Poem of the Week 2024/22

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide,

Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide,

Doth God exact day-labor, light denied,

I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts, who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait."

– John Milton

Milton of course is renowned for the epic sweep & sonorous majesty of his verse, but his sonnets are almost oddly powerful, like a contained but impressive granite monument. Here, in his famous sonnet on his blindness, he is also  unexpectedly intimate, dealing with a physical crisis that shades into a spiritual one.

Blindness, which came upon Milton as he worked to justify the English rebellion against the anointed King, is not only a terrifying condition for a poet, but a resonant one, as the mighty figure of the blind Homer casts a giant shadow over subsequent poets. Milton was immersed in the classical past & worked with & against it, but he probably would have preferred to have that ongoing agon take place outside his physical body, in the mental/spiritual worlds of poetry & philosophy.

Milton approaches the subject obliquely, referring to his light, rather than his eyesight. & that light is spent, meaning not just gone, but used & therefore unavailable for further use, like a burnt-out candle. He was actively using his sight, not just for literary work, but for political work. The difficulties of such work are immensely increased, of course, when you have to compose in your head & rely on an amanuensis. Light is traditionally associated with knowledge, not just worldly but spiritual: enlightenment. ("This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all": First Epistle of John, 1:5, King James translation). So the poet is cut off not only from his work in the world but, by implication, from his spiritual sustenance. Yet in this moment of despair (there is an echo here, I think, of Job) he does not curse, or turn away from God; he questions His ways. He considers his situation, reviewing it carefully, examining it from different angles.

The calamity struck him before "half his days" were run: I assume Milton is talking here rather generally about half of the traditional Biblical lifespan of threescore & ten years (70): in other words, he still has much to do in "this dark world and wide". The world is dark: mysterious, lacking enlightenment, cut off from the divine glow. The poet whose light is spent is stuck in a world lacking light, but instead of feeling at home, he feels cut off, isolated; wide suggests an uncertainty about which direction to take or where to turn in this world. (Much like Dante at the beginning of his Commedia, lost in a dark wood halfway through the journey of his life.)

The next lines are an extended play on the parable of the talents, found in Matthew 25: 14 - 30. With his usual verbal dexterity, Milton puns on talent, a unit of money used in the Bible, & talent, a skill or knack of doing a particular thing. Milton's talent, of course, is scholarship & writing, & he is unable to use them as he did, despite his zeal. There is genuine anguish here; it is death to hide this talent: he refers not only to the money given the servant in the parable, but to what he felt was his purpose for being in existence on earth. At the end of the parable, the "unprofitable servant" is cast "into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth". Again, darkness is used as an indication of ignorance, suffering, & even damnation. Continuing the play on the parable, he wants to present his "true account", & this refers not only to the account book in the gospel story but to God's judgment on each soul when it dies (in Christian theology, the "four last things" are death, judgment, Heaven, & Hell).

This sonnet divides its fourteen lines in what is sometimes called the Italian or Spenserian mode: an octave & a sestet (as opposed to the English or Shakespearean sonnet, three quatrains & a concluding couplet). Line 7 concludes the extended play on the parable as well as the summary of the poet's tormenting situation: will God judge him for his failures to do his work, since God is also taking away his necessary tools? This question – Doth God exact day-labor, light denied – is usually, in modern editions, set apart with quotation marks, making it clear that the poet, the I of the next line, is the speaker. But when I pulled down my college copy of Milton's Complete Poems & Major Prose, I saw that I had crossed out the quotation marks, which surprised me, as I do not write in books, until I suddenly flashed on my professor instructing the class to do so. They are apparently not in the more lightly punctuated original printing, & they're not meant to be. With his customary flexibility of syntax, Milton initially suggests that this line is the "chiding" the returning Master gives his servant. It isn't until the end of the octave that we realize the speaker is, more likely, I the poet. There is a tendency in annotated editions to make the crooked straight &  the rough places plain in ways they weren't meant to be. Writers often want the ambiguity, the struggle to see what exactly is going on.

So the answer to the poet's question – why have I been struck in this terrible way, & what do I do now? – is already developing even before the sestet, in the amphibiously placed line that suggests God is the one chiding the poet by asking if he really thinks God will punish him for the troubles God has laid on him. And the poet asks the question fondly. Fond at this time primarily means foolish, though there is a suggestion of the current meaning, which centers on affection for someone or something. The poet himself feels that his question is foolish (who is he to question the mysterious ways of the Almighty?) but he has not turned away from God: there is that residual affection. & despite what we would now call the "power imbalance" between poet & Creator, the poet feels he can & should question the ways of the powerful, as in the stated epic purpose of Paradise Lost, which is to justify the ways of God to men, meaning not only to justify to men (humanity) God's ways, but to justify the ways God has treated men (humanity): that is, he feels free to call God to account for the state of humanity, & he feels God not only expects but requires this analysis from his rational creation.

The sestet provides whatever answer the poet is going to receive. The poet has murmured his question; murmur now implies something low, soft, & indistinct, but here it has a more Biblical resonance as grumbling or complaining. Patience – a quality of endurance, of withholding judgment on one's situation, of waiting to see what is in store – heads off the murmur by suggesting that God is not quite like the Master in Jesus's parable; God does not need anything from those he created or from the gifts he gave them. The poet's suffering & troubled confusion is, in the vast & empyreal vision of God, a mild yoke (another echo of Biblical language: "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light", Matthew 11:30, King James translation).

In a phrase suggestive of the celestial armies of Paradise Lost, we are told of thousands who, at his bidding, rush without rest over the entire world, finding no obstacles in land or sea; they post, which suggests they are messengers or servants. There is a great sense of infinite movement & quickness here, part of the abundance of the Creator. Of course we feel we should also be rushing about. But, with a traditional Christian humility in the face of the unknowable ways of God, we are told that they are also serving him who simply wait to see what he gives them to do. There is a suggestion that they will be called on, at some point, to end their standing & their waiting. & though this attitude is rooted, as I mentioned, in a traditional Christian fear of the Lord, it is impossible to hear Milton's firm & magnificent final line without feeling a sense of power, strength, & determination, & even defiant pride, despite their official acceptance of Christian humility, in those who stand & wait.

I took this poem from John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Merritt Hughes.