IN OBITUM PRÆSULIS ELIENSIS Anno ætatis 17 ON THE DEATH OF THE BISHOP OF ELY This poem is parallel, in every respect except that of verse-form, with Elegy III on the death of Dr. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester. Dr. Nicholas Felton, Bishop of Ely, was likewise a Cambridge man, and had likewise been Master of Pembroke. His death occurred in October, 1626, only a few days after that of his brother-bishop. No ADHUC madentes rore squalebant genæ, Dum mæsta charo iusta persolvi rogo Cum centilinguis Fama (proh! semper mali Spargit per urbes divitis Britanniæ, Tumulis potentem sæpe devovens deam: Turpem Lycambis execratus est dolum, At ecce! diras ipse dum fundo graves, Leni, sub aurâ, flamine: "Cæcos furores pone; pone vitream Bilemque et irritas minas. 1Ο · 20 Quid temerè violas non nocenda numina, Subitòque ad iras percita? Non est, ut arbitraris elusus miser, Mors atra Noctis filia, Erebove patre creta, sive Erinnye, In lucem et auras evocat, (Ut cum fugaces excitant Horæ diem, Themidos Iovisque filiæ,) 30 40 connection of a personal sort is known to have existed between Dr. Felton and Milton, though the tone of the poem might seem to imply such a connection. The concluding verses, in spite of their somewhat conventional phrasing, are premonitory of Milton's power to suggest the vastness of cosmic space. My cheeks were still damp and stained, and my swollen eyes not yet dry from the salt tears I had shed in doing my sad duty over the precious bier of Winchester's bishop, when hundred tongued Rumor (0, always true messenger of evil and disaster!) spread through the cities of rich Britain and among the people sprung from Neptune, the news that you, who were chief pontiff of religion in the isle that bears the name of Ely, had yielded to Death and the dire Sisters. Then straightway ire boiled in my unquiet breast, and often I cursed the potent goddess of the grave, with curses more savage than Ovid conjured up against Ibis. More sparingly did the Grecian bard Archilochus curse the treachery of Lycambes, and Neobule, his own betrothed. But lo, while I was pouring forth heavy curses and was calling down destruction upon the Destroyer, methought I heard astonied these words, borne by a gentle breath beneath the breeze: "Quench thy blind wrath; quench thy gleaming bile and thy unavailing threats. Why dost thou rashly violate the powers which cannot be harmed, but which may be moved to sudden wrath? Death is not,- as thou deemest, poor deluded soul, the dark daughter of Night, born of Erebus or Erinys in the vasts of Chaos. No, she is sent from starry heaven to reap everywhere the fields of God. Souls hidden under the weight of flesh she calls into the air and the light, even as the fleet Hours, daughters of Themis and Jove, bring forth day from Et sempiterni ducit ad vultus Patris, Hanc ut vocantem lætus audivi, citò Vates ut olim raptus ad cœlum senex Non me Bootis terruere lucidi Sarraca tarda frigore, aut Formidolosi Scorpionis brachia; Non ensis, Orion, tuus. Prætervolavi fulgidi solis globum; Longèque sub pedibus deam Vidi triformem, dum coërcebat suos Frænis dracones aureis. Erraticorum siderum per ordines, Per lacteas vehor plagas, Velocitatem sæpe miratus novam, Donec nitentes ad fores 50 60 Ventum est Olympi, et regiam crystallinam, et Stratum smaragdis atrium. Sed hic tacebo, nam quis effari queat night. And these souls she leads before the face of the Sempiternal Father; but the souls of the impious she justly hurries away to the mournful realms of savage Hell, and the subterranean abodes. When I heard her voice calling me I rejoiced; straightway I left my foul prison of flesh, and in the midst of winged soldiery was borne in blessedness to the stars, as of old the aged prophet was rapt to heaven charioted in fire. The wain of bright Boötes, slow with cold, did not appall me, nor the arms of the fearful Scorpion, nor thy sword, Orion. I sped past the globe of the fulgid sun; far beneath my feet I saw the tri-form goddess of the moon tugging at the golden reins of her dragons. Through the ranks of the erratic stars, and the milky stretches of space, I was borne, wondering at the novel speed of my flight, until I came to the glittering portals of Olympus, and the palace of crystal, and the courts paved with jasper and malachite. But here I will be silent, for who born of mortal father can tell the pleasures of that place? It is enough for me to enjoy it forever." NATURAM NON PATI SENIUM THAT NATURE IS NOT SUBJECT TO OLD AGE It is probable, from a letter written by Milton to Alexander Gill, his former master at St. Paul's School, that this piece was composed to oblige a Fellow of Christ's College, who was called upon to furnish some verse of the kind for the commencement exercises of 1628. Milton says: "A certain Fellow of our college, who had to act as Respondent in the philosophical disputation at this Commencement, chanced to entrust to my puerility the composition of the verses required by the annual custom to be written on the questions in dispute, being himself already long past the age for trifles of that sort, and more intent on serious things." The "Respondent in the philosophical disputation was a person chosen from among the candidates for the Master's degree, to HEU! quàm perpetuis erroribus acta fatiscit Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa profundis uphold a given thesis, and defend it against the attacks of two Opponents, similarly chosen. He was required to furnish a kind of poetical illustration of his thesis, to be distributed among the audience before the disputation began. The question here dealt with, that of the ultimate decay or eternal youthfulness of Nature, was a popular one in the seventeenth century, philosophic thought being about equally divided upon it. Milton's verses are a vigorous poetic protest against the theory of degeneracy, conceived with a fervor of conviction and a strength of imagery which gives the trifle a permanent significance. Milton was at the end of his fourth academic year at the time of writing, and hence in the twentieth year of his age. Ан, how man's roving mind is driven and wearied by perpetual error, involved in profound shade and night such as blind Edipodioniam volvit sub pectore noctem! Ergone marcescet sulcantibus obsita Naturæ facies, et rerum publica Mater, Omniparum contracta uterum, sterilescet ab ævo? Et, se fassa senem, malè certis passibus ibit Sidereum tremebunda caput? Num tetra vetustas Annorumque æterna fames, squalorque situsque, Sidera vexabunt? An et insatiabile Tempus Esuriet Cælum, rapietque in viscera patrem? Heu! potuitne suas imprudens Iupiter arces Edipus knew! Foolishly he dares to measure the deeds of the gods by his own, to his own laws he likens those laws graven on eternal adamant; and the will of Fate, never to be changed or undone, he links with his own perishable days. Shall the face of Nature wither, and be furrowed with wrinkles? Shall the universal Mother grow sterile with age, and her all-creating womb shrivel to nothingness? Shall she go stricken with eld, her steps uncertain, her starry head palsied? Shall the hideousness of age, and filth, and wasting, and the eternal famine of the years, vex the stars? Shall insatiable Time eat up the sky and devour his own father? Alas, could not improvident Jove have warded off this evil from the orbs of Heaven, made them exempt from this sickness of Time, and given "T is true, them perpetual revolutions? then, that a day will come when with fearful sound the floor of Heaven shall be broken up, when either pole shall shriek against the stroke, as Olympian Jove falls from his supernal dwelling, and dread Pallas, with the Gorgon uncovered on her shield; even 21 as Vulcan, thrown from Heaven's brink, fell down to Ægean LemThou too, O Sun-god, shalt imitate the calamity of thy son Phaethon and fall headlong from thy chariot, borne down in sudden ruin, and with thy quenched lamp the Ocean shall smoke and give forth deathly hisses from his waves. Then. torn from its foundation, the aëry summit of Mt. Hamus shall topple down; the Ceraunian mountains once used as missiles in the fratricidal wars of the gods shall crash into the lowest gulf, and terrify Stygian Dis. Hoc contra munisse nefas, et Temporis isto Convexi tabulata ruant, atque obvius ictu Decidat, horribilisque retectâ Gorgone Pallas; Qualis in Ægæam proles Iunonia Lemnon reus, Et dabit attonito feralia sibila ponto. 30 In superos quibus usus erat, fraternaque bella. At Pater Omnipotens, fundatis fortiùs astris, Consuluit rerum summæ, certoque peregit summo Singula perpetuum iussit servare tenorem. Volvitur hinc lapsu Mundi rota prima diurno, nos. Nay, not so. The omnipotent Father, planning for his universe, has more strongly established the stars. The scales of Fate He has balanced with surer weights. He has commanded all things in the great order to preserve unendingly their even way. Wherefore, the first wheel of the Universe [the Primum Mobile] rolls diurnal, and communicates its dizzy motion to the spheres within. Saturn goes no slower than his wont, and eager as of old fulminates red-crested Mars. Florid Phoebus shines ever young, nor does he deflect his team down declivities of sky to warm abandoned places of the earth; but always through the same zodiacal signs he goes charioting, strong with friendly light. The morning and the evening star rise lovely as of yore from the odorous East, shepherding their ethereal flocks on the blanching plains of heaven; in the morning they call home the stars, in the evening lead them out to pasture; disparting the realms of time with twin variety of light. As of old the moon shines through the changing phases of her horns, clasping with the same arms her cerulean fire. The elements, too, keep faith. With the same old crash the lurid lightning smites the cliffs. With undiminished roar Caurus rages through the void, and savage Aquilo flings its same horror of snow and storm against the martial Scythians. The Sea-king still lashes the bases of Sicilian Pelorus; the trumpeter of ocean still sounds his hoarse conch over the waters. With the same vast weight giant Ægæon, they tell, bestrides the back of the Balearic whale. Nor from thee, Earth, does thy ancient vigor fade. The narcissus keeps its odor; the flower of thy boy, O Apollo, is still beautiful, and of thine, Aphrodite. Rich as of old, Earth still guiltily hides the sinful gold in her mountains, and the gems beneath her waves. So, in fine, the just round of things shall go forever, until the last conflagration lays all waste, envelopes the poles, and wraps the summits of the mighty sky, and as on a huge pyre blazes the frame of the world. DE IDEÂ PLATONICÂ QUEMADMODUM ARISTOTELES INTELLEXIT ON THE PLATONIC IDEA AS IT WAS UNDERSTOOD BY ARISTOTLE This is probably also an academic exercise, written on some occasion similar to the foregoing. It is an attempt to burlesque Aristotle's interpretation, too rigid and physical, of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas or Archetypes. Milton speaks not in his own person, but in ΤΟ DICITE, sacrorum præsides nemorum deæ, 20 32 the person of a literal-minded Aristotelian, who demands loudly to know where the Archetype of man can be found, in the heavens above or the earth beneath. The manner of refutation here adopted is unexpectedly genial and humorous. YE goddesses who guard the sacred grove, and thou, O Memory, happy mother of the nine-fold deity; and Eternity, lazily recumbent far-off in thy great cavern, guarding the laws and ordinance of Jove and keeping the chronicles and feast-calendars of Heaven, - tell me, who was that first Being, eternal, incorruptible, coeval with the sky, that one and universal Being, exemplar of God, after whose image cunning nature patterned human kind? It surely does not lurk unborn in the brain of Jove, a twin to virgin Pallas. Though its nature is common to many, yet, wonderful to tell, it exists apart after the manner of an individual, and has a local habitation. Perchance as comrade to the sempiternal stars it wanders through the ten spheres of heaven, and inhabits the globe of the Moon, nearest to earth. Perchance it sits drowsing by the oblivious waters of Lethe, among the spirits that wait to enter some living body and be born. Or in some remote region of the world does this Archetype of man walk about as a huge giant, lifting its high head to frighten the gods, taller than Atlas the star-bearer? No, the seer Tiresias, to whom blindness gave but added depth of vision, never saw it in his dreams. Winged Mercury never showed it to the wise band of seers, as he taught them in the silent night. The Assyrian priest, though he knew the long ancestry of ancient Ninus, knew old Belus and renowned Osiris, never heard of such a creature. Not even Hermes Trismegistus, trine and glorious name, though he knew many secret things, told aught of this to the worshippers of Isis. Ah, Plato, unfading glory of the Academe, if you were the first to bring such |