Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/68

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��POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON

��aspects with that kind of fidelity which continually makes a new and surprising revelation of common things. He has not the delicate half-savage woodcraft by vir- tue of which some poets surprise her at her shy rites. His nature-pictures, if not con- ventional, are conventionalized. He paints, for the most part, in the broad typical way of the Dutch landscape school, a style which is fatally dull in second-rate hands, but which, in the hands of a consummate artist, leads to a classical permanency and largeness of effect. It is because Mil- ton's hand is consummate that we can read and re-read the Allegro and Penseroso, sure of a calm, renewed delight, when more thrilling poetry may have exhausted its power to charm after the first appeal.

The language of these two little master- pieces has been the despair of poets. It is not that it is so beautiful, for others have equaled or excelled it in the mere conjur- ing power of suggestion; but that it is, as a French critic has finely said, so just in its beauty. The means are exquisitely propor- tioned to the end. The speech incarnates the thought as easily, as satisfyingly, as the muscles of a Phidian youth incarnate the motor-impulse of his brain. Always frui- tion is just gently touched. To the con- noisseur in language there is a sensation of almost physical soothing in its perfect poise and play.

The metre of these poems, notwithstand- ing its simplicity, will repay careful study. Disregarding the inductions, we perceive the metrical norm to be the line of eight syllables, the stresses falling on the even syllables,

L'ALLEGRO

(1633)

HENCE, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,

��" But come', thou God'dess fair' and free'." This metre (iambic tetrameter) was a fa- vorite one with Milton's predecessors and contemporaries, but had shown itself to have two great weaknesses. It was prone to degenerate into monotony and into tri- viality.

Milton avoids the first danger by a lib- eral use of seven-syllable lines, with the initial stress falling on the first syllable :

Come', and trip' it as' you go',

a variation which gives a buoyant lilting effect to the verse, and sends it on with elastic freshness whenever it is in danger of becoming spiritless. It will be noticed, however, that this tripping measure is never introduced arbitrarily, for mere variety's sake, but always in answer to some bright- ening of mood in the thought itself, such as the quoted line illustrates. With this in mind, it will be instructive to compare the invocation of Mirth and her gay train with that of Melancholy and her sober attend- ants.

To show by what means Milton avoided the second danger to which the metre is exposed, that of degenerating into trivial- ity, would be to put our finger on one of the mysteries of the creative mind. A great composer has recently employed the negro melodies and jigs of the southern states as the leading themes in an imposing symphony. In somewhat the same way Milton here raises a half-doggerel metre into dignity. The real artist never shows himself so well as when he works in a homely medium, communicating to it his own distinction.

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his

jealous wings, And the night-raven sings;

There under ebon shades, and low-browed

rocks, As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. 10 But come, thou Goddess fair and free,

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