Poems (1673) was the second edition of John Milton's shorter poems, published the year before his death. Besides L'Allegro, Il Penseroso and Lycidas, it included sonnets written during the Republic, among them the famous sonnet on his blindness.
Two editions
Milton's shorter English and Latin poems first appeared in 1645, under the title Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin. They included the Nativity Ode, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, the masque Comus and Lycidas, his elegy for a drowned college friend.
The enlarged edition of 1673 added poems written since, especially sonnets, though some political sonnets addressed to Cromwell and other republicans were left out after the Restoration and printed only in 1694.
The sonnets
Milton wrote some two dozen sonnets in English and Italian. Unlike the love sonnets of the Elizabethans, many deal with public events, friends and his own life: the massacre of Protestants in Piedmont, the death of his second wife, his blindness.
The sonnet usually called On His Blindness, written in the 1650s, reflects on how a blind man can still serve God. Its last line became one of the most quoted in English.
L'Allegro and Il Penseroso
These twin poems, written in his youth, contrast the cheerful man and the thoughtful man through a day spent in the country and a night of study and music.
They inspired painters, and Handel set them to music in 1740 as L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.
Anecdotes
A title he never gave
Milton gave the sonnet on his blindness no title. The name On His Blindness was added by an editor, Thomas Newton, in the eighteenth century, and has stuck.
Lycidas
Lycidas was written in 1637 for a memorial volume for Edward King, a Cambridge friend of Milton who drowned in the Irish Sea. It is often called the greatest short poem in English.
Frequently asked questions
What are Milton's most famous short poems?
L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Lycidas, the Nativity Ode and the sonnet On His Blindness.
How many sonnets did Milton write?
About twenty-four, including five in Italian.
When did Milton go blind?
His sight failed gradually from the mid-1640s, and he was totally blind by 1652.