ice 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

"they know not what,
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extolled,
To live upon their tongues and be their talk?
Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise,
His lot who dares be singularly good."

There is the contempt of wealth--

"Extol not riches then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare;"

{218} a contempt which Milton shares with nearly all saints and heroes
and most philosophers; a little ungratefully, perhaps, as if forgetting
that, compared with the mass of men, he had himself always been rich,
and that what he owed to the toil o