The Complete Poetry of John Milton (2 page)
Read The Complete Poetry of John Milton Online
Authors: John Milton
Tags: #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Poetry, #European
1665
Stayed at Chalfont St Giles, Bucks, to escape plague (June ?–Feb. ? 1666).
1667
Publication:
Paradise Lost
(Ed. 1, Aug. ?; further issues, 1668, 1669).
1669
Publication:
Accedence Commenc’t Grammar
(June ?). Residence: Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields (c. 1669-74).
1670
Publication:
The History of Britain
(before Nov.).
1671
Publication:
Paradise Regain’d
and
Samson Agonistes
(early in year).
1672
Publication:
Joannis Miltoni Angli, Artis Logicæ Plenior Institutio
(May ?).
1673
Publications:
Of True Religion, Hæresie, Schism, Toleration
(May ?);
Poems
(Ed. 2, enlarged, together with
Of Education
, Ed. 2, Nov. ?).
1674
Publications:
Joannis Miltoni Angli, Epistolarum Familiarium Liber Unus
(with college prolusions, May);
Paradise Lost
(Ed. 2, revised, July);
A Declaration, or Letters Patents
(July ?). Died, apparently of gout (Nov. 8 ?); buried in St. Giles, Cripplegate (Nov. 12).
Posthumous publications:
Literæ Pseudo-Senatûs Anglicani
(Oct. ? 1676; a free and inaccurate English version appeared in 1682);
Mr. John Miltons Character of the Long Parliament
(Apr. ? 1681); A
Brief History of Moscovia
(Feb. ? 1682);
Letters of State
(translated by Edward Phillips, with four sonnets and a biographical memoir, 1694);
Joannis Miltoni Angli De Doctrina Christiana
(1825; translated and published in same year by Charles R. Sumner).
The following abbreviations, in addition to those which are commonplace, those which are standard for books of the Bible, and those which are easily recognizable short forms, will be found in this edition:
| Aen. | Aeneid |
| Ec. | Virgil, |
| El. | Elegy |
| FQ | Faerie Queene |
| HLQ | Huntington Library Quarterly |
| Meta. | Ovid, |
| MLN | Modern Language Notes |
| MLR | Modern Language Review |
| NQ | Notes and Queries |
| Od. | Odyssey |
| PL | Paradise Lost |
| PMLA | Publications of the Modern Language Association |
| PQ | Philological Quarterly |
| PR | Paradise Regain’d |
| Ps. | Psalm |
| Rep. | Plato, |
| RES | Review of English Studies |
| SA | Samson Agonistes |
| SEL | Studies in English Literature |
| Son. | Sonnet |
| SP | Studies in Philology |
| TLS | Times Literary Supplement |
| TM | Trinity Manuscript |
| UTQ | University of Toronto Quarterly |
PART 1
Poems
Written during School,
College, and University Years
(1624–32)
1
When the blest seed of
Terah’s
faithfull Son,
2
After long toil their liberty had won,
And past from
Pharian
3
fields to
Canaan
Land,
Led by the strength of the Almighties hand,
5
Jehovah
’s wonders were in
Israel
shown,
His praise and glory was in
Israel
known.
That
4
saw the troubl’d Sea, and shivering fled,
And sought to hide his froth-becurled head
Low in the earth,
Jordans
clear streams recoil,
10
As a faint host that hath receiv’d the foil.
5
The high, huge-bellied Mountains skip like Rams
Amongst their Ews, the little Hills like Lambs.
Why fled the Ocean? And why skipt the Mountains?
Why turned
Jordan
toward his Crystall Fountains?
15
Shake earth, and at the presence be agast
Of him that ever was, and ay shall last,
That glassy flouds from rugged rocks can crush,
And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush.
(
1624
)
1
Harris Fletcher, analyzing the grammar school lesson of paraphrasing from one language to another, points out that “Milton’s effort was cast into eighteen lines, or two more than the original verse divisions called for, and was more or less done in this fashion: lines 2, 4, 8, 10 were really added lines; but in lines 13-14 Milton compressed the four lines of verses 5 and 6 …” (
Intellectual Development
, I, 191). Compare the translation of Milton’s rendition of this same psalm in Greek.
2
Abraham; the original cites only Jacob, the blest seed of Abraham.