Explore the poem

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost the defiant, rebellious angel Lucifer, or Satan, has been cast down into the fiery pits of hell. In Milton’s poem the poet proclaims that it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven, but at the start of Meredith’s muscular sonnet, with its robust use of alliteration and assonance, Lucifer is restless and tired of ‘his dark dominion.’ Notice how ‘uprose’ in line one describes Lucifer emerging from the depths of hell but also reminds us of his catastrophic uprising against God. The line refers to the stars in the night sky, and stars feature again significantly in line eleven.

Although he has been defeated, Lucifer is still seen as an enormously powerful, menacing force. He is erratic, volatile and hugely formidable; his ‘huge bulk’ casts a shadow from the Arctic to Africa and complacent sinners are easy prey. But as he soars towards the stars he is reminded of his revolt against God. The stars are the ‘brain of heaven’. Are they therefore representative of reason and order; of a moral order that can never be defeated? Notice how, confronted by this ‘army of unalterable law’, Lucifer can only despair; ‘he looked, and sank’.

About George Meredith

George Meredith was a Victorian poet, author and journalist. He published eighteen novels between 1856 and his death in 1909 and, although many had limited commercial and critical success, The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885) were well received. At various times Meredith worked as a reader and adviser to publishers, as a war correspondent and as a contributor to and editor of literary journals. He was a skilful essayist and lecturer, and his ‘Essay on Comedy’ was regarded as a brilliant and insightful piece of work.

Meredith was an accomplished poet. Among his most widely read works is Modern Love, an uneven but fascinating account of the break‑up of a marriage, clearly based on his own experience. His wife eloped with an artist, abandoning Meredith and their son. The work is written as a sonnet sequence, using the sixteen-line form known as the ‘Meredithian sonnet’.