When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

Common card · No. 402717

"When I Consider How My Light is Spent" (also known as "On His Blindness") is one of the best known of the sonnets of John Milton (1608–1674). The last three lines are particularly well known; they conclude with "They also serve who only stand and wait", which is much quoted though rarely in context. Variants of it have been used as mottos in a number of contexts, for example the Dickin Medal for service animals bears the motto "We also serve", and the Navy Wives Clubs of America uses the motto "They Also Serve, Who Stay and Wait". In U.S. popular culture it is perhaps best known through its use by Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Vin Scully, who would quote it when showing a player not in the game. The sonnet was first published in Milton's 1673 Poems in his autograph notebook, known as the "Trinity Manuscript" from its location in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He gave it the number 19, but in the published book it was numbered 16, so both numbers are used for it. It...

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