lesson 2: defining a person's worth

John Milton’s poem “On His Blindness” is an autobiographical sonnet in which Milton meditates on his own loss of sight. For most of his life, Milton had been able to see perfectly, but his late-night reading and writing on behalf of the government of the short-lived English Republic, in which he held a very prominent position, helped ruin his eyesight. This sonnet—written in the “Petrarchan” rhyme scheme associated with the fourteenth-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca—is divided into an eight-line “octave” and a six-line “sestet.” The octave rhymes abba abba. The sestet rhymes cde cde. The sonnet is therefore a typical Petrarchan sonnet in form, but in subject matter, the poem departs from the topics usually associated with Petrarchan poems. Petrarch (the English version of Petrarca’s name) was most famous for writing about love; Milton departs from that conventional topic to deal with a very practical, very physical problem, but a problem with many broader spiritual implications.

1 When I consider how my light is spent    
2 Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,  
3 And that one talent, which is death to hide,   
4 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
5 To serve therewith my Maker, and present    
6 My true account, lest he returning chide:   
7 “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”    
8 I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent
9 That murmer, soon replies, “God doth not need    
10 Either man’s work, or his own gifts. Who best   
11 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
12 Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed    
13 And post o’er land and ocean without rest.  
14 They also serve who only stand and wait.”