Summary

John Milton’s “Sonnet 19” depicts the speaker’s relationship with God and his struggle to do what God expects of him. Initially, the speaker feels “useless” (4). His “light is spent” before his life is half over (1). Milton himself went blind in the years before this poem was written, and these lines most likely refer to his struggle to be a useful and good person without his eyesight. (This sonnet was given the title “On His Blindness” by a later editor). The speaker worries that he is unable to “serve therewith [his] Maker,” that is, to use his earthly talents to glorify God, no matter how much he may want to (5). He asks himself what he can do to make his life valuable to God, since he cannot work the way he used to. However, he finds the patience within himself to realize that “God...