twenty-one years old; yet it has been pronounced by critics as unsurpassed by any production of its class since the age of Pindar. Here is a splendid stanza : No war, or battle's sound, was heard the world around; The idle spear and shield were high uphung; The hooked chariot stood unstain'd with hostile blood; As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by. How fine is that passage referring to the silencing of the heathen oracles : The oracles are dumb; no voice or hideous hum Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. The village of Horton is associated with the earlier portion of the poet's life; it was there that he wrote his Comus, Lycidas, and Il Penseroso. At Chalfont St. Giles he wrote his great epic. Fuseli thought the second book of Paradise Lost the grandest effort of the human mind we possess. How splendid is his Invocation to Light how touchingly it closes!— Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns of men Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways Of nature's works, to me expunged and razed, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. According to Sir Egerton Brydges, Milton's sonnet on his loss of sight, is unequalled by any composition of its class in the language: When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, That murmur, soon replies-" God doth not need And post o'er land and ocean without rest: Il Penseroso abounds with striking passages; such as the following, to Contemplation :— Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, With a sad, leaden, downward cast, And hears the muses in a ring Ave round about Jove's altar sing: And add to these retired leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; What pen but Milton's could have produced-from so slight an incident as that which occurred at Ludlow Castle when the poet was its guest-a dramatic poem (Comus) so replete with beautiful imagery, and so lustrous with the graces of style? Here are a few lines:: Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould How sweetly did they float upon the wings So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, The Epilogue closes with these beautiful words : Mortals, that would follow me, Heaven itself would stoop to her. Here is an example of his famous L'Allegro : Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, And in thy right hand lead with thee To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; |