by Colette Georgii

Created on: June 20, 2008   Last Updated: June 26, 2008

Analysis of John Milton's Poem: When I Consider How My Light is Spent

John Milton wrote this poem between 1652 and 1655. It was published in 1673. It is Sonnet 19 and written in rhyme: abbaabbacdecde. In 1651 he went totally blind so it is usually considered that the poem refers to his blindness.

He does consider his blindness briefly in the poem, but taking Milton's work so literally as to suppose that his blindness was all that he was talking about doesn't give credit to Milton's completely abstract thinking nor his depth of understanding holy literature.

Milton's poem, When I Consider How My Light is Spent, is about man's (all men and all women) relationship with God. Light is often referred to in the Bible and I believe he is referring to light in the manner of which Jesus speaks of light when quoting the parable of putting the light under a candle in the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Jesus says, "Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to the whole house." He also says "For there is nothing hid that shall not be manifested;..."

He also states, "The light of the body is in the eye; therefore when thine eye is single thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body is full of darkness.
If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light,..." Here eye does not literally mean eye in the sense of seeing but in the sense of what is within a person.

John Milton by using the word light is referring to how he uses his genius, his fullness of light within himself, his being, that which came out of him to give to the world.

He considers "how my light is spent," and says "ere half my days in the dark world and wide." Here dark refers to evil. He has indulged his light in half of his days to bring his light to the wide "dark" world or the wide evil world.

He then says, "And that one talent which is death to hide." Here he is referring not to his talent but the Kingdom of God or of Heaven. He is thinking of how the servant who hid his talent from the fear of the Lord instead of increasing his talent as the first servant did, was told by God that he was a wicked and slothful servant.

What Jesus meant here was that in order to get into the Kingdom of Heaven you must give back to God more than what God originally gave to you. It is not referring to talent that one should give to man. A talent in the Bible was equal to 3,000 shekels or $30,000

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