Poems by Milton Class 12 Notes: On Time and On Shakespear

Two short poems, one towering name. The Milton poems in the Class 12 English Kaleidoscope — ‘On Time’ and ‘On Shakespear’ — look simple at first read: one poem scolds Time, the other praises Shakespeare.

This page gives you the argument of each poem in plain words, the themes and literary devices with exact quoted lines, the poetic form, model answers to all seven ‘Understanding the Poem’ questions, the common mistakes that cost students on this chapter, and a one-page revision summary for the night before a test. These notes follow the 2026-27 session.

Read top to bottom, or jump straight to the section you need from the list below. Everything is revision-length: short enough to finish in one sitting, complete enough to revise from alone. For the rest of the book, see the Class 12 English notes hub, or browse the full CBSE notes library.

John Milton: The Poet Behind These Two Poems

Milton’s biography explains why both poems behave the way they do. He began writing poetry at the age of ten, finished his formal education at Cambridge, and read across Latin, Greek, Italian and English — essentially all the literature he could lay his hands on.

He was later appointed Latin Secretary, and the job cost him his sight: years of late-night reading brought on eyestrain, and he was totally blind by the age of forty-five.

In his final years he wrote, through dictation, his two great epics, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. That detail matters more than it looks — Milton composed some of English poetry’s largest works while blind, speaking the lines aloud while others wrote them down.

The trap to avoid: neither poem in this chapter is an extract from those epics. ‘On Shakespear’ carries no printed date in this textbook; it was an early poem, decades before the late epic poems. ‘On Time’ is likewise an early lyric.

Think of both as the young, learned poet showing his range — praise poetry for a fellow writer, and philosophical verse about eternity.

For context on the rest of the poetry section, the Poems by Blake notes cover another voice from the same anthology, and the complete range of Class 12 revision notes is one click away. The full text of both poems sits in the official Class 12 English Kaleidoscope ebook, downloadable from the NCERT textbook portal.

On Time: The Soul’s Race Against the Clock

‘On Time’ is an address to Time personified — the poem’s only character. Time is called envious, and the textbook’s note explains why: in ancient mythology Cronos devoured each of his children at birth. Milton’s Time behaves the same way: it produces moments and mortal things, then swallows them.

That is why the poem pictures it as hungry and jealous — its appetite comes straight from the Cronos myth.

The poem then lowers the stakes. What Time actually devours is only what is false and vain — ‘merely mortal dross’. The precious parts of a person never get eaten. The two short lines ‘So little is our loss, / So little is thy gain.’

say it plainly: when Time destroys falseness and vanity, humanity loses almost nothing and Time gains almost nothing.

Next comes the end of the race. When Time has entombed every bad thing and finally consumes itself, Eternity greets the soul’s bliss with an ‘individual kiss’ — a whole, undivided welcome (more on that word later). Joy floods in like a wave, and everything sincerely good and perfectly divine — Truth, Peace, Love — shines around God’s throne.

The poem ends in ascent. The heaven-guided soul climbs, sheds its ‘Earthy grossnes’, sits ‘Attir’d with Stars’, and triumphs over Death, Chance and Time itself. The final note is victory, not sorrow.

Fresh analogy: picture a factory conveyor belt that grinds up everything loaded onto it — but it only ever receives counterfeit and disposable goods. The one genuine, valuable item (the soul) is never placed on the belt.

That is the logic of this poem: Time’s belt chews up whatever is false, vain and mortal, while the soul travels by a completely different route to eternity.

Two glossary items you must know. An envious Time is a direct allusion to Cronos, who devoured each child at birth. A plummet is the lead weight whose slow mechanism activates the ticking mechanism in a clock — so time’s measured march is heavy and mechanical, yet still destructive.

On Shakespear: Why the Poet Needs No Stone

The poem’s title in this textbook carries no printed date; its subject is a tribute, not a story. Milton opens with a rhetorical question: what need has Shakespeare’s honoured bones of piled stones, a star-pointing pyramid, or hidden hallowed relics? The implied answer is ‘none’, and the next lines say why.

Shakespeare is addressed as ‘dear son of memory, great heir of Fame’ — his fame descends through memory, not masonry. Stone monuments are called a weak witness of his name because they are dead matter that crumbles; a name that lives in minds needs no such support.

The real monument, Milton says, is the verse itself. Shakespeare ‘hast built thy self a live-long Monument’: his Book, built in the wonder and astonishment of readers, lives as long as reading does. His ‘easie numbers’ — the flowing, natural metre of his lines, where ‘numbers’ means verses — shame the slow, laborious art of lesser poets.

Readers take his ‘Delphic lines’ so deep into their hearts that wonder turns them to marble: ‘Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving’. The more intensely we conceive or imagine his meaning, the more we are petrified with admiration.

The final couplet seals the paradox: buried in such pomp — a tomb made of readers’ hearts — even kings would wish to die for such a burial. Shakespeare’s monument is wherever his verse is read.

The textbook’s footnote nudges you to notice the spellings ‘Shakespear’, ‘easie’ and ‘conceaving’. These are period spellings of seventeenth-century English, not printers’ errors — quote them exactly as printed and never ‘correct’ them in an answer.

Real-life application: today we still build stone-and-bronze memorials — statues, plinths, awards. But the honour that actually lasts is the work: books, films and music keep being read, watched and heard decades after the ceremony. That is exactly Milton’s point — the work outlives the honour, the ‘live-long Monument’ beats the pyramid.

Themes in Both Poems

Each poem argues one central idea, and they meet on the question of what lasts. This table maps each theme to the poem and to the line that carries it.

Literary Devices: The Craft of the Lines

Every device below is quoted exactly as printed, followed by why it works. The trio — device, line, effect — is what a poetry answer needs.

One structural note: in On Time, the personified Time is the poem’s only ‘character’ — personification carries the role a character sketch would in a story, which is why a poetry page needs no character section.

Poetic Form: Rhyme and Rhythm of the Two Poems

You can answer any question about form from what you can see on the page. On Shakespear runs to sixteen lines in rhyming couplets: Bones/Stones, hid/Pyramid, Fame/name, astonishment/Monument, art/heart, Book/took, bereaving/conceaving, lie/die. Eight closed pairs in a row form the pattern known as heroic couplets — equal-length lines that rhyme in sequence.

On Time is freer. Its twenty-two lines open with a quatrain (race/pace, hours/devours), pass through two short lines (‘So little is our loss, / So little is thy gain.’), then continue in pairs — entomb’d/consum’d, bliss/kiss — and close with the pairs clime/Time and quit/sit.

The line lengths vary, which suits a poem that argues, rises and celebrates rather than narrates.

Warning: judging these rhymes by modern ears misfires. ‘easie’, ‘conceaving’, ‘shone’ and similar words follow seventeenth-century spelling and pronunciation. The textbook’s own footnote points at the spellings precisely so you do not mistake them for slips.

Wait — do not use ‘shone’; the poem’s rhyme words are ‘divine/shine’.

Key Lines and Their Meanings

Five lines worth quoting in an answer, each with what it actually means inside the poem’s argument.

The poem’s final line — ‘Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.’ — is the victory statement that proves On Time is a triumph poem, not a lament.

Understanding the Poem: Questions and Answers

All seven textbook questions, answered in the tight form a revision page needs: open with the claim, then support it with the lines.

Question 1: Why has the poet pitted the flight of Time against the ‘lazy leaden-stepping hours’ and ‘the heavy Plummets pace’?

Answer: The contrast makes a single point: time’s destruction is certain even though its clockwork creeps. The lazy leaden-stepping hours and the heavy plummet — the lead weight that drives a clock’s mechanism — suggest a slow, mechanical march, yet everything they devour is gone for good.

The irony is that creeping time still levels everything false and vain, which is why the soul must escape to eternity.

Question 2: What are the things associated with the temporal and what are associated with the eternal?

Answer: The temporal is everything false and vain — ‘merely mortal dross’, the stuff Time’s womb devours. The eternal is what is ‘sincerely good / And perfectly divine’: Truth, Peace and Love, plus the soul’s bliss, which long Eternity greets with an individual kiss.

Question 3: What guides human souls towards divinity? Who is the final winner in the race against Time?

Answer: Heaven guides the soul — the poem names ‘our heav’nly guided soul’. After climbing and shedding its earthly grossness, the soul sits ‘Attir’d with Stars’ and triumphs over Death, Chance and Time; Time consumes itself at the end of its race, so the soul is the final winner.

Question 4: Why does Milton feel it is not necessary to put up a monument in stone for Shakespeare?

Answer: Because Shakespeare’s Book is itself ‘a live-long Monument’. Built in the wonder and astonishment of generations of readers, it lives as long as it is read, while any pile of stone would only be a ‘weak witness’ beside it.

Question 5: What does the ‘weak witness of thy name’ refer to?

Answer: It refers to every physical memorial — piled stones, a star-pointing pyramid, a tomb that hides ‘hallow’d reliques’. Stone is weak because it is dead matter that crumbles; a name that lives in memory needs no such support.

Question 6: How does Milton describe Shakespeare as the source of inspiration for all succeeding generations of poets?

Answer: Milton shows Shakespeare’s ‘easie numbers’ flowing with such natural ease that they shame ‘slow endeavouring art’. Because readers take ‘Those Delphic lines with deep impression’ into their hearts, every later poet inherits that inspiration and passes it onward.

Question 7: What is the best tribute that posterity has bestowed on Shakespeare?

Answer: The best tribute is not a monument but the continuing effect of reading: wonder carries his lines so deep into readers’ hearts that it turns them to marble ‘with too much conceaving’. Buried in such a living tomb, ‘Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die’ — readers moved to that depth are the tribute that outlasts all stone.

Common Mistakes Students Make

Misconception autopsy: two words do more damage than any device. Reading ‘individual kiss’ as a private, romantic kiss is a twenty-first-century reflex; in Milton’s English ‘individual’ meant undivided, so the kiss is the soul’s total union with Eternity.

Meanwhile ‘envious Time’ is not a vague adjective — it is a myth in one word: Cronos devoured each child at birth, so Time’s envy is the envy of a being that destroys what it begets. Correct both readings and the poem’s logic snaps into focus.

Beyond those two, these are the precise slips students make on this chapter — each row shows the error, the correction, and the reason.

How to Write Complete Poetry Answers

Every poetry answer in this chapter can be built with one formula: Name, Quote, Explain, Connect — N-Q-E-C. Name the device or idea, quote the exact line, explain what the line says, then connect it to the poem’s overall argument. Watch it work on the textbook’s own first question about On Time.

• Name: the poem contrasts Time the devourer with the slow instruments that measure it.
• Quote: ‘heavy Plummets pace’.
• Explain: the plummet is a clock’s lead weight, so time’s measured march is heavy, sluggish and mechanical — and still destructive.
• Connect: the creeping clock still devours everything false and vain, and that paradox is what makes the soul’s escape to eternity so striking.

Notice that the complete answer does three jobs at once: it names the contrast, quotes the exact phrase, and ties the quote to the poem’s big argument — the soul’s victory. Every one of the seven answers above is built the same way.

The Language Study task needs the same discipline but different content. When a dictionary entry gives [late ME entoumbe(n) MF entombe(r)] for ‘entomb’d’, a complete answer states: the word is found in late Middle English; it is of French origin; it has been in use since 1578.

Add the historical cause — about 30 per cent of English words are of French origin, with borrowings peaking between 1250 and 1400 after the Norman Conquest of 1066. That trio — period, origin, cause — is what the task is testing.

Etymology Insight: The Story Inside ‘entomb’d’

Etymology is the study of the history and derivation of a word — where it came from, when it entered the language, and how its form changed. The textbook uses ‘entomb’d’ as its worked example: the bracketed note tells you the word appears in late Middle English, is of French origin, and has been in use since 1578.

The transferable skill: when you meet an unfamiliar word in a poem you have not seen before, look for its family, not just its dictionary line. The two Milton poems cluster tomb-words: ‘entomb’d’ in On Time, and ‘Sepulcher’d’, ‘Tomb’ and ‘reliques’ in On Shakespear.

Spotting that cluster does two things — it confirms the grave imagery that runs under both poems, and it gives you the vocabulary to describe their tone as funereal and monumental.

The broader pattern is worth remembering: about 30 per cent of English words are of French origin, and French borrowings flooded in after the Norman Conquest of 1066, peaking between 1250 and 1400. So when a poem uses a formal, grave-sounding word that resembles modern French, you can often guess its pedigree — which is exactly the skill the Language Study task is testing.

Revision Summary: The Two Poems at a Glance

If you have time for only one page, this table replaces rereading both poems — it sets them side by side on every dimension a poetry answer can probe.

Memory device: On Time’s final victory is over three forces — Death, Chance, Time. Remember the initials: Death Cannot Touch (D-C-T). Say that sentence once and the trio comes back.

Five things to remember:

• Time is ‘envious’ because of the Cronos myth — he devoured each child at birth, and Time likewise devours what it produces.
• ‘individual’ means undivided — the kiss is the soul’s whole union with Eternity, not a romance.
• On Time ends in triumph: the heaven-guided soul climbs and wins against Death, Chance and Time.
• Shakespeare’s true monument is his verse, ‘a live-long Monument’, built in the hearts of readers.
• On Shakespear is dated 1630 — an early poem, decades before the dictated late epics.

FAQs: Poems by Milton Class 12 Revision Notes

Why does Milton call Time ‘envious’ in On Time?

Because the poem leans on the Cronos myth: the ancient god Cronos devoured each of his children at birth. Milton’s Time has the same appetite — it produces moments and mortal things, then swallows them — so envy and hunger belong to its nature, not to a random adjective.

What does ‘individual kiss’ mean in On Time?

‘Individual’ here means undivided, not single or romantic. The kiss is Eternity’s whole, undivided greeting of the soul’s bliss — a complete union between the soul and Eternity at the end of Time’s race.

Why does Milton say Shakespeare needs no stone monument?

Because his Book has already built him ‘a live-long Monument’ in the wonder and astonishment of readers. Stone is dead matter and a ‘weak witness’; verse that lives in every new reader’s heart never dies.

What do the ‘Delphic lines’ in On Shakespear refer to?

Delphi was the site of the famous Greek oracle, whose utterances were believed to be inspired by a god. Calling Shakespeare’s lines Delphic elevates them to inspired, oracular writing that impresses itself deeply on every heart.

How did Milton write his great epics after losing his sight?

In his final years he dictated Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Blind and unable to write, he composed the verse in his memory and spoke the lines aloud while others wrote them down.

What is the main difference between the two poems?

On Time faces mortality and shows the soul triumphing over Death, Chance and Time at the end of the race; On Shakespear honours a fellow poet whose verse outlives any tomb. One poem is about the soul’s passage to eternity, the other about art as a living monument.

Reference: NCERT Class 12 English Kaleidoscope textbook, chapter Poems by Milton.

Official source: download the NCERT textbook free from ncert.nic.in.