“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d,
I fondly ask; but patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.Milton represents himself first as a helpless wanderer groping over vast spaces in
utter darkness with an extinguished lantern. Then, harking back to Sonnet VII,^137
he sees himself as servant to a harsh Divine Taskmaster, characterized through a
cluster of biblical allusions pertaining to issues of vocation. He imagines God as the
pitiless divine money-lender suggested by the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:
14–30), ready to cast into outer darkness an unprofitable servant who fails to use
and increase the single talent given him. Or, as a much harsher master than the
vineyard keeper of Matthew 20:1–7, since he seems to demand that his laborers
work even by night – despite Christ’s statement (John 9:4) that at night “no man
can work.” Tension builds throughout the octave as Milton describes his painful
dilemma: he has been given one talent (the ability to write in the noblest forms of
prose and poetry) and unlike the slothful servant in the parable of the talents is eager
to use that talent for God and the public good. But he is blind. Even so, it seems
that he may be held accountable for using the talent and performing day labor in
darkness. In the sestet Patience, emanating from another dimension of himself,
offers a very different and more gracious paradigm for the God–man relationship.
God is not a master who requires servants to work in counting houses or vineyards
but a king of royal state, with myriads of servants who serve him in various ways, in
their several stations. So the blind author can place himself, not with those sent on
active missions around the world, but with those who (obeying a cluster of biblical
directives) “wait on the Lord.”^138 This is not a posture of passive resignation in the
face of affliction but rather – a persistent theme in Milton – of attentive waiting
upon God’s time, upon ripeness, upon the clarification of vocation; it implies an
ability to abide in hermeneutic uncertainties and to postpone closure.^139 The courtly
metaphor even implies that this may be the most worthy role, standing nearest the
throne and waiting upon the only true King in his glory.^140
This sonnet displays the consummate skill Milton has attained in setting speech
rhythms against the formal metrical pattern of the Petrarchan sonnet. Throughout,
the pauses dictated by meaning and syntax come in the middle of lines, as does the
volta or turn in the argument. Also, Milton varies the tempo of the lines in sharp
counterpoint to the metrics: by his use of short, discrete monosyllables and allitera-