John Milton: Having Loved

Today I read John Milton's 23 Sonnet, and indulged a little into the carving of his life. I've known him only as the mid-1600's English author of my favorite epic poem, Paradise Lost. However, he appeared to have garnered much of his love of God through sorrow and tribulation.

Milton Background
Thirty-five year old Milton married 16-year old Mary Powell in 1643, and after four children and what some debate was a rocky marriage (Mary initially moved home for three years, and Milton wrote pamphlets condoning divorce), Mary passed away. By 1654, Milton lost total sight, and was constrained to visionary world of darkness. Blind and a four-year widower, Milton remarried Katherine Woodcock, who passed away several months after birthing their first daughter (who also died).

Milton lost his first wife, his eyesight, and then his second wife. His Sonnet 23 is a eulogy to Katherine, his second wife. (At least, that's what most scholars believe). Interestingly, Milton was blind during the composition of Paradise Lost, and it was transcribed to his daughters while they sat in garden listening to the words drip from the lips of their father.

Poem Background

Sonnet 23 has reference to Alcestis and Joves great son, both of whom are characters in greek Euripedes' tragic work Alcestis. Alcestis was married to a husband who met distaste with the fickle Greek Gods, resulting in a deadly disease, forecasting imminent death. Alcestis choose to taste of death in the stead of her husband, leaving him lighted with the continued gift of life. Her husband enlisted the help of Joves' son (Hercules) to rescue his wife from the underworld. She was brought back to him.

Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis

Lord Leighton

Sonnet 23

Methought I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Joves great son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.

Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd

So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she enclin'd,
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

-John Milton

Consider on the virtue of tenderness with which Milton describes his late wife- his conception of her purity of mind, his desire to forever behold her face (from which his blindness had always precluded him!), the inclined desired embrace consummating his longing, etc. It seems to me that although love is individual, its precepts can be elucidated by those well acquainted with it.

Having loved and lost, resulting in the endured the presence of fleeting apparitions of dreams, this poem brought tears to my eyes. I'm reminded of why and what I will yet love, from Doctrine and Covenants 88:40,

"For intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence; wisdom receiveth wisdom; truth embraceth truth; birtue loveth virtue; light cleaveth unto light; mercy hath compassion on mercy and claimeth her own; justice continueth its course and claimeth its own..."

Life is about the acquisition of love in all its forms. We are entitled to the great journey of discovering felicitously the principle which exalts in the highest degrees. Indeed, it has been claimed as name by the most inenarrable existent being, our Heavenly Father, the God of Love.