Friday 16 November 2018

"Lodg'd in me Useless": An Analysis of John Milton's "On His Blindness"


Many poems have the unfortunate virtue of using their final lines to beautify a platitude. It does not matter that the preceding lines do their best to undermine the platitude; those who read a poem only once, and never closely, remember the diamond at the end, never realising it’s a zircon. The most infamous example is Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Travelled”, which is, bluntly, about a road equally travelled. A less famous example is the closing lines of John Milton’s “On His Blindness”:
‘… Thousands at His bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.’
This pretty sentiment is comforting, but, to wise people like Milton, comfort is always uncomfortably held. That despite his disability he does all that he is able, that he gives God all that God asks, that God will bless his stillness, the narrator does not know.


When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day labour, light deny’d,
I fondly ask; but patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

On a surface reading, the narrator of “On His Blindness” comes to accept his limits. He is rueful that he lost a ‘Talent’, but realises that all talents are equally superfluous to a self-sufficient God. God judges each of his children according to their own abilities, however impaired.

This is not what the poem is about.

Read closer and consolation falters. The reader notices that the platitude is not spoken by God, nor by the author, but by ‘patience’. Patience is not a virtue of truth; it is a virtue of endurance. Patience only aims ‘to prevent / That murmur’, not to prove the murmur groundless.
  
God demands no more than you are able. That, however, is the narrator’s worry: Is he doing all he is able? When he had sight, he wasted his powers. ‘That one Talent which is death to hide’ references the Parable of the Talents:

‘… a man travelling into a far country … delivered unto [his servants] his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one … and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money. After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents … His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant … He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant … Then he which had received the one talent came …  His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant … cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness …’    (Matthew 25:14-30 AKJV)

This is not a parable of a man who is excused for making nothing with nothing. This is a parable of a man who had something and did nothing with it. In the context of the poem, the narrator realises that when he had his sight, he ‘spent’ it wastefully, yielding no return. Now that he is blind, he fears he wastes his remaining talents.

‘They also serve who only stand and waite’ is obvious hyperbole. Being blind does not reduce you to standing and waiting. (Milton, for instance, wrote Paradise Lost while blind.) The hyperbole is, on first reading, rhetorical, not meant to be taken literally, and yet when taken literally, the hyperbole reveals the narrator’s dissatisfaction with his own efforts. He can do more than stand and wait. Why isn’t he speeding over ‘Land and Ocean without rest’?

The narrators fears his ‘milde yoak’ has broken him, not from its weight, but from his own weakness. When he could see, he wasted his sight. Now that he is blind, he fears – he knows – his remaining powers are lodg’d in him useless.

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