I.
The date of this sonnet is unknown. From the fact that it comes first in the series as arranged by the poet, it is inferred that it is the earliest sonnet he chose to publish.
4. the jolly Hours. See note on Comus 986.
5-6. To hear the nightingale before the cuckoo was for lovers a good sign. This superstition is a motive in the _Cuckoo and the Nightingale_, a poem formerly attributed to Chaucer, and as such "modernized" by Wordsworth, but now known to be the work of Sir Thomas Clanvowe. Stanza X of this poem is thus given by Wordsworth:--
But tossing lately on a sleepless bed, I of a token thought which Lovers heed; How among them it was a common tale, That it was good to hear the Nightingale Ere the vile Cuckoo's note be utterèd.
9. the rude bird of hate. This gives to the cuckoo altogether too bad a character. The bird has on the whole a fair standing in English poetry. We must think of the very pleasing _Ode to the Cuckoo_,--written either by Michael Bruce or by John Logan,--as well as of the passage in which Shakespeare makes Lucrece ask (line 848),--
Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows' nests?
Look up other nightingale and cuckoo songs; for example, Keats's _Ode to a Nightingale_, and Wordsworth's _The Cuckoo at Laverna_.
II (1631).
This sonnet Milton appears to have sent with a prose letter to a friend who had remonstrated with him on the life of desultory study which he was so long continuing to lead. In this letter he professes the principle of "not taking thought of being _late_, so it gave advantage to be more fit." He adds, "That you may see that I am something suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certain _belatedness_ in me, I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some little while ago, because they come in not altogether unfitly, made up in a Petrarchian stanza, which I told you of."
8. timely-happy: wise with the wisdom proportionate to one's years. Similar compounds of two adjectives in Shakespeare are very frequent; for example, holy-cruel, heady-rash, proper-false, devilish-holy, cold-pale.
10. even: equal, adequate.
VIII (1642).
The occasion of this sonnet was the near approach of the royalist army to London, early in the Civil War. The people of the city had reason to fear the entrance of the cavalier troops and the sacking of the houses of citizens obnoxious to the party of the king. Milton would have been an object of special animosity to victorious royalists, and for a short time he had grounds for the acutest anxiety. It is not easy to see how, in case of actual pillage of the city, he could have made use of such an appeal as this. The sonnet is probably to be regarded as a work of art constructed when the vicissitudes which it pictures were happily past, and when the poet's mind had regained its tranquillity.
1. Note that Colonel has three syllables, according to the pronunciation prevailing in Milton's time. Look up the etymology of this word.
10. The great Emathian conqueror: Alexander the Great, called Emathian from Emathia, a district of his kingdom of Macedonia.
11. bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground. Alexander destroyed the city of Thebes in 335 B.C. Pindar, the famous lyric poet, a native and resident of Thebes, had then been dead more than a century. But Pindar's house still stood, and was left standing by the conqueror, who destroyed all other buildings of the city.
12. the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet had the power To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. To quote from Plutarch, Life of Lysander: "The proposal was made in the congress of the allies, that the Athenians should all be sold as slaves; on which occasion Erianthus, the Theban, gave his vote to pull down the city and turn the country into sheep-pasture; yet afterwards, when there was a meeting of the captains together, a man of Phocis singing the first chorus in Euripides' Electra, which begins,--
"Electra, Agamemnon's child, I come Unto thy desert home,
they were all melted with compassion, and it seemed to be a cruel deed to destroy and pull down a city which had been so famous, and produced such men."
IX (1644).
Who the virtuous young lady was is not known.
2. See the gospel of Matthew VII 13.
5. See Luke X 40-42; Ruth I 14.
8. Note the "identical" rhyme. The effect of such a rhyme is unpleasant. Modern poets avoid it.
9-14. See Matthew XXV 1-13.
X (1644 or 1645).
Lady Margaret's father was the Earl of Marlborough, who had been President of the Council under Charles I. Milton attributes his death to political anxiety caused by the dissolution of Charles's third Parliament in 1629.
6-8. that dishonest victory at Chæronea. The victory of Philip over the Greeks at Chæronea, B.C. 338, is called by the poet _dishonest_ because obtained by means of intrigue and bribery. that old man eloquent is the orator and rhetorician Isocrates, who, in his grief over the defeat of his countrymen, committed suicide.
9. later born than to have known: too late to have known. _Serius nata quam ut cognosceres_.
XIII (1646).
"In these lines, Milton, with a musical perception not common amongst poets, exactly indicates the great merit of Lawes, which distinguishes his compositions from those of many of his contemporaries and successors. His careful attention to the words of the poet, the manner in which his music seems to grow from those words, the perfect coincidence of the musical with the metrical accent, all put Lawes's songs on a level with those of Schumann or Liszt."--_Encyclopædia Britannica_.
See introductory notes to Comus and Arcades.
3-4. not to scan With Midas' ears. The god Apollo, during the time of his servitude to Laomedon, had a quarrel with Pan, who insisted that the flute was a better instrument than the lyre. The decision was left to Midas, king of Lydia, who decided in favor of Pan. To punish Midas, Apollo changed his ears into those of an ass.
4. committing short and long: setting long syllables and short ones to fight against each other, and so destroying harmony.
5. The subject is conceived as a single idea, and so takes the verb in the singular. exempts thee: singles thee out, selects thee.
8. couldst humor best our tongue: couldst best adapt or accommodate itself to our language.
10. Phoebus' quire: the poets. _Quire_ is Milton's spelling of _choir_.
12-14. Read the story of Dante's meeting with his friend, the musician Casella, in the second canto of Purgatory.
XV (1648).
The taking of Colchester by the parliamentary army under Fairfax, Aug. 28, 1648, was one of the most important events of the Civil War.
7. the false North displays Her broken league. The Scotch and the English accused each other of having violated the Solemn League and Covenant, to which the people of both countries had subscribed.
8. to imp their serpent wings. To _imp_ a wing with feathers is to attach feathers to it so as to strengthen or improve its flight. The word is originally a term of falconry. See Richard II. II 1 292. See also Murray's _New English Dictionary_.
13-14. Valor, Avarice, Rapine; personified abstracts, after the manner of our earlier poetry.