The poems of John Milton, such as Paradise Lost, On The Morning of Christ`s Nativity, Samson Agonistes and Comus are well known. Perhaps less well known except by those who have made a serious study (I do not include myself here) of these poems is the occasional reference to cryptids, in particular sea monsters. I have only read the first few pages of Paradise Lost (1667) but very soon after Satan and his angels are thrown out of heaven after their rebellion against God, we have Milton portraying the following gloomy scene: (The spelling throughout is kept to my texts)
Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extending long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.
Him, happly slumbering on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea,and wished morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay etc,etc
Chained on the burning lake;……(1)
This theme of a boat stranding on the huge back of a sea-monster also comes up in the story of St. Brendan The Voyager, alleged to have sailed to N. America a few hundred years after Christ`s life.
`Milton`s great theme, set out in the opening line -`Of Man`s First Disobediance`- hails acts of human choice as the focus of the entire poem. Adam and Eve`s story is interwoven with those of God, Satan, angels, and all of subsequent human history. This first edition appeared during a brief window of loosening of censorship - after the Fire of London and during a political upheaval - its undistinguished quarto format disguising the potentially incendiary ideas within`(2)
The poem On The Morning of Christ`s Nativity (1629), written when Milton was about 21, developed this theme before his classic Paradise Lost was written, but in a far less profound manner:
He feels from Juda`s Land
The dredded Infants hand,
The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands controul the damned crew. (3)
This poem later develops the theme of the music of the spheres, which is something I am also interested in. My mother bought me the book English Poetry (see reference 3 below) when I was mentally ill in hospital about 10 years ago, which created a strange version of On The Morning of Christ`s Nativity in my mind on reading it as you can imagine!
The illustration is a portrait engraving of John Milton aged 63 by William Dolle for the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
(1) The Poetical Works of John Milton. London and New York (1891)
(2) Citizen Milton An Exhibition Celebrating The 400th Anniversary Of The Birth of John Milton. S.Achinstein.Oxford (2007)
(3) English Poetry. Selected by Kenneth Muir. London (1941)
Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extending long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.
Him, happly slumbering on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea,and wished morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay etc,etc
Chained on the burning lake;……(1)
This theme of a boat stranding on the huge back of a sea-monster also comes up in the story of St. Brendan The Voyager, alleged to have sailed to N. America a few hundred years after Christ`s life.
`Milton`s great theme, set out in the opening line -`Of Man`s First Disobediance`- hails acts of human choice as the focus of the entire poem. Adam and Eve`s story is interwoven with those of God, Satan, angels, and all of subsequent human history. This first edition appeared during a brief window of loosening of censorship - after the Fire of London and during a political upheaval - its undistinguished quarto format disguising the potentially incendiary ideas within`(2)
The poem On The Morning of Christ`s Nativity (1629), written when Milton was about 21, developed this theme before his classic Paradise Lost was written, but in a far less profound manner:
He feels from Juda`s Land
The dredded Infants hand,
The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands controul the damned crew. (3)
This poem later develops the theme of the music of the spheres, which is something I am also interested in. My mother bought me the book English Poetry (see reference 3 below) when I was mentally ill in hospital about 10 years ago, which created a strange version of On The Morning of Christ`s Nativity in my mind on reading it as you can imagine!
The illustration is a portrait engraving of John Milton aged 63 by William Dolle for the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
(1) The Poetical Works of John Milton. London and New York (1891)
(2) Citizen Milton An Exhibition Celebrating The 400th Anniversary Of The Birth of John Milton. S.Achinstein.Oxford (2007)
(3) English Poetry. Selected by Kenneth Muir. London (1941)
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