Sonnet 7: How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth
By John Milton
 
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
       Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
       My hasting days fly on with full career,
       But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
       That I to manhood am arriv'd so near;
       And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
       That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
       It shall be still in strictest measure ev'n
       To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n:
       All is, if I have grace to use it so
       As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
 
 
John Milton is one of the great voices of English literature, so much so that the word “Miltonic” has entered the dictionary, to mean grand, sublime, epic. But before Paradise Lost, Comus, and Lycidas, Milton was a young man impatient for achievement. From the beginning, it was evident to those around him that John Milton was special. Even as a boy, he would routinely stay up until midnight over his studies. He read and wrote in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian with ease; he studied the Bible in the original languages; and he composed clever verse in Latin and English. At Cambridge, he was outspoken, arrogant, and unpopular. When his fellow students put on a play, he observed in his commonplace book that “they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools.” He was nicknamed “The Lady of Christ’s,” because of his youthful appearance and his lack of interest in sports—and perhaps because his peers just didn’t like him very much.
 
Milton’s initial intent was to enter the Church, and when he left Cambridge with his MA in 1632, he was fully qualified to serve as a minister. But he did not pursue ordination. Probably, his strong Puritan leanings made him uncomfortable with the direction the Church of England was going under Archbishop William Laud, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1634 – and who would be executed by a Puritan government in 1645. 
 
For whatever reason, Milton went home to his parents, and spent the next few years continuing his education on his own terms; biding his time, it would seem. It was in this period of life that he wrote the sonnet, “How soon hath time.” The poem captures many sides of Milton: his impatience to achieve something, his excuses for why he hasn’t done so, his rock-solid faith in God, and his sense of responsibility.
 
The poem begins with impatience.
 
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
       Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
       My hasting days fly on with full career,
       But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
 
The first four lines have several different images for time and youth. Time is personified as a “subtle” thief, a bird of prey, who has flown in and quietly, secretly carried away Milton’s twenty-third year. Milton’s life is moving at top speed: “My hasting days fly on with full career.” If his life is a year, then measuring by years he is already in the springtime—“my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.” He does not seem to expect to have borne fruit this early – but he is concerned that he doesn’t even see “bud or blossom.” There’s no sign of anything to come.
 
In the next quatrain, we get Milton’s excuses for this lack of achievement.  “Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth / That I to manhood am arriv'd so near.” “The Lady of Christ’s” looks younger than he is; his outward appearance is deceiving. He speculates that his “inward ripeness” may be similarly delayed. Perhaps he should expect to see fewer results, at this point, than other “more timely-happy spirits” – those whom time has blessed; those who are not “late bloomers,” as he is.
 
As we enter the sestet of the poem, Milton turns from this debate of how old he is versus how old he looks with some strong, splendid lines about destiny.
 
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
       It shall be still in strictest measure ev'n
       To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n:
 
Whether his achievement is great or small, whether it comes when he is young or when he is old, he knows that it will be in exact proportion to whatever “lot,” whatever destiny,  Time and the will of Heaven have in store for him. He reminds himself that God is in charge and God’s will will be done.
 
It’s a grand expression of faith - but that’s not the end of the poem. In the last two lines, we get a kind of P.S.:
 
       All is, if I have grace to use it so
       As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
 
In this sonnet, Milton has moved from self-reproach to “letting go and letting God” – but here at the end, he makes another shift. The great “Task-Master” is God. In the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, God is the “Task-Master” who entrusts to each person a certain number of talents, and expects those talents to be invested and returned with interest.
 
With the concluding lines of the sonnet, Milton puts himself back on the hook. It is not entirely up to him, as he implied in the first part of the poem. Nor is it entirely up to God, as he implied in the second part. God’s will for him will be achieved, “less or more, or soon or slow,” but he cannot simply wait for it. “All is, if I have grace to use it so / As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.” He needs to use the time he has been given, conscious of the eye of God upon him. Milton’s vocation—whatever it might be—is a collaboration with God.
 
In the Church, we tend to use the word “vocation” fairly narrowly, to refer to priestly vocations or religious vocations. But everyone has a vocation, a calling. None of us is here by accident; there are things we are meant to do, and there are talents to be invested and returned with interest. Milton reminds us that we can’t just wait around to see what God has in mind. God invites us to be his coworkers. For each of us, discovering and living out our vocation is a work of grace, a collaboration with God.

Corinna Laughlin