With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun, 10 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
15 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,
20 Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet."

9. Charm: see note 5, extract 40.
11. Orient may either mean bright
here, which was a cornmon use of it in

Milton's time, or be taken in its ordinary acceptation.

100. ABDIEL. (Book V. 875.)

The flaming Seraph, fearless though alone,
Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold:
"O alienate from God! O Spirit accursed,
Forsaken of all good! I see thy fall

5 Determined, and thy hapless crew involved
In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread
Both of thy crime and punishment. Henceforth
No more be troubled how to quit the yoke
Of God's Messiah; those indulgent laws
10 Will not be now vouchsafed; other decrees
Against thee are gone forth without recall;
That golden sceptre, which thou did❜st reject,

6. Perfidious fraud, guilt of perfidy; fraud is here used in the sense of the Lat. fraus.

10. Vouchsafed: to vouchsafe is to warrant safe, to assure; and thence to grant (condescendingly). To vouch, Lat.

vocare, first meant to invoke the assistance of a third party, when attacked; and then, by a not unusual shifting of meaning, to answer such a call (Wedgwood).

Is now an iron rod to bruise and break
Thy disobedience. Well thou did'st advise;
15 Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly

These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath
Impendent, raging into sudden flame,
Distinguish not; for soon expect to feel
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire.
20 Then who created thee lamenting learn,

When who can uncreate thee, thou shalt know."
So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,

25 Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,

His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal :
Nor number, nor example with him wrought

To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
30 Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained
Superior, nor of violence feared aught;

And, with retorted scorn, his back he turned

On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.

16. Devoted, Lat. devotus, accursed, doomed to destruction.

101. THE ROUT OF THE REBEL ANGELS, (Book VI. 831.)

He on his impious foes right onward drove,
Gloomy as night; under his burning wheels
The steadfast Empyrean shook throughout,
All but the throne itself of God. Full soon
5 Among them he arrived, in his right hand
Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he sent
Before him, such as in their souls infixed
Plagues; they, astonished, all resistance lost,
All courage; down their idle weapons dropped;

1. He, the Son of God.

3. Empyréan, the highest heaven, where the pure element of fire is supposed to subsist." (Johnson.) It is

taken from Gk. ἔμπυρος.

8. Astonished, Lat. attoniti, thunderstruck.

10 O'er shields, and helms, and helmed heads he rode
Of thrones and mighty Seraphim prostrate,
That wished the mountains now might be again
Thrown on them, as a shelter from his ire.
Nor less on either side tempestuous fell
15 His arrows, from the fourfold-visaged Four
Distinct with eyes, and from the living wheels
Distinct alike with multitude of eyes;

One spirit in them ruled, and every eye

Glared lightning, and shot forth pernicious fire 20 Among the accursed, that withered all their strength, And of their wonted vigour left them drained,

Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen.

Yet half his strength he put not forth, but checked
His thunder in mid volley; for he meant

25 Not to destroy, but root them out of Heaven.
The overthrown he raised, and, as a herd
Of goats or timorous flock, together thronged,
Drove them before him thunderstruck, pursued
With terrors and with furies, to the bounds

30 And crystal wall of Heaven, which, opening wide,
Rolled inward and a spacious gap disclosed

Into the wasteful Deep. The monstrous sight
Struck them with horror backward, but far worse
Urged them behind; headlong themselves they threw
35 Down from the verge of Heaven; eternal wrath
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.

12. Again in the preceding part of the battle the good angels had flung mountains on their adversaries.

16, 17. Distinct, studded, ornamented, Lat. distinctus, part. of distinguo.

20. Accursed: to curse, O. E. corsian, is to execrate with the sign of the cross, as Fr. sacrer is used in the sense both of consecrating and execrating (Wedgwood).

22. Afflicted, as often in Milton, is used with the meaning of Lat. afflictus, dashed to the ground.

24. Volley etymologically, a flight, Fr. volée.

35. Verge, fr. Lat. virga, a rod, Fr. verge, is properly the limit within which the authority of vergers, wand-bearers or officers of a court, is exercised.

102. THE RECONCILIATION OF ADAM AND EVE. (Book X. 909.)

There can hardly be a doubt that we possess in this passage a reminiscence of an incident in the poet's own life-his reconciliation with his first wife, Mary Powell, after her unreasonable desertion of him for a considerable time.

He added not, and from her turned; but Eve,

Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing,
And tresses all disordered, at his feet

Fell humble; and embracing them, besought

5 His peace, and thus proceeded in his plaint :
"Forsake me not thus, Adam !

*

She ended, weeping, and her lowly plight
Immovable till peace obtained from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
10 Commiseration. Soon his heart relented
Toward her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress;
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid.
15 As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,

And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon.

2. Repulsed, to be repulsed.

3. Disordered: the prefix dis possesses two distinct forces; in disorder, disaster, distemper, disagreeable, it imparts a sort of negative notion, and comes from Fr. des, Gk. dus; in disperse, dissipate, distend, &c., it means "in different directions," and is the ordinary

Latin prefix dis, which comes from duo, two.

6. Forsake meant originally to abandon a suit, or cause, or subject of dispute (M. E. sake, Ger. sache).

8. Peace obtained, peace should be obtained-a Latin idiom.

From PARADISE REGAINED.

103. ATHENS. (Book IV. 236.)

Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold
Where on the Ægean shore a city stands,

1. Specular mount, mount of vision, fr. Lat. specula, a high place from which distant objects can be discovered.

Built nobly; pure the air, and light the soil;
5 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:
See there the olive grove of Academe,
10 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

15 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:

Thence to the famous orators repair,

20 Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece

To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

10. The Attic bird, the nightingale, for which the neighbouring district of Colonus was famous.

104. TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL, May 16th, 1652.

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,
5 And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud

Hast reared God's trophies, and his work pursued,
While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,

7. Darwen stream: the reference here is to the Battle of Preston, 17th Aug. 1648. The Darwen joins the Ribble from the south a little above Preston; and it was at a bridge over it that one of the fiercest wrestles of the day took place. See Car

lyle's "Cromwell," 3rd ed. vol. ii. p. 37. Imbrued the brue of this word is It. bevere, to drink; Lat. bibere, from which also comes beverage. So drench is but the causative form of drink.