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Il Penseroso ("the thinker") is a poem by John Milton, first found in the 1645/1646 quarto of verses The Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, published by Humphrey Moseley. It was presented as a companion piece to L'Allegro, a vision of poetic . The speaker of this reflective ode dispels "vain deluding Joys" from his mind in a ten-line prelude, before invoking "divinest Melancholy" to inspire his future verses. The melancholic mood is idealised by the speaker as a means by which to "attain / To something like prophetic strain," and for the central action of Il Penseroso – which, like L'Allegro, proceeds in couplets of iambic tetrameter – the speaker speculates about the poetic inspiration that would transpire if the imagined goddess of Melancholy he invokes were his Muse. The highly digressive style Milton employs in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso dually precludes any summary of the poems' dramatic action as it renders them interpretively ambiguous to critics. However, it can surely be said that the vision of poetic inspiration offered by the speaker of Il Penseroso is an Allegory exploration of a contemplative paradigm of poetic genre.
The speaker invokes a Melancholy goddess, veiled in black:
... and, following the form of classical hymn, claims her heritage with the Roman pantheon:
Having invoked the Melancholy goddess, the speaker imagines her ideal personification:
The central action of the poem proceeds as poetic visions of Melancholy, imagined by the speaker:
At the end of his reverie on poetic Melancholy, the speaker invokes the Muse's song; he imagines that his Muse will reward his studious devotion to her by revealing a heavenly vision:
As the final ten lines reveal, the speaker aspires to a revelation of divine knowledge to inspire his great poetry:
The final couplet issues an ultimatum to the Melancholy mood; the speaker will devote himself to the existence of a solitary hermit, staking his life upon the contemplative ideal he has illustrated throughout the poem, which he imagines will be rewarded by a vision of the divine.
Melancholy, in Il Penseroso, does not have the same parentage as Mirth does in L'Allegro; Melancholy comes from Saturn and Vesta, who are connected to science and a focus on the heavens.Revard 1997 pp. 110–111 Melancholy is connected in the poem with the "heavenly" muse Urania, the goddess of inspiring epics, through her focus and through her relationship with Saturn.Revard 1997 p. 97 Furthermore, she is related to prophecy, and the prophetic account within the final lines of Il Penseroso does not suggest that isolation is ideal, but they do emphasise the importance of experience and an understanding of nature. The higher life found within the poem, as opposed to the one within L'Allegro, allows an individual to experience such a vision.Lewalski 2003 p. 7
The poems have been classified in various traditions and genres by various scholars, including: as academic writing by E. M. W. Tillyard;Tillyard 1938 pp. 14–21 as pastoral by Sara Watson;Watson 1942 pp. 404–420 as part of classical philosophy by Maren-Sofie Rostvig;Rostvig 1962 as part of Renaissance encomia by S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush,Woodhouse and Bush 1972 pp. 227–269 and as similar to Homeric hymns and Pindaric odes.Osgood 1900 pp. liv, 39 Stella Revard believes that the poems follow the classical hymn model which discuss goddesses that are connected to poetry and uses these females to replace Apollo completely.Revard 1997 p. 96
L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is a pastoral ode by George Frideric Handel based on the poem. In an attempt to unite the two poems into a singular "moral design", at Handel's request, Charles Jennens added a new poem, "il Moderato", to create a third movement.
Stella Revard believes that Milton, in his first publication of poems, "takes care to showcase himself as a poet in these first and last selections and at the same time to build his poetic reputation along the way by skillful positioning of poems such as L'Allegro and Il Penseroso."Revard 1997 p. 1
The poem features in the Oxford Book of English Verse as edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch.
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