Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/379

 ELEGIES AND EPIGRAMS

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��ELEGIA SEXTA

��AD CAROLUM DIODATUM, RURI COMMORANTEM ;

Qui, cum Idibus Decemb. scripsisset, et sua carmina excusari postulasset si solito minus essent bona, quod inter lautitias quibus erat ab amicis exceptus haud satis felicem operam Musis dare se posse affirmabat, hoc habuit responsum.

ELEGY VI

( To Charles Diodati, who, sending the author some verses from the country at Christmas- time, asked him to excuse their mediocrity, on the ground that they -were composed amid the distractions of the festival season).

��The above note, given in the original edi- tions, explains the purport of the elegy. The verse-letter of Diodati's. here referred to, was written on the thirteenth of December, 1629, and Milton's reply was probably sent soon after Christmas. It is of extreme autobiographic interest, for two reasons. It contains a noble statement of Milton's poetic creed, at a time when he felt with almost equal intensity the

MITTO tibi sanam non pleno ventre salu-

tem,

Qua tii distento forte carere potes. At tua quid nostram prolectat Musa camce-

nam,

Nee sinit optatas posse sequi tenebras ? Carmine scire velis quam te redamemque

colamque ;

Crede mini vix hoc carmine scire queas. Nam neque noster amor modulis includitur

arctis, Nee venit ad claudos integer ipse pe-

des. Quam bene solennes epulas, hilaremque

Decembrim,

Festaque cselif ugam quse coluere Deum, 10 Deliciasque refers, hiberni gaudia runs, Haustaque per lepidos Gallica musta

focos ! Quid quereris refugam vino dapibusque

poesin ? Carmen amat Bacchum, carmina Bacchus

amat. Nee puduit Phcebum virides gestasse corym-

bos,

Atque hederam lauro prjeposuisse suse. Ssepius Aoniis clamavit collibus Euce Mista Thyoneo tnrba novena choro. Naso Corallaeis mala carmina misit ab agris ; Non illic epulae, non sata vitis erat. 20

��softer and the sterner sides of the poet's voca- tion ; and it gives an account of the Hymn on the Nativity, just completed, or perhaps still under way. The picture of Christmas merry- making in an English country-house gains a peculiar charm from the queer medium of seventeenth century Latin in which it is con- veyed.

��UNSURFEITED with feasting, I send you a good-health, for which your full stomach may give you need. Why do you tempt me to write verses by sending me yours ? Why will you not allow my Muse to stay in the shadow she loves ? You desire me to tell in verse how much I love and cherish you ? Believe me, that is a thing you can scarcely hope to learn in verse ; my love cannot be held in the strict bonds of metre, nor be put whole and unimpaired into measured syllables.

How well you tell of your high feastings, of your December merriment, and all the gaieties that celebrate the coming of the heavenly One to earth ! x How well you tell of the joys of winter in the country, and of the French must sipped pleasantly by the fireside ! But why do you imply that a poet must keep aloof from drinking and feasting ? Song loves Bacchus, and Bac- chus loves song. Apollo was not ashamed to bear the green corymbus ; nay, even to put the ivy of the wine-god above his own laurel. Many a time the nine Muses have mixed with the Bacchic chorus crying Evce on the Boeotian hills. Those verses which Ovid sent from the fields of Thrace were

1 A double reference is intended, to Christ and to Saturn ; the Roman Saturnalia was celebrated in De- cember.

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