Poem
Milton begins his poem by invoking the angels, and he claims that they too would need to cry along with mankind:
- So sweetly sung your joy the clouds along
- Through the soft silence of the list'ning night;
- Now mourn, and if sad share with us to bear
- Your fiery essence can distill no tear
- Burn in your sighs, and borrow
- Seas wept from our deep sorrow; (lines 4–9)
The final lines connect the act of Circumcision to Christ's Passion:
- And that great cov'nant which we still transgress
- Entirely satisfied,
- And the full wrath beside
- Of vengeful Justice bore for our excess,
- And seals obedience first with wounding smart
- This day: but O ere long
- Huge pangs and strong
- Will pierce more near his heart. (lines 21–28)
Read more about this topic: Upon The Circumcision
Famous quotes containing the word poem:
“A poem is one undivided, unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And no matter how all this disappeared,
Or got where it was going, it is no longer
Material for a poem. Its subject
Matters too much, and not enough, standing there helplessly
While the poem streaked by, its tail afire, a bad
Comet screaming hate and disaster....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has kinetic force, it sets in motion ... [ellipsis in source] elements in the reader that would otherwise be stagnant.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)