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Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings
Victory home, though new rebellions raise
Their Hydra-heads, and the false North displays
Her broken league to imp their serpent-wings.
Oh! yet a nobler task awaits thy hand...

For what can war but endless war still breed?
Till truth and right from violence be freed,
And public faith cleared from the shameful brand
Of public fraud. In vain doth Valour bleed,
While Avarice and Rapine share the land.

XIX. [XVI.]

10

TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL, MAY 16, 1652.
ON THE PROPOSALS OF CERTAIN MINISTERS OF THE COMMITTEE FOR
THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL.-M.

CROMWELL, Our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,

expressed. Possibly he may have intended a zeugma, and the verb is spreads, or some such.

5. virtue, in the Latin sense, i.q. valour, the word in the copy used by Phillips. There is also in it an allusion to the purity of Fairfax's morals.

7. and the false North. The English Parliament affected to regard the entrance of Hamilton's army into England in support of the Royal cause as a breach of the Solemn League and Covenant between the two nations.-displays, etc. It would seem as if in poetic vision he beheld the North spreading out a copy of the Covenant she had broken, to be cut up to imp the wings of the Hydra of rebellion. Imp is to graft; and in falconry, to imp a hawk's wing was to piece its broken feathers.

9. Oh! yet, etc. We have altered the punctuation here, and thus we think given sense and perspicuity to the passage. The ordinary punctuation is

"O yet a nobler task awaits thy hand

(For what can war but endless war still breed?)
Till Truth," etc.

13. And public faith, etc. See the passage quoted, from his History of England, in Life of Milton, p. 379.

SONNET XIX.*-1. "Nubem belli." En. x. 809.-N.

*This sonnet is constructed precisely on the same principle as those of Drummond and Donne, namely, three quatrains (the first two with only two rimes) and a couplet. It is remarkable that among the numerous sonnets of T. Tasso there are two of this very form, viz. Amando, ardendo, and Tu parti, o rondinella; while in IV. and VI. of Milton's Italian sonnets the arrangement of the third quatrain slightly differs.

Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,

To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,
And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud

Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued,
While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,
And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,
And Worcester's laureate wreath. Yet much remains
To conquer still; Peace hath her victories.
No less renowned than War; new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.
Help us to save free conscience from the
Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw.

xx. [xvII.]

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TO SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER.

(1652 ?)

VANE, young in years, but in sage counsel old,

Than whom a better senator ne'er held

The helm of Rome, when gowns not arms repelled
The fierce Epirot and the African bold,

10

5. crowned Fortune, i.e. the Royalist cause, with particular allusion, perhaps, to the battle of Worcester.

7. While Darwen, etc. The Darwen is of course the Derwent; but Cromwell never defeated the Scots on any one of the rivers of that name. Warton says it is a small stream near Preston in Lancashire; but there is no such name on the maps; the only river there being the Ribble, which we think is the stream Milton meant, though it was the English Royalists, not the Scots, that fought at Preston.

9. And Worcester's laureate wreath, sc. resounds, which seems rather incongruous. What he first wrote, and twenty battles more,' is hardly less so. Possibly he intended a zeugma (see on Sonnet XVIII. 4); but the simplest course is to take 'resound' in the sense of proclaim,' and then it will agree equally with the stream,' the 'field,' and the 'wreath.'

12. with secular chains. The Presbyterian divines were extremely anxious to have the aid of the secular arm in enforcing conformity.

14. Of hireling wolves, etc., i.e. the Presbyterian clergy, whom he frequently, and but too justly, charges with looking to secular advantages fully as much as their Episcopalian predecessors. He terms them 'wolves' in allusion to Mat. vii. 15, Acts xx. 29.

SONNET XX.-3. gowns, i.e. toga. Senate that baffled Pyrrhus and Hannibal.

As it was chiefly the wisdom of the
It is quite erroneous to render toga

Whether to settle peace, or to unfold

The drift of hollow States hard to be spelled, Then to advise how War may best upheld Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, In all her equipage; besides to know

Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,

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What severs each thou hast learned, which few have done.

The bounds of either sword to thee we owe :

Therefore on thy firm hand Religion leans
In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son.

XXI. [XIX.]

ON HIS BLINDNESS.

(1652 ?)

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,
Lodged 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-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

5

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

10

'gown,' for they are totally dissimilar. It may as well be noticed that the last foot in v. 4 is anapastic.

6. hollow States. Alluding probably, as Warburton thinks, to the United Provinces, whose Government was named the States General.

7. how War, etc. The construction is: how War may move best, upheld by, etc.

SONNET XXI.-1. spent. He seems to use this word here in the sense of the Italian spento, extinguished; è spento il lume.

2. Ere half my days, sc. are spent. As Milton was past forty-three when he lost his sight, it seems strange that he should say he had not lived half his days.

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Alluding to the parable of the Talents, Mat. xxv.

4.

As Warton observes, there is a play here on the meaning

Is kingly. Thousands, at his bidding, speed
And post o'er land and ocean, without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

XXII. [XVIII.]

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEMONT.-M.

(1655.)

AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks; their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learned thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

10

12.

8. fondly, i.e. foolishly.-prevent, i.e. anticipate, forestall. "There they, in their trinal triplicities, About him wait and on his will depend; Either with nimble wings to cut the skies, When he them on his messages doth send; Or on his own dear presence to attend."

SONNET XXII.—2.

.—W.

Spenser, Hymn of Heav. Love, x.— "Into the valleys green,

Distilled from tops of Alpine mountains cold.”

Fairf. God. of Bul. xiii. 60.-W.

3. Even them, etc. The Waldenses at all periods rejected the idolatry of the Church of Rome.

9. Mother, etc. An instance of this barbarity is related by Morland in his History of the Valleys of Piemont, etc.

10. sow, etc. Alluding to "Sanguis martyrum semen est Ecclesiæ."-T.

14. Early, etc., i.e. become converted, and so escape the destruction to come on Rome, the mystic Babylon (Rev. xviii.).

XXIII. [XXII.]

TO CYRIAC SKINNER.

(1655 ?)

CYRIAC, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overplied

In Liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

5

10

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask, Content though blind, had I no better guide.

XXIV. [xxIII.]

ON HIS DECEASED WIFE.

(1658.)

METHOUGHT I saw my late-espoused saint,

Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,

Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed-taint

5

SONNET XXIII.-1. This three-years-day. This would seem to mean, it is three years today since.

10. conscience, i.e. consciousness.

11. In Liberty's defence, i.e. in writing his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, etc. see Life of Milton, p. 45.

13. vain mask. "Surely every man walketh in a vain shew." Ps. xxxix. 6. -K.

SONNET XXIV.—1. " Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay." Raleigh, Son. before F. Q.-W.

2. Brought, etc. See the Alcestis of Euripides.

5. Mine, etc. It is nowhere said in the Scriptures that the Hebrew women

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