“Studious Retirement” 1632–1638odes on religious themes in complex metrical patterns, perfecting in them the long,
elaborate verse sentence which is a hallmark of his later poetry. “Upon the Circum-
cision” – a competent but uninspired poem – may be first, written about the time
of the feast, January l, 1633. Milton explicitly pairs it with the Nativity Ode, as his
speaker invites the angels who joyfully sang of the nativity to mourn now the first
blood shed by Christ. The poem is meant to substitute for the failed “Passion,”
treating the “wounding smart” of Christ’s circumcision as type and augury of that
event. The metrics of the two 14-line stanzas and their complex, interwoven rhyme
pattern derive from the Italian canzone, specifically Petrarch’s canzone (number
366) to the Virgin.^35 This poem and “On Time” were copied into, not composed
in, the Trinity manuscript, as items four and five.
“On Time” reprises the topic of Sonnet VII, but in very different terms. Those
two poems comprise another of Milton’s contrastive pairs, in which the second
makes some advance upon the first in thematic and formal terms. In the sonnet the
Miltonic speaker probes his personal anxieties and his own exacting faith; in “On
Time” he voices the transcendent faith of the Christian community in the promise
of eternal life. The latter poem, an ode with affinities to the Italian madrigal, is
conceived as a joyous celebration of the victory of Eternity over Time. The first
long sentence (lines 1–8) is an execration against Time, portraying it in slow, pon-
derous rhythms as an envious, leaden-stepping glutton with power only over “mortal
dross.” The second long sentence (lines 9–22) swells and soars with religious fervor
as it describes Eternity, where “Joy shall overtake us as a flood” and where “we shall
for ever sit, / Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.” The meter
is chiefly iambic, with line lengths varying from six to twelve syllables and a sono-
rous concluding alexandrine; the rhyme scheme includes alternating rhymes, en-
closed rhymes, and couplets. The (crossed out) heading in the Trinity manuscript,
“To be set on a clock case,” indicates that the poem was initially conceived as an
inscription.
“At a solemn Musick,” the finest of these small religious odes, is an ectastic
celebration of the conjunction of sacred vocal music and poetry. These arts are
apostrophized as Sirens – “Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Verse^36 –
who can transport the hearer from earth to heaven. This ode was composed di-
rectly in the Trinity manuscript as the second item: two rough drafts (crossed out)
and a fair copy follow immediately after Arcades. The title points to a specific musi-
cal event, perhaps a memorable vocal concert Milton attended in London. This
poem also reprises elements of the Nativity ode: the angelic choir and the music of
the spheres at Christ’s birth that almost restore the Platonic/Pythagorean/biblical
vision of universal harmony in the Golden Age and at the Millennium. Here, a
festive concert of vocal music evokes that same “undisturbed Song of pure concent.”^37
In a 24-line sentence imitating the sonorities and modulations of song, the speaker
first apostrophizes Voice and Verse as inspiring a vision of the trumpet-blowing
Seraphim, the harping Cherubim, and the hymning Saints before God’s throne,