Note Yet once more — MILTON’S MINOR POEMS.

1-5. To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather laurels,—is to make a new venture as a poet,—to compose a poem. The berries are harsh and crude,—he shatters their leaves before the mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man, or because he feels in himself a lack of “inward ripeness” to treat his theme worthily,—perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own choosing.