when i consider how my light is spent (on his blindness)

1、When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness)In A NutshellIn February of 1652, the English poet John Milton went completely blind. Many great artists have suffered blindness, but the twist in Milton's case is that he went blind before he wrote his best works, including the immortal ep

2、ic poem Paradise Lost. Milton had written a few great poems before 1652, such as the elegy "Lycidas." But he was not a famous poet by this point.In fact, Milton was more famous as a servant of the government of Oliver Cromwell, the "Lord Protector" of England during the period be

3、tween the kings Charles I and Charles II. Without going too far into English history, we'll just point out that from the years 1649 to 1660, there was no monarchy. Charles I had been beheaded, and Cromwell turned the government into a republican commonwealth, which is to say, not a monarchy. Mil

4、ton was a Puritan, and so was Cromwell. The 17th century Puritans believed that the Church of England needed to be reformed to create more distance from the elaborate ceremonies and power structures of Catholicism and the Pope. They wanted to boil Christianity down to the basics of "pure"

5、piety and morality. Thus, Milton was a big-time supporter of the commonwealth government, and he used his incredible powers of persuasion on behalf of Puritan rule in essays published in pamphlets.But, like we said, Milton went blind a few years after the Puritans gained power, and in this sonnet he

6、 worries about how he can serve God even with this condition. Many scholars date the poem to 1655 (source). When reading this poem, you have to keep in mind that Milton is not just using false modesty here, because he had not written the works that would cement his reputation. Hearing the author of

7、Paradise Lost say, "I haven't accomplished all the stuff I wanted to!" would be like Tiger Woods complaining that his life was wasted because he had never won the world Sudoku championship. But that's not what Milton is doing in this sonnet his "talent" at this point was

8、still unproven.Milton's blindness has become something of a myth. Some people think that Milton dictated all of Paradise Lost to his three daughters. And at least one scholar has suggested that he drove his daughters out of his house by making them read to him in languages they couldn't even

9、 understand (source). Why Should I Care?When John Milton went blind, he must have felt like modern athletes feel when they suffer a career-ending injury. You spend your whole life working toward a goal, pour your heart and soul into practicing, and then some uncontrollable event or freak accident pu

10、ts you back in the shoes of a regular guy. In the movie Friday Night Lights, the star high school running back Boobie Miles injures his knee and loses the chance to play for a state championship and earn a college scholarship. Things like this happen to people all the time, we just don't normall

11、y hear about them. The myth is that if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything. But, as many people have discovered, while you certainly can't achieve great things without working hard, the hard work is no guarantee.John Milton's life plan was to be of service to God. He felt he could

12、 best achieve this goal by using his intelligence and especially his writing. But back when Milton was alive, it was very hard to write when you had no vision. He was entirely dependent on other people to write down his work and read to him. Fortunately, Milton's blindness was not as crippling a

13、s he thought it would be, and he eventually adapted to the condition enough to write some of the world's great works of literature.This poem shows, though, that outcome was far from a sure thing. This sonnet puts us in the shoes of someone with enormous talent who must suddenly accept a new purp

14、ose in life. He goes from being a mover-and-shaker to being someone who merely "stands and waits" on God.When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness): Rhyme, Form & MeterWell show you the poems blueprints, and well listen for the music behind the words.Italian (Petrarchan)

15、Sonnet in Iambic PentameterMilton loved the classics, and in the 17th century, "classic" meant anything associated with Ancient Greece or Rome. The heart of the Roman Empire was located in what is now modern-day Italy, and the sonnet was invented in Italy, so it was not a surprise that Mil

16、ton would favor the original Italian form of the sonnet. This form is divided up into two sections, one with eight lines and one with six. Shakespeare, on the other hand, used a sonnet form that ended with a rhyming two-line couplet. The Italian sonnet form was made popular by the Italian poet Petra

17、rch, who was to the literary Renaissance what The Temptations were to Motown.The rhyme scheme of this sonnet is ABBAABBAC CDECDE. So, you can see that lines 1, 4, 5, and 8 all rhyme with each other. Unlike a classic Italian sonnet, "When I consider how my light is spent" does not divide cl

18、eanly into eight lines and six lines, however. The first section of the poem consists of the speaker trying to frame his foolish question, and the second consists of the response to the question by a figure named "patience." Most Italian sonnets have a sharp thematic turn or "volta&qu

19、ot; between the two sections, but in this poem the turn is a bit muddled between lines 8 and 9. If you think about it, the confusion makes perfect sense, as it conveys the awkwardness of someone (patience) interrupting someone else (the speaker) before the speaker can say something stupid.The meter

20、of the poem is classic iambic pentameter, with five iambs (an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable). Some of the lines do not fit the pattern exactly, but the pattern itself is clear:"Doth God ex-act day-la-bor, light de-nied?"Finally, this poem features a lot of enjambment

21、, which is when one line runs over into the next without a pause. Just check out the end of each line, and you'll find that over half lack punctuation markers like periods or semi-colons.Speaker Point of ViewWho is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or

22、 him?Though the speaker may be seething with frustration and even anger at God, he knows that he must tread very carefully if he wants to express himself. He has the skills and intelligence to do great things out in the world, but he has been tripped up by a seemingly trivial problem: his light has

23、run out. Unfortunately, this unlucky event throws a big wrench in his plans to be useful. The speaker imagines that he could have become a famous politician or even, say, the author of one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. (Cough, cough). But now he can't possibly do any of tha

24、t, right? (Cough, cough, cough.) He's a hard worker, and he can't just sit still! Can he?You get the impression from reading the first section of the poem that the speaker just wants to shout, "You can't seriously expect me to do my Christian duty without vision. This is a joke, rig

25、ht?" Fortunately, the speaker has a little guy in his shirt pocket named "patience," capable of popping out and delivering a pep talk whenever it looks like the speaker is about to lose his cool. The important thing to remember is that "patience" belongs to the speaker.Final

26、ly, we can see why the speaker thinks he would be so useful to God and to society: he is incredibly smart. With his ability to pack complicated arguments into a few brief lines, he would make an amazing lawyer. Also, he probably knows the Gospels inside and out because the "Parable of the Talen

27、ts" is one of the least frequently quoted stories from the New Testament. On the other hand, the speaker still has "half his days" left to live, so maybe, just maybe, he'll still get around to doing great things.When I Consider How My Light is Spent (On His Blindness) SettingWhere

28、 It All Goes DownThe poem reminds us of those scenes from horror movies where the hero is walking through some dark and dangerous place chased by monsters or something and his flashlight/torch/lamp suddenly flickers and goes out. You hear heavy breathing andwhat's that?! Did you hear a branch br

29、eak?!OK, the speaker is not in mortal danger, but he feels like his soul is endangered. He is left to navigate a "dark" and "wide" world without his vision. What's more, his demanding "Maker" has gone on a trip, and he worries he will be cast into further darkness i

30、f he can't make use of his "Talent." That "Talent" is buried deep within him, like a gold coin that has been thrown in a hole and covered up with soil.In the second half of the poem, "patience" presents a different view of the world. In this view, the world is a hug

31、e kingdom with thousands and thousands of servants working to achieve God's will. Some of them speed from continent to continent like the characters in an Indiana Jones movie. Others just stand around until the king calls for them.Sound CheckRead this poem aloud. What do you hear?If you ever wan

32、ted to know what walking on eggshells sounded like in a poem, this sonnet is a prime example. The speaker buries the climax of the first part of the poem the question of whether God demands "day-labour, light denied" inside all these other delicate expressions of why light is so important

33、to him. The poem has a lot of short phrases separated by commas and which seemingly bring us further and further from the point, as if Milton is worried that the whole sonnet might crack open into a steaming mass of resentment. It's like if you had a classmate who said, "When I think about

34、how my pencil just broke, I can't finish my math problem, and I like math so much, but you really need an eraser to do it, or else you might be stuck with a wrong answer, which would lead to a bad grade; 'Can I borrow a pencil?' I would want to ask you." Just ask for the darned penc

35、il already!However, when we consider that the speaker is about to talk to God, we can understand his desire to be cautious. The decision to questioning God's judgment is not to be taken lightly. The speaker is so cautious that he says, "I fondly ask" after he asks the question, which s

36、erves to take the sting of arrogance and insubordination out of it. Put another way, the time it takes you as reader to figure out what the speaker is trying to get across lessens the direct force of his statements."Patience," by contrast, is more direct. It uses shorter, more declarative

37、sentences like, "His state is kingly." Because they are making complex arguments, both the speaker and "patience" use frequent enjambment, where one lines carries over into the next without a pause. This gives the poem a prose-like and slightly evasive sound (the eggshell thing,

38、again). The entire poem builds to the final line, which does not carry over from the previous line and sounds remarkably clear and straightforward: "They also serve who only stand and wait." And we breathe a sigh of relief that the speaker has managed to hold things together until the end.

39、Whats Up With the Title?This sonnet first appeared in Milton's 1673 collection of Poems simply as the nineteenth sonnet in the collection, or Sonnet XIX. Many readers, including us, refer to it by the first line, "When I consider how my light is spent." Identifying a poem by the first

40、line is standard practice in the poetry world.But, many more readers refer to the poem as, "On His Blindness." The problem with this title is that it didn't come from Milton. It was given almost a hundred years later by Bishop Newton, a writer and clergyman (source). Now, almost everyo

41、ne agrees that the poem is most likely about Milton's blindness, but Milton never says so up front, leaving the door open for some interesting ambiguity. If Milton had wanted to say, "Hey, guys, this poem is about my blindness!" he could easily have done so. Newton's invented title

42、 changes the way you read the poem, which is why we prefer to use the first line of the poem.John Miltons Calling CardWhat is the poets signature style?"Light" in DarknessSome critics think that Milton's blindness gave him an uncanny ability to depict light, darkness, and shadow. This

43、sonnet offers pretty strong evidence for that claim. The central extended metaphor combines the concepts of light and money into symbolism as dense as seven-layer cake. Light and darkness interact in strange ways in Milton's poems. One of the most famous sections in Paradise Lost describes the i

44、nterior of Hell as having:No light; but rather darkness visibleServed only to discover sights of woe,"Darkness visible." Wow. Milton's blindness proved to him that one can "see" even without light. We should also point out that the distinction between light and darkness is ce

45、ntral to Christian theology.Patience, PleaseSymbol Analysis"Patience" is an important virtue in Christianity. It allows people to work toward other "theological" virtues like hope and faith. When the speaker begins to question whether God might be kind of a cruel figure for deman

46、ding work from people who can't perform it, patience steps in to correct him. The twist, of course, is that the speaker must already have patience in order for the personified figure called "patience" to come on the scene.· Line 7: The speaker is about to ask a rhetorical question

47、 about God's justice before patience interrupts him.· Line 8: The virtue of patience is personified as "patience," the amazing advice giver. In the second half of the poem, patience replies to the speaker's question.· Line 11: The metaphor in the first half of this line c

48、ompares God's rule over men to the wooden yoke that guides farm animals.· Lines 12-13: These lines present an image of servants rushing all over the world, by land and by sea, to serve God. These "servants" are Christian soldiers, merchants, politicians, clergy, etc. Lines 11-14 f

49、orm an extended metaphor comparing service to God with service to the most powerful king in the world.· Line 14: The word "wait" is a pun. It means "wait" in the sense that the speaker will wait until the end of his life to meet his ultimate fate, and also in the sense that

50、a person "waits" on a more powerful person simply by standing there until he is needed.Tough-O-MeterWeve got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, youll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)(7) Snow LineFor a short, 14-line sonnet, this poem is pretty hard. That's Milton for you. Few poets display so much religious and literary knowledge as Mr. Milton, and this poem is no exception. Most people today don't memorize the Gospels like they did back in 17th-century England, but if you don