The wearied argument
of The Rose is the almost squalid plea of all the poets, from
Ronsard to Herrick: "Time is short; they make the better bargain
who make haste to love." This thrifty business and essentially
cold impatience was--time out of mind--unknown to the truer love;
it is larger, illiberal, untender, and without all dignity. The
poets were wrong to give their verses the message of so sorry a
warning. There is only one thing that persuades you to forgive the
paltry plea of the poet that time is brief--and that is the
charming reflex glimpse it gives of her to whom the rose and the
verse were sent, and who had not thought that time was brief.
L'ALLEGRO
The sock represents the stage, in L'Allegro, for comedy, and the
buskin, in Il Penseroso, for tragedy. Milton seems to think the
comic drama in England needs no apology, but he hesitates at the
tragic. The poet of King Lear is named for his sweetness and his
wood-notes wild.
IL PENSEROSO
It is too late to protest against Milton's display of weak Italian.
Pensieroso is, of course, what he should have written.
LYCIDAS
Most of the allusions in Lycidas need no explaining to readers of
poetry. The geography is that of the western coasts from furthest
north to Cornwall. Deva is the Dee; "the great vision" means the
apparition of the Archangel, St.
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