Those blossoms also, and those dropping gums, That lie bestrown, unsightly and unsmooth, Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease; Meanwhile, as nature wills, night bids us rest.” To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorn'd: "My author and disposer, what thou bidd`st Unargued I obey; so God ordains.
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise. With thee conversing, I forget all time;
All seasons, and their change, all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun, When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild: then silent night, With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train: But neither breath of morn, when she ascends With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower, Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers; Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night, With this her solemn bird, nor walk by noon, Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet. But wherefore all night long shine these? For whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?" To whom our general ancestor replied: 'Daughter of God and man, accomplish'd Eve, Those have their course to finish round the earth By morrow evening; and from land to land In order, though to nations yet unborn, Ministering light prepared, they set and rise; Lest total darkness should by night regain Her old possession, and extinguish life
In nature and all things; which these soft fires Not only enlighten, but, with kindly heat Of various influence, foment and warm, Temper or nourish, or in part shed down Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow On earth, made hereby apter to receive Perfection from the sun's more potent ray. These, then, though unbeheld in deep of night, Shine not in vain. Nor think, though men were none, That heaven would want spectators, God want praise Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep: All these with ceaseless praise his works behold Both day and night. How often, from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive each to other's note, Singing their Great Creator! oft in bands
While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk, With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds, In full harmonic number join'd, their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven."
Thus talking, hand in hand alone they pass'd On to their blissful bower: it was a place Chosen by the sovran Planter, when he framed All things to man's delightful use: the roof Of thickest covert was inwoven shade, Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub,
Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower, Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin,
Rear'd high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought Mosaic; under-foot the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broider'd the ground, more color'd than with stone
Of costliest emblem: other creature here,
Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none,
Such was their awe of man! In shadier bower More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd, Pan or Sylvanus never slept; nor nymph Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess, With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs, Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed; And heavenly quires the hymenean sung, What day the genial angel to our sire Brought her, in naked beauty more adorn'd, More lovely than Pandora; whom the gods Endow'd with all their gifts; and, O! too like In sad event, when to the unwiser son Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire.
Thus, at their shady lodge arrived, both stood, Both turn'd, and under open sky adored
The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven, Which they beheld, the moon's resplendent globe, And starry pole: "Thou also madest the night, Maker Omnipotent! and thou the day Which we, in our appointed work employ'd, Have finish'd, happy in our mutual help And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss Ordain'd by thee; and this delicious place, For us too large, where thy abundance wants Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground. But thou hast promised from us two a race To fill the earth, who shall with us extol Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake, And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep."
The city which thou seest no other deem
Than great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth, So far renown'd, and with the spoils enrich'd Of nations: there the Capitol thou seest Above the rest lifting his stately head On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel Impregnable; and there Mount Palatine, The imperial palace, compass huge, and high The structure, skill of noblest architects, With gilded battlements, conspicuous far, Turrets and terraces, and glittering spires. Many a fair edifice besides, more like Houses of gods, (so well I have disposed My aery microscope,) thou mayst behold Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs, Carved work, the hand of famed artificers, In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold.
Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see What conflux issuing forth, or entering in; Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state,
Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power,
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings: Or embassies from regions far remote
In various habits, on the Appian road,
Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south, Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe Nilotick isle, and, more to west, The realm of Bocchus to the Black-moor sea; From the Asian kings, and Parthian among these; From India and the golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle Taprobane,
Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed; From Gallia, Gades, and the British west; Germans and Scythians, and Sarmathians, north Beyond Danubius to the Taurick pool.
Paradise Regained, IV. 44.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold
Where on the Egean shore a city stands,
Built nobly; pure the air, and light the soil; Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits, Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City, or suburban, studious walks and shades:
1 Satan, persisting in the temptation of our Lord, shows him imperial Rome in its greatest pomp and splendor, and tells him that he might easily expel the Emperor Tiberius, and take possession of the whole himself, and thus possess the world. Baffled in this, he next points out to him the cele brated seat of ancient learning, Athens, and its celebrated schools of philosophy; pronouncing a highly inished panegyric on the Grecian musicians, poets, orators, and philosophers of the different
See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There flowery hill Hymettus with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream: within the walls then view The schools of ancient sages; his who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand; and various-measured verse, Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd, Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own: Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate, and chance, and change in human life; High actions, and high passions best describing: Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne:
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From Heaven descended to the low-roof'd house Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and the Stoic severe :
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home, Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight: These rules will render thee a king complete Within thyself; much more with empire join'd.
Paradise Regained, IV. 1 ►
SAMSON'S LAMENTATION FOR HIS BLINDNESS.
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eased Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me: They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,' Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first-created Beam, and thou great Word, "Let there be light, and light was over all;" Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? The sun to me is dark,
And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Since light so necessary is to life, And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the soul,
She all in every part; why was this sight To such a tender ball as the eye confined, So obvious and so easy to be quench'd? And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, That she might look at will through every pore? Then had I not been thus exiled from light, As in the land of darkness, yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death, And buried; but, O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave; Buried, yet not exempt,
By privilege of death and burial,
From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs; But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
SONNET ON HIS OWN BLINDNESS.
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent3 which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He, returning, chide; "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth no need Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
1 "Few passages in poetry are so affecting as this; and the tone of the expression is pec rhy Miltonic."-Brydges.
"Milton's sonnets are, in easy majesty and severe beauty, unequalled by any other compositions of the kind."-Rev. Alerander Dyce. "Of all the sonnets of Milton, I am most inclined to prefer that 'On His Blindness.' It has, to my weak taste, such various excellences as I am unequal to praise sufficiently. It breathes doctrines at once so sublime and consolatory, as to gild the gloomy paths of our existence here with a new and singular light."—Brydges.
* He speaks here with allusion to the parable of the talents, Matt. xxv., and with great modesty of himself as if he had not five, or two, but only one talent.
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