With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The hidden soul of harmony, That Orpheus' self may heave his head Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear Of Pluto, to have quite set free These delights if thou canst give, JOHN MILTON.1 He 1 JOHN MILTON, the son of a scrivener of the same name, waɛ born in London, in Bread Street, December 9, 1608. He was edu cated by Dr. Young, a famous Puritan divine, then at St. Paul's School, and finally at Christ's College, where he first wrote verse: in Latin and English. After a brief stay at his father's, wher were written some of his more famous short poems, including the two given here, he travelled in Italy, where he met Galileo. In 1639 he returned to England and soon drifted into the great struggle between king and Parliament then just beginning. He soon won the foremost place as a writer on political and religious questions, and in 1649 was made Latin Secretary of the Commonwealth, a post which he continued to hold under Cromwell. was the chief defender, with the pen, of the Con monwealth and the Protector. About 1653 he became totally blind, owing to incessant work, made necessary by his continual controversies. At the Restoration his life was spared, but he was obliged to live in obscurity. It was at this period that he returned to poetry and wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, the greatest epic poems in the English language, and which have caused him to be ranked next to Shakespeare among English poets. He was a an of profound learning and a wonderful linguist. His prose writings were voluminous and chiefly controversial. The style seems heavy and involved, if judged by the standard of the present day, but it is nevertheless magnificent, rich, and powerful. It is as the great literary genius of Puritan England, and as the IL PENSEROSO. HENCE, vain deluding joys, The brood of Folly without father bred! How little you bestead Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes posses As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams, The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train. But hail, thou goddess sage and holy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, Black, but such as in esteem Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, To set her beauty's praise above The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended: Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore, His daughter she; in Saturn's reign While yet there was no fear of Jove. poet of Puritanism, that Milton is most interesting. He died in November, 1674, at his home in Bunhill Fields. pure, Come, pensive nun, devout and With a sad leaden downward cast And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet Aye round about Jove's altar sing: That in trim gardens takes his pleasure: Sweet bird, that shunn st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chantress, oft, the woods among, I woo, to hear thy even-song; And missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry, smooth-shaven green, Oft, on a plat of rising ground, Save the cricket on the hearth, What worlds or what vast regions hold Or what (though rare) of later age But, O sad Virgin, that thy power Such notes as, warbled to the string, That own'd the virtuous 1ing and glass; Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, Till civil-suited Morn appear, Not trick'd and frounced as she was wont With the Attic Boy to hunt, But kerchieft in a comely cloud, While rocking winds are piping loud, Or usher'd with a shower still, When the gust hath blown his fill, |