By John Milton (c. 1645)
Hence vain deluding Joys,
The brood of Folly without father bred…
But hail, thou Goddess sage and holy,
Hail, divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight…
Come pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure…
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that Heav’n doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew.
Originally published in Poems (1645) by John Milton. Public domain.
Analysis
“Il Penseroso” answers its companion with a defense of studious solitude. Here melancholy is not despair but a lucid clarity that makes learning and vision possible. The poem moves from monastic seclusion to nocturnal astronomy, mapping a contemplative life that finds rapture in order, ritual, and knowledge.
The pair “L’Allegro/Il Penseroso” teaches a double lesson: joy needs measure, contemplation needs delight. Milton refuses to collapse the two temperaments, proposing instead that a full humanism alternates between them. The poems thus model a balanced education — festival and vigil, theater and prayer.