Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/409

Rh Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges ! Tandem, ubi, non tacitae permensus tempora vitae, Annorumique satur, cineri sua jura relinquam, Ille mihi lecto madidis astaret ocellis; Astanti sat erit si dicara, 'Sim tibi curæ' ; Ille meos artus, liventi morte solutos, Curaret parvâ componi molliter urnâ: 90 Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus, Nectens aut Paphiâ myrti aut Parnasside lauri Fronde comas; et ego securâ pace quiescam. Turn quoque, si qua fides, si præmia certa bonorum, Ipse ego, cselicolum semotus in æthera divûm, Quò labor et mens pura vehunt atque ignea virtus, Secreti hæc aliquâ mundi de parte videbo (Quantum fata sinunt), et totâ mente serenùm Ridens purpureo suffundar lumine vnltus, Et simtil jethereo plaudam mihi laetus Olympo.

��the Saxon phalanxes with British war. Then, when I have lived the measure of my life, not in inglorious silence, and, sated with years, shall give the urn its rights, my patron will stand with wet eyes at my bed- side. As he stands there, I shall only say, "I am in thy care." He will place my limbs, loosened in death, softly in their humble grave ; and perhaps he will carve my face in marble, and bind my sculptured brows with Paphian myrtle or with the laurel of Parnassus, and I shall rest in peace. Then, if faith means aught, if there is any reward for the righteous, I shall stand among the ethereal deities in Para- dise, whither labor, and a pure mind, and righteousness that burneth as a flame, carry the souls of men : from some corner of the secret world, the fates permitting, I shall look down and behold all this ; my soul shall smile, my serene face shall be suffused with purpureal light, and glad at heart I shall clap my hands in the air of Heaven.

��EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS ON THE DEATH OF DAMON

��Milton's intimacy with Charles Diodati con- tinued after they had both left college, and ripened into a friendship of a very pure and ex- alted kind, as is proved by the letters which passed between them, while one was at Horton and the other in the north of England engaged in the study of medicine. The Italian can- zone beginning " Diodati, e '1 te diro con mara- viglia," and the fact of Milton's pilgrimage to Lucca, the ancestral home of the Diodati fam- ily, show that his friend was still in his mind during his sojourn abroad. He probably did not hear of his bereavement until he reached Geneva, in June, 1639, when Diodati had been dead almost a year, carried off, within a fort- night of his sister, apparently by some epi- demic which swept over that region of Black- friars where the two had taken lodgings. The elegy which follows was written, if we are to take literally the passage beginning " Twice the ear had grown green on the stalk," about two years after Diodati's death, i. e. in the autumn of 1640.

Aside from the rare beauty and passion of

��the poem in its Latin form, it has much auto- biographic interest. The life which the two friends led together is treated in much more explicit detail than is the case in Lycidas, and without the fiction necessary there. Diodati's medical studies, their talks and walks in the country about Horton, Milton's own experiences in Italy and his poetic ambitions, all come in for a treatment which is unusually concrete in spite of the pastoral disguise. Of preemi- nent interest is the passage concerning the great epic poem on the legendary history of Britain which Milton has already under way, and his decision to write in English instead of Latin. It would be pleasant to know whether the shepherds and shepherdesses who figure in the threnody are actual friends of Milton and Diodati. disguised according to the pastoral convention ; in the case of Chloris " from the stream of Chelmer," at least, a real person seems to be indicated. For some discussion of the form and spirit of the poem, see the intro- duction to the Latin poems.

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