John Milton (1608 – 1674)
English poet and politician, most famous for his epic poem Paradise Lost.
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
John Milton was one whose natural parts might deservedly give him a place amongst the principal of our English Poets, having written two Heroick Poems and a Tragedy, namely Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Sampson Agonista. But his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which might have ever lived in honorable Repute, had not he been a notorious Traytor, and most impiously and villanously bely'd that blessed Martyr, King Charles the First.
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.
And join with thee, calm Peace and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet.
He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground.
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said;
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.
Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.
Ornate rhetoric thought out of the rule of Plato... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.
Have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern god of sea.
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.
By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones
Forget not.
A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him.
[A] puppy, once my pretty little man, now blear-eyed, or rather a blinding; having never had any mental vision, he has now lost his bodily sight; a silly coxcomb, fancying himself a beauty ; an unclean beast, with nothing more human about him than his guttering eyelids; the fittest doom for him would be to hang him on the highest gallows, and set his head on the Tower of London.
Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof.