Il Penseroso ("the thinker") is a poem byJohn Milton, first found in the 1645/1646 quarto of versesThe Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, published byHumphrey Moseley. It was presented as acompanion piece toL'Allegro, a vision of poeticmirth. The speaker of this reflectiveode dispels "vain deluding Joys" from his mind in a ten-line prelude, before invoking "divinest Melancholy" to inspire his future verses. The melancholic mood is idealised by the speaker as a means by which to "attain / To something like prophetic strain," and for the central action ofIl Penseroso – which, likeL'Allegro, proceeds incouplets ofiambic tetrameter – the speaker speculates about the poetic inspiration that would transpire if the imaginedgoddess of Melancholy he invokes were his Muse. The highly digressive style Milton employs inL'Allegro andIl Penseroso dually precludes any summary of the poems' dramatic action as it renders them interpretively ambiguous to critics. However, it can surely be said that the vision of poetic inspiration offered by the speaker ofIl Penseroso is anallegorical exploration of a contemplativeparadigm ofpoetic genre.
It is uncertain whenL'Allegro andIl Penseroso were composed, as they do not appear in Milton's Trinity College manuscript of poetry. However, the settings found in the poem suggest that they were possibly composed ca. 1631 shortly after Milton left Cambridge in 1629.[1]
As prelude to his invocation of Melancholy, the speaker dismisses joy from his imagination. Its rhythm of alternate lines of iambic trimeter and iambic pentameter is identical to that of the first 10 lines ofL'Allegro:
Hence vain deluding Joys,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes;
Dwell in som idle brain
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams,
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle Pensioners ofMorpheus train.
— lines 1–10
The speaker invokes a Melancholy goddess, veiled in black:
But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy
Whose Saintly visage is too bright
To hit the Sense of human sight;
And therefore to our weaker view,
O'er laid with black, staid Wisdoms hue.
— lines 11–16
... and, following the form of classical hymn, claims her heritage[2] with the Romanpantheon:
Thee bright-hairedVesta long of yore,
To solitarySaturn bore;
His daughter she (in Saturn's reign,
Suchmixture was not held a stain);
— lines 23–26
Having invoked the Melancholy goddess, the speaker imagines her ideal personification:
... pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, stedfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestick train,
And sable stole of Cipres Lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Com, but keep thy wonted state,
With eev'n step, and musing gate,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thy self to Marble, till
With a sad Leaden downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
— lines 31–44
The central action of the poem proceeds as poetic visions of Melancholy, imagined by the speaker:
TheeChauntress oft the Woods among
I woo to hear thyeven-Song;
And missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven Green,
To behold the wandringMoon,
Riding neer her highest noon,
Like one that had bin ledastray
Through the Heav'ns wide pathles way;
— lines 63–70
... let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely Tow'r,
Where I may oft out-watch theBear,
Withthrice great Hermes, orunsphear
The spirit ofPlato to unfold
What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold
The immortal mind hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of thoseDaemons that are found
Infire,air,flood, or underground...
— lines 85–95
And if ought else, greatBards beside,
Insage and solemn tunes have sung,
OfTurneys and of Trophies hung;
Of Forests, and inchantments drear,
Wheremore is meant then meets the ear.
Thus night oft see me in thypale career,
Till civil-suitedMorn appeer...
— lines 116-22
And when theSun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me Goddess bring
To arched walks oftwilight groves,
And shadows brown that Sylvan loves
Where the rudeAx with heaved stroke,
Was never heard theNymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt.
— lines 131-8
At the end of his reverie on poetic Melancholy, the speaker invokes the Muse's song; he imagines that his Muse will reward his studious devotion to her by revealing a heavenly vision:
And as I wake,sweet musickbreath
Above, about, or underneath,
Sent by somspirit to mortals good,
Or th'unseenGenius of the Wood.
But let my due feet never fail,
To walk the studiousCloysters pale,
And love the high embowedRoof
With antickPillars massy proof,
And storied Windows richly dight,
Casting a dimm religious light.
There let the pealing Organ blow,
To the full voic'dQuire below,
In Service high, and Anthems cleer,
As may with sweetnes, through mine ear...
Dissolve me into extasies,
And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes.
— lines 151-67
As the final ten lines reveal, the speaker aspires to a revelation of divine knowledge to inspire his great poetry:
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of everyStar that Heav'n doth shew,
And every Herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To somthing likeprophetic strain.
These pleasures Melancholy give,
And I with thee will choose to live.
— lines 168-76
The final couplet issues an ultimatum to the Melancholy mood; the speaker will devote himself to the existence of a solitary hermit, staking his life upon the contemplative ideal he has illustrated throughout the poem, which he imagines will be rewarded by a vision of the divine.
According toBarbara Lewalski,Il Penseroso, along withL'Allegro, "explore and contrast in generic terms the ideal pleasures appropriate to contrasting lifestyles ... that a poet might choose, or might choose at different times, or in sequence".[3] In particular,Il Penseroso celebrates Melancholy through the traditional Theocritan pastoral model. The setting focuses on a Gothic scene and emphasises a solitary scholarly life. The speaker of the poem invokes a melancholic mood main character wanders through an urban environment and the descriptions are reminiscent of medieval settings. The main character, in his pursuits, devotes his time to philosophy, to allegory, to tragedy, to Classical hymns, and, finally, to Christian hymns that cause him to be filled with a vision. Besides being set in a traditional form, there is no poetic antecedent for Milton's pairing.[4]
Melancholy, inIl Penseroso, does not have the same parentage as Mirth does inL'Allegro; Melancholy comes from Saturn and Vesta, who are connected to science and a focus on the heavens.[5] Melancholy is connected in the poem with the "heavenly" muse Urania, the goddess of inspiring epics, through her focus and through her relationship with Saturn.[6] Furthermore, she is related to prophecy, and the prophetic account within the final lines ofIl Penseroso does not suggest that isolation is ideal, but they do emphasise the importance of experience and an understanding of nature. The higher life found within the poem, as opposed to the one withinL'Allegro, allows an individual to experience such a vision.[7]
The poems have been classified in various traditions and genres by various scholars, including: as academic writing by E. M. W. Tillyard;[8] as pastoral by Sara Watson;[9] as part of classical philosophy by Maren-Sofie Rostvig;[10] as part of Renaissance encomia by S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush,[11] and as similar to Homeric hymns and Pindaric odes.[12] Stella Revard believes that the poems follow the classical hymn model which discuss goddesses that are connected to poetry and uses these females to replace Apollo completely.[2]
During the eighteenth century, bothIl Penseroso andL'Allegro were popular and were widely imitated.[13] The poet and engraverWilliam Blake, who was deeply influenced by Milton's poetry and personality, made illustrations to bothL'Allegro andIl Penseroso.
L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is apastoral ode byGeorge Frideric Handel based on the poem. In an attempt to unite the two poems into a singular "moral design", at Handel's request,Charles Jennens added a new poem, "il Moderato", to create a third movement.
Stella Revard believes that Milton, in his first publication of poems, "takes care to showcase himself as a poet in these first and last selections and at the same time to build his poetic reputation along the way by skillful positioning of poems such asL'Allegro andIl Penseroso."[14]
The poem features in theOxford Book of English Verse as edited byArthur Quiller-Couch.
| Topics |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Poetry | ||
| Antiprelatical tracts | ||
| Divorce tracts | ||
| Political tracts | ||
| Other writings | ||
| Individual sonnets | ||
| Disputed | ||
| Related | ||