Softly on my eyelids laid.

And as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,

Sent by some spirit to mortals good,
Or the unseen genius of the wood.
But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowèd roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,'
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,

And I with thee will choose to live.

I "This shows that Milton did not run into the enthusiastic madness of that fanatic age against church music."— Thyer.

SONNETS.

THE following four sonnets show the personal characteristics of Milton. The first, "On Cromwell," reveals his appreciation of that "chief of men" in the midst of "detractions rude," and of the necessity of further combat, for

"Peace hath her victories

No less renowned than War."

It is the same spirit that made Milton infamous before he was famous as the defender of the regicide.

The second, "On the late Massacre in Piedmont," shows him as a great Protestant, sympathizing with religious liberty. It is sublime in the fact that the vengeance asked for is the spread of the truth, that those slaughterers may fly woe.

The third, "On his Blindness," is unapproachable in patient submission, and the clearer vision of faith.

The fourth, "On his Deceased Wife," shows that the great mind that wrote a Defence of the People, and lifted up a clarion voice for distant nations, was associated with a heart tender as a woman feeling in the night for a lost child.

TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL.

CROMWELL, Our chief of men, who through a cloud, Not of war only, but detractions rude,

Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,

To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, And on the neck of crownèd Fortune proud

Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued, While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbued, And Dunbar's field resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester's laureate wreath. Yet much remains To conquer still; Peace hath her victories No less renowned than War: new foes arise Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.

ON THE LATE MASSACRE' IN PIEDMONT.

AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them that kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans,

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother and infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant: that from these may grow

A hundred fold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

1 Organized by the Duke of Savoy, 1655. Cromwell ordered a general fast, and sent the survivors two hundred thousand dollars.

ON HIS BLINDNESS.

WHEN I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, 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 not need

Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.”

ON HIS DECEASED WIFE.'

METHOUGHT I Saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove's great son3 to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint Purification in the old law did save,

And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled; 4 yet, to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight.

But oh! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked; she fled; and day brought back my night.

I Catherine, his second wife, died within a year after marriage.

2 Wife

LIFE OF JOHN MILTON.

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LITTLE is known of great poets. They live of necessity an other worldly life. Homer is a mere voice crying on the deserted shore. Dante seems a shade in the world of shadows, and Shakspeare has been described as a munificent benefactor, who knocked at the door of the human family by night, threw in inestimable wealth, fled, and the sound of his footsteps was all the tidings he gave of himself." Milton moved, to be sure, in the great events of troublous and travailing times, but the events and victories brought. forth for the race were so great that they hid the master thinkers who lifted the doers into prominence.

John Milton was born Dec. 9, 1608. His father, in his early youth, had been disinherited for abjuring the errors of popery. Here is seen how his illustrious son might have inherited his love of liberty and right. The father was passionately fond of music. It is equally clear how his son inherited his aptness for metrical composition.

From very early life Milton was a hard student, paying the price of genius by unwearied and persistent study.

At the age of twenty-one he wrote the "Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity." He lived with his

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