When the Assault was Intended for the City
Captain, or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,
Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If deed of honour did thee ever please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
He can requite thee; for he knows the charms
That call fame on such gentle acts as these,
And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,
Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms.
Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower:
The great Emathian conqueror did spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground; and the repeated air
Of sad Electra's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare.
Imagine the scene: an army tears through the streets of an ancient city, slaughtering every man, woman and child in its way. One soldier is about to charge into the nearest house to slit the throats of the occupants when he notices a scrap of paper pinned to the door. Tearing it off, he discovers a sonnet has been written on it. As he reads the words, his expression changes and turning round, he angrily rebukes those who would smash their way through.
What could make the soldier change his mind? Well, this is the sonnet he finds. In the first line, Milton, speaking as the archetypal poet, appeals to the soldier's sense of honor, whether he happens to be a high and mighty "Captain, or Colonel" or a lowly "Knight in Arms." Such military honor can be expressed in acts of violence--bravely taking on and slaying a fiercesome enemy--or "gentle acts" of magnanimity and generosity.
But Milton is not relying solely on the soldier's nobility. No, a bit of bribery will do too. He can "requite" or repay in a very special way. Spare me, he says, and I will pluck your name out of obscurity and make it pass into legend. And like the soldier, we are quickly transported by these sweet, golden words as we begin to picture "whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms." Here the poet is a master hypnotist, whose "charms" cast a spell over his audience.
With masterful ease, Milton shifts the mood from the violence and panic of the opening to one of calm and serenity. It's easy to imagine the soldier being held spellbound while all hell is breaking loose around him. As reality begins to melt, the lowly dwelling of the poet is transformed into the "Muses' Bower" (a leafy shelter or arbour). Weird, magical forces dwell here, and the wielder of any spear raised against it would have to take the consequences.
Would an act of mercy be one act of cowardice? No, Milton assures the soldier, and he gives two precedents, both drawn from the work of the Greek historian Plutarch.
The "great Emathian conqueror" is Alexander the Great, whose father reigned over the Emathia district of Macedonia. Plutarch tells us of Alexander's savage attack on the city of Thebes, where he used brutal violence to quell the people into obedience. Yet he spared the family of the poet Pindar, while others were sold into slavery or murdered. Why? Milton's grand euphemism for Alexander is a clue, because it was Pindar's flattery of Alexander's father that made the all-conquering son spare the poet's life.
Milton's second comparison refers to a crucial moment when the warrior Lysander decided not to crush the city of Athens into the dust. A captured Spartan general had stood up to sing a few lines from Euripides's tragedy "Electra:" "Electra, Agamemnon's child, I come/ Into your rustic courtyard." (Another bower, perhaps?) The lines were so beautiful that Lysander declared it would be barbaric to destroy a civilisation that could produce such poetry.
While these allusions are fascinating, it is worth remembering that poetry is never found in the footnotes. Some passages in Milton's epic "Paradise Lost," for instance, can seem like little more than a mythological dictionary, unless we allow the heavy, orotund language to wash roll over us like a wave. Perhaps the only place where this kind of sensibility survives is in fantasy literature, where one constantly comes across passages like, "I am Gorothmere, Lord of the Zandrung Empire, and I challenge Xenda to battle with the Salackian Worm!" This kind of delicious nonsense is not a million miles away from the high seriousness of Milton.
At the conclusion, Milton puns on "air" to show how the poet can produce a sound from nothing that can bewitch the mind of the listener. It is this that survives the destruction of "temple and tower"—a terse alliterative survey of human power, both religious and political. Matter may crumble but the imagination goes on. It is the poetic that eternally survives, precisely because it is a mere mouthful of air. It is the breath of freedom and of life itself.
John Milton (1608–1674) was an English poet most famous for his epic work "Paradise Lost." He wrote the above sonnet in 1642 when King Charles I had raised an army to storm Parliament and win back power; the people of London expected an attack at any moment.
Christopher Nield is poet living in London.
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