1.
4 the three Fates.
5 the etymological meaning of Ely (“island of eels”).
6 whose poem attacks an unidentified enemy.
7 Archilochus was in love with Neobule, daughter of Lycambes, who at first allowed and then forbade their marriage; to avenge himself he wrote such bitter satires that father and daughter hanged themselves.
8 The following lines, to the end, are spoken by Felton’s spirit.
9 According to Cicero (De Natura Deorum, III, xvii, 44), Death is a child of Night by Erebus, offspring of Chaos (the lower world). Erinys was one of the three Furies.
10 The Hours kept watch at the gates of heaven. Themis personified Justice.
11 Elijah (2 Kings ii. 11).
12 In flight he passes three heavenly constellations: Boötes, lying in the north and meaning “ox herder,” appears to move slowly; it is near the Great Bear, known as the Wain (wagon). Scorpio, lying in the south, is named for its similarity to a scorpion. Orion, lying on the equator, is in the figure of a hunter with belt and sword.
13 The moon (Diana) was triform because she was the virgin moon-goddess, the patroness of virginity, and the presider over child-birth, the chase, and nocturnal incantations. The threefold identification rests upon the phases of the moon: increasing, full, and waning. As goddess of nocturnal incantations she was identified with Hecate. As Davis P. Harding shows (“Milton and the Renaissance Ovid” [Harvard Univ. Press, 1946], p. 50), the dragons of the moon were associated with Hecate because they descended to Medea when she invoked the goddess’ help to flee from Jason’s wrath.
14 Rev. xxi. 19-21: “And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones /… the eighth, beryl… / And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.”
15 1 Cor. ii. 9: “But it is written, Eve hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
In obitum Procancellarii medici1
Parére fati discite legibus,
Manusque Parcæ2 jam date supplices,
Qui pendulum telluris orbem
Jäpeti3 colitis nepotes.
5
5 Vos si relicto mors vaga Tænaro4
Semel vocârit flebilis, heu moræ
Tentantur incassùm dolique;
Per tenebras Stygis ire certum est.
Si destinatam pellere dextera
10
10 Mortem valeret, non ferus Hercules
Nessi venenatus cruore
Æmathiâ jacuisset Œtâ.5
Nec fraude turpi Palladis invidæ
Vidisset occisum Ilion Hectora,6 aut
15
15 Quem7 larva Pelidis peremit
Ense Locro, Jove lacrymante.
Si triste fatum verba Hecatëia8
Fugare possint, Telegoni parens9
Vixisset infamis, potentique
20
20 Ægiali soror10 usa virgâ.
Numenque trinum fallere si queant
Artes medentûm, ignotaque gramina,
Non gnarus herbarum Machaon
Eurypyli cecidisset hastâ.11
25
25 Læsisset et nec te, Philyreie,12
Sagitta echidnæ perlita sanguine,
Nec tela te fulmenque avitum
Cæse puer genitricis alvo.13
Tuque O alumno major Apolline,
30
30 Gentis togatæ cui regimen datum,
Frondosa quem nunc Cirrha luget,
Et mediis Helicon in undis,14
Jam præfuisses Palladio gregi
Lætus, superstes, nec sine gloria,
35
35 Nec puppe lustrasses Charontis
Horribiles barathri recessus.
At fila rupit Persephone tua
Irata, cum te viderit artibus
Succoque pollenti tot atris
40
40 Facibus eripuisse mortis.
Colende præses, membra precor tua
Molli quiescant cespite, et ex tuo
Crescant rosae, calthæque busto,
Purpureoque hyacinthus ore.
45
45 Sit mite de te judicium Æaci,15
Subrideatque Ætnæa16 Proserpina,
Interque felices perennis
Elysio spatiere campo.
On the death of the Vice-Chancellor, a Physician1
Learn to submit to the laws of destiny / and now offer up suppliant hands to the Parca,2 / descendants of Japetus,3 who inhabit / the pendulous orb of the earth. / If doleful death, wandering [5] / from abandoned Taenarus,4 once summon you, alas: delays / and deceptions are essayed in vain; / through the shadows of the Styx one is certain to go. / If the right hand were strong enough / to rout appointed death, the untamed Hercules, [10] /poisoned by the blood of Nessus, / would not have been cast down on Emathian Oeta.5 / Nor would Troy have seen Hector6 slain / by the shameful deceit of envious Pallas, nor / him7 whom the ghost of Achilles killed [15] / with Locrian sword, Jove shedding tears. / If the incantations of Hecate8 could put / sad fate to flight, the parent of Telegonus9 / would have lived in infamy, and / the sister of Aegialeus10 to employ her potent wand. [20] / And if the arts of the physician and unknown herbs / were able to deceive the triple divinity, / Machaon, knowing so much of herbs, / would not have fallen by the spear of Eurypylus;11 / neither would the arrow smeared with the hydra’s blood [25] / have wounded you, son of Philyra,12 / nor the missiles and thunderbolt of your grandfather, you, / boy cut from your mother’s womb.13 / And you, O greater than your pupil, Apollo, / to whom the government of our gowned society was given, [30] / and whom now leafy Cirrha mourns / and Helicon in the midst of its waters,14 / now you would be the happy leader to the Palladian troop, / surviving, not without glory; / nor in Charon’s boat would you traverse [35] / the fearful recesses of hell. / But Persephone broke your thread of life, / angered, when she saw you by your arts / and powerful potions snatch so many / from the black jaws of death. [40] / Reverend Chancellor, I pray your limbs / find peace in the gentle soil, and from your grave / spring roses and marigolds / and the hyacinth with purple face. / May the judgment of Aeacus15 be gentle upon you, [45] / and may Sicilian16 Prosperina smile, / and forever among the fortunate / may you walk in the Elysian field.
(Oct.–Nov. 1626)
1 Dr. John Gostlin, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge and Regius Professor of Medicine from 1623, died on Oct. 21, 1626.
2 one of the three Fates; specifically, Morta, who controlled the advent of death.
3 As father of Atlas, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, he was considered mankind’s common progenitor.
4 the infernal regions.
5 To win back Hercules’ love, his wife Deianira followed the advice of the dying Nessus to smear a robe with his blood, which Hercules was to wear; but since Nessus’ blood had been stained with the blood of the hydra, also killed by Hercules, the robe caused fatal poisoning. Hercules had himself placed on a pyre on Mt. Oeta in Macedonia.
6 Athena, disguised as Hector’s brother Deiphobus, urged him to fight with Achilles, in which battle he was slain.
7 Sarpedon, son of Jove, who was slain by Patroclus, wearing Achilles’ armor.
8 goddess of enchantments.
9 Circe.
10 Medea, who was learned in magic.
11 Machaon, surgeon to the Greeks at Troy, was a son of Aesculapius.
12 Chiron was wounded by one of Hercules’ arrows poisoned by the hydra’s blood.
13 Aesculapius, so delivered by his father Apollo, was killed by Jove, Apollo’s father, because he saved men from death.
14 In an extravagance Milton has Apollo, god of healing, learning from Gostlin, and Cirrha (near Delphi) and Helicon (the haunt of the Muses) equating Cambridge with its poetic mourners.
15 a judge of the dead, appointed because of his justice in ruling Aegina.
16 Sicilian because she was carried off from Enna in Sicily by Pluto.
In proditionem Bombardicam1
Cum simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britannos
Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, nefas,
Fallor? an et mitis voluisti ex parte videri,
Et pensare malâ cum pietate scelus?
5
5 Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria cæli,
Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis.
Qualiter ille2 feris caput inviolabile Parcis3
Liquit Jördanios turbine raptus agros.
On the Gunpowder Plot1
When recently, at the same time against the King and the British lords, / you attempted, perfidious Fawkes, your unspeakable crime, / am I mistaken, or did you wish to seem in part kind / and to compensate for the heinous deed with wicked piety? / Certainly you would send them to the courts of high heaven [5] / in a sulphurous chariot with flaming wheels; / just as he2 whose head was inviolable by the cruel Parcae,3 / carried off in a whirlwind, disappeared from the plains of the Jordan.
(Nov. 1626 ?)
1 a Roman Catholic conspiracy by Guy Fawkes and others to blow up James I and the House of Lords on Nov. 5, 1605.
2 Elijah (2 Kings ii.
1 comment