The Complete Poems
PENGUIN ENGLISH POETS
GENERAL EDITOR: CHRISTOPHER RICKS
JOHN MILTON: THE COMPLETE POEMS
JOHN MILTON was born in 1608. The son of a scrivener (a notary and money-lender), he was educated by private tutors and attended St Paul’s School and Christ’s College, Cambridge. He left Cambridge in 1632 and spent the next six years in scholarly retirement. A Masque and Lycidas belong to this period. Following his Italian journey (1638–9), he took up the cause of Presbyterianism in a series of hard-hitting anti-prelatical pamphlets (1641–2). His divorce pamphlets (1643–5), written after his first wife had temporarily deserted him, earned him much notoriety and contributed to his breach with the Presbyterians. In 1649 he took up the cause of the new Commonwealth. As Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State, he defended the English revolution both in English and Latin – and sacrificed his eyesight in the process. He risked his life by publishing The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth on the eve of the Restoration (1660). His great poems were published after this political defeat. A ten-book version of Paradise Lost appeared in 1667, and Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were published together in 1671. An expanded version of his shorter poems (first published in 1646) was brought out in 1673, and the twelve-book Paradise Lost appeared in 1674, the year of his death.
JOHN LEONARD has taught at the universities of Cambridge, Ottawa and Western Ontario. He has published widely on Milton, and his book Naming in Paradise (Clarendon Press, 1990) was a co-winner of the Milton Society’s James Holly Hanford Award. He is a Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario, where he has taught since 1987.
JOHN MILTON
THE COMPLETE POEMS
edited with a preface and notes by
JOHN LEONARD
BookishMall.com
BookishMall.com
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 1998
13
Copyright © John Leonard, 1998
All rights reserved
The moral right of the editor has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
CONTENTS
Preface
Table of Dates
Further Reading
POEMS 1645
On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity
A Paraphrase on Psalm 114
Psalm 136
The Passion
On Time
Upon the Circumcision
At a Solemn Music
An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester
Song. On May Morning
On Shakespeare. 1630
On the University Carrier
Another on the Same
L’Allegro
Il Penseroso
Sonnet I (‘O nightingale’)
Sonnet II (‘Donna leggiadra’)
Sonnet III (‘Qual in colle aspro’)
Canzone
Sonnet IV (‘Diodati, e te’l dirò’)
Sonnet V (‘Per certo’)
Sonnet VI (‘Giovane piano’)
Sonnet VII (‘How soon hath Time’)
Sonnet VIII (‘Captain or colonel’)
Sonnet IX (‘Lady that in the prime’)
Sonnet X (‘Daughter to that good Earl’)
Arcades
Lycidas
A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle [‘Comus’]
ENGLISH POEMS ADDED IN 1673
On the Death of a Fair Infant
At a Vacation Exercise
Sonnet XI (‘A book was writ of late’)
Sonnet XII On the same (‘I did but prompt the age’)
Sonnet XIII To Mr H. Lawes, on his Airs
Sonnet XIV (‘When Faith and Love’)
Sonnet XV On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
Sonnet XVI (‘When I consider how my light is spent’)
Sonnet XVII (‘Lawrence of virtuous father’)
Sonnet XVIII (‘Cyriack, whose grandsire’)
Sonnet XIX (‘Methought I saw my late espousèd saint’)
The Fifth Ode of Horace
On the New Forcers of Conscience
PSALM PARAPHRASES ADDED IN 1673
Psalms I-VIII
Psalms LXXX-LXXXVIII
UNCOLLECTED ENGLISH POEMS
On the Lord General Fairfax
To the Lord General Cromwell
To Sir Henry Vane the Younger
To Mr Cyriack Skinner upon his Blindness
‘Fix Here’
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE PROSE WORKS
‘Ah Constantine, of how much ill’
‘Founded in chaste and humble poverty’
‘Then passed he to a flow’ry mountain green’
‘When I die’
‘Laughing to teach the truth’
‘Jesting decides great things’
‘’Tis you that say it, not I’
‘This is true liberty, when freeborn men’
‘Whom do we count a good man’
‘There can be slain’
‘Goddess of shades, and huntress’
‘Brutus far to the west’
‘Low in a mead of kine’
PARADISE LOST
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
Book XI
Book XII
PARADISE REGAINED
The First Book
The Second Book
The Third Book
The Fourth Book
SAMSON AGONISTES
THE LATIN AND GREEK POEMS
ELEGIARUM LIBER
Elegia I Ad Carolum Diodatum
Elegia II In Obitum Praeconis Academici Cantabrigiensis
Elegia III In Obitum Praesulis Wintoniensis
Elegia IV Ad Thomam Iunium
Elegia V In adventum veris
Elegia VI Ad Carolum Diodatum, ruri commorantem
Elegia VII Anno aetatis undevigesimo
‘Haec ego mente’
In Proditionem Bombardicam
In eandem
In eandem
In eandem
In Inventorem Bombardae
Ad Leonoram Romae canentem
Ad eandem
Ad eandem
SILVARUM LIBER
In Obitum Procancellarii Medici
In Quintum Novembris
In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis
Naturam non pati senium
De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit
Ad Patrem
Greek Verses:
Psalm CXIV
Philosophus ad Regem
Ad Salsillum
Mansus
Epitaphium Damonis
GREEK AND LATIN POEMS ADDED IN 1673
Apologus de Rustico et Hero
In Effigiei eius Sculptorem
Ad Ioannem Rousium
LATIN POEMS FROM THE PROSE WORKS
Epigram from Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio
Epigram from Defensio Secunda
UNPUBLISHED LATIN POEMS
Carmina Elegiaca
[Asclepiads]
Notes
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines
PREFACE
The present text represents a partial modernization. Spelling has been modernized, italics removed, and most capitals reduced. Contractions have for the most part been preserved, for they provide a guide to Milton’s prosody. I have modernized punctuation only when the original pointing might impede a modern reader. Most of my changes are from a comma to a semi-colon or full-stop. An example is Lycidas 128–32, which the editions of 1645 and 1673 point as follows:
Besides what the grim Wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
The comma after ‘said’ is potentially confusing, for it gives the momentary signal that the ‘two-handed engine’ is something that the bad shepherds said. I have printed a full-stop. In this instance I have the support of the 1638 edition, which also has a full-stop. John Creaser has argued for the virtues of eclecticism in choosing between variants such as these.1 Convinced by his arguments, I have drawn on the punctuation of all the texts produced in Milton’s lifetime. Occasionally I have modernized against all early texts.
I have not modernized any punctuation that in my judgement conveys a deliberate ambiguity. An example is Paradise Lost v 77– 81:
Taste this, and be henceforth among the gods
Thyself a goddess, not to earth confined,
But sometimes in the air, as we, sometimes
Ascend to Heav’n, by merit thine, and see
What life the gods live there, and such live thou.
Many editors change the comma after ‘we’ to a semi-colon and so remove a suggestive ambiguity. As Zachary Pearce noted in 1733, Satan’s ‘as we’ is placed so as to refer either to ‘Ascend to Heav’n’ or ‘in the air’. William Empson discerns ‘a natural embarrassment’ in the fallen Satan’s implied doubt as to whether ‘he could go to Heaven himself’.2 It is not always easy – and is sometimes impossible – to decide when a poet is being deliberately ambiguous, but it is an editor’s responsibility to make difficult decisions.
Variations of punctuation are too numerous to be recorded in the notes (though I have drawn attention to a few cases). I have recorded more verbal variations between the early texts, though constraint of space has forced me to be selective – especially with the early poems, which are extensively reworked in the Trinity manuscript.
Attention should be drawn to a liberty I have taken in my use of capitals.
1 comment