On His Blindness
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On His Blindness
"When I Consider How My Light is Spent" (Also known as "On His Blindness") is one of the best known of the sonnets of John Milton (1608–1674). The last three lines are particularly well known; they conclude with "They also serve who only stand and wait", which is much quoted though rarely in context. Variants of it have been used as mottos in a number of contexts, for example the Dickin Medal for service animals bears the motto "We also serve", and the Navy Wives Clubs of America uses the motto "They Also Serve, Who Stay and Wait". In U.S. popular culture it is perhaps best known for Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Vin Scully, who would quote it when showing a player not in the game. The sonnet was first published in '' Milton's 1673 Poems'' in his autograph notebook, known as the "Trinity Manuscript" from its location in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He gave it the number 19, but in the published book it was numbered 16, so both numbers are used for it. It is ...
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Sonnet
A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect. The term "sonnet" is derived from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (lit. "little song", derived from the Latin word ''sonus'', meaning a sound). By the 13th century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that followed a strict rhyme scheme and structure. According to Christopher Blum, during the Renaissance, the sonnet became the "choice mode of expressing romantic love". During that period, too, the form was taken up in many other European language areas and eventually any subject was considered acceptable for writers o ...
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Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or University of Oxford, Oxford. Trinity has some of the most distinctive architecture in Cambridge with its Trinity Great Court, Great Court said to be the largest enclosed courtyard in Europe. Academically, Trinity performs exceptionally as measured by the Tompkins Table (the annual unofficial league table of Cambridge colleges), coming top from 2011 to 2017. Trinity was the top-performing college for the 2020-21 undergraduate exams, obtaining the highest percentage of good honours. Members of Trinity have been awarded 34 Nobel Prizes out of the 121 received by members of Cambridge University (the highest of any college at either Oxford or Cambridge). Members of the college have received four Fields Medals, one Turing Award and one Abel ...
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Poetry By John Milton
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the Sanskrit ' ...
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Gospel Of Matthew
The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and forms a community of disciples, of how he taught the people through such events as the Sermon on the Mount and its Beatitudes, and how Israel becomes divided and how Jesus condemns this hostile Israel. This culminates in his departure from the Temple and his execution. At this point many people reject Jesus, and on his resurrection he sends the disciples to the gentiles. Matthew seems to emphasize that the Jewish tradition should not be lost in a church that was increasingly becoming gentile. The gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's community and the other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees with the position that through their rejection of Christ, the Kingdom of God h ...
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Parable Of The Talents
The Parable of the Talents (also the Parable of the Minas) is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in two of the synoptic, canonical gospels of the New Testament: * * Although the basic theme of each of these parables is essentially the same, the differences between the parables in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke are sufficient to indicate that the parables are not derived from the same source. In Matthew, the opening words link the parable to the preceding Parable of the Ten Virgins, which refers to the Kingdom of Heaven. The version in Luke is also called the Parable of the Pounds. In both Matthew and Luke, a master puts his servants in charge of his goods while he is away on a trip. Upon his return, the master assesses the stewardship of his servants. He evaluates them according to how faithful each was in making wise investments of his goods to obtain a profit. It is clear that the master sought some profit from the servants' oversight. A gain indi ...
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Enjambment
In poetry, enjambment ( or ; from the French ''enjamber'') is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The origin of the word is credited to the French word ''enjamber'', which means 'to straddle or encroach'. In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered (called the rejet); the tension arises from the "mixed message" produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning.Preminger 359 In spite of the apparent contradiction between rhyme, which heightens closure, and enjambment, which delays it, the technique is compatible with rhymed verse. Even in couplets, the closed or heroic couplet was a late development; older is the open couplet, where rhyme and enjambed lines co-exist. Enjambment has a long histo ...
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Petrarchan Sonnet
The Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, is a sonnet named after the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, although it was not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets.Spiller, Michael R. G. The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1992. 5 Dec. 2015. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The original Italian sonnet form consists of a total of fourteen hendecasyllabic lines (in English sonnets, iambic pentameter is used) in two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet. Form The rhyme scheme for the octave is typically ABBAABBA. The sestet is more flexible. Petrarch typically used CDECDE or CDCDCD for the sestet. Some other possibilities for the sestet include CDDCDD, CDDECE, or CDDCCD (as in Wordsworth's "Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room," a sonnet about sonnets). This form was ...
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Commonwealth Of England
The Commonwealth was the political structure during the period from 1649 to 1660 when England and Wales, later along with Ireland and Scotland, were governed as a republic after the end of the Second English Civil War and the trial and execution of Charles I. The republic's existence was declared through "An Act declaring England to be a Commonwealth", adopted by the Rump Parliament on 19 May 1649. Power in the early Commonwealth was vested primarily in the Parliament and a Council of State. During the period, fighting continued, particularly in Ireland and Scotland, between the parliamentary forces and those opposed to them, in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the Anglo-Scottish war of 1650–1652. In 1653, after dissolution of the Rump Parliament, the Army Council adopted the Instrument of Government which made Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of a united "Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland", inaugurating the period now usually known as the Protecto ...
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Milton's 1645 Poems
Milton's 1645 ''Poems'' is a collection, divided into separate English and Latin sections, of John Milton's youthful poetry in a variety of genres, including such notable works as '' An Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity'', ''Comus'' and ''Lycidas''. Appearing in late 1645 or 1646 (see 1646 in poetry), the octavo volume, whose full title is ''Poems of Mr. John Milton both English and Latin, compos'd at several times'', was issued by the Royalist publisher Humphrey Moseley. In 1673, a year before his death, Milton issued a revised and expanded edition of the ''Poems''. According to ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'' (2004), notwithstanding its title page, the book was published in 1646.Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, Frontispiece The volume's frontispiece contains an extremely unflattering portrait of Milton by the engraver William Marshall. Underneath the portrait are sati ...
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Thomas Newton
Thomas Newton (1 January 1704 – 14 February 1782) was an English cleric, biblical scholar and author. He served as the Bishop of Bristol from 1761 to 1782. Biography Newton was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and was subsequently elected a fellow of Trinity. He was ordained in the Church of England and continued scholarly pursuits. His more remembered works include his annotated edition of '' Paradise Lost'', including a biography of John Milton, published in 1749. In 1754 he published a large scholarly analysis of the prophecies of the Bible, titled ''Dissertations on the Prophecies''. In his 1761 edition of Milton's poetry, he gave the title ''On His Blindness'' to Sonnet XIX, '' When I Consider How My Light is Spent''. Newton was appointed the Bishop of Bristol in 1761 and in 1768 became the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He has been considered a Christian universalist. One of Newton's famous quotes concerns the Jewish people: The preservation of the Jew ...
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Wren Library
The Wren Library is the library of Trinity College in Cambridge. It was designed by Christopher Wren in 1676 and completed in 1695. Description The library is a single large room built over an open colonnade on the ground floor of Nevile's Court. The floor of the library proper within the upper storey lies several feet below the external division between the two storeys, reconciling the demands of use with the harmony of architectural proportion. It is credited as being one of the first libraries to be built with large windows to give comfortable light levels to aid readers. The book stacks are arranged in rows perpendicular to the walls under the intervals between the windows. At the end of each stack is a fine limewood carving by Grinling Gibbons, and above these are plaster cast busts of notable writers through the ages. Other marble busts standing on plinths depict notable members of the college and are mostly carved by Louis-François Roubiliac. A later addition is a ...
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John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. ''Paradise Lost'' is widely considered one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and it elevated Milton's widely-held reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, Milton achieved global fame and recognition during his lifetime; his celebrated ''Areopagitica'' (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of spe ...
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