There is scarcely a word in it that prose cannot use even to-day. The thought is one that might come from any moralist; there is nothing daring or imaginative about it. Yet out of this what poetry Milton has made! The personal emotion of it, the note of confession and individual experience, has lifted it altogether above the level of the cold maxims of the preacher who gives no sign of having suffered, or sinned, or so much as lived, himself. Then the art of it: so entirely unperceived by the ordinary reader, so invincible in its effect upon him. The whole secret of it defies analysis: but a few ingredients can {216} be detected. There is comparatively little of Milton's favourite alliteration: the tone of the passage is too quiet for the free use of an artistic device so instantly visible. But note the beautiful line—
"Companions of my misery and woe"—
itself free flowing without a pause of any kind, so as to prepare the better for the full pause both of sense and of rhythm which separates it from what follows. Then there is the vivid conversational "At first it may be," and its pause, contrasting so finely with the next line where the pause is also after the fifth syllable, but with a totally different effect. Note again the variety of rhythm which distinguishes the last two lines. Neither has any strong pause in it: and they might so easily have been a monotonous repetition. Is it fanciful to think that, perhaps half unconsciously, Milton has suggested the quick stab of pain or sorrow in the swift movement of the first: and that the long-drawn rhythm of the second is meant to convey something of the dull years of misery which so often follow? Its first six syllables—
"Nor lightens aught each man's,"
if given their full effect of sound, take perhaps half as long again to read as the first six of the {217} preceding line. In any case, whatever was meant by it, the line is a most beautiful one in itself, as well as full of one of the most moving of human things, a strong man's confession that his strength does not always suffice him.
These obviously autobiographical passages are to be found all through the poem. There are the stately Roman embassies coming and going in all their pomp: in which it is surely Cromwell's Foreign Secretary who sees nothing but
"tedious waste of time, to sit and hear So many hollow compliments and lies, Outlandish flatteries."
There is the old contempt of war and those who in virtue of their victories
"swell with pride, and must be titled Gods,"
and of the mob who praise and admire