On his Blindness, written by John Milton deals with the autobiography of his own personal life where he loses his own eyesight. He completely lost his sight during his later stage of life and this poem shows his interior feelings of it. It is written in a sonnet and filled with Biblical tone as Milton was a Puritan poet. There are always a spirit of Puritanism that imbue in his themes of the poem and writing features.
The poem opens with a feeling of wonder and the urge to create and serve God through one’s talent. Milton invokes his own personal feeling implying that he “consider how my light is spent” suggest his pondering upon his sight which he had utilized to serve God. He adds that it has been “Ere half my days” where he lost his sight at his later age of life and the world crumbled down on him like “dark world and wide”. He mentions that “one Talent” which suggest the poetic talent gifted by God to him has become “death to hide”. He feels that his inability to perceive the world has left his talent “useless” but his “Soul more bent” to serve and create poetry and art about his “Maker”. The “Maker” is in reference to God and he has to “present” the “true account” of the talent he had spend on earth or God will “chide” him for not using at his later stage of life.
However, he highlights the Puritan spirit of morality in the poem. He interrogates whether God exactly wants “day-labour” or hard work from the man he “fondly ask” and after a moment of “patience” the answer comes to him. The answer is the morality where God do not need “Either man’s work or his own gifts” which suggest the man’s talent and hard labour but God wants a man who can withstand the atrocities of life and bear his “mild yoke” implying a weight of shoulder one carry it behind his back “serve him best”.
Lastly, he further depicts the Puritan spirit that the position of God is “Kingly” and there so many angels “at his bidding speed” who “post o’er Land and Ocean without rest” looking after the life of mankind and serving God. The important morality that Milton draws in the sonnet is that one should have patience in life for the good days to come ahead and he shrouds in the last statement that even the angels also serve those “who only stand and wait” for a better purpose without complaining in life.
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