ELEGIA SEPTIMA Anno ætatis undevigesimo ELEGY VII This elegy constitutes a personal confession of an unusually intimate kind, a confession of "love at first sight" for a girl whom the poet encountered by chance in some public place in London. Though conceived in a tone of whimsical extravagance and with the conventional sentimental machinery of the pseudoclassic poet, it indubitably records a real experience, and one which is significant in the understanding of Milton's character. The unusual form of the date attached, in which the ordinal is put in place of the numeral, seems to imply that the poem was written before his NONDUM blanda tuas leges, Amathusia, nôram, Et Paphio vacuum pectus ab igne fuit. Sæpe cupidineas, puerilia tela, sagittas, Atque tuum sprevi maxime numen, Amor. "Tu imbelles " dixi "transfige colum puer nineteenth year was completed, i. e., sometime between May 1 and December 9, 1627. The postscript which follows the poem probably is to be taken with this elegy alone, though from the manner in which it is printed in the original editions, it may be taken to have a general application to the entire seven. It was written at a later date than the elegies to which it is appended, in some mood of strenuousness when the technical shortcomings of the verse and its occasional rather lax Ovidian tone made an apology seem necessary. I DID not yet know thy laws, bland Aphrodite, and my heart was still free from Paphian fire. Often I spoke scorn, Love, of thy great name, and disdained Cupid's arrows as puerile weapons. "Boy unfit for war," I said, "go shoot doves; only easy battles suit so delicate a chieftain. Or make a swelling triumph, poor child, over a conquest of sparrows. These are trophies worthy of thy warrior-ship. take up thy silly arms against mankind? That quiver of thine avails not against strong men." The Cyprian boy could not endure this (there is no god swifter to anger), and at my words he burned with a double fire of rage. Why It was spring, and shining over the roofs of the town, dawn had brought the Mayday; but my eyes were turned toward retreating night, and could not endure the radiance of morning. Suddenly Love stood by my bed, Love with painted wings for speed. The swaying quiver betrayed the god where he stood; his torch betrayed him, and his eyes sweetly menacing, and whatever else about him was boyish and lovely. So Ganymede looks, as he brims the cups of amorous Jove in ever-during Olympus; or Hylas, who lured the beautiful nymphs to his kisses, and who was stolen away by the Naiad. Wrath was on him, but you would have deemed it an added grace; and he spoke words of threatening cruelty, full of spite. "Wretch," he said, "thou hadst been wiser to learn my power by the spectacle of others' pain: now thou shalt in thine own person prove what my arm can do. Thou shalt be numbered among those who have felt my strength; thy pangs shall strengthen men's belief in me. Perhaps thou art ignorant that I, even I, subdued Apollo, made haughty by his victory over Python; to me that great god had to yield. Whene'er he thinks on Daphne, he confesses that my darts carry surer and deadlier harm than his own. The Parthian horseman, who conquers as he flees, draws not his bow more skilfully than I. The Cydonian hunter yields the palm to me, and Cephalus, who slew his wife unwittingly. Huge Orion I. overcame, and the strong hand of Hercules, and Hercules's friend. Jove himself may turn his thunderbolts against me, but before they strike, my arrows have pierced the side of Jove. If thou still doubtest, my weapons will teach thee the rest better than words, — my weapons, with which not lightly shall I seek thy heart. Deem not, fool, that thy Muses can succor thee, nor that the serpent of Apollo the healer can give thee any aid!" So he spake, and, shaking his arrow with the golden tip, he flew away into the warm breast of his mother Cypris. But I smiled derisively at his fierce threats, and had not the slightest fear of the boy. And now I took my pleasure, sometimes in the city parks, where our citizens promenade, sometimes in the suburban places of resort. Crowds of girls, with faces like to the faces of goddesses, came and went radiantly through the walks; the day brightened with a double splendor. Surely, the sun himself stole his beams from their faces. I was not stern with myself; I did not flee from the gracious spectacle, but let myself be led wherever youthful impulse directed. Rashly I sent my gaze to meet theirs; I could not control my eyes. Then by chance I noted one supreme above the others, and the light of her eyes was the beginning of my ills. She looked as Venus might wish to seem to mortals; lovely to behold as the queen of the gods was she. That rascal Cupid, harboring his grudge, had thrown her in my path; all alone, he had woven this plot against me. Not far off the sly god was hiding; his torch and many arrows hung as a great load from his back. Not a moment did he lose. Now he clung to her eyelids, now to her mouth; thence he stole between her lips, and hid himself in her bosom; and wherever the nimble archer went, ah, me! from a thousand points of vantage he struck my defenceless breast. Suddenly unwonted furies assailed my heart; I burned inly with love, I was all flame. Meanwhile she who was my only delight in misery disappeared, never to be given to my eyes again. I started on, full of mute complaining, heart-broken at my loss. Often I stood in doubt whether to go on or turn back. My being was divided, my body remained behind, but my thoughts went after her. I could have wept for the joy so suddenly snatched from me. Such was the grief of Vulcan for the heaven he had lost, when he was thrown down the sky into Lemnos isle; thus Amphiarus borne down to Oreus by his astonished horses, gazed back from the abyss at the vanishing light of the sun. What shall I do, wretch that I am, and overcome by grief? I cannot take up my love or lay it by. O, may it be granted me to see her loved countenance again and to speak with her face to face! Perhaps she is not all made of adamant, mayhap she would not be deaf to my prayers. Surely no one ever suffered more in Love's flame. I may stand first, a prime exemplar of love-sorrows. Spare me, I pray, since thou art a winged god of tender love! Let not thy deeds refute thy office. Now, ah, now at last thy bow is fearful to me, thou goddessborn, whose arrows are potent as fire! Henceforth thine altars shall smoke with my gifts; among all the gods thou shalt be for me single and supreme. Take away, then, my tortures nay, take them not away! I know not why it is, loving is such sweet wretchedness. But whatever the future has for me, grant me this, for thou canst easily, that a single dart shall transfix both my heart and hers, and make us lovers. Hæc ego mente olim lævâ, studioque supino, These vain trophies of my idleness I set up in time past, in unserious mood and with lax endeavor. Error hurried me astray, and my untaught years were an ill mistress to me; until the shady Academe [i. e. Plato's philosophy] offered me its Socratic streams, and loosened from my neck the yoke to which I had submitted. Since then, all those youthful flames are extinct, and my breast is rigid with accumulated ice; whence Cupid himself fears freezing for his arrows, and Venus dreads my Diomedean strength. [EPIGRAMMATA] [EPIGRAMS] The short pieces which follow were originally printed without the general title Epigrams, under which they appear in modern editions, but were included under the title Elegies, as being written in elegiac metre. The four epigrams on the Gunpowder Plot are heavy and tasteless; they are signal illustrations of Milton's congenital lack of humor. The epigrams on Leonora Baroni are interesting autobiographically. It has been plausibly conjectured that Milton heard this famous singer at the concert which he speaks of attending at the palace of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, during his first visit to Rome, October and November, 1638. Efforts have been made, ineffectually, to identify her with the donna leggiadra" of Milton's Italian poems, the Bolognese lady whose novel beauty sotto nova idea pellegrina bellezza" - enthralled him at some period of his Italian residence. IN PRODITIONEM BOMBARDICAM CUM simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britannos Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, nefas, Fallor? an et mitis voluisti ex parte videri, Et pensare malâ cum pietate scelus ? Scilicet hos alti missurus ad atria cæli, Sulphureo curru flammivolisque rotis; Qualiter ille, feris caput inviolabile Parcis, Liquit Iördanios turbine raptus agros. 66 66 The Baroni were originally a Neopolitan family, but they had settled in Rome about a year before Milton's visit. Of Leonora, Bayle's Dictionary, quoted by Masson, says that she was one of the finest voices in the world," and that an infinity of beaux esprits made verses in her praise." It is interesting in this connection to note that Milton's susceptibility to music was accompanied by an almost complete insensibility to the appeal of the plastic and graphic arts, if we are to judge by the absence of any mention of the latter among his recorded impressions of Italy. 66 Three epigrams of minor interest, entitled respectively Apologus de Rustico et Hero, De Moro (title supplied by the editors), and Ad Christinam, Suecorum Reginam, will be found, together with three Greek pieces from the SYLVE, and two epigrams on Salmasius, in the Appendix. ON THE GUNPOWDER PLOT WHEN, perfidious Faux, you attempted your late unspeakable crime against the British King and Parliament, do I mistake you, or did you really want to show a kind of false mildness and piety in the midst of your wickedness? Perhaps; since you intended to send them to the high courts of Heaven in a chariot of sulphurous smoke and wheeling flame, even as Elijah, that head inviolable by the fierce Parcæ, was snatched away in a whirlwind from the fields of Jordan. ON THE SAME O BEAST acrouch on the seven hills, did you attempt thus to send King James to Heaven? Unless you have power to bestow better largess, forbear, I pray, your insidious gifts. Without the aid of your infernal powder he has gone, timely late, to the companionable stars. Do you rather blow skyward your base cowls, and all the brute gods profane Rome worships; for unless you aid them thus or somehow else, they will hardly, believe me, clamber up the hard road to Heaven. ON THE SAME KING JAMES laughed at those purgatorial fires through which the supernal home must forsooth be approached. At this the triple-crowned monster of the Lateran gnashed its teeth, and moved its ten horns in horrid threat, saying: "Man of Britain, thou shalt not mock my mysteries unpunished; thou shalt pay for despising my religion; and if ever thou enterest the starry dome of Heaven, only through flame shall the sorry way lie open." O how near the awful truth did you speak! A little more, and the words had not lacked their weight. For almost he went, rolled high by Tartarean fire, a burnt shade, to the upper shores. ON THE SAME HIM whom impious Rome had vowed to her ire, whom she had damned to Styx and the Tænarian gulf, him, contrary-wise, she went about to send to the stars, and sought to carry him clean aloft to the gods. ON THE INVENTOR OF GUNPOWDER BLIND antiquity praised Prometheus, who brought the heavenly torch from the sun; but for me he shall be greater who stole from Jove his lurid arms and threeforked thunderbolt. TO LEONORA, SINGING To every man his angel is allotted (believe it, ye people !), his winged angel from |