Poem of the Day: ‘I Did But Prompt the Age’
Milton notes the transformation of cries for ancient liberty into demands for unchecked licentiousness — a lesson every age must learn.

Today’s entry in the Sun’s Week of Sonnets may have begun life as a complaint about a rejected divorce petition, but John Milton (1608 –1674) always has bigger fish to fry. And in “Sonnet 12” (eccentrically rhymed abbaabba cbbcbc), Milton notes the transformation of cries for ancient liberty into demands for unchecked licentiousness — a lesson every age must learn. He reminds readers that Latona (mother of the gods Apollo and Diana who would rule the sun and moon) changed into frogs the people who denied her water to drink, suggesting that those who rail against Milton’s demand for ordered freedom are likewise turned into braying animals: “owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs.” Calls for liberty are, to them, pearls before swine. “Licence they mean when they cry liberty,” he says, for those who love true liberty “must first be wise and good.”
Sonnet 12: I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
by John Milton
I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
By the known rules of ancient liberty,
When straight a barbarous noise environs me
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs:
As when those hinds that were transform’d to frogs
Rail’d at Latona’s twin-born progeny
Which after held the sun and moon in fee.
But this is got by casting pearl to hogs,
That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood,
And still revolt when truth would set them free.
Licence they mean when they cry liberty;
For who loves that, must first be wise and good.
But from that mark how far they rove we see,
For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood.
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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.