The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
The Milton variorum edition of the sonnets is not as lavish as the two books noted above, but it is useful: A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, Volume 2, Part 2,
Leland Ryken • The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
For George Herbert, The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. Helen Wilcox
Leland Ryken • The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
For John Donne, The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, Volume 7, Part 1: The Holy Sonnets,
Leland Ryken • The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
Happily, for each of the poets there exists a variorum edition of their poems that functions as a guide to most published scholarship on them. (A variorum edition is one that summarizes all or nearly all known explications of an author’s texts.) These magical books are the following.
Leland Ryken • The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
After the emotional and spiritual exaltation of the vision, the story ends on a note of pathos, as (a) the vision fades and (b) the blind poet wakes to darkness.
Leland Ryken • The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
The poem records a real or imagined dream of the glorified Katherine in heaven and Milton’s longing to be reunited with her.
Leland Ryken • The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
The occasion of the poem is Milton’s becoming totally blind at the age of forty-four
Leland Ryken • The Devotional Poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Milton
This poem is modeled on Puritan funeral sermons for women. That genre included five elements that Milton’s poem also incorporates: organization of the sermon around a single verse from the Bible; a two-part format of a doctrinal sermon followed by a eulogy for the deceased; offering the deceased as an example to be emulated; painting a portrait of
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Milton standing at the gravesite of his departed friend.