Milton writes to his friend Henry Lawes, the composer, with genuine warmth and admiration. He praises Lawes’s careful marriage of music and English words, noting how he was the first to teach musicians to match notes to accent instead of mangling syllables with clumsy “Midas Ears”—a jab at those deaf to verbal rhythm. That skill lifts Lawes above the crowd, and Milton insists future generations will remember him as the man who could most gracefully coax the English tongue into song.
The poem then turns into mutual honor: Lawes dignifies poetry, so poetry lends him her own wings, calling him a priest of Apollo’s choir. The final compliment is both intimate and ambitious. Milton claims that even the great Italian poet Dante would let Fame place Lawes higher than Casella, the friend Dante met singing in the gentle shadows of Purgatory. The overall mood is affectionate, proud, and quietly confident—a friend celebrating another friend’s art with the sense that it deserves to endure.