John Milton’s ‘Sonnet 19’

Time may not be lost in waiting to use our talents

John Milton reflects on the purpose and meaning of his blindness in Sonnet 19. A detail of "Blind Veit Stoss With Daughter" by Jan Matejko. Public Domain

When I consider how my light is spent, Ere 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 therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.”

“Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something,” says Winnie the Pooh in the 2018 film, “Christopher Robin.” Despite Pooh’s wisdom, there’s nothing so stifling as the feeling of being unable to put our gifts to their proper use.

Like a child who receives a kite and must wait for the perfect blustery day to fly it, our patience is tested by periods of waiting in which our talents lie unused. We yearn for purpose, and thus, we are anguished by uncertainty about the future as we discern the next step in our lives. It is a strong human desire to actualize potential, and thus it is innately frustrating to wait in stillness until we are called to fully employ our talents.

The resulting listlessness is agonizing. In the period of perhaps-too-much time for reflection, we dwell on all the possible uses for our seemingly wasted gifts, just as John Milton did in “Sonnet 19.”

An engraving of John Milton at age 62, 1670. Everett Collection/Shutterstock

Written in the mid-1650s, “Sonnet 19” expresses Milton’s spiritual crisis when he had lost his eyesight. He turns this challenge into a more universal confrontation with the feeling of uselessness when we feel we could do more.

In short, it is a poem of loss, specifically the loss of the medium for our talents or a channel through which we could exercise them. As he mourns the loss of the light to illuminate his way, Milton shows us that, perhaps, the situation is not as dark as it may seem, and the time not so lost as it may appear.

The Dark Night

The first half of the sonnet unveils the speaker’s grappling with his feeling of uselessness. Before half his days are done, he loses his sight and his ability to exercise his talent for writing. Milton references Christ’s parable about the servant who buries his master’s talent and must later account for it.

Just so, the speaker in the poem dreads the thought of having to say he did nothing when the time comes to give an account to his Maker. He questions, “Doth God exact day labor, light denied?” and wonders whether God would demand from us a task that we were not given the tools to complete.

Milton’s verses bring to mind what St. John of the Cross described as the “dark night of the senses.“ This theological concept explains how God allows periods of desolation in which we don’t perceive his presence as clearly, but he allows these in order to increase our trust in him. If only we persevere and don’t give up in despair, the “dark night” teaches us to rely on God and to walk by faith rather than by sight.

Just when he wishes more than ever to serve God, the speaker faces a profound desolation in which he feels left in the dark, both literally and metaphorically. Milton, therefore, unfolds a physical enactment of the dark night of the senses; the speaker in the poem is deprived of his sight, the means of employing his gifts. In consequence, he loses the feeling of fulfillment and closeness to God that comes from his vocation. He feels further from God even while, according to St. John of the Cross, God is calling him to come closer than ever.

How to Serve

Why does it serve to only stand and wait? What good can possibly come from idleness?

The second voice in the poem speaks up to counter the first. Patience curbs the murmuring of the speaker, for even though the speaker’s question is asked “fondly” and from a desire to serve, patience gently prods him to recognize that his fervor is misdirected.

Appropriately, given the loss of the speaker’s sight, the poem is composed of voices. Just as blindness is often associated with lack of faith in Scripture, so, too, the speaker’s blindness is both a physical and spiritual condition. His voice dispels the blindness of those in the Gospels; likewise, God’s voice must penetrate the blindness of the speaker in the poem to show him a new way in which he may serve.

"Waiting," 1875, by Vladimir Makovsky. Public Domain

The voice of the virtue reminds the speaker that God has no need of anything from us. Our work and gifts can add nothing to him; rather, Milton tells us “who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.” Many are called to spectacular deeds on the world stage, traveling over land and sea, but just because the action is on a grander scale does not mean it is a greater form of service.

Because it is often a quiet and unspoken sacrifice, the humble and obedient submission to God’s timing is often overlooked as a less important form of service. However, it requires an immense effort to sacrifice our will in such a way, to still the soul that yearns for action, and to give up the way that seems so evidently the best way for us.

“Serve” is repeated several times in the poem, and we, like the speaker, can often forget that obedience and trust are essential to serving well. It does not serve to be always imposing our will upon others, and much less so upon God. In the end, God restores light to the speaker in the form of spiritual illumination. By this light, the speaker can look forward with hope like the psalmist in Psalm 130: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and I hope for his word. My soul looks for the Lord more than sentinels for daybreak.”

A 1926 illustration of Winnie-the-Pooh by artist E.H. Shepard. Public Domain

The sort of waiting entailed in Milton’s sonnet is not an empty sort of Nothing. Instead, it is a fruitful sort of readiness, full of deference to another. In “The House At Pooh Corner,” A.A. Milne’s characters have this exchange:

“‘What did you do?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘The best thing,’ said Owl wisely.”

This reply comes in response to a decision not to act before consulting the wisdom of another.  As Milton notes, we have a far greater source of wisdom we may consult. We can wait in readiness until God calls us to take the next step in our journey. At that time, it is right to say, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

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