The Complete Poetry of John Milton (24 page)
Read The Complete Poetry of John Milton Online
Authors: John Milton
Tags: #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Poetry, #European
Therefore shall the face of Nature wither, covered over with the wrinkles / of ploughings, and the common mother of things,
3
/ contracted of her all-bearing womb, become sterile from old age? [10] / And herself acknowledged old, shall she move with erroneously / certain steps, her starry head trembling? Shall foul old age / and the endless greed of years, and squalor and mold / plague the heavens? Or shall insatiable time / devour heaven and ravage his father’s very organs? [15] / Alas, could not unforeseeing Jupiter fortify / his citadels against this execration, and banish / such an evil of time, and yield eternal circuits? / Therefore it shall come to pass that at some time, collapsing with / a tremendous noise, the vaulted floors of heaven will crash down and even [20] / each exposed pole will rattle with the collision, and Olympian Jove / will fall from his celestial court, and fearful Athena with her Gorgon / shield revealed,
4
as for example the child of Juno
5
on Aegean Lemnos / fell, cast from the sacred threshold of heaven. / You also, Phoebus, shall copy the misfortune of your son
6
[25] / in your headlong chariot, and shall be carried in sudden ruin / downward, and Nereus
7
shall steam at your extinguished light / and issue funereal hisses from the astonished deep. / Then furthermore the destruction of the foundations of Haemus
8
/ will burst from its summit asunder, and indeed, dashed to the lowest depths, [30] / the Ceraunian mountains, which he had used against the upper regions / in fraternal wars, cast down, will terrify Stygian
Dis. /
But the omnipotent Father, with the stars fixed more steadfastly, / has taken care of the greatest of things, and with certainty / has transfixed in balance the scales of the fates, and even [35] / commanded each individual thing in the great order to preserve / its uninterrupted course perpetually. / Therefore the Prime Wheel
9
of the world turns in its daily flight / and hastens with kindred whirling motion the encircled heavens. / Saturn, as is his wont, is by no means impeded, and as violent as formerly, / Mars flashes red lightning from his crested helmet. [40] / Bright Phoebus gleams forever youthful, / nor does the God warm the exhausted lands throughout the sloping regions / with his down-slanting chariot; but always strong in his friendly / light he runs onward the same through the signs of the spheres. / He
10
rises equally beautiful from the fragrant Indies, [45] / who drives at dawn the heavenly flock from the sky, / calling the morning, and driving them at evening into the pastures of heaven, / and who divides the kingdoms of time with its twin hues. / Delia
11
waxes and wanes by turns with alternating horn, / and she embraces the blue flame which is the sky with constant arms. [50] / Nor do the elements vary in faithfulness, and with accustomed crash / the lurid lightning-bolts strike the shattered rocks. / Nor through the void does Corus
12
rage with milder roar, / and harsh Aquilo
13
draws the armed Gelonians
14
together / with similar chill, and breathes winter, and blows the clouds along. [55] / And even the king of the sea,
15
as is his custom, cleaves the depths / of Sicilian Peloros, and the trumpeter
16
of Oceanus / clamors his grating conch through the level sea, / nor an Aegaeon
17
of less vast bulk / do the Balearic whales carry on their back. / On the contrary, Earth, the ancient vigor of that former age [60] / is not removed from you; and Narcissus
18
retains his fragrance; / that youth still possesses his beauty, and that lad / of yours, Apollo, and yours too, Cypris,
19
nor in former times / did knowing Earth more abundantly conceal the golden gift of mountains, / which leads to crime, not even the gems beneath the seas. Thus, in short, [65] / into eternity the most just sequence of all things shall proceed, / until the final flame shall devastate the world, far and wide / encompassing the poles and the summits of the deserted sky; / and the frame of the universe shall burn up in a vast funeral pyre.
20
(
June 1631 ?
)
1
That nature does not decay was the philosophic conclusion of both George Hakewell in
An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World
(1627) and other “optimists,” as Tillyard calls them (
Elizabethan World Picture
, N.Y., 1944, p. 33). Fink (
Classical Republicans
, pp. 91-122)
sees
evidence that Milton came to accept the theory of deterioration by 1642, but Joseph A. Bryant, Jr. (
SAMLA Studies in Milton
, pp. 1-19), argues that he maintained the position taken here without even occasional misgiving. Though commonplace, the concept is due to Milton’s faith in God: since these things come from God, providence is immutable, matter incorruptible, and nature undegenerate. Hanford, in “Youth of Milton,” p. 17, calls this early position “significant in its consistency both with his humanistic inheritance and with his later attitude in theology, politics, and education.”
The poem has frequently been identified as the verses which were “ghostwritten” for a Fellow of the college and alluded to as printed in a letter to Alexander Gill, dated July 2, 1628.
2
Man, like Sophocles’ Oedipus, is blind of his own doing; he presumes against God and his laws by seeing them in relation to his own imperfect concepts.
3
Earth.
4
Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa, who turned all who looked upon her to stone. Pallas Athena placed the head in her shield as a protective figure.
5
Vulcan.
6
Phaeton, hurled into the river Eridanus for endangering earth when he drove the chariot of the sun.
7
the Old Man of the sea.
8
a mountain in Thrace. The Ceraunian Mountains (l. 31) were in Epirus.
9
See
Fair Infant
, n. 7.
10
Venus, known as Lucifer when the morning star and as Hesperus when the evening star.
11
the moon.
12
the northwest wind.
13
the northeast wind.
14
a tribe of Scythia.
15
Neptune, whose waves beat upon Pelorus, the northeastern promontory of Sicily.
16
the merman Triton.
17
a giant with a hundred arms. The Balearic Islands lie in the western Mediterranean Sea off Spain.
18
Narcissus was changed into a flower when he died for love of his own reflection.
19
For Hyacinthus (beloved of Apollo), see
Fair Infant
, 25-27; for Adonis (beloved of Venus), see
El.
1, n. 7.
20
This was also the prediction of Hakewell. Compare 2 Peter iii. 10: “the day of the Lord will come … in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” See
PL
XII, 547-51.
1
Dicite, sacrorum præsides nemorum deæ,
2
Tuque O noveni perbeata numinis
Memoria mater, quæque in immenso procul
Antro recumbis otiosa Æternitas,
5
Monumenta servans, et ratas leges Jovis,
Cælique fastos atque ephemeridas Deûm,
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
Natura sollers finxit humanum genus,
Æternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,
10
Unusque et universus, exemplar Dei?
Haud ille Palladis gemellus innubæ
Interna proles insidet menti Jovis;
3
Sed quamlibet natura sit communior,
Tamen seorsùs extat ad morem unius,
15
Et, mira, certo stringitur spatio loci;
Seu sempiternus ille syderum comes
Cæli pererrat ordines decemplicis,
4
Citimúmve terris incolit Lunæ globum:
Sive inter animas corpus adituras sedens
20
Obliviosas torpet ad Lethes aquas:
5
Sive in remotâ forte terrarum plagâ
Incedit ingens hominis archetypus gigas,
Et diis tremendus erigit celsum caput
Atlante major portitore syderum.
6
25
Non cui profundum cæcitas lumen dedit
Dircæus augur
7
vidit hunc alto sinu;
Non hunc silenti nocte Plëiones nepos
8
Vatum sagaci præpes ostendit choro;
Non hunc sacerdos novit Assyrius, licet
30
Longos vetusti commemoret atavos Nini,
9
Priscumque Belon, inclytumque Osiridem.
Non ille trino gloriosus nomine
Ter magnus Hermes
10
(ut sit arcani sciens)
Talem reliquit Isidis cultoribus.
35
At tu perenne ruris Academi
11
decus
(Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis)
Jam jam pöetas urbis exules tuæ
Revocabis, ipse tabulator maximus,
Aut institutor ipse migrabis foras.
1
Say, goddesses, guardians of the sacred groves,
2
/ and you O Memory, most fortunate mother / of the ninefold deity, and you Eternity, / who recline at leisure in a boundless cave far away, / keeping watch over the records and unalterable laws of Jove, [5] / and the calendars of heaven as well as the daybooks of the gods, / say who was that first man from whose likeness / skillful Nature fashioned the human race, / eternal, incorruptible, coeval with the heavens, / and unique yet universal, the image of God? [10] / Certainly he is not seated, an internal offspring, / the twin of the virgin Athena, in the mind of Jove;
3
/ but although his nature be commonplace, / yet he exists separate unto himself by habit, / and, strange it is, is confined by regions in fixed space; [15] / or, the comrade of the imperishable stars, / he roams through the tenfold spheres
4
of the sky, / or inhabits the nearest to the earth, the moon: / or perhaps he is motionless, sitting by the waters of Lethe / among the oblivious souls waiting to enter a body:
5
[20] / or perhaps in a far-off region of the world / the archetype of man casually advances, a prodigious giant, / and, terrifying creature, to the gods raises his lofty head / higher than Atlas, the bearer of the stars.
6
/ The Dircean seer,
7
to whom blindness yielded a profound light, [25] / did not discern him in his deep hiding-place; / the swift grandson of Pleione
8
in the silent night did not / behold him in the wise company of prophets; / the Assyrian priest had no knowledge of him, although / he was mindful of the long ancestry of aged Ninus
9
[30] / and primitive Belus, and renowned Osiris. / Even thrice-great Hermes,
10
that one glorious for his triple name / (granting his esoteric knowledge), / did not bequeath the like to the worshippers of Isis. / But you, eternal glory of the Academy of the fields
11
[35] / (if you first introduced these marvels into schools), / now will recall the poets, exiles of your city, / since you yourself are the greatest fabler, / or else, creator, you shall quit that state yourself.
(
June 1631 ?
)
1
Milton satirizes Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s archetypal man in
Metaphysics
by raising unimaginative and insensible objections such as a matter-of-fact Aristotelian might do. It is evident, however, that he favors Plato’s theory of ideas (or archetypes), of which existing things are but imperfect copies. Compare the second prolusion, “On the Harmony of the Spheres.”
2
the nine Muses whose mother was Mnemosyne (Memory).
3
Pallas Athena sprang full-grown from the head of Jove.
4
in the Ptolemaic system, the ten revolving spherical transparent shells, with earth as center, in which the heavenly bodies were set.
5
Plato often referred to transmigration of souls (e.g.,
Phaedo, 70–72
); the waters of Lethe were drunk to induce forgetfulness before reincarnation.