From the hard season gaining? Time will run rise To hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise. XXI. TO CYRIACK SKINNER'. CYRIACK, whose grandsire, on the royal bench Which others at their bar so often wrench; To measure life learn thou betimes, and know way; For other things mild Heaven a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains. XXII. TO THE SAME. CYRIACK, 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 liament which began in 1653, and was active in settling the protectorate of Cromwell. In consequence of his services, he was made president of Cromwell's council; where he appears to have signed many severe and arbitrary decrees, not only against the royalists, but the Brownists, fifth-monarchy men, and other sectarists. He continued high in favour with Richard CromweH. Henry Lawrence, the virtuous son, is the author of a work entitled Of our Communion and Warre with Angels, &c. Printed Anno Dom. 1646. 4o, 189 pages. The dedication is "To my Most deare and Most honoured Mother, the lady Lawrence." He is perhaps the same Henry Lawrence, who printed A Vindication of the Scriptures and Christian Ordinances, 1649. Lond. 4°. 'Son of William Skinner, esq. and grandson of sir Vincent Skinner; and his mother was Bridget, one of the daughters of the famous sir Edward Coke, lord ehief justice of the King's Bench. 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. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask Content though blind, had I no better guide. XXIII. ON HIS DECEASED WIFE. METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband [faint. Rescu'd from death by force, though pale and Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed gave, taint Then rough-hewn, and lastly rugged. All in SONN. xii. Ver. 4. Of owls and buzzards. From ver. 1. to ver. 8, as now printed. So it was at first written, afterwards corrected to the present reading, Worcester's laureat wreath. Ver. 11, & 12, as now printed. This sonnet Ver. 10. And hate the truth whereby they should is in a female hand, unlike that in which the 8th be free. All in Milton's own hand. sonnet is written. Title. "To my friend Mr. Hen. Lawes, feb. 9. 1645. On the publishing of his aires." Ver. 1. As now printed. Ver. 2. And to advise how war may, best up held, Move on her two main nerves. Ver. 3. Words with just notes, which till then So at first written, afterwards corrected to then us'd to scan, With Midas' eares, misjoining short In the first of these lines "When most were wont to Ver. 6. And gives thee praise above the pipe of To after age thou shalt be writ a man, Thou honourst vers, &c. Ver. 12. Fame, by the Tuscan's leav, shall set Than old Casell, whom Dante woo'd to There are three copies of this sonnet; two in and by. Ver. 10. What power the church and what the civill means, Thou teachest best, which few have ever done. Afterwards thus, Both spiritual power and civill, what each means, Thou hast learn'd well, a praise which few have won. Lastly, as now printed. Ver. 13. either of the two last. manuscript. SONN. xxi. The four first lines are wanting. In the hand of a fourth woman, as it seems, SONN. xxi. Ver. 3. to ver. 5, as now printed. Ver. 12. Of which all Europe talks from side Ver. 13, 14. As now printed. This sonnet is written in the same female hand as the last. SONN. xxiii. No variations, except in the spelling. This is in a fifth female hand; beautifully written; imitating also Milton's manner of beginning most of the lines with small initial letters; which is not the case with the other female hands. APPENDIX TO THE SONNETS. I. DR. Birch, in his LIFE OF MILTON, has printed a sonnet, said to be written by Milton in 1665, when he retired to Chalfont in Buckinghamshire on ac- Fair mirrour of foul times! whose fragile sheen, II. In the concluding note on the seventh Sonnet, it has been observed that other Italian sonnets and compositions of Milton, said to be remaining in manuscript at Florence, had been sought for in vain by Mr. Hollis. I think it may not be improper here to observe, that there is a tradition of Milton having fallen in love with a young lady, when he was at Florence; and, as she understood no English, of having written some verses to her in Italian, of which the poem, subjoined to this remark, is said to be the sense. It has often been printed; as in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1760, p. 148; in Fawkes and Woty's Poetical Calendar, 1763, vol. viii. p. 68; in the Annual Register for 1772, p. 219; and in the third volume of Milton's poems in the Edition of the Poets, 1779. But to the original no reference is given, and even of the translator no mention is made, in any of those volumes. The poem is entitled, A fragment of Milton, from the Italian. Then, laughing, they repeat my languid lays→→ "Nymphs of thy native clime, perhaps," CHRIST'S NATIVITY ›. Turs is the month, and this the happy mort, That he our deadly forfeit should release, That glorious form, that light unsufferable, · Forsook the courts of everlasting day, Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein See, how from far, upon the eastern road, THE HYMN. Ir was the winter wild, All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; Had doff'd her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: 'This ode, in which the many learned allusions are highly poetical, was probably composed as a college-exercise at Cambridge, our author being now only twenty-one years old. In the edition of 1645, in its title it is said to have been written in 1629. The stars, with deep amaze, Stand fix'd in stedfast gaze, Bending one way their precious influence; And will not take their flight, For all the morning light, Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence; But in their glimmering orbs did glow, And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow; And, with your ninefold harmony, Make up full consort to the angelic symphoy. Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them For, if such holy song The babe yet lies in smiling infancy, That on the bitter cross Must redeem our loss; So both himself and us to glorify: Yet first, to those ychain'd in sleep, His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue : The brutish gods of Nile as fast, The wakeful trump of doom must thunder Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste. through the deep; With such a horrid clang Shall from the surface to the centre shake; When, at the world's last session, Nor is Osiris seen In Memphian grove or green, Trampling the unshower'd grass with lowings loud: Nor can he be at rest Within his sacred chest ; Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud; In vain with timbrell'd anthems dark The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark. throne. So, when the Sun in bed, Pillows his chin upon an orient ware, Troop to the infernal jail, Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave; And the yellow-skirted Fayes Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moonlov'd maze. But see, the Virgin blest Hath laid her babe to rest; Time is, our tedious song should here have ending: Heaven's youngest-teemed star Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp at And all about the courtly stable [tending: Bright-harness'd angels sit in ord er serviceable. THE PASSION3. EREWHILE of music, and ethereal mirth, Wherewith the stage of air and Earth did ring, For now to sorrow must I tune my song, * This Ode was probably composed soon after that on the Nativity. And this perhaps was a college exercise at Easter, as the last was at Christmas. WARTON. |