Summary
Summary of Milton: Minor Poems
Key ideas
Key idea 1
A young poet tests his range
Before Paradise Lost, John Milton was already exploring many kinds of poetry. These shorter works come mostly from his twenties and thirties, between his student years at Cambridge and the upheavals of the English Civil War. A Christmas hymn, paired poems about different moods, a masque, an elegy and sonnets reveal different sides of his voice.
Some are playful and others stern, but two inheritances connect them: the Bible and the poetry of Greece and Rome. Milton is discovering how they can speak together.
Key idea 2
Christian subjects meet classical imagination
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Key idea 3
Two moods offer different pleasures
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Key idea 4
Virtue must face persuasive temptation
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Key idea 5
Grief opens into larger questions
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Key idea 6
Sonnets join private and public duty
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Key idea 7
Sound carries thought through the lines
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Key idea 8
Many forms share one searching voice
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love poems that sound rich read aloud, and anyone eager to meet Milton before Paradise Lost. These poems bring together cheerful and thoughtful moods, Christian faith, classical poetry, grief and virtue.
What this book is
John Milton is remembered for Paradise Lost, but he wrote a good deal before it. The poems gathered as his minor poems come mostly from his twenties and thirties, between his student years at Cambridge and the upheavals of the English Civil War. They were printed together in 1645 and again, with additions, in 1673. Here you meet a young poet testing every tool he has.
The collection holds a hymn for Christmas morning, two paired poems about cheerful and thoughtful moods, a masque called Comus, the elegy Lycidas, and a run of sonnets. Some are playful and some are stern. All of them join two inheritances, the Bible and the poetry of Greece and Rome. You get the substance of the whole collection in the next few minutes, and a sense of how these poems sound when spoken. Let us begin with the early poems, where Milton first shows his range.
In this summary
- 1A young poet tries every voiceFree
- 2Two moods, two ways to live
- 3Comus defends virtue under pressure
- 4Lycidas turns grief into hard questions
- 5The sonnets carry public and private weight
- 6How to read Milton's shorter poems aloud
Key point 1 of 6
A young poet tries every voice
The earliest poems in the collection show a student finding his range. On the Morning of Christ's Nativity was written in 1629, when Milton was twenty-one. It imagines the world on the first Christmas morning, with the old pagan gods of Greece, Egypt and Syria fleeing as the child is born. The poem joins a Christian subject to a classical habit of mind, and that mixture will mark almost everything he writes afterward.
Other short pieces from these years show different sides of him. At a Solemn Music pictures heaven as a great choir and asks that earth might join its harmony again. On Shakespeare is a brief tribute that praises the older poet for needing no stone monument, since his readers are his memorial. There are also funeral verses for a young woman and for a university carrier, which show that Milton could be tender and also lightly humorous within the same few years.
Milton also wrote in Latin and Italian, and the 1645 volume carried some of that work. It tells us that he saw himself as part of a European tradition, not only an English one. He had read Virgil, Ovid and Horace closely, and he had read Spenser and the Bible just as closely. The young poet is learning to borrow without copying.
What should you listen for in these early poems? Notice the stately rhythm and the long, rolling sentences. Notice also how often Milton pictures sound itself, whether bells, angels or the music of the spheres. His ear was already remarkable, and it grew more important as his eyesight later failed.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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Check yourself
How do L'Allegro and Il Penseroso treat cheerful and thoughtful ways of living?
Right. “Each mood has its pleasures, and each ends with a modest wish to live in that way.”Not quite. “Each mood has its pleasures, and each ends with a modest wish to live in that way.”
What does the Lady defend against Comus's arguments?
Right. “The Lady answers that true freedom lies in self-control and that goodness is protected by its own strength.”Not quite. “The Lady answers that true freedom lies in self-control and that goodness is protected by its own strength.”
What central worry troubles the speaker in the sonnet on blindness?
Right. “The speaker wonders whether he can still serve God when his best gift is useless.”Not quite. “The speaker wonders whether he can still serve God when his best gift is useless.”
Questions about Milton: Minor Poems
What are Milton's minor poems?
They are his shorter works, mostly from his youth and middle years. They include the Nativity ode, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas and the sonnets, and they are usually set apart from his epics.
What is Lycidas about?
Lycidas mourns Edward King, a Cambridge friend of Milton's who drowned in the Irish Sea. It uses the old shepherd elegy form to ask why the young die and to attack corrupt clergy.
What do L'Allegro and Il Penseroso mean?
They are Italian for the cheerful man and the thoughtful man. The two poems are a pair, one praising a lively day and the other a quiet night of study.
Is Comus a play?
Comus is a masque, a courtly entertainment with verse, music and dance, first performed in 1634 at Ludlow Castle. It has characters and a debate about virtue, but it is shorter than a stage play.
Are Milton's minor poems hard to read?
Reading aloud helps a great deal, and the sonnets and L'Allegro are the easiest way in.
