The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems (3 page)

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,

Ethereal
¹
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 Tuscan
³
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 uneasy
⁹
steps

Over the burning marl,
¹⁰
not like those steps

On Heaven’s azure. And the torrid clime

Smote
¹¹
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

Sheer
¹⁴
o’er the crystal battlements.
¹⁵
From 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 uncouth
¹⁷
swain to th’ oaks and rills,
¹⁸

While 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 son
²³

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 aye
²⁹
shall last,

That
³⁰
glassy floods from ruggèd rocks can crush,

And make soft rills
³¹
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
³⁵
Heav’ns so full of state,
³⁶

For His, etc.