The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems Read Free Page A

whether writing about angels or demons, Milton’s touch can also be delicate and lyrically shimmering:
     
…how he fell
    From Heaven they fabled, 13 thrown by angry Jove
    Sheer 14 o’er the crystal battlements. 15 From morn
    To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
     
    A summer’s day, and with the setting sun
    Dropt from the zenith, 16 like a falling star….
PARADISE LOST , 1:740–45
     
    His psychological insights, as well as his sense of inner drama, exceed those of every English poet or dramatist but Shakespeare. Here is Satan, newly arrived in view of the Garden of Eden:
     
…Horror and doubt distract
    His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
    The Hell within him, for within him Hell
    He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
    One step, no more than from himself, can fly
    By change of place.
PARADISE LOST , 4:18–23
     
    This patient, careful, almost tender delineation of devilish torment is a good deal more impressive even than that offered in Marlowe’s fine play Doctor Faustus : “How comes it, then,” asks Faustus of the devil, “that thou art out of hell?” And the devil replies, “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it” ( The Works of Christopher Marlowe , ed. Brooke, 155). Marlowe gives us high drama, as does Milton. But Milton gives us more.
    And who can forget, once read, the achingly stupendous close to Lycidas , composed when Milton was twenty-nine:
     
    Thus sang the uncouth 17 swain to th’ oaks and rills, 18
    While the still morn went out with sandals gray.
    He touched the tender stops of various quills, 19
     
    With eager thought warbling his Doric 20 lay.
    And now the sun had stretched out 21 all the hills,
    And now was dropped into the western bay.
    At last he rose and twitched 22 his mantle blue:
    Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
LYCIDAS , 186–93
     
    The very moment he heard (by e-mail) that this edition was in preparation, a friend of mine, many years away from any connection with schools or colleges, promptly wrote out from memory a remarkably accurate transcript of almost fifty lines of Lycidas . That is exactly the sort of response, and the sort of tribute, that this edition of Milton’s English poems is intended to elicit.
     
    The principal function of the introduction to a book like this is to inform prospective readers of the editor’s goals and intentions and of the nature of the material offered in support of those goals and intentions in the pages that follow. Introductions to editions of Milton customarily explain the editor’s view of Milton’s theological concerns, usually discussing the poetry’s relationship to those concerns. Biographical information is often set out as well. (Biographical material is here offered, in capsule form, in the Chronology, which immediately follows the Contents listing above.) In this volume, however, much of the necessary theological and other informational material is spread throughout the book, being contained in the annotations (affixed to the poems for which such information is necessary), these comprising whatever value the book may possess. Those who employ this edition as a university textbook, which in all likelihood will be its chief use, will have an informed and communicative instructor to frame additionally needed contexts. And the brief list of suggested reading at the end of this volume offers, I trust, whatever further guidance may be required, at least in the initial stages of coming to know John Milton’s English poetry. Most of the items there cited, of course, contain references to still further critical and historical materials.

 
    PSALM 136

     
    1624
     
    Let us with a gladsome mind
    Praise the Lord, for He is kind,
For His mercies aye endure,
    Ever faithful, ever sure.
     
    Let us blaze 32 His name abroad, 33
    For of gods He is the God,
For His, etc.
     
    O let us His praises tell,
    Who doth the wrathful tyrants quell, 34
For His, etc.
     
    That with His miracles doth make
    Amazèd