; her child lived but a short time. At the time of his second marriage Milton had been blind several years. Notice the reference in the sonnet to the sense of sight: in his dream he _saw_.

2. like Alcestis. Read the story of the Love of Alcestis in William Morris's Earthly Paradise; and read in Euripides, "That strangest, saddest, sweetest song of his, Alkestis."

6. Purification in the Old Law. See Leviticus XII.