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"When I Consider How My Light is Spent" by John Milton
With this line Milton says that even if you are not that one who is working for God twenty four hours a day, but you stand and wait, you also serve to God in a way that is worthy. So you should not be worry. God sees everything. In both ways you serve to Him.
So summarize all, this is a masterpiece of Milton’s work. Not only because he wrote it when he was already blind, but he really work through rhythm, make this as a sonnet. Maybe he didn’t use so much epithets or metaphors, but in this sonnet we can see allegory and personifications. Throughout this poem there were many contrasts made between light and dark. The sense of balance in this poem was made by usage of “light” and “dark”, “death” and “soul”, “useless” and “work”, “denied” and “serve”. They are antonyms of each other. These words create an atmosphere of mood and balance. Anyway, I really liked this poem because it is incredible how big faith Milton had. It is really inspiring when person in Milton’s condition still find a faith in God. Despite his fear, what was perfectly described, he finds a peace. Milton’s sonnet is an example of exploring human behavior and the unfamiliar to understand the rational world. This poem is a perfect autobiographic story, part of his life.
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“When I consider how my light is spent” sometimes called the poem “On His Blindness”, or Sonnet 19. All of those titles are correct. The exact date of creation of this poem can’t be known, just guessed. Well, John Milton became completely blind in 1652. According to Stopford Brooke’s opinion then – this poem was written 20 years after Milton’s first sonnet in 1632, so that makes approximately in 1652, definitely after Milton’s blindness. However, this poem was published first time in 1673. Author was middle-age man when he became blind. And this was very traumatic to him.So because of that he wrote a poem “When I consider how my light is spent”, where author writes about his blindness and his biggest questions to God: why this happened to him; how it is possible to serve Him by being like that.He felt useless to God, because at that time people thought that God will judge them according to their job for God, their best ability to serve God. Poem is like an inner dialogue, conversation with himself. And major theme of entire poem is about Milton’s relationships with God, his own faith. The sonnet is the loss and regain of primacy of experience.