Part 3: How Do You Know If Literature Is Christian?
Part 4: Perspectives on Mutability
Read these sonnets by poetical genius John Milton. (Naturally, they're exceptional!) I shall post about them presently.
Like William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, and many other Elizabethan poets, Milton dealt with the theme of mutability in his sonnets, though in a distinctively Christian way:
How Soon Hath Time
<>How soon hath time, that subtle thief of youth,
Stol’n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arriv’d so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear.
That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th.
Yet it be less or more, or soon or slow.
It shall be still on strictest measure ev’n
To that same lot, however mean of high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav’n:
All is, if I have the grace to use it so
As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.
This sonnet is typical of Milton in that it is richly endowed with biblical allusions:
To a Virtuous Young Lady
<>Lady! That in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely hath shunned the broad way and the green,
And with those few art eminently seem
That labor up the hill of heavenly Truth;
The better part with Mary and with Ruth
Chosen thou hast; and they that overween,
And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,
No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.
Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,
And hope that reaps no shame. Therefore be sure
Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends
Passes to bliss at the mid-hour of night,
Hast gained thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure.
Points of analysis (I’ll address these questions in later posts):
- What constitutes Christian literature? Milton can certainly be considered Christian. What about Shakespeare? (Read a sonnet with a related theme here.)
- How does Milton address mutability differently than Shakespeare and Herrick?
- What biblical allusions did Milton incorporate into his poems? (‘How Soon Hath Time,’ ‘To a Virtuous Young Lady,’ and ‘When I Consider How My Light Is Spent’)
2 comments:
When I cosider how my light is spent is one of my favourite poems. But...Paradise Lost is a tsunami of poetry. I cannot get enough of it and it keeps being so much bigger and richer than I think or can fathom
that means you find his poetry sublime; it produces within you the experience of the sublime, a high comment for Milton that he does deserve!
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