“Cambridge... for Seven Years” 1625–1632on the classical hymn. But they also incorporate elements of several other kinds: the
academic prolusion or debate, the Theocritan pastoral idyl of the ideal day and its
festivals, the Theophrastian prose “character” with such titles as “The Happy Man”
or “The Melancholy Man,” the encomium, and the demonstrative or eulogistic
oration with its traditional categories of praise: the goods of nature (ancestry and
birth), the goods of fortune (friends and circumstances of life), and the goods of
character (actions and virtues). L’Allegro especially shows the continuing influence
of Jonson’s lyric manner, his clarity, delicacy, and grace. It also evokes the Shake-
speare of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. The final couplet of
each poem echoes and answers the question posed in Marlowe’s “Come live with
me and be my love” and its Elizabethan analogues. But despite the familiarity of
these elements, Milton’s paired poems have no close antecedents.^111
Metrically and rhythmically also these poems are a tour de force. Both begin with
a ten-line prelude, with alternating lines of six and ten (or eleven) syllables and an
intricate rhyme pattern. For the rest, both use the verse form of the Winchester
epitaph – octosyllabic couplets with seven-syllable lines freely intermingled, and
with complex shifts between rising and falling rhythms, iambic and trochaic feet
and lines. Milton is now so skillful with metrics that from the same verse form he
can produce utterly different tonal effects. In L’Allegro the quick short vowels, the
monosyllables, the liquid consonants, and the frequent trochaic rhythms trip over
the tongue in a mimesis of youthful frolic – an English version of Anacreontic
verse:
Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles, (ll. 25–8)In Il Penseroso polysyllables, clusters of consonants, and a liberal use of spondaic feet
produce a deliberate and somber tone:
Com pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, stedfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestick train, (ll. 31–4)Structurally, both follow closely the model of the classical hymn: first, an exorcism
or banishment of the opposing deity; then an invocation to the deity celebrated
(Mirth, Melancholy); then a celebration of her qualities and activities; and finally a
prayer to be admitted to her company. The first five sections of the two poems are
closely paralleled, save that those in Il Penseroso are a little longer. The chief struc-
tural difference comes in the sixth section and in Il Penseroso’s eight-line coda,
which has no parallel in L’Allegro.