Light Denied: A Dark Miltonic Metaphor

Abstract

When he wrote perhaps his most famous sonnet, “When I consider how my light is spent,” numbered 16 or 19 depending on the edition of his published works, John Milton was blind. The poem begins with a lament, a cry of pain by an artist who can no longer see the fruits of his labor, but resolves in favor of a pious Puritan, convinced that salvation lies not in works but in faith. Before the resolution, however, the speaker accuses someone – arguably, God! – of taking away his eyesight, of “light denied.” In this study, we mined the fourteen lines of the sonnet to discover in his metaphors deeper meaning beyond the literal surface. We draw on others of Milton’s work in that process and find connections that reinforce both the technique and the beauty of the sonnet, resolving, as Milton does, the twin questions of why the calamity was delivered and “then what”? That question is emphatically answered in the last line of the sonnet, the Puritan answer, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”