What Milton Couldn’t Forget

Psalm 111:1-4

1Praise the LORD!

I will thank the LORD with all my heart

as I meet with his godly people.

2How amazing are the deeds of the LORD!

All who delight in him should ponder them.

3Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty.

His righteousness never fails.

4Who can forget the wonders he performs?

How gracious and merciful is our LORD!

Poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, was raised on the Psalms. He, his older sister, Anne, and his younger brother, Kit, would often sprawl in front of the fireplace as they discussed a Bible passage with their parents and then sing several psalms together.

It is not surprising that the earliest of Milton’s poems were paraphrases of psalms, written when he was about fifteen years old. He began: “Let us with a gladsome mind / Praise the Lord, for He is kind.” As he was going completely blind in his forties, he wrote a paraphrase of Psalm 6, including the words: “My bed I water with my tears; my eye through grief consumed, is waxen old and dark.”

But despite his blindness, Milton could always recall the beauties and the majesties of God’s creation, as he did in his epics. He paraphrased Psalm 111:4 as:

For wonderful indeed are all his works,

Pleasant to know and worthiest to be all

Had in remembrance always with delight.

“Who can forget?” asked the psalmist. The answer is simple: We do, over and over again. Very quickly we forget the wonderful things God has done for us. Pause a moment to bring to remembrance a few of the things God did for you yesterday.

Show my forgetful feet the way

That leads to joys on high.

There knowledge grows without decay,

And love shall never die.

ISAAC WATTS

Fascinating Fact

This psalm, when combined with Psalm 112, is another acrostic poem with each verse (or sometimes each sentence) beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Undoubtedly, it was a learning device, which is reinforced by the reminder in verse 4 not to forget.

Notable Quotable

“We must study, apprehend, reason, and compare, if we would remember. Memory is but the treasure-house of the things we put in it, and we can only store it with the facts of God’s universe by the exercise of all the intellectual powers. But memory is fickle, hence the necessity of constantly examining it to see if its contents are still there and in their right places.”

J. W. BURN