Plot in On His Blindness

“He” in this context refers to God. The speaker offers the question in the following line with this caveat that if he is chided for his question, he will recant the question. This reveals the speaker’s anxious and apologetic tone.

In line 6, the speaker suggests that his “one talent’ is to present “my true account.” This signals to the reader that the speaker’s talent is writing, an activity that would have been nearly impossible to do in Early Modern England without sight. Because Milton himself went blind in 1652, this poem is conventionally read as autobiographical.