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Updated: June 7, 2025
Milton alludes to the fact that the constellation of the Bear never sets, when he says, "Let my lamp at midnight hour Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft outwatch the Bear." Il Penseroso And Prometheus, in James Russell Lowell's poem, says,
Throwing a /penseroso/ air into his thin cheeks, our Don then began a few preliminary thrummings, which set my teeth on edge, and made Tarleton put both hands to his ears.
I, who labor under the suspicion of not knowing the difference between "Old Hundred" and "Old Dan Tucker," I, whose every attempt at music, though only the humming of a simple household melody, has, from my earliest childhood, been regarded as premonitory symptom of epilepsy, or, at the very least, hysterics, to be treated with cold water, the bellows, and an unmerciful beating between my shoulders, I, who can but with much difficulty and many a retrogression make my way among the olden mazes of tenor, alto, treble, bass, and who stand "clean daft" in the resounding confusion of andante, soprano, falsetto, palmetto, pianissimo, akimbo, l'allegro, and il penseroso, I was bidden to Camilla's concert, and, like a sheep to slaughter, I went.
Milton couples his name with that of Orpheus in his Il Penseroso: "But, oh, sad virgin, that thy power Might raise Musaeus from his bower, Or bed the soul of Orpheus sing Such notes as warbled to the string, Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, And made Hell grant what love did seek." Ibycus. Simonides. Sappho
The choice of subjects in which the emotion of melancholy was given full sway shows one direction taken by the romantic movement. Here, the influence of Milton's Il Penseroso can often be traced. Lines like these:
In addition to these two great oratorios, our composer produced the beautiful music to Dryden's "St. Cæcilia Ode," and Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." Henceforth neither praise nor blame could turn Handel from his appointed course. He was not yet popular with the musical dilettanti, but we find no more catering to an absurd taste, no more writing of silly operatic froth.
Burke was certain that Milton composed Il Penseroso in the long, resounding aisle of a mouldering cloister, or ivied abbey. He beheld its solemn gloom in the verse. The fine nerves of the mind are braced, and the strings of the harp are tuned, by different kinds of temperature.
In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks of the youthful poems of Milton: "'Il Penseroso' is the masterpiece of meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio in which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make no comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere.
In 1645, when he made a gathering of his early pieces for the volume published by Humphry Moseley, he wanted three years of forty. That volume contained, besides other things, Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso; then, when produced, as they remain to this day, the finest flower of English poesy.
I have sometimes read that these two idylls are "masterpieces of description". Other critics will ask if in the scenery of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso Milton has described the country about Horton, in Bucks, or that about Forest Hill, in Oxfordshire; and will object that the Chiltern Hills are not high enough for clouds to rest upon their top, much less upon their breast.
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