FROM LYCIDAS.

On whose fresh lap the swart-star1 sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,2
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired wood-bine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,3
To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little ease,

Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise;
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;5
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount?
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth:
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.

Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

193

1 The dog-star; the star of the hot season, called swart or swarthy, perhaps from its supposed effects, Hor. Odes, iii. 29, 18.

2 Rathe, early; the opposite is sere, late; we retain the comparative rather as an adverb.-Compare Shakesp. Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 5. Pale primroses, etc. Freak'd; see note 7, p. 12.

8 Compare "I know a bank," etc.-Shakesp. Midsummer Night's Dream, Act

II. Sc. 2.

4 A Greek interjection.

5 The ocean full of monsters.

"Lycidas" was composed on the death of Milton's friend, Mr. Edward King, who, in a voyage to Ireland, was shipwrecked and drowned on the English coast in 1637.-Comp. Hor. Odes, i. 3, 18.

Supposed to be a Cornish giant.

7 St. Michael's Mount (Mount's Bay, in Cornwall), called guarded, either on account of the fortress once erected on it, or on account of the tradition of the Archangel Michael having been seen seated on it. The " great vision" is called on by Milton to "Look homeward now, and regard with pity the corpse of Lycidas." Campbell alludes to a similar superstition of St. Columba descending to count the Hebrides.-See Pleasures of Hope.

In the map of Galicia, in Mercator's Atlas (1636), near the point Cape Finisterre is Namancos; and in this map the castle of Bayona is conspicuous.

Through the dear might of Him that walk'd the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy1 locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.

THE LADY'S SONG in "COMUS."

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen
Within thy aery shell,

By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet-embroider'd vale,

Where the love-lorn nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well;
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair

That likest thy Narcissus are?

Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere!
So may'st thou be translated to the skies,

And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies.

FROM "PARADISE LOST."

BOOK I.

THE INVOCATION AND INTRODUCTION.

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,3

Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning, how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or, if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's" brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence

1 So Horace of Augustus, Odes, iii. 3.

2 For Narcissus and Echo, see Ovid, Met. iii. 379. Milton, in "aery shell" and daughter of the sphere," dresses Echo in his own mythology. Pair, the lady's brothers.

8 The simple sublimity of Milton's proposition of his subject has been often admired.-See Byron's "Hints from Horace."-Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire, etc.; and Addison, Spectator, No. 303.

He invokes with propriety to a sacred subject the muses that inspired Moses in Oreb and David in Sion. The mythological muses are associated with hills and streams. See Book iii. 27.

Or Siloam, in the valley to the south of Jerusalem, running along the base of Sion, and supplying the "pool" of the same name, Isaiah viii. 5.

FROM PARADISE LOST.

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian' mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit,2 that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings out-spread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine; what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell; say first, what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favour'd of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel angels; by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory" above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven, and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty power
Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.

195

1 Helicon; Aonia is an appellation of Beotia; the allusion is to Hesiod, who, like Milton, sung in his "Theogony," of gods.

2 He invokes literary ability for his work from an imaginary muse; but the moral and religious qualities requisite for it from the Holy Ghost. "His widow was wont to say that he really looked on himself as inspired. In his 'Reason of Church Government,' speaking of his design of writing a poem in the English language, he says, 'it was not to be obtained *but by devout prayer of that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.""-Newton.

3 The Hebrew word translated "moved," means brooded," as a bird on her eggs. Milton studied the scriptures in the original language.-Newton.

4 Comp. Hom. Iliad ii. 485; Virg. Æn. viii. 645.-Newton; comp. also Æn.

i. 9-12.

Viz. in the peculiar glory of Divinity, for he was already above his peers in angelic glory, as Bentley objected.

6 An allusion perhaps to En. i. 44, or to Luke x. 18.

7 See note 7, p.9.

THE FALLEN ANGELS IN THE BURNING LAKE.

The superior fiend1

Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,

3

Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolé,

6

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe.
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral,' were but a wand,
He walk'd with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marle, not like those steps
On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire:
Nathless he so endured till on the beach
Of that inflaméd sea he stood, and call'd
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced,
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa," where the Etrurian shades,
High over-arch'd, imbower; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion 10 arm'd

Hath vex'd the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris" and his Memphian chivalry,

While with perfidious hatred they pursued

1 Satan.

2 Of the lake. Having roused from the lethargy of their fall his nearest mate, Beelzebub, he proposes to search for a more eligible place for rest than the fiery waves into which they had been cast.

3 The comparison properly ends with moon; but, as is the practice of Homer and Virgil, Milton surrounds his similes with correlative objects and pictures, that heighten their magnificence.-See the succeeding comparisons in this passage; see also Book i. 768, and ii. 636.

4 Galileo, the Florentine astronomer, whom Milton visited when he was in Italy. 5 Fiesole, ancient Fesulae, three miles north east of Florence.

6 Vale of the Arno near Florence, celebrated for its scenery and its rich fertility. 7 The Saracen Emirs, who commanded the squadrons that, during the seventh and succeeding centuries, terrified the Christian coasts of the Mediterranean, furnished, it is said, the origin of the term admiral in various forms in European languages.— See Du Cange Gloss., Amir. 8 Nevertheless.

9 Milton remembers the scenery of his youthful travels. The luxuriant foliage of a southern country heightens the illustration intended to be conveyed. Vallombrosa (shady vale) is about eighteen miles from Florence.

10 The figure of the constellation Orion is an armed man. The ancients, for the purposes of agriculture and navigation, paid great attention to the connection between the weather and the movements of the heavenly bodies. Virg. Georg. i. 204, etc."Nimbosus Orion." En. i. 535. Scattered sedge; the Hebrew name of the Red Sea implies the sedgy sea.-Newton.

11 The oppressor Pharaoh is by some writers called Busiris.-Brydges. Busiris, an Egyptian tyrant, was slain by Hercules-See Keightley's Mythology, p. 323. Many Egyptian kings bore this name. There was a city Busiris in the Delta, with a temple of Isis.-Herod. ii. 59-61. Memphian; Memphis, the celebrated ancient capital of Lower Egypt, was near th e of the modern Cairo.

FROM PARADISE LOST.

The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot wheels: so thick bestrewn,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded. "Princes, potentates,

Warriors, the flower of Heaven, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize

Eternal spirits; or have ye chosen this place,
After the toil of battle to repose

Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find

To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
T'adore the Conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood
With scatter'd arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers, from Heaven-gates, discern
Th' advantage, and, descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen !"

BOOK II.

SATAN PRESIDING IN THE INFERNAL COUNCIL.

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,1
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised

To that bad eminence: and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue

Vain war with Heaven, and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus display'd:

"Powers and dominions, deities of Heaven;
For since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigour, though oppress'd and fall'n,
I give not Heaven for lost. From this descent
Celestial virtues rising, will appear

More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate.

Me though just right, and the fix'd laws of Heaven,
Did first create your leader; next, free choice,

With what besides in counsel or in fight

197

1 The island of Ormus, in the Persian Gulf, was once the emporium of all the riches of India.

Compare the compact and classical composition of this sentence with that in Book i. 44, "Him the Almighty power," etc.-See p. 195.