Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/115

 LATER SONNETS

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��" When the Assault was intended to the City," the two on his blindness, and one on his second wife. The first of these presents Milton in a characteristic and at the same time unexpected light. On the thirteenth of November, 1642, the king's forces had advanced from their victory at Edgehill to Turnham Green, on the outskirts of Lon- don. An immediate assault was expected, and Essex hastened out with regular forces and trainbands to the number of 24,000 to engage the enemy. The occasion was one of such imminent danger that Milton's atti- tude in staying quietly in his study to write a sonnet pleading that his own house be spared from rapine by the cavalier troopers, seems rather chilly and ungenerous, not to say unvirile. The fact is, that he was at once unusually open to the enthusiasm of ideas, and unusually callous to the raw excitement of events. He had by nature much of the wanness of the idealist ; it is, indeed, not difficult to believe that a con- ception of his failing in this respect, and the hope of overcoming it, biased his ac- ceptance of public office when, a few years later, it was offered him. Now, with the brute force of arms drawing near, it was natural for him to retire haughtily into the kingdom of the mind, and especially to that city of the kingdom where his power was most absolute. The curious thing is that this haughtiness is tempered by an unex- pected humility. The poet seems to bow his head before the conqueror, and to offer his music as the price of leniency, with a Greek submission to the Fates strangely at variance with his habitual temper.

The first sonnet on his blindness shows submission to fate in a larger sense and in a deeply Christian mood. His blindness had been total for three years, and he had not yet seen his way to using, in darkness, " that one talent which is death to bide." He seemed to have made the last and great sacrifice. The manner in which the human

��pining of a strong man after the work de- nied him to do emerges here into con- templation of the sufficiency of the divine Worker, is so fine as to be beyond the reach of praise. The poet seems to stand by the battle chariot of God, powerless with wounds, but martial and attentive, while His aides and ensigns bear messages of the strife still waging. The second sonnet on his blindness, addressed to Cy- riack Skinner, takes a more everyday view. It is pathetic to see Milton comforting himself in his calamity with the belief that his second pamphlet against Salmasius, with its scurrility, its personal abuse, and its poor logic, was worth the price of his eyes; and the touch of vanity in the opening lines only adds to the pathos. Yet the purely human courage which this second sonnet breathes, its refusal to " bate a jot of heart or hope," its determination to " still bear up and steer right onward," is almost as fine as the more exalted resignation of the first.

The last of Milton's sonnets, that on his dead wife, is the tenderest of all his utter- ances. He had married Katharine Wood- cock on the 12th of November, 1656. Two years later she died in child-birth, and a month later her baby followed her. We know nothing of her or her relations with Milton beyond what the sonnet gives; but that is enough. The fact that he had never seen her face in life gives to this account of his veiled vision of her in sleep a peculiar poignancy ; and the closing lines,

" But O ! as to embrace me she inclined I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night,"

are in effect his farewell to the warmer human side of life. Henceforth his heart, too, was to dwell in darkness. The double darkness was given him as a background upon which to trace his vision of heaven and earth and hell in stupendous lines of light.

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