JOHN MILTON.
John Milton, born in 1608, was twenty-four years of age when George
Herbert died. Hardly might two good men present a greater contrast than
these. In power and size, Milton greatly excels. If George Herbert's
utterance is like the sword-play of one skilful with the rapier, that of
Milton is like the sword-play of an old knight, flashing his huge but
keen-cutting blade in lightnings about his head. Compared with Herbert,
Milton was a man in health. He never _shows_, at least, any diseased
regard of himself. His eye is fixed on the truth, and he knows of no
ill-faring. While a man looks thitherward, all the movements of his
spirit reveal themselves only in peace.
Everything conspired, or, should I not rather say? everything was freely
given, to make Milton a great poet. Leaving the original seed of melody,
the primordial song in the soul which all his life was an effort to
utter, let us regard for a moment the circumstances that favoured its
development.
[Illustration:
His volant touch
Fied and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.]
From childhood he had listened to the sounds of the organ; doubtless
himself often gave breath to the soundboard with his hands on the lever
of the bellows, while his father's
volant touch,
Instinct through all proportions low and high,
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue;
and the father's organ-harmony we yet hear in the son's verse as in none
but his. Those organ-sounds he has taken for the very breath of his
speech, and articulated them. He had education and leisure, freedom to
think, to travel, to observe: he was more than thirty before he had to
earn a mouthful of bread by his own labour. Rushing at length into
freedom's battle, he stood in its storm with his hand on the wheel of the
nation's rudder, shouting many a bold word for God and the Truth, until,
fulfilled of experience as of knowledge, God set up before him a canvas
of utter darkness: he had to fill it with creatures of radiance. God
blinded him with his hand, that, like the nightingale, he might "sing
darkling." Beyond all, his life was pure from his childhood, without
which such poetry as his could never have come to the birth. It is the
pure in heart who shall see God at length; the pure in heart who now hear
his harmonies. More than all yet, he devoted himself from the first to
the will of God, and his prayer that he might write a great poem was
heard.
The unity of his being is the strength of Milton. He is harmony, sweet
and bold, throughout. Not Philip Sidney, not George Herbert loved words
and their melodies more than he; while in their use he is more serious
than either, and harder to please, uttering a music they have rarely
approached. Yet even when speaking with "most miraculous organ," with a
grandeur never heard till then, he overflows in speech more like that of
other men than theirs--he utters himself more simply, straightforwardly,
dignifiedly, than they. His modes are larger and more human, more near to
the forms of primary thought. Faithful and obedient to his art, he spends
his power in no diversions. Like Shakspere, he can be silent, never
hesitating to sweep away the finest lines should they mar the intent,
progress, and flow of his poem. Even while he sings most abandonedly, it
is ever with a care of his speech, it is ever with ordered words: not one
shall dull the clarity of his verse by unlicensed, that is, needless
presence. But let not my reader fancy that this implies laborious
utterance and strained endeavour. It is weakness only which by the agony
of visible effort enhances the magnitude of victory. The trained athlete
will move with the grace of a child, for he has not to seek how to effect
that which he means to perform. Milton has only to take good heed, and
with no greater effort than it costs the ordinary man to avoid talking
like a fool, he sings like an archangel.
But I must not enlarge my remarks, for of his verse even I can find room
for only a few lyrics. In them, however, we shall still find the simplest
truth, the absolute of life, the poet's aim. He is ever soaring towards
the region beyond perturbation, the true condition of soul; that is,
wherein a man shall see things even as God would have him see them. He
has no time to droop his pinions, and sit moody even on the highest pine:
the sun is above him; he must fly upwards.
The youth who at three-and-twenty could write the following sonnet, might
well at five-and-forty be capable of writing the one that follows:
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which time leads me and the will of heaven:
All is--if I have grace to use it so
As ever in my great Task-master's eye.
The _It_ which is the subject of the last six lines is his _Ripeness_: it
will keep pace with his approaching lot; when it arrives he will be ready
for it, whatever it may be. The will of heaven is his happy fate. Even at
three-and-twenty, "he that believeth shall not make haste." Calm and
open-eyed, he works to be ripe, and waits for the work that shall follow.
At forty-five, then, he writes thus concerning his blindness:
When I consider how my life is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide--
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent _foolishly._
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
That is, "stand and wait, ready to go when they are called." Everybody
knows the sonnet, but how could I omit it? Both sonnets will grow more
and more luminous as they are regarded.
The following I incline to think the finest of his short poems, certainly
the grandest of them. It is a little ode, written _to be set on a
clock-case_.
ON TIME.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race.
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace,
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours--
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross:
So little is our loss!
So little is thy gain!
For whenas each thing bad thou hast entombed,
And last of all thy greedy self consumed,
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss; _that cannot be divided--
And joy shall overtake us as a flood; [eternal._
When everything that is sincerely good,
And perfectly divine
With truth and peace and love, shall ever shine
About the supreme throne
Of him to whose happy-making sight alone
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb,
Then, all this earthy grossness quit,
Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit
Triumphing over Death and Chance and thee, O Time.
The next I give is likewise an ode--a more _beautiful_ one. Observe in
both the fine effect of the short lines, essential to the nature of the
ode, being that which gives its solemnity the character yet of a song, or
rather, perhaps, of a chant.
In this he calls upon Voice and Verse to rouse and raise our imagination
until we hear the choral song of heaven, and hearing become able to sing
in tuneful response.
AT A SOLEMN MUSIC.
Blest pair of sirens, pledges of heaven's joy
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixed power employ--
Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce--
And to our high-raised phantasy present
That undisturbed song of pure concent[105]
Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne
To him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee;
Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow;
And the cherubic host in thousand choirs,
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly;
That we on earth, with undiscording voice,
May rightly answer that melodious noise--
As once we did, till disproportioned[106] Sin
Jarred against Nature's chime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason,[107] whilst they stood
In first obedience and their state of good.
O may we soon again renew that song,
And keep in tune with heaven, till God ere long
To his celestial consort[108] us unite,
To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light!
Music was the symbol of all Truth to Milton. He would count it falsehood
to write an unmusical verse. I allow that some of his blank lines may
appear unrhythmical; but Experience, especially if she bring with her a
knowledge of Dante, will elucidate all their movements. I exhort my
younger friends to read Milton aloud when they are alone, and thus learn
the worth of word-sounds. They will find him even in this an educating
force. The last ode ought to be thus read for the magnificent dance-march
of its motion, as well as for its melody.
Show me one who delights in the _Hymn on the Nativity_, and I will show
you one who may never indeed be a singer in this world, but who is
already a listener to the best. But how different it is from anything of
George Herbert's! It sets forth no feeling peculiar to Milton; it is an
outburst of the gladness of the company of believers. Every one has at
least read the glorious poem; but were I to leave it out I should have
lost, not the sapphire of aspiration, not the topaz of praise, not the
emerald of holiness, but the carbuncle of delight from the high priest's
breast-plate. And I must give the introduction too: it is the cloudy
grove of an overture, whence rushes the torrent of song.
ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY.
This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the son of heaven's eternal king,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.
That glorious form, that light insufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
Wherewith he wont[109] at heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of trinal unity,
He laid aside, and here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
See how, from far upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet!
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet;
And join thy voice unto the angel choir,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.
THE HYMN.
It was the winter wild
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded that her maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace.
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war, or battle's sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hookéd chariot stood
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye, _awe-filled._
As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds, with wonder whist, _silent._
Smoothly the water kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild Oceän,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm[110] sit brooding on the charméd wave.
The stars with deep amaze
Stand fixed in stedfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer,[111] that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.
And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new enlightened world no more should need:
He saw a greater sun appear
Than his bright throne or burning axle-tree could bear.
The shepherds on the lawn,
Or e'er the point of dawn, _ere ever._
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row:
Full little thought they than _then._
That the mighty Pan[112]
Was kindly come to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook--
Divinely warbled voice
Answering the stringéd noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loath to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.
Nature, that heard such sound,
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat[113] the airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shame-faced night arrayed;
The helméd cherubim
And sworded seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn choir,
With unexpressive[114] notes to heaven's new-born heir.
Such music, as 'tis said,
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,[115]
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Ring out, ye crystal spheres;
Once bless our human ears--
If ye have power to touch our senses so;[116]
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
And, with your ninefold harmony,
Make up full consort[117] to the angelic symphony.[118]
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the age of gold;
And speckled vanity
Will sicken soon and die;[119]
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;
And hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Yea, truth and justice then
Will down return to men,
Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.
But wisest Fate says "No;
This must not yet be so."
The babe lies yet in smiling infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify.
Yet first, to those y-chained in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,
With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The agéd earth, aghast
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world's last sessiön,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.
And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is:
But now begins; for from this happy day,
The old dragon, under ground
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway;
And, wroth to see his kingdom fail,
Swinges[120] the scaly horror of his folded tail.[121]
The oracles are dumb:[122]
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the archéd roof in words deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving;
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
The lonely mountains o'er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
From haunted spring and dale,
Edged with poplar pale,
The parting genius[123] is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn,
The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.
In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemures[124] moan with midnight plaint;
In urns and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the flamens[125] at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power foregoes his wonted seat.
Peor and Baälim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And moonéd Ashtaroth, _the Assyrian Venus_.
Heaven's queen and mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine;
The Lybic Hammon shrinks his horn;[126]
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz[127] mourn.
And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol, all of blackest hue:
In vain with cymbals' ring
They call the grisly[128] king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue.
The brutish gods of Nile as fast--
Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis--haste.
Nor is Osiris[129] seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshowered[130] grass with lowings loud;
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud;
In vain, with timbrelled anthems dark,
The sable-stoléd sorcerers bear his worshipped ark:
He feels, from Judah's land,
The dreaded infant's hand;
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn.
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide--
Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine:
Our babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the damnéd crew.
So, when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail--
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave;
And the yellow-skirted fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.
But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid her babe to rest:
Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heaven's youngest-teemed star[131]
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed[132] angels sit, in order serviceable.[133]
If my reader should think some of the rhymes bad, and some of the words
oddly used, I would remind him that both pronunciations and meanings have
altered since: the probability is, that the older forms in both are the
better. Milton will not use a wrong word or a bad rhyme. With regard to
the form of the poem, let him observe the variety of length of line in
the stanza, and how skilfully the varied lines are associated--two of six
syllables and one of ten; then the same repeated; then one of eight and
one of twelve--no two, except of the shortest, coming together of the
same length. Its stanza is its own: I do not know another poem written in
the same; and its music is exquisite. The probability is that, if the
reader note any fact in the poem, however trifling it might seem to the
careless eye, it will repay him by unfolding both individual and related
beauty. Then let him ponder the pictures given: the sudden arraying of
the shame-faced night in long beams; the amazed kings silent on their
thrones; the birds brooding on the sea: he will find many such. Let him
consider the clear-cut epithets, so full of meaning. A true poet may be
at once known by the justice and force of the adjectives he uses,
especially when he compounds them,--that is, makes one out of two. Here
are some examples: _meek-eyed Peace; pale-eyed priest; speckled vanity;
smouldering clouds; hideous hum; dismal dance; dusky eyne:_ there are
many such, each almost a poem in itself. The whole is a succession of
pictures set in the loveliest music for the utterance of grandest
thoughts.
No doubt there are in the poem instances of such faults in style as were
common in the age in which his verse was rooted: for my own part, I never
liked the first two stanzas of the hymn. But such instances are few;
while for a right feeling of the marvel of this poem and of the two
preceding it, we must remember that Milton was only twenty-one when he
wrote them.
Apparently to make one of a set with the _Nativity_, he began to write an
ode on the _Passion_, but, finding the subject "above the years he had
when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it
unfinished." The fragment is full of unworthy, though skilful, and, for
such, powerful conceits, but is especially interesting as showing how
even Milton, trying to write about what he felt, but without yet having
generated thoughts enow concerning the subject itself, could only fall
back on conventionalities. Happy the young poet the wisdom of whose
earliest years was such that he recognized his mistake almost at the
outset, and dropped the attempt! Amongst the stanzas there is, however,
one of exceeding loveliness:
He, sovereign priest, stooping his regal head,
That dropped with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshly tabernacle enteréd,
His starry front low-roofed beneath the skies.
Oh what a masque was there! what a disguise!
Yet more! the stroke of death he must abide;
Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's side.
In this it will be seen that he has left the jubilant measure of the
_Hymn_, and returned to the more stately and solemn rhyme-royal of its
overture, as more suited to his subject. Milton could not be wrong in his
music, even when he found the quarry of his thought too hard to work.