The Explicator

ISSN: 0014-4940 (Print) 1939-926X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vexp20

16. Milton’s on his Blindness

Donald C. Dorian

To cite this article: Donald C. Dorian (1951) 16. Milton’s on his Blindness, The Explicator, 10:3,
32-33, DOI: 10.1080/00144940.1951.11481596

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00144940.1951.11481596

Published online: 26 Oct 2015.

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Download by: [Monash University Library] Date: 03 April 2016, At: 06:46
 ON HIS BLINDNESS
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied 1"
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
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Bear his mild yoke, they serve hiin best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
-JOHN MILTON
 two") is formed the poetic image, a mixture of head and body, structure
and texture, efficient communication and useless; though beloved,
concretion. The poem moves on to state the matter more objectively.
The body supports the head "not to the glory of tyrant head but to
The increase of body." The imagery, the concrete particularity of the
poem is not placed there by the poet to facilitate the passage of the
head's idea. The texture is there for its own sake, becaus~, in Ransom's
general theory, it is the tex;ure which the poet wishes to preserve and
celebrate. "Beauty is of body." The head is, at best, a "rock garden"
and needs the "body's love And best bodiness to colorify" the features
of the head. Thus, the body's coloring transforms the eyes and hollows
of the face into "blue birds," "sea-shell flats And caves" to make them
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fitting objects for poetry. Upon the skull, the "tyrant head" itself, the
body must spread a garden fit for more than mere abstraction, fit, in
fact, for the most poetic imagery Ransom can devise, an "olive garden
for the nightingales." -CHARLES MOORMAN, Tulane University
16. Milton's ON HIS BLINDNESS
In response to N.V.A.'s invitation (Exp., May, 1951, IX, Q8),
I suggest that "days" in the second line of Milton's sonnet on his
blindness should be interpreted to mean working days. If Milton's
blindness became complete when he was about forty-four, considerably
more than half his total life expectancy had passed, but somewhat less
than half of a normal working life. This reading is in accordance with
the reference to "day-labor" in the seventh line, with several parallels
in the "Letter to a Friend" in the Cambridge Manuscript), and with
the Biblical passages alluded to in the letter and the sonnet.
In the "Letter to a Friend," where Milton had earlier been con-
cerned about the passing of time while his life work was delayed, he
wrote that "the day with me is at hand wherein Christ commands all
to labour while there is light." The allusion is presumably to John XII,
35, with which John IX, 4 should be compared: "I must work the works
of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man
can work." Later in the letter Milton refers, as he does in the sonnet,
to "that command in the gospel set out by the terrible seasing of him
that hid the talent." (It may be relevant to notice that the parable of
the talents in Matthew xxv immediately follows the parable of the
wise and foolish virgins, which concludes: "Watch therefore, for ye
know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.")
A little farther on the letter recalls that "those that were latest lost
nothing when the master of the vineyard came to give each one his
hire." The parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew XX, 1-16),
in which those who labor a whole day and those who labor only the
last hour of the day are rewarded alike, ends: "So the last shall be
first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen."
The clear applicability of these Biblical passages to the theme of
the sonnet suggests that they were again in Milton's mind throughout
the writing of it, and, in the same sequence as in the letter, led to his
conclusion: "They also serve who only stand and wait."
-DONALD C. DORIAN, Rutgers University