"Blinded by the Light: John Milton's Sonnet 19"

English poet John Milton’s “Sonnet 19” captures the essence of its author in a complete and satisfying way. In just fourteen Petrarchan lines, Milton has created a microcosm of his life, making reference to his feelings towards God, life and the natural processes of age and death. This essay will provide a thorough explication of Sonnet 19 under a variety of critical approaches and theories, with the aim of showing the utter depth in every line of the poem.

Milton was born in England in 1608. His parents, who were highly religious, had actually come to England years before Milton’s birth for religious reasons: Milton’s Catholic grandfather had disinherited his son for being a Protestant. This Protestantism was passed down to Milton, who was very devout and had even trained to become a minister, before dropping out of this training for personal reasons. Milton was a highly educated man, having spent years doing private studies which focused on many subjects, including theology. In his later years, Milton’s eyesight had begun to fail, forcing Milton’s final poems, including the epic Paradise Lost, to be recorded by dictation.1

Sonnet 19 is a poem which makes use of all of the above information to create a work indicative of the whole of Milton’s life. Published in 1673, it is almost certain that Milton’s eyes had at the very least begun to fail, and highly likely that they had failed completely by this time, leaving him completely blind. In fact, when published years after Milton’s death in a magazine, the poem was given a name to the effect of “On His Blindness” by the magazine’s editor. The downside of this naming is that it sorely limits the way one can look at the poem, especially if one believes Milton came up with this title himself. The poem’s first line, “When I consider how my light is spent,” can thus be seen from the perspective of Milton while going through his period of failing vision. The next line, which describes the world as dark and wide, is a clear reference to this blindness: To a man who cannot see, the world seems but large, daunting and impenetrable. When Milton describes his blindness as “lodged with me useless,” he is definitely feeling the sting of the God who has done this to him. These references to blindness and the lack of light that failing eyesight brings are interesting, but their relevance grows thinner as the poem wears on.

With the blindness being only a single factor in the poem’s overall meaning, there must be other ideas to which Milton is trying to explore. Sonnet 19 is not just a meditation on blindness; it is also a poem on religion, God and free will. Starting over from the beginning, the first line can be viewed in a deeply pensive way. Instead of merely a thought on Milton’s final years with functioning eyesight, it is a lamentation on how Milton’s life is spent, has been spent, and will continue to be spent. This line can evoke a debate which would come to be a central point in his later work Paradise Lost: the debate between whether humans truly have free will, or if all events are merely pre-determined and controlled by God.

Fitting with the theme of religion is the reference to “Talent” in line three. In some printings of the poem, this word is capitalized, in others it is not. The significance of this word, and line, is the reference to the parable of Talents found in the book of Matthew. In this parable, a wealthy man gives Talents (a large sum of money) to his servants, with instructions to invest the money, so as to make more of it. The first two of his servants are given five and two Talents, respectively. The third servant is given just one. While the first two servants are investing their money, the third servant buries and hides his Talent in a hole in the ground. When their master returns, he sees that the first two servants have doubled the amount of money they were given to start with, but the third servant has only what he buried in the ground. The third servant is called wicked and lazy, his Talent is given to the servant with ten Talents, and he is thrown into the darkness. The purpose of this story is to show that if one wishes to succeed in the kingdom of Heaven, one must take care of the duties they have been assigned by God.2 This parable is a central theme in the poem, as Milton discusses the idea of whether or not one must carry out God’s instructions if they wish to benefit in the after-life. He asks of his Maker the question, “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” The answer Milton receives is where we see the influence of his Protestant upbringing. Protestants, especially Lutherans, tend to believe that solely by believing in God, one will receive salvation and entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. There is no requirement for serving God and doing his work under the Protestant way.

There is also a somewhat “middle-of-the-road” approach to dissecting this poem, which combines elements of both of these major theories. Under this mentality, the poem is an expression of Milton’s feelings about how God and the blindness tie in. The parable of the Talents is brought in, as we see the idea of God providing things for man to toil with; in this case, blindness. One can see how this works: God has set down for Milton a crippling ailment, and only by overcoming this ailment, can Milton be the kind of man who deserves entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.

John Milton’s Sonnet 19 can be described as a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a Bible. Milton has created a tightly-wound ball of poetry which is full of questions, answers, and ambiguity. This compact and meaningful poem is truly a triumph, be it viewed as a lamentation on failing senses, one man’s spiritual dogma, or a cross-breed of the two.

References

Bloom, Harold. (2004) John Milton. Philadelphia, Chelsea House Publishers.

The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Edition. (1952) Philadelphia, Westminster Publishers.

Shawcross, John T. (2005) Rethinking Milton Studies. Newark, University of Delaware Press.