Milton wrote a lot of stuff that you will need to know apart from Paradise Lost, which is, according to some, the most commonly occurring work on the exam. There’s plenty of short poetry (including sonnets), long poetical works, and philosophical work to study. Here I have given the short poetry first, followed by the non-poetic work. On the topic of Paradise Lost, I have not included any information. Since it appears as often as it does, spending time to read at least the first book of the poem is worth your while. The real trick with Paradise Lost is not to know the plot, but to get as sense of the cadence and the syntax. ETS really wants you to be able to identify the parts of speech in a Miltonic sentence — what’s the subject, what does X adjective modify, etc. Spending time reading the poem is the best way to prepare for those types of questions which will more than likely constitute at least four or five questions.
I have also listed Milton as a Restoration poet, which is really rather arbitrary. Milton does not really fit in with Restoration poets, but he’s a bit late to be considered a Renaissance poet.
“How Soon Hath Time”
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th.
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of
Heaven;
All is: if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.
“On Shakespeare”
My personal feeling is that it’s worth knowing poems by poets about other poets. Ben Johnson also wrote about Shakespeare, and Andrew Marvell wrote about Milton. It’s a good idea to keep these things in mind because ETS wants you to be able to place such poets in a meaningful constellation of influences.
What needs my Shakespear for his honour’d Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid
Under a Star- ypointing Pyramid ?
Dear son of memory , great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th’ shame of slow- endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu’d Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving ;
And so Sepulcher’d in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
“On the Late Massacre in Piedmont”
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 Piedmontese 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 th’ Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (also sometimes called “On his blindness”)
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
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
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Aeropagitica
Areopagitica is John Milton’s impassioned (if not initially successful) protest against censorship and obstruction of the press. While the work did not produce immediate results and seems rather conservative to modern tastes, it grew to have great significance to later generations and was instrumental in forming many modern defenses of literary freedom.
Throughout the piece, Milton makes numerous religious and classical allusions (to the point of tedium). He considered the political freedom of ancient Greece to have been an ideal situation and attempts to link the greatness of Greece with the greatness of England. In addition, the Protestant Milton got a tremendous mileage out of continually evoking the frightening and hated visage of the Catholic Church, which had created in 1559 the infamous “Index of Prohibited Books”.
Milton brings up three central points in his attack of censorship. Firstly, books are not the sole purveyors of evil or destructive information, so attempts to halt the flow of evil or destructive information by regulating book publishing would necessarily be ineffective. Secondly, you would need inhumanly perfect individuals to serve as judges, or personal biases and misunderstanding would creep into the system and damage the chances that “good” books had of publication. Thirdly, even “bad” books can serve a constructive purpose by strengthening an individual’s resistance to faulty or evil ideas – if a person can be exposed to poisonous thoughts and triumph, their spirit will be the stronger for the contest.
“For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us’d, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
*Comus
Comus is a masque about the attempted seduction of a young girl by Comus, a supernatural being. The Lady stands firm, secure in the sanctity of her virginity, and eventually her brothers (along with an attendant spirit or two) come to her rescue.
Comus is of interest due to being a very early example of John Milton’s work (certain elements of Lucifer of Paradise Lost can be seen in Comus). Additionally, Comus is dedicated to the Earl of Bridgewater and features his children in the primary roles. Debate still rages about whether or not Milton intended the masque to address an unpleasant situation involving the Earl’s sister-in-law and niece, where both women were raped repeatedly by members of their household. Comus is very much absorbed in the mental and spiritual aspects of chastity and could be viewed as a defense of the victims of sexual assault (who still have their spiritual chastity “intact”), if read with the family history in mind.
From Comus:
“Love virtue, she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime:
Or, if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.”
Of Education
Of Education is Milton’s contribution to contemporary debate about methods of education, which in turn was part of a larger discussion about how the Church should be organized and how the State should be governed. In substance, Milton’s tractate generally agrees with the humanistic theory of education that grew up in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the impulse of the Revival of Learning. This theory is marked by two or three outstanding characteristics, all of which are prominent in Milton’s treatise. One of these is a clearer consciousness, among teachers and students, of education as a discipline for active life. A second is an insistence upon the more extensive reading of ancient writers, both classical and Christian, as the principal means of securing this discipline. A third characteristic is an attitude of severe and often hostile criticism toward medieval education and culture.
Samson Agonistes
In this play he re-tells the story of the Hebrew hero Samson from the Book of Judges in the Bible. The play concentrates on Samson after he had been betrayed by his wife Delilah, was blinded and held prisoner by the Philistines, the enemies of the Hebrews. Samson resists the temptation to become despondent and, having re-gained his strength by allowing his hair to grow after the Philistines had cut it, destroyed the leadership of the Philistines by pulling a large building down on them and himself.
This play takes on a special poignancy when one understands that Milton, like Samson, had devoted his life to his country. Milton temporarily gave up his poetry and worked for Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth government after Charles I was deposed. He continued this service even though his eyesight was failing and he knew that he was hastening his own blindness. After the Restoration in1660, Milton saw all his efforts come to nothing, for the monarchy was restored with Charles II. One can imagine Milton wishing that he could perform some heroic feat as Samson did. And in some sense Milton was successful, for his beloved England, along with much of the world, enjoys many of the freedoms he fought for. The tyranny the monarchy represented to him has disappeared from England.
Lycidas
“Lycidas” is a poem by John Milton, written in 1637 as a pastoral elegy, dedicated to the memory of Edward King, a collegemate of Milton’s at Cambridge who had been drowned when his ship sank in the Irish Sea off the coast of Wales. The poem is 193 lines in length, and is irregularly rhymed.
The topic of the poem is a shepherd who mourns his drowned friend, Lycidas, first alluding to the immortal fame of a poet. Then, the metaphor of “shepherd” for priests is explored. King and Milton were both preparing to become ministers, and the death of one good shepherd mourned as a severe loss to the flock, i.e. the salvation of the faithful (108–131):
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake,
Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain,
(The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)
He shook his Miter’d locks, and stern bespake,
How well could I have spar’d for thee young swain,
Anow of such as for their bellies sake,
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck’ning make,
Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A Sheep-hook, or have learn’d ought els the least
That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
The phrase “blind mouths” describes the corrupt clergy who “creep, intrude and climb into the fold“, i.e. who acquire their position with dishonest means, referring to their greed, and uselessness as guardians. The “Wolf” has been interpreted as an allegory for the Catholic Church, and the “two-handed engine at the door” may refer to Judgement Day, although the precise metaphor intended is uncertain, and the lines are among the most discussed in English literature. An “engine” in Milton’s day needed not be a mechanical machine, but could also refer to a simpler device or weapon, such as a two handed sword used for execution.
The final lines of the poem:
And now the Sun had stretch’d out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch’d his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.
Vade Mecum 