When I Consider How My Light is Spent

John Milton’s Sonnet XIX, known as “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” is a poem considering one’s disabling affliction in light of a time-less truth that the Apostle Paul wrote of: all things work to the good who love God and one thereby learns to be content in all things. Milton’s disabling affliction was blindness and by most interpretative accounts he was blind when he wrote Sonnet XIX. Under God’s providence Milton “considers” his dark infirmity and writes (dictates?) in light thereof. In this darkness and in this light I will consider Milton’s Sonnet.

First to consider is that the poem used in The Norton Anthology of English Literature is an edited version from The Complete Poetry and Major Prose of Milton, edited by Merritt Y. Hughes. The poem that will be considered here is the 1673 text printed in The Riverside Milton, edited by Roy Flannagan. The decision of Riverside was not to intervene into the text, but to leave as it was written. Hughes’ changes insert punctuation, capitalization and spelling to update it to a modern audience. By modernizing the poem Hughes has effectively changed the meaning to what he as the editor had in mind. Milton wanted good readers, readers that read deeper than surface meanings and by changing the text the art of Milton’s words are compromised for the poem was designed to confuse the reader. Milton as a wordsmith is preparing the reader for a spiritual confusion that leads one to a question. Hughes’ editing reinforces the binary aspects of the poem that sets up one speaker in the octave and one speaker in the sestet, the problem in the octave then the solution in the sestet, if one likes. If one leaves out the editorial changes, the octave speaker and the sestet speaker become erased...

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... is required of all humankind. In Milton’s voice of patience the voice of complaint was quelled and regardless of time spent working or what affliction besets one, God is generous and graciously provides all through the unction of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost’s works derive from one’s faith and by this spirit operates within one to the glory, purpose and will of God. This will of a holy God who sends forth his messengers to Godspeed in giving good success to forward his purpose in the talent or gift that he distributes by the operation of the selfsame Spirit. Milton acknowledges obedience to this one God that he puts himself at disposal to, and in all this Milton “charged [not] God foolishly” (Job 1:22 K.J.V.). John Milton’s darkness will in one day stand in the eternal unspent light as he waits to consider the words “enter in good and faithful servant.”