Department of English
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Sonnet 19 ("When I consider how my light is spent")
(1673)
John
Milton
(December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674)
When I consider how my light is spent, | |
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide, | |
And that one Talent which is death to hide, | |
Lodg'd
with me useless, though my Soul more bent |
|
To
serve therewith my Maker, and present |
5 |
My
true account, lest he returning chide, |
|
Doth
God exact day-labour, light deny'd, |
|
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 |
10 |
Bear
his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State |
|
Is
Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed |
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And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest: |
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They also serve who only stand and waite. |
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Notes
This sonnet is first published in Milton's Poems in 1673 as sonnet XIX. In his notebook, the Milton Manuscript ("Trinity manuscript") at Trinity College, Cambridge, "There is no sonnet numbered 18 (or, for that matter, 19 and 20) and Sonnet 21 [...] Evidently a page is missing. (This is a terrible loss in the case of what we now call Sonnet 19, "When I consider how my light is spent," since the manuscript might have left us a clue as to exactly when it was written, a matter which Milton's critics have debated incessantly.)" (Patterson 90).
1 consider:
1 light:
1 spent: used up
2 Ere:
before
4 bent:
6 chide: scold or rebuke (Oxford Dictionaries Online)
7 exact:
7
day-labor: cf. John 9:4: "I must
work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh,
when no man can work." See also John
9:1–7.
8
fondly:
8 patience:
8 prevent: forestall
8
murmur: expression of discontent by grumbling (Online
Etymology Dictionary)
11 Bear his mild yoke: cf. Matthew 11:29–30: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
13
post:
13
o'er land...only stand: cf. Paradise Lost 3.648–53 below
14 They: i.e. angels; cf.
Th'Archangel Uriel, one of the sev'n
Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,
Stand ready at command, and are his eyes
That run through all the heav'ns, or down to th'earth
Bear his swift errands over moist and dry,
O'er sea and land.
(Paradise Lost 3.648–53)
But O th'exeeding grace
Of highest God, that loves his creatures so,
And all his workes with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed Angels, he sends to and fro,
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.
(The Faerie Queene 3.8.1 ll. 5–9)
14 stand:
When I consider everything that grows | |
Holds in perfection but a little moment, | |
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows | |
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; | |
When I perceive that men as plants increase, | 5 |
Cheerèd
and checked even by the selfsame sky, |
|
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, | |
And
wear their brave state out of memory; |
|
Then
the conceit of this inconstant stay |
|
Sets
you most rich in youth before my sight, |
10 |
Where
wasteful Time debateth with Decay |
|
To
change your day of youth to sullied night; |
|
And, all in war with Time for love of you, |
|
As he takes from you, I engraft you new. |
|
—William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets, eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library
—John Milton
How
soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth, |
|
Stoln
on his wing my three and twentieth yeer! |
|
My
hasting dayes flie on with full career, |
|
But
my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. |
|
Perhaps
my semblance might deceive the truth, |
5 |
That
I to manhood am arriv'd so near, |
|
And
inward ripenes doth much less appear, |
|
That
som more timely-happy spirits indu'th. |
|
Yet
be it less or more, or soon or slow, |
|
It
shall be still in strictest measure eev'n |
10 |
To
that same lot, however mean, or high, |
|
Toward
which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n; |
|
All is, if I have grace to use it so, |
|
As ever in my great task Masters eye. |
|
—John Milton, Poems (1645)
The Value of Literature
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them […] A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
—John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
Blindness
[...] If any one thinks that classical studies of themselves cultivate the taste and the sentiments, let him look into Salmasius’s Responsio. There he will see the first scholar of his age not thinking it unbecoming to taunt Milton with his blindness, in such language as this: “a puppy, once my pretty little man, now blear-eyed, or rather a blindling; having never had any mental vision, he has now lost his bodily sight; a silly coxcomb, fancying himself a beauty; an unclean beast, with nothing more human about him than his guttering eyelids; the fittest doom for him would be to hang him on the highest gallows, and set his head on the Tower of London.” These are some of the incivilities, not by any means the most revolting, but such as I dare reproduce, of this literary warfare.
Salmasius’s taunt about Milton’s venal pen is no less false than his other gibes.
—Mark Pattison, "Chapter 9: Milton and Salmasius.—Blindness.," Milton (London: Macmillan, 1879)
Study Questions
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Sample Student Responses to John Milton's Sonnet 19
Response 1:
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Reference
Bush, Douglas, ed. Milton: Poetical Works. London: Oxford UP, 1974. Print.
Maclean, Hugh, and Ann Lake Prescott, eds. Edmund Spenser's Poetry: Authoritative
Texts, Criticism. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton,
1993. Print.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism. 2nd ed. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Print.
Further
Reading
The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. Eds. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. New York: Modern Library, 2007. Print.
Danielson, Dennis, ed. The
Cambridge Companion to Milton. 2nd ed. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1999. Print.
Hughes, Merritt Y. John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose. Cambridge: Hatchett, 2003. Print.
Milton, John. Complete Shorter Poems. Ed. Stella P. Revard. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print. [with original spelling and punctuation, notes]
Patterson, Annabel. "Chapter 5: Milton's Heroic Sonnets." A Concise Companion to Milton. Ed. Angelica Duran. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. 78–94. Print.
Pattison, Mark. The Sonnets of John Milton. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1883. Print.
Shawcross, John T. John
Milton: The Self and the World. University Press of Kentucky,
2001. Print.
Shawcross, John T. The Complete Poetry of John Milton. Anchor, 1971. Print.
Verity,
A. W. Milton's Sonnets. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1944. Print.
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Last updated January 14, 2018