Biden's fond of quoting two John Milton sonnets penned later in the poet's life, but if Biden wins in November, the more apt sonnet for him would be one Milton wrote when he turned 24

There's Sonnet 19, with Milton, fast going blind, fretting how he's going to realize his lifelong dream of being England's/Christendom's Greatest Epic Poet™ when he can't even see the words he'd need to write, but resolving to have faith in himself and God's will.

There's the Sonnet 23: he's now totally blind and completely hopeless, dreaming of his deceased wife. His greatest feat to date isn't poetical, but political: pamphlets justifying the regicide of Charles I. But Charles II's been restored and now Milton's in hiding/house arrest.

After Sonnet 23, Milton goes silent. Seems as though life's defeated him: two dead wives, one dead child, eyesight gone, and the collapse of the revolutionary political order he devoted his most productive years to help bring forth and serve. Yet no Epic Poem to show for it all.

But then, of course, comes Paradise Lost, the Epic he spent decades believing he was destined to write, his life's ambition coming to be once he went through personal and political hell so to more fully envision the poetic Hell, all in service to "justify the ways of God to men."

Biden, like Milton, has only ever wanted to reach the pinnacle of his chosen vocation...but spent the decades between his entry into that field failing at his ambition, enduring tragedies, biding his time, and probably giving up on his White House dream before making a final run.

That is why it's best to read Biden's career to Milton's Sonnet VII, written upon his turning 24, declaring his ambition, frustrated it hasn't already happened yet, unaware of all it will take to get there, yet keeping faith it'll happen when it happens, whenever that may be.

None of this is meant to be hagiographic: I'm just using my English major to riff on Biden's fondness for Milton's Sonnets, flattening their very different lives into a story of how both men's shallow juvenile dreams of glory ripened into something deeper through age and tragedy.

But this thread will self-destruct if Biden loses.

(Why, yes, Sonnet 23 did serve as the opening scene for the few pages I wrote of a Milton biopic while on my subway rides to work circa 2013)

More Biden & Sonnet 23 https://twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/647395511436095492?s=20

And no this isn't the first time I've used Milton to justify the ways of politicians to twitter https://twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/727670871846838273

And yeah I've added Alison Chapman's "The Legal Epic: 'Paradise Lost' and the Early Modern Law" and Anna Beer's "Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot" to this stack in the 8 years since snapping this photo https://twitter.com/MikeSacksEsq/status/243557437293068288?s=20