L'Allegro Summary & Analysis
by John Milton

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The Full Text of “L'Allegro”

1Hence loathed Melancholy,

2Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born,

3In Stygian cave forlorn

4      'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy;

5Find out some uncouth cell,

6      Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

7And the night-raven sings;

8      There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,

9As ragged as thy locks,

10      In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

11But come thou goddess fair and free,

12In heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,

13And by men, heart-easing Mirth,

14Whom lovely Venus at a birth

15With two sister Graces more

16To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;

17Or whether (as some sager sing)

18The frolic wind that breathes the spring,

19Zephyr, with Aurora playing,

20As he met her once a-Maying,

21There on beds of violets blue,

22And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,

23Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair,

24So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

25Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee

26Jest and youthful Jollity,

27Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,

28Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,

29Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,

30And love to live in dimple sleek;

31Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

32And Laughter holding both his sides.

33Come, and trip it as ye go

34On the light fantastic toe,

35And in thy right hand lead with thee,

36The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;

37And if I give thee honour due,

38Mirth, admit me of thy crew

39To live with her, and live with thee,

40In unreproved pleasures free;

41To hear the lark begin his flight,

42And singing startle the dull night,

43From his watch-tower in the skies,

44Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

45Then to come in spite of sorrow,

46And at my window bid good-morrow,

47Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,

48Or the twisted eglantine;

49While the cock with lively din,

50Scatters the rear of darkness thin,

51And to the stack, or the barn door,

52Stoutly struts his dames before;

53Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn

54Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,

55From the side of some hoar hill,

56Through the high wood echoing shrill.

57Sometime walking, not unseen,

58By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,

59Right against the eastern gate,

60Where the great Sun begins his state,

61Rob'd in flames, and amber light,

62The clouds in thousand liveries dight.

63While the ploughman near at hand,

64Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,

65And the milkmaid singeth blithe,

66And the mower whets his scythe,

67And every shepherd tells his tale

68Under the hawthorn in the dale.

69Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures

70Whilst the landskip round it measures,

71Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

72Where the nibbling flocks do stray;

73Mountains on whose barren breast

74The labouring clouds do often rest;

75Meadows trim with daisies pied,

76Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.

77Towers, and battlements it sees

78Bosom'd high in tufted trees,

79Where perhaps some beauty lies,

80The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

81Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,

82From betwixt two aged oaks,

83Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,

84Are at their savoury dinner set

85Of herbs, and other country messes,

86Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;

87And then in haste her bow'r she leaves,

88With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;

89Or if the earlier season lead

90To the tann'd haycock in the mead.

91Sometimes with secure delight

92The upland hamlets will invite,

93When the merry bells ring round,

94And the jocund rebecks sound

95To many a youth, and many a maid,

96Dancing in the chequer'd shade;

97And young and old come forth to play

98On a sunshine holiday,

99Till the live-long daylight fail;

100Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

101With stories told of many a feat,

102How Faery Mab the junkets eat,

103She was pinch'd and pull'd she said,

104And he by friar's lanthorn led,

105Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,

106To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

107When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

108His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn

109That ten day-labourers could not end;

110Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,

111And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,

112Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

113And crop-full out of doors he flings,

114Ere the first cock his matin rings.

115Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

116By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep.

117Tower'd cities please us then,

118And the busy hum of men,

119Where throngs of knights and barons bold,

120In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,

121With store of ladies, whose bright eyes

122Rain influence, and judge the prize

123Of wit, or arms, while both contend

124To win her grace, whom all commend.

125There let Hymen oft appear

126In saffron robe, with taper clear,

127And pomp, and feast, and revelry,

128With mask, and antique pageantry;

129Such sights as youthful poets dream

130On summer eves by haunted stream.

131Then to the well-trod stage anon,

132If Jonson's learned sock be on,

133Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,

134Warble his native wood-notes wild.

135And ever against eating cares,

136Lap me in soft Lydian airs,

137Married to immortal verse,

138Such as the meeting soul may pierce

139In notes with many a winding bout

140Of linked sweetness long drawn out,

141With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,

142The melting voice through mazes running,

143Untwisting all the chains that tie

144The hidden soul of harmony;

145That Orpheus' self may heave his head

146From golden slumber on a bed

147Of heap'd Elysian flow'rs, and hear

148Such strains as would have won the ear

149Of Pluto, to have quite set free

150His half-regain'd Eurydice.

151These delights if thou canst give,

152Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

The Full Text of “L'Allegro”

1Hence loathed Melancholy,

2Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born,

3In Stygian cave forlorn

4      'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy;

5Find out some uncouth cell,

6      Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

7And the night-raven sings;

8      There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,

9As ragged as thy locks,

10      In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

11But come thou goddess fair and free,

12In heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,

13And by men, heart-easing Mirth,

14Whom lovely Venus at a birth

15With two sister Graces more

16To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;

17Or whether (as some sager sing)

18The frolic wind that breathes the spring,

19Zephyr, with Aurora playing,

20As he met her once a-Maying,

21There on beds of violets blue,

22And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,

23Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair,

24So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

25Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee

26Jest and youthful Jollity,

27Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,

28Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,

29Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,

30And love to live in dimple sleek;

31Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

32And Laughter holding both his sides.

33Come, and trip it as ye go

34On the light fantastic toe,

35And in thy right hand lead with thee,

36The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;

37And if I give thee honour due,

38Mirth, admit me of thy crew

39To live with her, and live with thee,

40In unreproved pleasures free;

41To hear the lark begin his flight,

42And singing startle the dull night,

43From his watch-tower in the skies,

44Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

45Then to come in spite of sorrow,

46And at my window bid good-morrow,

47Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,

48Or the twisted eglantine;

49While the cock with lively din,

50Scatters the rear of darkness thin,

51And to the stack, or the barn door,

52Stoutly struts his dames before;

53Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn

54Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,

55From the side of some hoar hill,

56Through the high wood echoing shrill.

57Sometime walking, not unseen,

58By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,

59Right against the eastern gate,

60Where the great Sun begins his state,

61Rob'd in flames, and amber light,

62The clouds in thousand liveries dight.

63While the ploughman near at hand,

64Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,

65And the milkmaid singeth blithe,

66And the mower whets his scythe,

67And every shepherd tells his tale

68Under the hawthorn in the dale.

69Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures

70Whilst the landskip round it measures,

71Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

72Where the nibbling flocks do stray;

73Mountains on whose barren breast

74The labouring clouds do often rest;

75Meadows trim with daisies pied,

76Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.

77Towers, and battlements it sees

78Bosom'd high in tufted trees,

79Where perhaps some beauty lies,

80The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

81Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,

82From betwixt two aged oaks,

83Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,

84Are at their savoury dinner set

85Of herbs, and other country messes,

86Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;

87And then in haste her bow'r she leaves,

88With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;

89Or if the earlier season lead

90To the tann'd haycock in the mead.

91Sometimes with secure delight

92The upland hamlets will invite,

93When the merry bells ring round,

94And the jocund rebecks sound

95To many a youth, and many a maid,

96Dancing in the chequer'd shade;

97And young and old come forth to play

98On a sunshine holiday,

99Till the live-long daylight fail;

100Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,

101With stories told of many a feat,

102How Faery Mab the junkets eat,

103She was pinch'd and pull'd she said,

104And he by friar's lanthorn led,

105Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,

106To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

107When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,

108His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn

109That ten day-labourers could not end;

110Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,

111And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,

112Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

113And crop-full out of doors he flings,

114Ere the first cock his matin rings.

115Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,

116By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep.

117Tower'd cities please us then,

118And the busy hum of men,

119Where throngs of knights and barons bold,

120In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,

121With store of ladies, whose bright eyes

122Rain influence, and judge the prize

123Of wit, or arms, while both contend

124To win her grace, whom all commend.

125There let Hymen oft appear

126In saffron robe, with taper clear,

127And pomp, and feast, and revelry,

128With mask, and antique pageantry;

129Such sights as youthful poets dream

130On summer eves by haunted stream.

131Then to the well-trod stage anon,

132If Jonson's learned sock be on,

133Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,

134Warble his native wood-notes wild.

135And ever against eating cares,

136Lap me in soft Lydian airs,

137Married to immortal verse,

138Such as the meeting soul may pierce

139In notes with many a winding bout

140Of linked sweetness long drawn out,

141With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,

142The melting voice through mazes running,

143Untwisting all the chains that tie

144The hidden soul of harmony;

145That Orpheus' self may heave his head

146From golden slumber on a bed

147Of heap'd Elysian flow'rs, and hear

148Such strains as would have won the ear

149Of Pluto, to have quite set free

150His half-regain'd Eurydice.

151These delights if thou canst give,

152Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

  • “L'Allegro” Introduction

    • In John Milton's "L'Allegro"—an Italian word which means, roughly, "The Happy Man"—a speaker vows to banish Melancholy (thoughtful sadness, here personified as a dark goddess). He chooses instead to follow Mirth (the embodiment of joy and cheer). For most of this long poem, he imagines what a life ruled by Mirth might look like. In his vision, Mirth presides over a sociable, pleasure-loving existence in an idyllic countryside, full of comic poetry and gorgeous music—to him, obviously the best path. But this poem has a sister, "Il Penseroso" (or "The Thoughtful Man"), whose speaker makes precisely the opposite choice. Read together, these poems suggest that there might be a balance to be struck between sorrowful, pensive solitude and giddy, lively sociability. But taken on its own, "L'Allegro" is a celebration of the active life relished in good company (albeit one that's possible only in happy fantasy—or in poetry). Though Milton probably wrote these poems as a young man, they weren't collected and published until 1645, when they appeared in Poems of Mr. John Milton.

  • “L'Allegro” Summary

    • Get away, hateful Melancholy—you who were born from the union of Cerberus and the darkest Midnight, in a pitch-black and isolated underworld cave, amidst terrible monsters and screams and awful visions. Go find some unknown hole where Darkness unfurls its clutching wings and the night-raven cries. There, beneath the blackest shadows and frowning rocks—rocks as wild as your ragged hair—live forever in a deserted land of utter darkness.

      But welcome, you beautiful and liberated goddess—you who go by the name of Euphrosyne in heaven, but whom human beings just call Mirth. You (and your two sisters, the other Graces) were born to Venus (goddess of love) and the ivy-crowned Bacchus (god of wine). Or perhaps (as some wiser poets have sung), Zephyr (the god of the west wind and herald of the springtime) got together with Aurora (goddess of the dawn) one May morning; the two of them slept together on a bed of purple violets and newly bloomed, dew-washed roses, and then Aurora gave birth to you, Mirth: a lovely daughter, so lively and happy and courteous.

      Hurry here soon, nymph, and bring with you the spirit of Jokes and youthful Fun; bring snappy comebacks, comical turns of phrase, and playful games. Bring encouraging nods, beckoning gestures, and huge smiles, like the smiles you might see on the face of Hebe (the eternally youthful cupbearer of the gods), the smiles that love to live in a smooth, dimpling cheek. Bring the kind of play that wrinkly old Worry scorns; bring Laughter, roaring so hard he has to hold his sides.

      Come, Mirth, and as you come, skip along in a nimble, fanciful dance, hand in hand with the beautiful nymph called Liberty. And if I've praised you well enough, Mirth, then let me join your band, so that I can live with Liberty and with you, enjoying blameless delights. Let me listen to the lark singing as he flies out in the morning and startles the night out of his guard tower in the sky, until the many-colored sunrise comes. Then, shunning sorrow, let me say good morning at my window through the plants that grow there: sweet-briar, vine, and tangled wild roses. All the while, the rooster, with his energetic crowing, will dispel the last shreds of the darkness; he'll come boldly strutting out to the haystack or the barn door with his hens behind him. I'll often listen to the hunters riding out with their dogs and their horns, cheerfully awaking the sleepy morning, their sounds ringing from the side of some dewy hill and echoing piercingly through the woods.

      Sometimes I'll go walking (not all alone) through elm hedgerows, over green hills, right up toward the place in the east where the mighty Sun begins his procession; he comes dressed in fires and in orange-golden light, with many-colored clouds all around him. Meanwhile, the nearby ploughman whistles at his work, and the milkmaid sings happily, and the mower sharpens his scythe, and every shepherd tells his story beneath the hawthorn tree in the valley.

      I quickly see many new delights as I look around at the landscape: reddish-brown lawns and pale grey unplanted fields where sheep wander and nibble the grass; mountains upon whose bare, rocky slopes the struggling clouds lie down to rest; neat little meadows speckled with daisies; shallow streams and broad rivers. My eye catches towers and walls enfolded in leafy trees; perhaps some beautiful thing is in there, something admired and adored by everyone around.

      Nearby, there's a cottage with smoke coming from its chimney, standing between two old oak trees. Here, the shepherds Corydon and Thyrsis have gotten together to eat their tasty dinner of vegetables and other rustic foods, prepared by the shepherdess Phyllis. When Phyllis is done with the cooking, she quickly leaves her leafy retreat to go gather up the grain with her fellow shepherdess Thestylis—or, if it's earlier in the year, she goes to the sun-browned haystacks in the meadow.

      Sometimes, with carefree joy, the little villages in the hills will beckon with a cheerful ringing of bells. The jolly music of fiddles will play while many young men and many young maidens dance in the dappled shade of the trees. The young and the old alike will come out to enjoy a sunny holiday, staying out until dusk falls.

      Then they'll all gather around to drink spiced nut-brown ale and tell stories of the doings of the fairies. They'll tell how Mab the Fairy Queen ate all the sweets. A woman will tell of how the fairies pinched and prodded her. A man will tell of how he was once led astray by a will-o'-the-wisp; and he will tell the story of how hard a household spirit worked to earn a bowl of cream. In just one night, the story goes, before the first peep of dawn, this fairy spirit separated all the grain from the wheat stalks, doing more work than ten day laborers could. Afterward, he stretched himself out in front of the fire and warmed his strong, hairy body. Then, full to the brim with the cream he earned, he dashed out of the house before the first rooster crowed. When these stories are done, the country people creep off to bed, and the wind whispers them to sleep.

      Now we turn to enjoy the glories of mighty cities, with their constant murmur of people—places where crowds of knights and brave barons, decked out in their peacetime best, celebrate grand festivals. The cities are also full of ladies whose bright eyes win over all the men. These ladies judge who triumphs in the contests of intellect or strength; the men compete to earn the favor of the lady whom everyone most admires.

      In such cities, Hymen (god of marriage) must often show up, wearing his brilliant orange robes and carrying a bright candle, bringing with him all sorts of celebrations and feasts, masques and old-fashioned pageants: the kinds of sights that young poets dream about while sitting beside riversides (which seem populated with spirits) on summer evenings.

      Then we can turn swiftly to the busy stage, to see if the scholarly playwright Ben Jonson has his comedy socks on, or if sweetest Shakespeare—the child of Imagination—is singing his wild, rural birdsongs.

      And to protect me against gnawing anxieties, Mirth, wrap me up in the softest, tenderest music, accompanied by deathless poetry: artistry of the sort that can penetrate any soul it meets with its delicious, wandering, drawn-out melodies; artistry that twists and turns, playful and dizzying; artistry in which the singer's voice seems to dissolve and wander through mazes. Such music can unravel all the chains that tie up the secret essence of harmony. Such music might make Orpheus himself (the legendary musician) lift his head up from his delicious sleep on a bed of flowers in Paradise, all so that he could listen to the kind of music that would have completely won over Pluto (god of the underworld) and persuaded him to release Orpheus's wife Eurydice (whom Orpheus once halfway rescued from the land of the dead).

      If you can give me these pleasures, o Mirth, then I intend to live with you.

  • “L'Allegro” Themes

    • Theme The Pleasures (and Limitations) of the Happy Life

      The Pleasures (and Limitations) of the Happy Life

      “L’Allegro” is one half of a two-part poetic project in which John Milton examines two possible attitudes toward life: one of active cheer and one of contemplative melancholy. As “L’Allegro” means (roughly) “The Happy Man,” readers won’t be surprised to discover that this poem sings the praises of the happy life and derides melancholy. (Its sister poem, "Il Penseroso," does just the opposite.)

      This poem’s speaker paints a rosy picture of a life dedicated to Mirth, a goddess who embodies happiness. His vision of Mirth’s world suggests that, in the eyes of a mirthful sort of person, a good life is one full of sensual pleasure, natural beauty, sweet music, and lively community. The poem might also hint that such a one-sided view of life has its blind spots.

      The goddess Mirth, the speaker speculates, might be the daughter of Venus (goddess of sex and beauty) and Bacchus (god of wine and ecstasy). Or, on the contrary, she might be the daughter of Zephyr (god of the west wind that heralds spring) and Aurora (goddess of the dawn). Taken together, these two different genealogies reveal that the speaker thinks true happiness is born of sensual, earthy pleasures—wine, women, and song!—and/or the glory of nature (particularly the freshest, youngest faces of nature).

      No wonder, then, that when he describes what his life would be like if he could follow in Mirth's footsteps forever, what he depicts is a pastoral landscape. That means that he imagines Mirth's world as an idealized countryside, a place where life is a combination of wholesome rural work—ploughing, shepherding, dairy farming—and sensual delight. To life as happily as he wants to, this speaker imagines, he would need to be in constant communion with nature's glory. He would also need to enjoy plenty of the simple pleasures that make life good: dancing, quaffing some "spicy nut-brown ale," and relishing only the lightest comedies and the sweetest, gentlest music. All his fun should be simple, all his art should be consoling and carefree.

      But perhaps the most fundamental part of a life of Mirth, for this speaker, is the more or less constant presence of other people, the "busy hum of men." From the moment the mirthful man gets up in the morning, this speaker imagines, he’s among others: the “ploughman,” the “dairymaid,” and the “thresher” are all busy at their work right outside his window. Even when he goes for a country walk, he’s “not unseen”; someone’s always nearby. And every evening, he gathers around the fire with all his neighbors to tell stories and sing songs.

      Described this way, the mirthful speaker's vision of the good life sounds alluring: no end of fun, no end of pleasure, no end of good company. But throughout the poem, Milton drops hints that this vision might be limited, even blinkered. For instance, in this imagined world, it seems to be always a fine day in the spring or the summer: winter never puts an end to the fun. Life isn't like that.

      In the end, "L'Allegro" comes across as a sincere celebration of life's joys, but also as a warning that life can't be all mirth and liveliness. There's no spring without winter, and perhaps there can be no mirth without melancholy—though this poem's speaker would love to believe so. Even his final words express a note of doubt: "These delights if thou canst give, / Mirth, with thee I mean to live," he says. That's a big "if."

    • Theme The Perils of Melancholy

      The Perils of Melancholy

      Before the poem’s speaker gets around to his praise of a life dedicated to the goddess Mirth, he first spends a solid ten lines rejecting the goddess Melancholy. Melancholy was an important and complex concept in Milton’s era. It was a temperament associated with artists and scholars: an inward-looking, reflective, solitary, deeply thoughtful attitude. But it was also associated with a paralyzed bleakness that we might now call depression.

      To this speaker, Melancholy—here personified as a gloomy goddess—reveals only that second face. She strikes him as nothing but a dismal hag who emerged from the deepest caverns of the underworld, with nothing of value to offer those people foolish enough to follow her. His portrait of her outlines some of the dangers of the solitary, intellectual life. But it might also reveal something of the speaker's own limitations.

      Melancholy, as this speaker sees her, is a creature of utmost darkness. Her parents, he declares, were “Cerberus” (the three-headed dog who guards Hades, the classical underworld) and “blackest midnight.” She belongs to a land where “brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings”—where a personified darkness stretches out dreadful wings to block out all light—and she ought to go back there, to live alone forever in a “dark Cimmerian desert” (an allusion to the Cimmerians, a mythical people said to live in eternal darkness next door to Hades).

      Through these relentless images of dreadful, hellish darkness and isolation, the speaker symbolically suggests that Melancholy locks people into themselves, preventing them from seeing (and taking part in) the wide and lovely world. There’s no upside here, no potential insight or wisdom to be gained from solitary, melancholic reflection.

      With this view of Melancholy, it’s no wonder that the speaker roundly rejects her and turns to the goddess Mirth instead. However, Milton offers plenty of hints that the speaker’s wholesale dismissal of Melancholy might be a little shortsighted. For this poem has a partner, a poem entitled “Il Penseroso,” or (roughly) “The Thoughtful Man.” That poem’s speaker embraces Melancholy as a wise spiritual guide and rejects the “vain deluding joys” of Mirth. Perhaps this poem’s speaker’s inability to see anything deeper in Melancholy than darkest despair reveals more about him than it does about melancholy itself.

    • Theme The Role of Art in the Happy Life

      The Role of Art in the Happy Life

      The speaker of “L’Allegro” envisions a perfect life spent following the goddess of Mirth (happiness embodied). While much of the pleasure he envisions is earthy and physical (drinking “spicy nut-brown ale,” walking out to enjoy the sunrise), there’s also plenty of art here. Describing the role that music, poetry, and theater play in his vision of the good life, this poem’s speaker suggests that art’s main purpose should be to delight and soothe its audience. Tellingly, he also fantasizes that art might protect people from life’s darker side—a notion that reveals some of his buried fears.

      Much of the art in the speaker’s ideal life comes in the form of rustic fun, fitting right in with the rest of the easy daily pleasures of the rural community he describes. Musicians play their “jocund rebecks” (jolly fiddles) so people can dance under the trees; neighbors tell each other fairy stories to while away the evening hours before bed. These folksy kinds of art-making, the speaker suggests, simply add more pleasure to already pleasurable lives.

      To the speaker's mind, the comedies of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare also fit this pattern of art as a natural source of easy pleasure. For example, the speaker praises “sweetest Shakespeare” by describing his verse as his “native wood-notes wild,” a kind of melody that he “warble[s]” as instinctively and easily as a bird sings. Similarly, Mirth herself doesn't walk, but dances everywhere she goes on a "light fantastic toe"—a kind of artfulness that comes naturally and instinctively to the happy soul. Here, the speaker depicts art as something that emerges effortlessly from joy, then creates more joy‚ in a process as easy as breathing.

      Besides expressing and creating free-flowing delight, art serves a deeper purpose: keeping Melancholy, the speaker’s dreaded enemy, away from the door. The speaker hopes, for instance, that “soft Lydian airs” (songs written in the warmest, sweetest musical mode) might ward off “eating cares” (gnawing anxieties). Picturing such ravishing music as a velvety robe in which he can be “lap[ped]” (or wrapped up), the speaker presents art as a soothing protector—or, some might argue, as a security blanket, a way of evading and denying fear and worry.

      The speaker even goes so far as to fantasize about a kind of music so very beautiful that it could ward off death itself. What the mythical musician Orpheus couldn’t quite do (rescue his dead wife Eurydice from the underworld using the power of song), the speaker’s imagined music can: the ideal music of mirth might “quite set free” Orpheus’s “half-regained Eurydice,” the speaker declares.

      It’s this last idea that hints the speaker’s vision of art (and especially music) might be wishful. Though art can genuinely express delight and offer pleasure and consolation, it can’t reverse death, and it can’t keep all worry away forever.

      In fact, some of the kinds of art the speaker doesn’t have much time for might offer him different kinds of consolation. This speaker only wants Jonson around “if Jonson’s learned sock be on”—that is, if Jonson is writing comedies (symbolized by the traditional soft slippers worn by classical comedians). And he only wants Shakespeare around when Shakespeare is singing like a bird, not howling like a grief-stricken father. But, as Keats would point out some 170-odd years after Milton published this poem, art’s truthful reflection of life’s horrors can create its own kind of beauty. To this poem’s all-Mirth-all-the-time speaker, such darker, richer flavors of consolation are out of reach.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “L'Allegro”

    • Lines 1-4

      Hence loathed Melancholy,
      Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born,
      In Stygian cave forlorn
            'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy;

      “L’Allegro” begins with a banishment. The poem’s speaker tells a personification of Melancholy (thoughtful, reflective sadness) that she can get herself “hence”—that she can go away, remove herself at once from his presence. He has no need for her.

      He has no liking for her, either. She’s “loathed Melancholy,” in his eyes—hateful, despised—and she came from a dreadful place. She’s the child of “Cerberus” (the three-headed dog who guards the land of the dead in classical mythology) and “blackest Midnight,” and she was born in a “Stygian cave” (a gloomy cavern alongside the river Styx, the river that flows through the underworld). Born amidst “horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy,” Melancholy strikes the speaker as a rather unholy sight herself.

      These strong words make a fair amount of sense coming from the speaker of a poem entitled “L’Allegro”: in Italian, “The Joyful Man.” The speaker appears to be the titular joyful man, and if he’s to live as he wishes to, he’s going to have to get rid of Melancholy first. She has no place in the happy life he’ll envision over the course of this poem.

      But the very fact that he needs to get rid of Melancholy before he can begin highlights a juxtaposition that gives this poem its purpose and form. For “L’Allegro” isn’t a stand-alone poem. It’s half of a two-part project. It has a sister poem, “Il Penseroso” (“The Thoughtful Man,” roughly)—and the speaker of that poem strikes out in exactly the opposite way, banishing “false deluding Joys” from his life and hailing Melancholy as a "goddess sage and holy."

      This poem isn’t simply about what it is to lead a happy life, then. It’s about choosing one path over another: an active, sociable, lively, pleasure-seeking path, as opposed to a path of solitary, moody contemplation. To a speaker for whom this feels like the right choice, Melancholy just plain looks ugly, like something that crawled out of the darkness. But readers should keep in mind that this poem expresses only one perspective and embraces only one possible aspiration.

    • Lines 5-10

      Find out some uncouth cell,
            Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
      And the night-raven sings;
            There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,
      As ragged as thy locks,
            In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

    • Lines 11-13

      But come thou goddess fair and free,
      In heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne,
      And by men, heart-easing Mirth,

    • Lines 14-16

      Whom lovely Venus at a birth
      With two sister Graces more
      To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;

    • Lines 17-24

      Or whether (as some sager sing)
      The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
      Zephyr, with Aurora playing,
      As he met her once a-Maying,
      There on beds of violets blue,
      And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,
      Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair,
      So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

    • Lines 25-32

      Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
      Jest and youthful Jollity,
      Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
      Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
      Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
      And love to live in dimple sleek;
      Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
      And Laughter holding both his sides.

    • Lines 33-40

      Come, and trip it as ye go
      On the light fantastic toe,
      And in thy right hand lead with thee,
      The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
      And if I give thee honour due,
      Mirth, admit me of thy crew
      To live with her, and live with thee,
      In unreproved pleasures free;

    • Lines 41-44

      To hear the lark begin his flight,
      And singing startle the dull night,
      From his watch-tower in the skies,
      Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

    • Lines 45-52

      Then to come in spite of sorrow,
      And at my window bid good-morrow,
      Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
      Or the twisted eglantine;
      While the cock with lively din,
      Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
      And to the stack, or the barn door,
      Stoutly struts his dames before;

    • Lines 53-56

      Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
      Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,
      From the side of some hoar hill,
      Through the high wood echoing shrill.

    • Lines 57-62

      Sometime walking, not unseen,
      By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
      Right against the eastern gate,
      Where the great Sun begins his state,
      Rob'd in flames, and amber light,
      The clouds in thousand liveries dight.

    • Lines 63-68

      While the ploughman near at hand,
      Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
      And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
      And the mower whets his scythe,
      And every shepherd tells his tale
      Under the hawthorn in the dale.

    • Lines 69-80

      Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures
      Whilst the landskip round it measures,
      Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
      Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
      Mountains on whose barren breast
      The labouring clouds do often rest;
      Meadows trim with daisies pied,
      Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
      Towers, and battlements it sees
      Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
      Where perhaps some beauty lies,
      The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

    • Lines 81-90

      Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,
      From betwixt two aged oaks,
      Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
      Are at their savoury dinner set
      Of herbs, and other country messes,
      Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses;
      And then in haste her bow'r she leaves,
      With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;
      Or if the earlier season lead
      To the tann'd haycock in the mead.

    • Lines 91-98

      Sometimes with secure delight
      The upland hamlets will invite,
      When the merry bells ring round,
      And the jocund rebecks sound
      To many a youth, and many a maid,
      Dancing in the chequer'd shade;
      And young and old come forth to play
      On a sunshine holiday,

    • Lines 99-104

      Till the live-long daylight fail;
      Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
      With stories told of many a feat,
      How Faery Mab the junkets eat,
      She was pinch'd and pull'd she said,
      And he by friar's lanthorn led,

    • Lines 105-106

      Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,
      To earn his cream-bowl duly set,

    • Lines 107-116

      When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
      His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn
      That ten day-labourers could not end;
      Then lies him down, the lubber fiend,
      And stretch'd out all the chimney's length,
      Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
      And crop-full out of doors he flings,
      Ere the first cock his matin rings.
      Thus done the tales, to bed they creep,
      By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep.

    • Lines 117-124

      Tower'd cities please us then,
      And the busy hum of men,
      Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
      In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,
      With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
      Rain influence, and judge the prize
      Of wit, or arms, while both contend
      To win her grace, whom all commend.

    • Lines 125-130

      There let Hymen oft appear
      In saffron robe, with taper clear,
      And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
      With mask, and antique pageantry;
      Such sights as youthful poets dream
      On summer eves by haunted stream.

    • Lines 131-132

      Then to the well-trod stage anon,
      If Jonson's learned sock be on,

    • Lines 133-134

      Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
      Warble his native wood-notes wild.

    • Lines 135-137

      And ever against eating cares,
      Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
      Married to immortal verse,

    • Lines 138-142

      Such as the meeting soul may pierce
      In notes with many a winding bout
      Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
      With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
      The melting voice through mazes running,

    • Lines 143-144

      Untwisting all the chains that tie
      The hidden soul of harmony;

    • Lines 145-147

      That Orpheus' self may heave his head
      From golden slumber on a bed
      Of heap'd Elysian flow'rs,

    • Lines 147-150

      and hear
      Such strains as would have won the ear
      Of Pluto, to have quite set free
      His half-regain'd Eurydice.

    • Lines 151-152

      These delights if thou canst give,
      Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

  • “L'Allegro” Symbols

    • Symbol Day and Night

      Day and Night

      In this poem, dawn and day are insistently associated with Mirth, and "blackest Midnight" with Melancholy. Symbolically, these times of day reveal something about the character of these two personified attitudes (and about how this poem's speaker thinks):

      • Dawn has always been a symbol of youth, hope, and rebirth—for obvious reasons! It marks the start of a fresh new day, and it suggests a new lease on life and a new capacity to see after a period of obscurity. It's the fitting symbolic time of day for Mirth, whose attitude toward life is all youthful joy.
      • Nighttime and midnight, meanwhile, are old symbols of death and despair (as in the phrase "the dark night of the soul"). However, night might also symbolically suggest dreams, deep contemplation, and possible revelation. This poem's speaker, who associates the night with "loathed Melancholy," doesn't have much time for the idea that wisdom might emerge from the night; he sees only its "horrid" side.

      Of course, there's something significant about the very fact that day and night go hand in hand; on this earth, at least, we can't have one without the other. In shunning melancholic night and clinging to mirthful day, this poem's speaker might be seeing only half of the full human picture.

    • Symbol Violets and Roses

      Violets and Roses

      When the speaker imagines Mirth being conceived by Zephyr (god of the west wind) and Aurora (goddess of the dawn), he depicts the happy couple lying together on a "bed of violets blue / And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew." Both of these types of flowers are traditional symbols of passion and romantic love—because they're beautiful and soft and sweet-scented, yes, but also because they fade (and, in the case of roses, because they hurt if you grab them the wrong way). (See John Donne and Ben Jonson for some other famous symbolic violets and roses from around Milton's time.)

      This speaker doesn't seem too worried about the fragility of flowers, though. Picturing gods and goddesses making love, he's also picturing what seems to be a world whose seasons never stray too far from spring and summer (the times when violets and roses bloom). Note that the roses here are "fresh-blown," only just budded: the symbolism here suggests the most vibrant young love.

  • “L'Allegro” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Personification

      By personifying Melancholy (pensive sorrow) and Mirth (joyful laughter) as two diametrically opposed goddesses, this poem's speaker makes his choice to follow Mirth feel, well, personal. To choose Mirth, in this vision, is not merely to try to live a happy life. It's to choose to join the entourage of a gorgeous goddess, dancing in her graceful footsteps.

      Much of what the speaker says in this poem is an apostrophe to Mirth, in which he courteously asks her if he can come along and join her party and describes how he imagines his life with her might be. Mirth, as the speaker rapturously describes her, is "buxom, blithe, and debonair"—good-natured, cheerful, and courteous. (The word "buxom" also suggests that she's easy on the eyes, with lots of plump curves.) She doesn't just walk, she "trip[s]" (or dances) along on a "light fantastic toe," skipping lightly in intricate patterns—and she comes hand in hand with "Liberty," here personified as a "mountain-nymph." These two lovely female figures suggest that Mirth and Liberty are much to be desired: they express the joys of youth, love, freedom, and fun in their very beings.

      And in fact, they bring all these pleasures with them in the form of a host of other personified figures, from "Jest" (jokes) to "Laughter," who arrives "holding both his sides" in an uncontrollable fit of giggles. By personifying jokes and laughter and fun, Milton suggests that an important part of the ideal life for "L'Allegro" ("the happy man," that is) is sociability. A melancholy man might sit alone brooding; a joyful one will be most at home in happy company.

      Before getting around to Mirth and her "crew," though, the speaker must first banish "loathed Melancholy," her nemesis. He describes her with a good deal of distaste. This gloomy goddess's hair looks as "ragged" as the dark and craggy caves the speaker banishes her to; she's the daughter of "blackest Midnight," and readers can imagine she has a dark, grim expression to match her parentage. Again, the personification makes the speaker's rejection feel personal, and perhaps even sexualized: the speaker longs to follow buxom Mirth, but feels only disgust for unkempt Melancholy.

      (Readers should note, though, that these descriptions reveal more about the speaker than about Mirth or Melancholy themselves. In this poem's sister, "Il Penseroso," a very different speaker takes exactly the opposite perspective on these same two personified ways of life: to him, Melancholy is a "goddess sage and holy" with a "saintly visage," a saint-like face—while Mirth offers only "vain deluding Joys.")

      The poem also personifies times of day and celestial bodies:

      • Night appears as a sentry, stationed in a "watch-tower in the skies." Scared away at the first sound of morning birdsong, this lonely watchman seems like an ineffectual soldier in Melancholy's army. (The poem insistently associates Melancholy with the night and the dark and Mirth with dawn and day.)
      • The "great Sun," meanwhile, appears as a glorious king, "rob'd in flames" and "amber light" and surrounded by his servants: the clouds, which at sunrise are decked out in "thousand liveries" (that is, in the official uniforms of a great lord's servants—these ones in a thousand different colors). Contrasted with the skedaddling night, the sun feels like a calm, powerful, and masterful figure, Mirth's natural ally.
    • Allusion

    • Imagery

    • Juxtaposition

    • Metaphor

    • Alliteration

  • "L'Allegro" Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Loathed
    • Melancholy
    • Cerberus
    • Stygian
    • Uncouth
    • Ebon
    • Cimmerian
    • Yclep'd
    • Euphrosyne
    • Mirth
    • Venus
    • Ivy-crowned Bacchus
    • Sager
    • Zephyr
    • Aurora
    • A-Maying
    • Buxom, blithe, and debonair
    • Haste thee
    • Jest
    • Jollity
    • Quips and cranks
    • Wanton wiles
    • Becks
    • Wreathed smiles
    • Hebe
    • Sport that wrinkled Care derides
    • Trip it as ye go / On the light fantastic toe
    • Unreproved
    • Dappled
    • Din
    • Hounds and horn
    • Hoar
    • Liveries
    • Dight
    • Furrow'd
    • Landskip
    • Fallows
    • Cynosure
    • Hard by
    • Corydon and Thyrsis
    • Messes
    • Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses
    • Bow'r
    • Thestylis
    • Bind the sheaves
    • The tann'd haycock in the mead
    • Secure delight
    • Hamlets
    • Jocund rebecks
    • How Faery Mab the junkets eat
    • Friar's lanthorn
    • The drudging goblin
    • Lubber fiend
    • Crop-full
    • Ere the first cock his matin rings
    • Weeds of peace
    • Hymen
    • Taper clear
    • Mask
    • Antique pageantry
    • Anon
    • Jonson's learned sock
    • Fancy's child
    • Wood-notes
    • Eating cares
    • Lap me in soft Lydian airs
    • Orpheus, Pluto, and Eurydice
    • Despised, hated. Pronounced with two syllables here: LOATHE-ed.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “L'Allegro”

    • Form

      "L'Allegro" is one half of what one might call a poetic diptych: one big artwork made of two separate parts. In "L'Allegro" and its sister poem "Il Penseroso," Milton juxtaposes two different approaches to life (and to poetry): the joyful active attitude of "L'Allegro" and the melancholic contemplative attitude of "Il Penseroso."

      In both "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," the speaker starts out by banishing a figure that embodies the other way of life, the path he's not going to take. In "L'Allegro," the speaker makes short work of a personified Melancholy in the first ten lines, telling her to go away to the dark, dank places she came from and never come back. In the remaining 142 lines of the poem, the speaker invites Mirth to come and be his goddess instead. Under her rule, he dreams, he'll live out the perfect pastoral fantasy: a life of "unreproved pleasures" (blameless delights) enjoyed in an idyllic countryside.

      In this vision, Milton draws on a long poetic tradition. Pastoral poetry has its roots in ancient Greece and Rome, whose poets first wrote of a fantastical "Arcadia": a rural dreamland where nymphs and shepherds live out lives of wholesome, earthy pleasures. The form roared into special popularity in England in the 16th and 17th centuries (so much so that Shakespeare, among other poets, felt compelled to make fun of it). Here, Milton uses the pastoral genre to paint a picture of what a contented life centered on "Mirth" might look like.

      Most pastoral poems imagine some kind of voluptuous relaxation in a natural setting. Their speakers might relish the pleasures of love or the pleasures of finally being left well and truly alone, but either way, they're typically doing a good bit of lounging under trees. Milton's pastoral is a little earthier. His vision of Arcadia combines classical elegance with the good cheer of a much more English-sounding countryside. "L'Allegro" sings of the glorious sunrise and the beauties of wildflowers, yes—but it also celebrates a hard day's work at the plough, followed by ale and fairy tales around the fire.

    • Meter

      There are two patterns of meter in "L'Allegro": one rhythm for the speaker's banishment of Melancholy in the ten opening lines and another for the remaining 142 brisk and giddy-paced lines of the poem.

      The 10 opening lines use a solemn, stately, and changeable meter. The rhythm is always iambic—in other words, the poem here uses iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. But the lines grow and shrink, swaying back and forth between short lines of trimeter (three iambs in a row) to long lines of pentameter (five iambs in a row), like so:

      Find out | some un- | couth cell,
      Where brood- | ing Dark- | ness spreads | his jeal- | ous wings,

      It's hard to build up momentum here: just when a long pentameter line gets going, an abrupt short line cuts off the flow. This grim, deliberate rhythm helps to make the speaker's banishment of Melancholy feel deadly serious.

      Things change when the speaker invites Mirth, that "goddess fair and free," to step in and take Melancholy's place. From line 11 on down, the poem uses a swift, light-footed tetrameter—lines with four beats apiece. Sometimes, the rhythm is iambic, as in lines 11-12:

      But come | thou god-| dess fair | and free,
      In heav'n | yclep'd | Eu phro- | syne,

      And sometimes, the rhythm is trochaic—that is, built from trochees, the opposite feet to iambs, with a DUM-da rhythm. Here's how that sounds in lines 33-34:

      Come, and | trip it | as ye | go
      On the | light fan- | tastic | toe,

      Note that Milton also cuts the closing unstressed syllables off of these lines, giving them even more bounce: launched off that closing stress, the rhythm goes flying from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.

      Whether the feet are iambic or trochaic, four steady beats ring out firmly all through the rest of the poem, sweeping the reader along with them. The flexibility of the rhythm here makes the poem feel as light, playful, and energetic as the joyous life that the speaker imagines.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      A shift in the rhyme scheme of "L'Allegro" marks a shift in the speaker's way of being. In the first 10 lines of the poem, the speaker banishes Melancholy from his life. Here, his rhymes run like this:

      ABBACDDEEC

      This weaving, varied pattern works along with a weaving, varied meter to make this passage solemn, ceremonious, and severe. (The long gap between the C rhymes feels particularly final: the slow movement from "cell" in line 5 to "dwell" in line 10 is like a great heavy door swinging shut.)

      When the speaker is done getting Melancholy out of the way, he launches into a new pattern of couplets as he ushers Euphrosyne (the goddess of fun and joy, also known as Mirth) into his life:

      FFGGHHII

      ...and so on, for the rest of the poem.

      There's much more momentum in this pattern. Couplets have a certain inherent springiness: one never need wait too long for the next line to come along and neatly cap the rhyme before it. The couplets here allow readers to feel the speaker's enthusiasm for the life of pastoral joy and jollity he has chosen to embrace.

      Reader take note, though: this poem has a twin, "Il Penseroso," that uses the exact same pattern of rhymes, but for precisely the opposite purposes. In that poem, the speaker banishes "vain, deluding Joys" and embraces Melancholy as the wiser and more profound path—and, as his rhymes suggest, he gets just as caught up in his praise of Melancholy as he gets caught up in his praise of Mirth.

  • “L'Allegro” Speaker

    • The speaker of "L'Allegro" is L'Allegro himself: that is, the archetypal "joyful man" (to translate from the Italian). Or at least, the speaker is the aspiring joyful man. As the poem begins, the speaker banishes the personification of Melancholy: an embodiment of a pensive, sorrowful, contemplative way of life. He then invites Mirth—an embodiment of a joyful, energetic, active way of life—to take Melancholy's place. This speaker, then, is done with sitting around gloomily, thinking about things. He's ready to have fun.

      But his fun is not without purpose. The particular ways in which the speaker describes his ideal life reveal that he's not just any joyful man, but a joyful reader. His vision of the good life is drawn from pastoral poetry: sources like the ancient Roman poet Virgil's Eclogues, a series of poems celebrating an idyllic, fantastical life in the countryside. (Two shepherds who appear in the Eclogues get name-checked here.) The speaker also seems to have been inspired by sources a little closer to Milton's home, like the comic writings of his fellow Londoners Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.

      The speaker, then, wants to relish the kinds of joys that the comic and pastoral poets celebrate: the beauty of nature, the wholesome pleasures of a rural life, and the earthy delights of wine, women, and song. But the fact that he imagines this way of life through a fine haze of poetry also suggests that Milton is questioning what it would mean to be a light, pleasure-loving comic writer.

  • “L'Allegro” Setting

    • "L'Allegro" is a prime example of pastoral poetry—an ancient genre that celebrates an idealized countryside, relishing a fantasy of what a simple, good life lived close to nature might be. The poem thus mostly seems to be set in a Greco-Roman utopia of green hills and bleating sheep, populated by wholesome rustics: peaceful shepherds, fetching shepherdesses. There's a traditional name for the country paradise in which a pastoral poem is set—"Arcadia"—and it's in Arcadia that "L'Allegro" takes root.

      But this particular Arcadia is infused with the folklore and country customs of Milton's own England. In this world, the rustics gather around the fire at the end of the day to trade stories about "Faery Mab" (Queen of the Fairies in British folklore) and the "lubber fiend" (a helpful-but-tricksy household goblin who would do your chores for you if you left him a snack).

      The literature of this Arcadia feels quite English, too. Milton nods to the Eclogues of the Roman poet Virgil (one of the great-grandfathers of pastoral poetry) in the names he gives his shepherds. But he goes so far as to name-check his near contemporaries Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare, whose comic writings he celebrates as the proper voice for a land ruled by Mirth.

      And Shakespeare offers a good key to understanding what Milton is doing with this poem's setting. The world Milton depicts here is like nothing so much as A Midsummer Night's Dream, which similarly marries an ostensibly Greek woodland setting to English folklore and the English language. In both of these works, this combined setting allows for blissful pastoral ideals to mingle with plain old fun: bucolic beauty and earthy local humor both have a place here.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “L'Allegro”

    • Literary Context

      John Milton (1608-1674) is honored as one of the greatest of the English poets. He's most famous for his epic poem Paradise Lost, a retelling of Adam and Eve's banishment from the Garden of Eden—a work whose stated aim was nothing less than "to justify the ways of God to men." Milton wasn't shy of a project.

      "L'Allegro" (which roughly translates to "The Joyful Man") is one of Milton's earlier works and one half of a two-part poetic experiment: it has a sister, "Il Penseroso" (or "The Thoughtful Man"). While "L'Allegro" celebrates an active life governed by Mirth, "Il Penseroso" honors a contemplative life governed by Melancholy.

      These poems, like Milton's great elegy "Lycidas," in some ways feel preparatory. While scholars haven't been able to firmly date "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" (which were first collected in the 1645 Poems of Mr. John Milton), most agree that Milton wrote them as a young man, perhaps not long out of university. In the contrast between "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," one can see Milton working out his relationship with different schools of artistic thought and different philosophical attitudes. (It seems not unfair to say that, as a writer, he's more naturally a Penseroso than an Allegro.)

      These poems also draw on the pastoral genre, a long and storied literary tradition. Pastoral poetry has its roots in ancient Greece, whose poets first wrote of an imagined "Arcadia": a mythical land of plenty, youth, and pleasure, populated by nymphs and rustics and an abundance of sheep. The Roman poet Virgil developed the form in his influential Eclogues (which Milton alludes to here in the names he gives his shepherds). In one way or another, the pastoral genre kept on popping up over the centuries, but in England it became particularly popular in the late 16th century, about a generation before Milton. Milton (and his contemporaries, like Andrew Marvell) embraced a form so well-worn that it had already spawned plenty of mockery, making it their own.

      It would be hard to overstate Milton's enduring effect on literature. His poetry has been a touchstone for generations, from 19th-century Romantics like Blake and Byron (who delighted in the charismatic, rebellious Satan of Paradise Lost) right up to contemporary writers like Philip Pullman.

      Historical Context

      Milton probably wrote this poem as a young man in the early 1630s, but he published it in 1645: right in the teeth of the English Civil War. In this bloody conflict, anti-monarchist forces led by Oliver Cromwell rose up against King Charles I, fighting for increased Parliamentary power as a curb on royal tyranny. (That argument would start to look ironic later, when a temporarily victorious Cromwell began to behave not unlike a dictator in his role as "Lord Protector.") The resultant wars tore the British Isles apart for a decade and uprooted ancient certainties. Milton became embroiled in the era's many dramatic turns of the political tide.

      The English Civil War was prompted in part by religious disagreements. Cromwell’s government was much more sympathetic to Puritanism—a particularly strict and abstemious branch of Protestant Christianity—than the King’s government had been. For a devout Puritan intellectual like Milton, Cromwell’s revolution thus sounded like a great opportunity to help build a country that aligned with his religious beliefs.

      Milton threw himself whole-heartedly into this project, writing pamphlets and tracts defending the revolution and Cromwell. He eventually became Cromwell’s Latin Secretary: in other words, the man tasked with defending Cromwell to the most important intellectual figures of Europe. (Latin was, at the time, the language of the learned, spoken by educated people across the Continent and the British Isles.) This was a task that grew particularly pressing and delicate after Cromwell's forces convicted Charles I of treason and beheaded him.

      But Cromwell's power didn't hold, and in 1660, Charles I's son, Charles II, returned from exile in France to retake the throne. This left Milton in a bind. If it hadn't been for some fast talking from his influential friend Andrew Marvell (who was always strategically quiet about his personal political opinions), Milton might well have ended up in jail—or worse.

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