Point of View

Like most sonnets, Milton's "Sonnet 19" is written in first-person point of view. The speaker (whom most critics have historically identified with Milton himself) uses first-person pronouns like "I," "me," and "myself," with great frequency throughout the poem. The use of first-person perspective supports the poem's central themes. "Sonnet 19" is a deeply introspective piece of writing, focused almost exclusively on the speaker's internal thoughts and feelings. Because of its religious subject matter, the poem exists entirely in the realm of the mind and the soul, with very little interaction or interest in the material world. Therefore, the first-person point of view allows the reader to be grounded in the poem's "setting," such as it is, within the speaker's thoughts. Furthermore, this poem is deeply personal in subject matter, so much so that it has generally been read as an autobiographical expression of Milton's own experience going...