Early Works

‘Fresh woods and pastures new’

In 1645/6, at the age of 37, Milton published his first collection of poetry, Poems... Both English and Latin. It gathers the most significant works of his youth, including Lycidas, Comus, the sonnets, and his early poems in Latin and Greek.

Many of the poems are printed with their date of composition or a headnote explaining the circumstances of their writing. Such details imply the care Milton (or his publisher Humphrey Moseley) took over his presentation in this volume. Even the notoriously incompetent frontispiece emphasizes Milton’s early development as a writer, professing to portray him aged 21—significantly, the age at which he wrote the Nativity Ode, the first poem in the book.

Click on the thumbnail images below for more details.

	John Milton (1608–1674) Draft of Lycidas. Milton’s Poetical Notebook, Trinity College MS R.3.4, pp.30-31. Facsimile of the manuscript of Milton’s minor poems ... (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899).
	John Milton (1608–1674) *Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos’d at several times ...* (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1645).
	John Milton (1608–1674) *Poems, &c. upon several occasions...both English and Latin, &c. compos’d at several times: with a small tractate of education to Mr. Hartlib.* (London: Thomas Dring, 1673).
	John Milton (1608–1674) **Lycidas, in Poems, &c. upon several occasions...both English and Latin, &c. compos’d at several times: with a small tractate of education to Mr. Hartlib.** (London: Thomas Dring, 1673).
	John Milton (1608–1674) 'On the morning of Christ's Nativity', in Poems, &c. upon several occasions...both English and Latin, &c. compos’d at several times: with a small tractate of education to Mr. Hartlib. (London: Thomas Dring, 1673).
	John Milton (1608–1674) **A Mask, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos’d at several times ...** (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1645).
	John Milton (1608-1674) ‘The Lady Enters’, in Comus, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (London: William Heinemann, 1921).
	John Milton (1608–1674) *The Minor Poems of John Milton. Illustrated and decorated by A. Garth Jones* (London: George Bell & Sons, 1898).