Notes

1] Written after Milton's published advocacy of freer divorce had brought upon him criticisms from leading Puritans of the Presbyterian party. First printed in Poems, 1673.
clogs: restraints (literally, a heavy piece of wood attached to the leg to prevent escape).

2] Milton's divorce pamphlets appeal to the liberty given to the Israelites in the Old Dispensation, and to those given permanently to mankind by the law of nature.

5-7] The reference is to the noise made by the frogs into which Latona transformed the rude rustics who, by muddying the waters, prevented her drinking from the lake Lacia, as she flew from the wrath of Juno, carrying her twin off-spring Phoebus and Phoebe, the destined rulers of sun and moon (see Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, 317-81.

8] Cf. "Give not what is holy unto the dogs; neither cast your pearls before swine" (Matthew 7:6).

9-11] Milton extends his condemnation from those who ignorantly reject his doctrine to those who ignorantly welcome it and in so doing make it an excuse for licence.

13] rove: shoot away from the mark.

14] despite the expenditure of wealth and human lives in the war for freedom.

Other poems by John Milton