The Complete Poetry of John Milton by John Milton Read Free Book Online Page A

Vice-Chancellor, a Physician
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    Learn to submit to the laws of destiny / and now offer up suppliant hands to the Parca, 2 / descendants of Japetus, 3 who inhabit / the pendulous orb of the earth. / If doleful death, wandering [5] / from abandoned Taenarus, 4 once summon you, alas: delays / and deceptions are essayed in vain; / through the shadows of the Styx one is certain to go. / If the right hand were strong enough / to rout appointed death, the untamed Hercules, [10] /poisoned by the blood of Nessus, / would not have been cast down on Emathian Oeta. 5 / Nor would Troy have seen Hector 6 slain / by the shameful deceit of envious Pallas, nor / him 7 whom the ghost of Achilles killed [15] / with Locrian sword, Jove shedding tears. / If the incantations of Hecate 8 could put / sad fate to flight, the parent of Telegonus 9 / would have lived in infamy, and / the sister of Aegialeus 10 to employ her potent wand. [20] / And if the arts of the physician and unknown herbs / were able to deceive the triple divinity, / Machaon, knowing so much of herbs, / would not have fallen by the spear of Eurypylus; 11 / neither would the arrow smeared with the hydra’s blood [25] / have wounded you, son of Philyra, 12 / nor the missiles and thunderbolt of your grandfather, you, / boy cut from your mother’s womb. 13 / And you, O greater than your pupil, Apollo, / to whom the government of our gowned society was given, [30] / and whom now leafy Cirrha mourns / and Helicon in the midst of its waters, 14 / now you would be the happy leader to the Palladian troop, / surviving, not without glory; / nor in Charon’s boat would you traverse [35] / the fearful recesses of hell. / But Persephone broke your thread of life, / angered, when she saw you by your arts / and powerful potions snatch so many / from the black jaws of death. [40] / Reverend Chancellor, I pray your limbs / find peace in the gentle soil, and from your grave / spring roses and marigolds / and the hyacinth with purple face. / May the judgment of Aeacus 15 be gentle upon you, [45] / and may Sicilian 16 Prosperina smile, / and forever among the fortunate / may you walk in the Elysian field.
    (
Oct.–Nov. 1626
)
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    1 Dr. John Gostlin, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge and Regius Professor of Medicine from 1623, died on Oct. 21, 1626.
    2 one of the three Fates; specifically, Morta, who controlled the advent of death.
    3 As father of Atlas, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, he was considered mankind’s common progenitor.
    4 the infernal regions.
    5 To win back Hercules’ love, his wife Deianira followed the advice of the dying Nessus to smear a robe with his blood, which Hercules was to wear; but since Nessus’ blood had been stained with the blood of the hydra, also killed by Hercules, the robe caused fatal poisoning. Hercules had himself placed on a pyre on Mt. Oeta in Macedonia.
    6 Athena, disguised as Hector’s brother Deiphobus, urged him to fight with Achilles, in which battle he was slain.
    7 Sarpedon, son of Jove, who was slain by Patroclus, wearing Achilles’ armor.
    8 goddess of enchantments.
    9 Circe.
    10 Medea, who was learned in magic.
    11 Machaon, surgeon to the Greeks at Troy, was a son of Aesculapius.
    12 Chiron was wounded by one of Hercules’ arrows poisoned by the hydra’s blood.
    13 Aesculapius, so delivered by his father Apollo, was killed by Jove, Apollo’s father, because he saved men from death.
    14 In an extravagance Milton has Apollo, god of healing, learning from Gostlin, and Cirrha (near Delphi) and Helicon (the haunt of the Muses) equating Cambridge with its poetic mourners.
    15 a judge of the dead, appointed because of his justice in ruling Aegina.
    16 Sicilian because she was carried off from Enna in Sicily by Pluto.
In proditionem Bombardicam
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                    Cum simul in regem nuper satrapasque Britannos
                      Ausus es infandum, perfide Fauxe, nefas,
                    Fallor? an et mitis