Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/61

 ON BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE 19

��The highly-favoured Joseph bore To him that served for her before, And at her next birth, much like thee, Through pangs fled to felicity, Far within the bosom bright Of blazing Majesty and Light: There with thee, new-welcome Saint, Like fortunes may her soul acquaint, With thee there clad in radiant sheen, No Marchioness, but now a Queen.

��ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE

(1631)

This sonnet was written at Cambridge, shortly before Milton took his Master's degree. After he had left Cambridge for Horton, he sent the sonnet to a friend, whose name is now unknown, enclosed in a letter replying to cer- tain exhortations which that friend had made to him concerning his apparent idleness and aimlessness. After setting forth the reasons which deterred him from entering the church, Milton says : " That you may see that I am something suspicions of myself, and do take

��notice of a certain belatedness in me, I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some little while ago, because they eome in not altogether unfitly, made up in a Petrarchian stanza."

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stolen on his wing my three and twen- tieth year !

My hasting days fly on with full ca- reer,

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 ap- pear,

That some more timely-happy spirits in-

du'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.

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