By William Wordsworth (1807)
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men…
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Originally published in Poems in Two Volumes (1807) by William Wordsworth. Public domain.
Analysis
Wordsworth turns to Milton not for nostalgia but for a measure of civic virtue. The sonnet’s complaint is national and inward: institutions that should carry meaning — altar, sword, pen, fireside — have forgotten the “inward happiness” they once served. The appeal to a dead poet becomes a mirror held up to the living state.
The praise of Milton is a syllabus for reform. Star-like, sea-voiced, pure, and free — these metaphors frame qualities that are not aristocratic rarity but habits of common life: cheerfulness, godliness, humility. Wordsworth insists that greatness walks the “common way,” laying “lowliest duties” upon itself as a discipline of freedom.
The poem’s force lies in its plainness. No tangled myth, no romantic veil — only the direct grammar of exhortation. In a culture hungry for spectacle, Wordsworth offers the opposite: character as a quiet power that can still renew a nation, if we will ask for it.