PER certo i bei vostr' occhi, Donna mia, Esser non può che non sian lo mio sole; Si mi percuoton forte, come ei suole, Per l'arene di Libia chi s' invia, Mentre un caldo vapor (nè senti pria)

Da quel lato si spinge ove mi duole, Che forse amanti nelle lor parole Chiaman sospir; io non so che si sia. Parte rinchiusa e turbida si cela

Scossomi il petto, e poi n' uscendo poco Quivi d' attorno o s' agghiaccia o s' ingiela;

Ma quanto agli occhi giunge a trovar loco Tutte le notti a me suol far piovose, Finchè mia alba rivien colma di rose.

TRANSLATION

IN sooth, your beauteous eyes, my Lady,
Cannot be other than my sun;
So sore they smite me, as he smiteth

The traveller in the sands of Libia;
From that side where I feel my pain, out-
gushes

A burning vapor, never felt before,
Which mayhap lovers in their language
Call sighs; for me, I know not what it
be.

A part within lurks pent and turbid,
Shaking my breast; a part forth-issuing
Congeals and freezes in the air about;
But whatso findeth passage to my eyes
Is wont to darken all my nights with rain,
Till Thou return, my day-spring crowned
with roses.

SONNET

GIOVANE, piano, e semplicetto amante,
Poichè fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,
Madonna, a voi del mio cuor l' umil dono
Farò divoto. Io certo a prove tante
L' ebbi fedele, intrepido, costante,
Di pensieri leggiadro, accorto, e buono.
Quando rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il
tuono,

S'arma di se, d' intero diamante;
Tanto del forze e d' invidia sicuro,
Di timori e speranze al popol use,
Quanto d' ingegno e d' alto valor vago,
E di cetra sonora, e delle Muse.
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro
Ove Amor mise l' insanabil ago.

From 1642, when he entered actively into the national struggle for liberty, until 1658, when the duties of his Latin secretaryship ceased, Milton wrote no English verse except in the way of some rather wooden translations from the Scriptures, and scattered sonnets, seventeen sonnets in seventeen years. The translations may be dismissed without comment, but the sonnets are of manifold interest. They are the fugitive outcroppings of "that one talent which is death to hide," and constitute the only relief which he allowed himself from his resolution to efface the singer in the fighter so long as his country's fate hung in the balance. Even in them, he does not throw off the weight of that resolution; for such of them as are not actual political manifestoes still cling closely to matter of fact. They are, in a word, occasional poetry; but they are lifted into permanence by the presence in them of the whole of a great personality, capable of giving to the most ordinary words an unaccountable resonance and distinction.

The sonnets written after 1642 divide themselves into three groups, - those addressed to personal friends, both men and women, those dealing with some aspect of public affairs, especially as represented by the great men of the time, and those of a purely autobiographic nature.

Of the first group, the sonnets "To a Virtuous Young Lady," "To the Lady Margaret Ley," and "To Mistress Catherine Thomson," are of particular interest, as showing the poet's growth away from the mere schoolboy amorousness of the Latin elegies and the gentle troubadour gallantry of the Italian Sonnets toward

a high Puritan ideal of womanhood. Of these, the sonnet "To the Lady Margaret " is pitched in the lowest key. It was written shortly after Mary Powell's desertion. Phillips says of Milton's relations with the Lady Margaret, that "being now as it were a single man again, he made it his chief diversion now and then of an evening to visit" her, and that she, "being a woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular honor for him, and took much delight in his company, as likewise Captain Hobson, her husband, a very accomplished gentleman." The tone of the sonnet may have been determined by Milton's rumination upon the springs of his own domestic misfortunes. Eight of the fourteen lines are devoted to a eulogy of the lady's father, James Ley, Earl of Marlborough, Lord President of the Council under Charles and one time Lord High Treasurer, whose death was believed to have been hastened by the sudden breaking up of Charles's third Parliament, as that of Isocrates was caused by news of the battle of Charonea. Milton deems it a sufficient encomium upon the daughter to say that she reflects the honor of the father. In other words, what attracted him in her was probably the dignity with which she bore a great and good name, a dignity thrown into relief by what must have seemed to him the lowbred and selfish impulsiveness of his own wife, the daughter of a shifting cavalier squire. It is, one may say, the civic ideal of womanhood to which this sonnet gives a celebration quite Roman in its pith and

measure.

The sonnet "On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson" is perhaps