hello friends today we are going to do the poem on his blindness written by john milton one of the greatest poets who ever lived as you know john milton lived in the puritan england and he was a contemporary of shakespeare but in the sense that he was only a child when shakespeare was nearing his the end of his life milton belonged to an affluent family and he was a brilliant student and a great scholar he spent a lot of time reading late into the night and unfortunately he turned blind at the age of 44 and this is attributed mainly to the tremendous train that he put his eyes through because he used to read and those days we know that he must have read by candlelight it must have been a very difficult task for his eyes to cope up with and that is believed to be one of the reasons why he turned blind now about milton when you talk about his literary style we call it the grand style and this was a word a term used by matthew arnold to to talk about the poetic style of milton he said that milton used the grand style because he was a master in describing things and his vocabulary was quite rich and his poetic diction was of superb excellence and he being a scholar who was widely read on all the ancient classics and almost everything that was available you can see all that scholarliness being reflected in his writing and that is why his writing or his style is called the grand style now this particular poem that we have here is a very short one it's a sonnet and you know that a sonnet is a poem of 14 lines and the poem on his blindness is what you would classify as a petrarchan sonnet a petrarchan it has of course 14 lines as always all sonnets do and it is divided structurally it is divided into uh an octave or an octet of eight lines followed by a sestect of six lines and usually in a petrarchan sonnet ah some kind of an issue is discussed or maybe a problem is presented in the octave and then in the cested uh a solution or a some kind of a resolution for the problem is found so this poem on his blindness to follows the same pattern it also has the rhyme scheme a b a b a a b b a and the cested c d e c d e now let me just so i let me tell you something about the background to the poem it was believed to have been written in 1655 uh that is immediately after he went blind now he had started losing his vision right from 1644 and slowly down the years his vision became dimmer and dimmer and finally in 1652 he went completely blind and he must have been naturally terribly upset by uh what happened to him because the laws of vision is difficult for any person and for a man like milton who spent every waking hour reading or writing something you can imagine what a cruel shock it must have been and so uh but then uh what is very special about milton is that he very soon came to terms with his blindness though he must have become bitter about it he continued to work hard he continued to write and all his great masterpieces came after he was blind for instance you know that he is remembered for his paradise lost paradise lost was written much later when he was totally blind and it was published in 1667 and his paradise regained and samson against this those two works came in 1671 just uh three years before his death so he managed to conquer his blindness and that is something we should really you know admire in this man and so this poem is believed to have been written in 1655 but it was published only in 1673 and in his book now in some books you would find it as sonnet 19 in some others has sounded 16. now this was published in the year 1673 in this collection of poems and it is said that he used to write all his uh works in a book there he had numbered as 19 but when the book came out in the published form it became sonnet 16. so that is why the confusion between 19 and 16. now let me just read the poem to you when i consider how my light is spent air half my days in this dark world and wide and that one talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless though my soul more bent to serve there with my maker and present my true account lest he returning child that god exact day labor light denied i fondly ask but patience to prevent that murmur soon replies god does not need either man's work or his own gifts who best bear is mild yoke they serve him best his state is kingly thousands at is bidding speed and post over land and ocean without rest they also serve who only stand and wait so some of you might feel uh that you've heard this somewhere because this last line is immensely popular they also serve who only stand and wait though you may not have heard the rest of the poem i'm sure that many of you would have heard this last line okay now let's go back to the beginning of the poem so this is how he starts the poem when i consider how my light is spent here half my days in this dark world and wide so he says when i consider means when i think or when i dwell on how i spend my light so here light the word light has many many meanings here so here light can refer to life itself because you know that life is light and death is darkness so when i think of how i am spending my time or half my days in this dark world and white so at that time he's somewhere in his 40s because it was when when he was 44 that he lost his sight so maybe he's some 46 or 47 at this time and so that is just half of his life he expects to live for a long time and so he says when i think of how my light my life is spent or half my days because when my life has just passed half its course in this dark world and wide so this world is dark and white so there you can also think of the world being a world of difficulties that is why it is dark it's a big world at the same time when you interpret light as his vision sight he is telling us that before he has lived even half of his life he has gone blind and now he finds himself in darkness so the dark world and white can also refer to the world of darkness caused by his blindness and that one talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless though my soul more bent to serve there with my maker and present my true account lest he returning child so he says that when i think of how i spend my talent okay so here talent again is a reference to the biblical talent now in the bible there is this parable of talents so we are not actually talking about the talent or the skill that we have though he means it that way also in the bible there is this parable or the story of the talents okay that comes in matthew chapter 25 verses 14 to 30 where there is the story of a master who was going away for a long time and so before he left he called his three servants and he gave them a few talents talent in those days was some kind of a unit a unit of weight of gold or silver uh which was used to you know for transactions so he gave according to the to the ability of each of those servants he gave it is believed that he gave five talents to the first servant he gave two to the second and then he gave one talent to the third servant and then uh he asked them to take care of this these talents that he gave them and then he went away for a long time and when he came back he summoned the servants and asked them to give him a kind of a report of what they did with the talents and the first one had doubled it he had done something with it and he had doubled it and then that is five had become ten and again the second man was called and he too had put his talents to good use and now the two talents had become four talents and the third servant who was given this one talent he had buried it for fear of losing it or putting it to some other use and he he was not resourceful at all he just kept it as it is he kept it carefully buried and so he took the same one that the master had given him and he returned it to the master and the master was really angry because the other two had used the talent and they had kind of doubled it whereas this man had not used it and so he took away that talent from him and turned him out of his house and he gave he he whereas he gave rewards to the other two that is a story in the bible so here when milton talks about that one talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless he is also referring to that talent symbolically you know that talent which god had given him god gives all of us some talents and depending on our resourcefulness on our ability on our capacities we can either multiply them or we can destroy them or we can maintain them as we have them so um that is the idea here and the one talent so here talent in this case can also be read as talent or ability and so what is the talent that milton might be referring to the talent of writing poetry his creative imagination the skills of creative writing all that can be the talent if you look at it that way and so and it is one talent which depth which is death to hide that is this ability to write is something that a writer is born with it is an innate skill and so until he dies he has this talent but then unfortunately due to his blindness he is not able to use the talent or due to certain other calamities now we know that milton lived in a very calamitous period it was the time when oliver cromwell took over power and charles the first was beheaded in 1649 and then the puritans took over and milton was puritan himself and so he was given a lot of importance he held important posts so he had a lot of responsibilities to do and now turning blind must have obstructed all his duties he wanted to fulfill his duties but unfortunately he was not able to so the talent can also refer to his duties and to his uh ability or the skill of writing and so he says this talent is going to be there in me till i die it is but unfortunately it is lodged with me useless it is inside me it is lodged in me but it is useless though my soul more bent to serve there with my maker he says my soul is keen bent in the sense it has a tendency to you you have a bend for something means you have an inclination and interest for something so he says my soul is more than willing to serve my maker but unfortunately i am not able to so my soul more bent to serve there with my maker and make of course you know is god and present my true account lest he turning child so he says i want to tell him what is happening to me and i want to tell him what i am doing now or why i am not doing something now but i am afraid lest he returning child so he is worried that god will chide him chide here means scold him because god will ask him what were you doing with the talent just like you remember the master in the bible asked the third servant what were you doing all this while why didn't you use this talent like the others to multiply it or to increase it so similarly would not god ask me to what i did with my talent so he's worried uh and there again the bend can be also interpreted as his soul is a little bent in the sense a little worried a little distorted because he is afraid that god will question him and asked him why did you waste the talent that i gave you so all those thoughts are there in his mind and then he says i fondly ask that god exact day labor light denied so then he says and if said such a question is asked he would ask this question or he asks himself this question is it will god ask me to give an account of my day labor since he has denied light to me that is there you can see you can feel a tone of complaint a small you know a grudging tone you can feel there because he's asking is it fair because it is god who took away the light from my eyes so is it fair for god to ask me what you did with your talent because he knows that i'm blind now and he is in one way because nothing happens without the knowledge of god so god definitely knows that i am blind so will he really ask me for an account of my day labor or the work that i did using my light so that's why the question he asks and then he says i fondly ask fondly means foolishly okay so he asks this question it's a kind of a foolish question in all in essence he though he is a little disgruntled a little unhappy with uh you know having become blind he immediately tries to you know gloss over that um that stone and he says i foundly ask fondly innocently foolishly those days fond meant foolish okay and then he asks this question and then he says but patience to prevent that murmur soon replies so it is his impatience that actually came out in the form of that question but patience now here patience is personified as a person who kind of restricts him who holds him back and says don't say that okay and patience uh replies it it's actually his own patience though he became restless and he asked a question immediately he kind of corrects himself and he says that my patience comforted me consoled me and replied god does not need either man's work or his own gifts who best bear his mild yoke they serve him best so then he says now remember god does not need man's work god does not need your account it doesn't matter if you're not able to work that doesn't affect god in any way at all so don't ever think that god is a kind of a master who is going to exact labor from you he knows he has given you certain talents you can use it you may not use it god is not really going to punish you for any of these for your activities who best bear is mild yoke so all that god wants you to do is to bear your yoke okay so the the yolk is something that is placed on the neck of the oxen when it plows the field you must have seen it and so um he says that god only wants his creatures to bear his mild yoke so here yoke means burden or task so each of us is assigned a certain task when we are born and god just wants us to fulfill them he is not a task master who is going to ask us for a report if you use your talents well and good he'll be happy otherwise he's not really going to question you that is why he says god is so much high above us he does not need either man's work or his own gifts who best bear is mild yoke they serve him best now again this again this yoke again is a reference to the bible where it was believed earlier that the jews in the old testament it was said that there were almost some 600 duties that a person had to fulfill but when jesus came he said he made the whole thing very light he removed this burden of this having to fulfill so many duties and he said that you only have to do two things love god and love your fellow beings okay that is all you have to do all the other duties were taken away and so jesus christ made the yoke very light so here too the only thing you have to do is realize your functions realize your duties take up your responsibilities do them love god love each other okay so that's all god expects from man who best bears mild yolk they serve him best his state is kingly thousands at his bidding speed and post over land and ocean without rest so he says about god he says his state is kingly means god is the king of this whole universe and there are thousands who are ready to post over land speed and post over land and ocean so there are angels and there are any number of people waiting to do anything that god asks into at the very next second they are willing to obey him so that is who god is he is the almighty he is the only king okay now this again um can lead you to think about this the puritans and how they what was the reason for the beheading of charles the first it is because he began to claim all the the rights of kingship and he began to act as if the king is greater than god and that is the reason why that is what led to a lot of unrest and his extremely um dictator kind of an autocratic kind of rule all that led to this his beheading and the puritans they would not permit anybody else they would not permit a mortal to assume the powers of god and so here um milton being a puritan he makes it very clear that god alone is the king and there are so many people so many angels waiting to do what he tells them to do he just has to not just look at them they will do things so an individual doesn't have to even think that god would keep a tab of what he is doing okay so thousands at his bidding speed and post over land and ocean without rest they also serve who only stand and wait so patience his own patience tells him god does not experience any lack of people to serve him and they also serve only stand and wait means the people who stand there waiting for the orders of god they to serve him because the very act of standing there and waiting to take an order from god in itself is a service because you are not going off somewhere you are not going and lying down and sleeping somewhere you are standing there waiting waiting to listen to any single uh small command that god would give you so that itself so you're spending your whole life waiting to serve god and that itself is a mighty gesture and that is why the sentence they also serve who only stand and wait so doesn't matter if you are blind now doesn't matter if you cannot really do anything now but just wait patiently and there will come a time when you will be assigned a duty and then you can put in all your talents to do the duty well so milton is in one way trying to console himself and trying to reassure himself that he will be able to overcome this dark period in his life and he will also be put to some good use by god that he will be able to use the talents that god has bestowed upon him so now let's look at the structure i say totally it's got an octave or an octet and assessed it and so where does the octave end sentence eight is but patience to prevent but then there milton uses the technique of enjambment enjambment is when a sentence doesn't end or a stanza doesn't end uh there but the the run the line just runs on to the next stance that is an enjambment so here the eighth line but patience to prevent that murmur so it goes on to the cested that murmur so that is how from there onwards you have the uh zest it from that murmur onwards okay so that is enjambment and another thing is that uh from this point onwards you can see a turn in the mood because in the first part he was lamenting about his blindness and how he's not able to fulfill his duties how his talent is lying wasted but then from and you can also you also heard him complaining almost complaining and then suddenly now there is a turn and patience comes and tells him no no don't complain god does not need so that's how it goes on so this turn or a cert a twist is called volta okay that happens here volta v-o-l-t-a so from here onwards he starts uh so in the first octave he presented a problem or something that was worrying him and then in the cested with this volta you can see that he gets a reassurance that everything is going to be fine you don't have to worry god is not going to punish you and that he they also serve who only stand and wait okay so that's the poem on his blindness and in this poem you can see that light represents many things one as i told you light is life itself as opposed to death and then light is sight okay it is sight wish and light is sight itself or vision and again light is intellect or the inner light maybe when he went blind he might have questioned god you saw that yeah okay maybe his belief in god was shaken at least for a short span of time because that happens when you believe in god you pray to him every day and then something really bad happens to you you get a little peeved at god and you ask him how could you do this to me because i am a very devout follower of yours i pray every day i do everything that you want me to and yet how could you do this to me so maybe it is that that kind of a problem he faced it is possible then again light also is the intellect because now he might have experienced something like a writer's block because of his blindness he must today of course you would say that you would use the word depression if a person suddenly loses sight his sight he can get depressed so maybe milton was a bit depressed because he was not able to use his intellect his his scholarliness everything kind of lay wasted for some time and so all these the spiritual the inner light and his intellect so the light in this poem can it has various meanings or it symbolizes various things and again he talks about his the limitations that were imposed on him the helplessness that he must have very obviously felt a man who was so active so actively involved in all the intellectual activities of his time a man who was you know trying to give event to all his creative abilities who was a genius who used to read a lot write a lot engage in discourses in discussions and what would happen to such a person if his light is taken away from him light in all the senses that i mentioned earlier so that helplessness that despair the despondency all that he expresses here but then the poem ends on a very positive note because he rises to the occasion his faith in god elevates him from the depths of despair into which he falls and he is given the assurance don't worry just do what you can they also serve who only stand and wait so this is a very short poem of course as i told you to sonnet and this is one of the most popular sonnets of john milton and this is a very it has a very universal theme you know it applies to to all ages because we all go through stages of despair and he gives us this message that a dark face in life does not mean the end of life we can surely overcome it with god's grace so that and again there is something that i should mention which i almost forgot when we talk about this line god does not need either man's work or his own gifts so there there is also some critics say that the calvinist belief the there was a group of protestants who were called the calvinists the followers of calvin and according to the calvinists they believed in something called predestination that is even before we are born our destiny or god has already destined something for us we are blessed or we are not blessed even before we are born now the catholics believed that man can improve himself he can redeem himself from a sins through his good actions and he can escape from the wrath of god but the calvinist did not believe in that idea they believed in predestination that means what you do or don't do during your worldly life here doesn't really matter because god has already chosen you for his grace to bestow his grace a few people are already pre-destined to receive his grace so that idea is also some critics like to believe that maybe he is talking about that here when he says god does not need either man's work or his own gifts okay so that something i wanted to mention so that is the poem on his blindness and i hope this interpretation has helped you