some thoughts

Before resuming my Sunday-afternoon journey down the rigorous road of Milton’s Paradise Lost, I decided to duck under the side-boughs and explore a few of the lesser well-known glens of Milton’s shorter poems. There I discovered friends old and new, made aquaintance and reminisced.

My walk was disturbed shortly by the familiar twin voices of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso–campaigning, making caricature, self-justifying–arguing which was the better temperament and lifestyle. (Or perhaps the voice is single; the banner over which daily reading, “…yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.”) I heard Lycidas again lamented; next a blind widower awake from a dream to redoubled loss in Sonnet XIX (”…I woke, she fled, and day brought back my night.”).

And newer friends were found: a better tribute to Shakespeare (On Shakespeare), lofty and wise; a taunt toward Time (”…that two-handed engine at the door, [which] Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.”), to echo Donne’s to Death (On Time); a thankful hymn for the sirens’ song, which warmed my heart most strangely (At a Solemn Music). Last, but not least, this little gem (Translation from the title-page of ‘Areopagitica’), a translation of Euripides:

This is true liberty when freeborn men
Having to advise the public may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise,
Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a state than this?

(A worthy gem to consider these days, I think.)

They say Sunday afternoons are for visiting, and well they say it. But not all friends are living, nor all corporeal. Today in these glens I’ve visited friends of gold, and along the paths befriended silvers, and their company has been most refreshing. But I have lingered too long; back on the main road Raphael soon will speak of the making of worlds and of kingdoms king’d, while Adam’s ancient chorus of inquiry ebbs toward the bounds of permission…and I have miles to go before I sleep…

(I am thankful for the Sabbath.)