ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

NOTES TO PP. 146–65
in meaning, which it is not, only about the purpose of difficulty in the poem, which
he views more as an elaborate reflex to absolutist power than to issues of moral and
artistic intentions. Where he emphasizes the inherent instability of “My God, my
King,” I would argue that Herbert is already there ahead of him with his stress on
“plainly.”
18 For my emphasis here and later on Herbert’s different audiences, I am indebted to an
early reading of this poem by Summers, George Herbert: His Religion and Art, p. 112.
19 In attributing the reference of the pronoun (“He”) to God, I follow Summers, George
Herbert: His Religion and Art and Richard Strier, Love Known: Theology and Experience
in George Herbert’s Poetry, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, p. 203.
20 Strier, Love Known, p. 208. In an essay to which I am more generally indebted,
Robert Shaw’s, “Farewells to Poetry,” Yale Review 70 (1980):187–205, discusses “The
Forerunners” in the context of other “Farewell” poems by Herrick, Yeats, and
Stevens. As will be clear to those familiar with his essay, I found his discussion of
authorship in Herbert’s poem especially suggestive.
21 Vendler, The Poetry of George Herbert, p. 267.
22 Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972, ch. 3 (“Letting Go: The Dialectic
of the Self in Herbert’s Poetry”).
23 Michael J.Colacurcio, “‘The Corn and the Wine’: Emerson and the Example of
Herbert,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 42 (1987):1–28.
24 Works, p. 233 (“The Parson preaching”).
25 James Merrill, Recitative: Prose by James Merrill, ed. J.D.McClatchy, San Francisco:
North Point Press, 1986, p. 33.
6 THE ONCE AND FUTURE POET
1 Thomas N.Corns, “Milton’s Quest for Respectability,” MLR 77 (1982):769–79. See
also Corns, Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640–1660, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992, ch. 3.
2 All references to Milton’s work are to John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose,
ed. Merritt Y.Hughes, Indianapolis, IN: The Odyssey Press, 1957. The quotation is
from The Reason of Church Government as Urged Against Prelaty, p. 671. I have also
consulted the Scolar Press Facsimile edition of Milton’s Poems 1645.
3 Revard, Milton and the Tangles of Neaera’s Hair: The Making of the 1645 “Poems,”
Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
4 Quoted in John Milton: The Complete Poetry and Major Prose, p. 1021.
5 Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Stephen E.Whicher, Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin, 1957, p. 158 (from “Self-Reliance”).
6 Martz, “The Rising Poet, 1645,” in The Lyric and Dramatic Milton, ed. Joseph H.
Summers, New York: Columbia University Press, 1965, pp. 3–33.
7 Samuel Johnson: Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Frank Brady and W.K.Wimsatt,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977, p. 429.
8 Wilding, “John Milton: The Early Works,” in The Cambridge Companion to English
Poetry: Donne to Marvell, ed. Thomas Corns, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993, p. 221. See also David Loewenstein, “‘Fair Offspring Nurs’t in Princely
Lore’: On the Question of Milton’s Early Radicalism,” Milton Studies 28 (1992): 37–
48. By contrast, Barbara K.Lewalski regards Milton as unquestioningly “radical” from
his earliest years as a poet. See her “How Radical was the Young Milton?” in Milton
and Heresy, ed. Stephen B.Dobranski and John P.Rumrich, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1998, ch. 3.
9 Barker, “The Pattern of Milton’s ‘Nativity Ode,’” collected in Milton: Modern
Judgements, ed. Alan Rudrum, London: Macmillan, 1969, p. 49.
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