the earth.
869. Earth-shaking is a Homeric epithet of Neptune. The mace of Neptune
must be his trident.
870. Tethys is wife of Oceanus and mother of the Oceanids. She reared the
great goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter. Her pace is suitable to her dignity.
871. hoary Nereus. See note on line 835.
872. the Carpathian wizard's hook. Proteus, son of Oceanus and Tethys,
herded the sea-calves of Neptune on the island of Carpathus. As a
herdsman he bore a crook, or _hook_. He had the gift of prophecy, and so
is called a _wizard_.
873. Scaly Triton's winding shell. _Triton_ was herald of Neptune and so
carried a shell, which he was wont to _wind_ as a horn. His body was in
part covered with scales like those of a fish.
874. The soothsaying Glaucus was a prophet, and gave oracles at Delos. He
is represented as a man whose hair and beard are dripping with water,
with bristly eyebrows, his breast covered with sea-weeds, and the lower
part of his body ending in the tail of a fish.
875. By Leucothea's lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands.
Ino, after she had slain herself and her son Melicertes, by leaping with
him into the sea, became a protecting deity of mariners under the name
Leucothea, or the white goddess. So she came to the aid of Ulysses when
he was passing on his raft from Calypso's isle to Phaeacia. She there
appears "with fair ankles," and when she receives back from him her veil,
which she had lent him, she does it with "_lovely hands_."
Melicertes becomes a protecting deity of shores, under the name Palaemon.
The Romans identified him with their god Portunus.
877. By Thetis' tinsel-slippered feet. Thetis was the wife of Peleus, and
the mother of Achilles. In Homer she has the epithet _silver-footed_.
878. the songs of Sirens. See note on line 253.
879. By dead Parthenope's dear tomb. Parthenope was one of the Sirens. At
Naples her tomb was shown.
880. And fair Ligea's golden comb. Ligea was probably also a siren. In
Virgil, Georgics IV 336, we find a nymph of this name, spinning wool with
other nymphs, "their bright locks floating over their snowy necks." The
name Ligea means shrill-voiced.
887. In the reading make in an adverb.
892. My sliding chariot stays. Compare this use of _stay_ with that found
in lines 134, 577, 820.
893. the azurn sheen. With _azurn_ compare _cedarn_, line 990.
908-909. Be careful what inflection you give these lines in the reading.
913. of precious cure: of precious power to cure.
921. To wait in Amphitrite's bower. _Amphitrite_ was a daughter of
Oceanus and Tethys. She was goddess of the sea, had the care of its
creatures, and could stir up the waves in storm.
923. Sprung of old Anchises' line. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth,
Brutus the Trojan was the grandson of AEneas and founder of London.
Anchises, in the Homeric story, is the father of AEneas. This fable plays
an important part in the ancient British myth.
924. thy brimmed waves. A river is happiest when full to its brim.
930. Of what parts of speech are torrent and flood?
933. It is very curious that our word beryl and the German _Brille_ come
directly from the same source.
937. And yet this river is the English Severn!
957. Note the impressive effect of the five-foot line ending the scene.
The shepherds have their dance in rustic fashion. The words describing
this dance are the familiar peasant words, jig, duck, nod. The playful
tone in which the spirit calls upon the swains to give place to their
betters is charming.
964. With the mincing Dryades. "The _Dryades_ were nymphs of woods and
trees, dwelling in groves, ravines, and wooded valleys, and were fond of
making merry with Apollo, Mercury, and Pan."
980. I suck the liquid air: I inhale the upper air,--the _aether_
_liquidus_ of the poets. So Ariel, Tempest V 1 102, "I drink the air
before me."
981. the gardens fair Of Hesperus and his daughters three. The number of
the Hesperides and their parentage are differently given in various
legends. The story of their garden in some mysterious place in the far
west, where they guarded the tree that bore the golden apples, assisted
by the dragon Ladon, is one of the best known in the classic mythology.
984. Along the crisped shades and bowers. Milton applies _crisped_ to
brooks, Par. Lost IV 237. Herrick has,--"the crisped yew," and the
American Thoreau,--"A million crisped waves."
985. spruce. A very interesting account of the origin of this word is
given by Skeat in his Etymological Dictionary.
986. The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours. See note on L'Allegro 15.
"The _Graces_ were guardians of the vernal sweetness and beauty of
nature, friends and protectors of everything graceful and beautiful." The
_Hours_ were goddesses of the seasons, daughters of Zeus and Themis. They
were the door-keepers of Olympus, whose cloud-gate they open and shut:
thus they preside over the weather.
990. About the cedarn alleys: about the pathways through cedar groves.
Coleridge, in Kubla Khan, has the line, "Down the green hill athwart a
cedarn cover"; and Tennyson, Geraint and Enid, the line,--"And moving
toward a cedarn cabinet." So also William Barnes, in his Rural Poems,
uses the expression, "stonen jugs."
992. Iris is the messenger of the gods: her path is the rainbow.
993. Dr. Murray gives other instances of blow as a transitive verb.
999. Adonis was a young shepherd, the special favorite of Venus. His
death was caused by a wild boar. The story is told in various forms.
Observe that Milton makes him wax well of his deep wound.
1002. the Assyrian queen. The worship of Aphrodite (Venus) was brought
into Greece from Assyria.
1005. Holds his dear Psyche. Psyche--the personification of the human
soul--was a mortal maiden, beloved of Cupid. Venus, in her jealousy of
Psyche, compelled her to pass through a long series of hardships and
toils. Cupid at last succeeded in reconciling his mother and his beloved,
and in having _Psyche_ advanced to the dignity of an immortal.
1015. Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend: where the curvature of the
vault of the sky seems less than higher up toward the zenith.
1021. the sphery chime. See notes, Hymn on the Nativity 48 and 125.
LYCIDAS.
Lycidas is Milton's contribution to a volume of elegiac verses, in Greek,
Latin, and English, composed by many college friends of Edward King, who
was drowned in the wreck of the vessel in which he was crossing the Irish
Channel.
In its main intention, Lycidas is an elegy, because it professes to mourn
one who is dead and extols his virtues. In its form it is almost wholly
pastoral, because it feigns an environment of shepherds, allegorizing
college life as the life of men tending flocks, and the occupations of
earnest students as the careless diversions of rustic swains.
Four times the pastoral note is rudely interrupted by the intervention of
majestic beings who speak in awful tones from another world, and whose
voices instantly check all familiar rustic speech, compelling it to wait
till they have announced their messages from above. The supernal powers
who thus descend to take their parts in the office of mourning are
Phoebus, Apollo, Hippotades, god of the winds, Camus, god of the river
Cam, and St. Peter. This mingling of classic, Hebrew, and Christian
conceptions is a marked characteristic of all Milton's poetry.
Thus Lycidas is neither wholly elegiac nor wholly pastoral. From the lips
of St. Peter, typifying the church, comes a speech of violent
denunciation, in the true later Miltonic manner. In strange contrast to
this grim invective is the famous flower-passage, the sweetest and
loveliest thing of its kind in our literature.
1-5. To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather
laurels,--is to make a new venture as a poet,--to compose a poem. The
berries are harsh and crude,--he shatters their leaves before the
mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man,
or because he feels in himself a lack of "inward ripeness" to treat his
theme worthily,--perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with
forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own
choosing.
6-7. A sad duty is imposed upon him, forbidding further delay on any
personal grounds.
8. Lycidas is one of the stock names of pastoral poetry. The poem, though
most serious in its main motive and intention, is to have a pastoral
coloring throughout. Note the impressive repetitions, dead, dead, and the
recurrences of the name Lycidas in the next two lines.
11. he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme. Edward King had,
in accordance with the college custom of his time, written verses,
apparently all in Latin. Of these verses Masson, in his life of Milton,
gives specimens. They seem to be commonplace.
13. and welter to the parching wind. See Par. Lost II 594, I 78.
15. Sisters of the sacred well. Ancient tradition connects the origin of
the Muses with Pieria, a district of Macedonia at the foot of Olympus.
But the springs with which we associate the Muses are Aganippe and
Hippocrene on Mount Helicon.
19. So may some gentle muse. A peculiar use of the word _muse_ as
masculine, and meaning _poet_.
23-31. We pursued the same studies, at the same college, and we studied
from early morning sometimes till after midnight. The metaphors are all
pastoral.
32-36. We wrote merry verse, bringing in the college jollities, in wanton
student-fashion, and the good-natured old don who was our tutor affected
to be pleased with our work.
34. Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel. The _Satyrs_,
represented as having human forms, with small goat's horns and a small
tail, had for their occupation to play on the flute for their master,
Bacchus, or to pour his wine. The _Fauns_ were sylvan deities, attendants
of Pan, and are represented, like their master, with the ears, horns, and
legs of a goat.
37-49. Nature herself sympathizes with men, and mourns thy loss.
50. Nymphs: deities of the forests and streams.
52. on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie. The
shipwreck 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 shaggy 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
Bacchanalian 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 appetite 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 noble. 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 Assigner
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 god 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 god 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, god 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 god is represented
as wearing a mantle made of water-grasses 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 scholarship, 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 massy 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 partisanship 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 pronoun 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 God 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 fashionable.
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
passage. 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 Shelley'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 passage 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 passage 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_.
153. dally with false surmise. King's body was not found. There was no
actual strewing of the laureate hearse with flowers.
156. the stormy Hebrides: islands off the northwest coast of Scotland.
160. Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old. The fable of Bellerus is the
fabled Bellerus, or Bellerus of the fable. He was a mythical giant of
Cornwall in old British legend. Bellerium was the name given to Land's
End, where he was supposed to live.
161. the great Vision of the guarded mount. St. Michael's Mount is a
pyramidal rock in Mounts Bay on the coast of Cornwall. This was guarded
by the angel, St. Michael, whose gaze was directed seaward, toward
Namancos and Bayona, in northwestern Spain. In some unknown place between
these widely sundered limits, the body of Lycidas is tossed.
170. with new-spangled ore. _Ore_, from its original meaning of metal in
the natural state, comes to signify metallic lustre generally. See Comus
719, 933.
173. See Matthew XIV 25.
175. Compare Comus 838.
176. the unexpressive nuptial song. See Hymn on the Nativity 116. See
also Revelation XIX 7-9.
181. And wipe the tears forever from his eyes. See Revelation XXI 4.
183. Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore. This is the same
promotion that was accorded to Melicertes, son of Ino, who on his death
became the genius of the shore under the name of Palaemon.
186. uncouth; a self-depreciating expression meaning _unknown_ or
_obscure_.
187. Milton applies the epithet gray both to evening and to morning.
188. various quills are the tubes of the shepherd pipe.
189. Doric means simply _pastoral_, because the idylls of the first
pastoral poets were written in the Doric dialect of Greek.
190. had stretched out all the hills: had caused the shadows of the hills
to prolong themselves eastward on the plain.
The poet seems to feign that he spent a day in the composition of
Lycidas.
SONNETS.
Of poems in strict sonnet form, that is, containing neither more nor less
than fourteen decasyllable iambic lines, interlocked by some scheme of
symmetrical rhyme, not in couplets, Milton left twenty-three, of which
five are in Italian. Of the three sonnets in English omitted from this
edition, two have reference to the violent controversy occasioned by
Milton's publications in advocacy of greater freedom of divorce, and are
rough and polemic in style; the third is omitted on account of its
unimportance and lack of distinction.
In their dates the twenty-three sonnets range from the poet's
twenty-third to his fiftieth year. They are the only form of verse in
which he indulges during that middle period of his life which was
abandoned to political partisanship on the side of the Parliament in the
Civil War, and to the service of the government during the Commonwealth
and the Protectorate. If, as is now widely believed, Shakespeare's
sonnets are artificial and tell us little or nothing about their author,
those of Milton are purely natural and subjective and tell us nothing
else but what their writer was thinking and feeling. Their themes are his
veritable moods and passions. The mood is now friendly, amiable, and
serene, now bitter, strenuous, indignant, vindictive.
Wordsworth, in his sonnet, _Scorn not the Sonnet_, thus refers to
Milton's sparing use of this poetic form:--
and when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains,--alas too few.