WorkJohn Milton

“Sonnet 19: 'When I consider how my light is spent' (On His Blindness), in Poems, &c. upon Several Occasions”

Sonnet 19: 'When I consider how my light is spent' (On His Blindness), in Poems, &c. upon Several Occasions (1673) Inferred

John Milton (1608–1674) · 1673

InferredFuller uses the quoted phrase 'stand and wait' as a conscious literary allusion to the closing line of Milton's Sonnet 19 ('On His Blindness'): 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' The phrase was among the most commonly cited Miltonic tags in the 19th century and Fuller uses it prescriptively—she and her mother must now 'stand and wait' rather than intervene in the lives of the younger Fullers

QuotedRead

Documented 1841

Letters

Selected engagements, in chronological order.

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this work is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

When Fuller engaged with this work

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist1record

V. New York

VI. Europe

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

1841—

Letter to Margarett C. Fuller

p225

quoted · read

“Mother and sister must now "stand and wait" rather than counsel or cherish.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.

Inferred Fuller uses the quoted phrase 'stand and wait' as a conscious literary allusion to the closing line of Milton's Sonnet 19 ('On His Blindness'): 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' The phrase was among the most commonly cited Miltonic tags in the 19th century and Fuller uses it prescriptively—she and her mother must now 'stand and wait' rather than intervene in the lives of the younger Fullers