In Silo, his bright sanctuary,

Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent,
Who hurt their minds,

And urged them on with mad desire

To call in haste for their destroyer.
They, only set on sport and play,

Unweetingly importuned.

1680

Their own destruction to come speedy upon them.

So fond are mortal men,

Fallen into wrath divine,

As their own ruin on themselves to invite,

Insensate left, or to sense reprobate,

And with blindness internal struck.

Semichor. But he, though blind of sight,

Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,

His fiery virtue roused

From under ashes into sudden flame,
And as an evening dragon came,
Assailant on the perched roosts

And nests in order ranged

Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle

His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.

So Virtue, given for lost, ▲

Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,

Like that self-begotten bird

In the Arabian woods embost,

That no second knows nor third,

And lay erewhile a holocaust,

1690

1677

1700

From out her ashy womb now teemed,

Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most

When most unactive deemed;

And, though her body die, her fame survives,

A secular bird, ages of lives.

Man. Come, come; no time for lamentation now,

Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself

Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished

1710

A life heroic, on his enemies

Fully revenged - hath left them years of mourning,
And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor
Through all Philistian bounds; to Israel
Honour hath left and freedom, let but them
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion;
To himself and father's house eternal fame;
And, which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, as was feared,
But favouring and assisting to the end.

1720

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Let us go find the body where it lies

Soaked in his enemies' blood, and from the stream
With lavers pure, and cleansing herbs, wash off
The clotted gore. I, with what speed the while
(Gaza is not in plight to say us nay),

Will send for all my kindred, all my friends,
To fetch him hence, and solemnly attend,

With silent obsequy and funeral train,

Home to his father's house. There will I build him

A monument, and plant it round with shade
Of laurel ever green and branching palm,
With all his trophies hung, and acts enrolled
in copious legend, or sweet lyric song.
Thither shall all the valiant youth resort,
And from his memory inflame their breasts
To matchless valour and adventures high;
The virgins also shall, on feastful days,
Visit his tomb with flowers, only bewailing
His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice,
From whence captivity and loss of eyes.
-Chor. All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable dispose

Of Highest Wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft He seems to hide his face,

But unexpectedly returns,

And to his faithful champion hath in place

Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns,
And all that band them to resist a

His uncontrollable intent.

His servants He, with new acquist

Of true experience from this great event,.
With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
And calm of mind, all passion spent...

THE END.

1730

1740

1750

INTRODUCTION

TO THE MINOR POEMS.

ང་

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

UNDER the date Oct. 6, 1645, this entry occurs in the books of the London Stationers' Company: "Mr. Moseley entered for his copie, under the hand of Sir Nath. Brent and both the Wardens, a booke called Poems in English and Latyn by Mr. John Milton, 6d." The meaning of the entry is that on that day Humphrey Moseley, then the most active publisher in London of poetry, old plays, and works of pure fancy, registered the forthcoming volume as his copyright, showing Brent's licence for its publication, and the signatures of the Wardens of the Company besides, and paying sixpence for the formality. The following is the complete title of the volume when it did appear:

"Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, gentleman of the King's Chappel, and one of His Majesties private Musick.

Printed and publish'd according to Order. London, Printed by Ruth Raworth, for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at the signe of the Princes Arms in Pauls Churchyard. 1645."

From a copy of this first edition of Milton's Poems among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum, bearing a note of the precise day of its publication written on the title-page, I learn that the day was Jan. 2, 1645-6. Milton had then been some months in his new dwelling-house in Barbican; where, besides his pupils, there were now domiciled with him his reconciled wife, his aged father, and several of his wife's relations.

The volume published by Moseley is a small and rather neat octavo of more than 200 pages. The English Poems come first and fill 120 pages; after which, with a separate title-page, and filling 88 pages, separately numbered, come the Latin Poems. The poems contained in the volume, whether in the English or the Latin portion, include, with two exceptions, all those which are now known to have been written by Milton, at different periods, from his boyhood at St. Paul's School to the year 1645, in which the volume was published. The exceptions are the little elegy "On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough" (1626), and the curious little fragment, "At a Vacation Exercise at College" (1628). Prefixed to the volume as a whole, and doubtless with Milton's sanction, was a very eulogistic Preface by Moseley, entitled "The Stationer to the Reader" (see it at the beginning of the Minor Poems). Then, before Comus, which begins on p. 67 of the volume, there is a separate title-page, as if to call attention to its greater length and importance besides which,