Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint.
John Milton went blind in 1652.  The late espoused saint is one of two possibilities: either his first wife, Mary Powell, who died in childbirth the same year that he went blind, or his second wife Katherine Woodcock, who died in 1658, two years after they married. Since they met in 1656, John would have never seen his second wife’s face.
On His Deceased Wife