The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography

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“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674

ken rhythms, a striking use of imagery and sound effects, and intricate rhyming
patterns (among the 1,758 lines there are about 150 that rhyme). In Samson’s bitter
opening lament, the blind Milton’s identification with the emotional states of his
hero and his consummate metrical art produce lines of great poignancy and power:


O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark
And silent as the Moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life it self, if it be true
That light is in the Soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as th’eye confin’d?
So obvious and so easie to be quench’t,
And not as feeling through all parts diffus’d,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exil’d from light;
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but O yet more miserable!
My self, my Sepulcher, a moving Grave,
Buried, yet not exempt
By priviledge of death and burial
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes. (80–109)

This style challenges the heroic couplets that have become normative for Restora-
tion tragedy, and it also marks the culmination of Milton’s lifelong experimentation
with verse forms. There is nothing like this in Milton’s earlier poetry, nor in any
previous English verse.
Samson Agonistes is not a point-by-point political allegory, but it invites applica-
tion to the post-Restoration ethos and the situation of the Puritan dissenters. In
Areopagitica Milton made Samson a figure for England in the throes of vibrant Puri-
tan reform, “a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after

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