[English translation by Meredith Russo and Thomas H. Luxon.]
Introduction. Sonnet IV describes the submission to desire of a man who previously had scorned all notions of love. The speaker claims to have fallen not for conventional features of female beauty—“golden braids, nor vermillion cheeks”—but his beloved’s “honest demeanor, and in the brow that calm, tender black splendor.” Such claims provoke comparisons to the dark lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets (see Shakespeare's Sonnets 127-152) Interestingly, the features this man finds irresistible are her demeanor and dark brow, which conjures parallels to Shakespeare’s dark lady. While the Petrarchan rhetoric of love praises women for their fair hair, skin, and rosy cheeks, the speaker claims that he can resist all these traits, and instead some new attraction lies beneath such exotic beauty, and this he cannot resist. It is thought that the lady Milton refers to in these sonnets is Italian or of Italian heritage because of the emphasis on her exotic and darker features. Perhaps this lady, revealed to be Emilia in Sonnet 2, did not really exist, but Milton most likely wanted us to read her as an actual woman, especially as he describes her in such detail in this sonnet. For more on Milton's Italian sonnets, see J.E. Shaw and A. Bartlett Giamatti, eds. in Volume 1 of A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, 365-88, and Harris Fletcher, ed. Complete Poetical Works.
Diodati. Charles Diodati and John Milton had been intimate friends since they were schoolboys at St. Paul's in London. Several letters they wrote to each other, Charles in Greek and Milton in Latin, survive and can be found in the Yale Complete Prose Works, volume 1. Elegies 1 and 6 from the 1645 Poems, were also addressed to Diodati. Milton wrote Epitaphium Damonis (Damon's Epitaph) in memory of Charles who died while Milton sojourned in Italy.
nelle ciglia. This may be translated as “in the eyes,” “in the eyelashes,” or “in the brow.”
degli occhi suoi auventa si gran fuoco. This image of emotions darting from eyes comes up often in Milton’s verse. See especially Paradise Lost 8.62-63, and 488 and 9.1035.
more rare...my foreign fair. This poem's expression of love for a darker foreign beauty contrasts with earlier exaltations of fair-haired English women in Elegy 1.71-72.
E'l cantar. Similar praises are lavished upon the object of Petrarch's affection in Sonnet 213.4 (Search CCXIII).
lab'ring Moon (Luna). For a similar usage, see Paradise Lost 2.665. In both situations, Milton draws from Virgil's Eclogues, which describe the moon as distracted from her path by beautiful song; see Eclogue 8.92.
I fill my ears with wax (l'incerar gli orecchi). Homer's Odysseus instructs his sailors to fill their ears with wax in order to escape the dangers of the beautiful Sirens' songs. See Odyssey 12.165.