Shades of Milton...

John Milton

Artist not Identified

(As Depicted on Wikipedia)

Dr. Timothy J. Burbery, a professor of English literature at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, has posted a request on the Milton Listserve that I belong to, asking for poems that refer to John Milton or his works.

In reflecting upon his request, I realized that Oscar Wilde's 1881 poem "To Milton" was modeled upon William Wordsworth's "London, 1802."

Oscar Wilde

In his Favourite Coat

Photographer not Identified

(As Depicted on Wikipedia)

To Milton (1881)
Oscar Wilde

Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

I note in passing that in the lines "This England, this sea-lion of the sea, / By ignorant demagogues is held in fee," there might be an echo of the prophecy of the dying John of Gaunt in Shakespeare's 1594 play Richard II, Act 2, Scene 1, "This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England," for the theme is similar: "That England, that was wont to conquer others, / Hath made a shameful conquest of itself." But I digress, so let us return to my point and look at Wordsworth's poem.

William Wordsworth

Reproduced from Margaret Gillies's 1839 Original

(As Depicted on Wikipedia)

Here it is:

London, 1802
William Wordsworth

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men:
O raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

As in Wilde's, this sonnet begins by invoking Milton. Indeed both do so by calling out to him forcefully: "Milton!"

There's probably no allusion, but I'm reminded of another famous call to awaken the dead:

With great voice, he cried out: "Lazarus, come out!"

That was John 11.43. Was Milton thinking of this in Paradise Lost, Book 1.314ff, where he has Satan call out to awaken the dead: "He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep / Of Hell resounded. Princes...." The 'dead' angels, fallen into Hell, from off the burning lake arise, although abashed.

Away from fallen angels and back to our Wilde man, I suggest that his lines 2-4, "From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers; / This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours / Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey," imply the mind-made hell of heaven that Milton's Satan exclaims in Paradise Lost, Book 1.254-255: "The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."

Perhaps Wordsworth had a similar thought in telling Milton that "England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters," implying that England had become a type of Hell, for a stagnant, or dead fen, might recall the "Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death" in Paradise Lost, Book 2.621. But I'm probably stretching my point.

There's a lot more to be said about these two poems, but other scholars have doubtless already said it, and I have promises to keep...