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With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony,

That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed

Of heap'd Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half-regained Eurydice.

These delights if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.

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,
Hail, divinest Melancholy !

Whose saintly visage is too bright

To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view
O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue;

Black, but such as in esteem

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem,
Or that starr'd Ethiop queen that strove

To set her beauty's praise above

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended:
Yet thou art higher far descended:

Thee bright-haired Vesta, long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore;

His daughter she; in Saturn's reign
Such mixture was not held a stain:
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,

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
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypres lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn:
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:
There, held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble, till

With a sad leaden downward cast
Thou fix them on the earth as fast:

And join with thee calm Peace and Quiet
Spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring

Aye round about Jove's altar sing:
And add to these retired Leisure,

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure:
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The cherub Contemplation;
And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustom'd oak.

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,
To behold the wandering moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heavens' wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfeu sound
Over some wide-water'd shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar:
Or, if the air will not permit,
Some still removed place will fit,
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom;
Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman's drowsy charm
To bless the doors from nightly harm.
Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of those demons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under-ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet, or with element.
Some time let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine;

Or what (though rare) of later age
Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage.

But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Musæus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing

Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek
And made Hell grant what Love did seek!
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife

That own'd the virtuous 1ing and glass;
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar king did ride:
And if aught else great bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.

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,
Ending on the rustling leaves
With minute drops from off the eaves.
And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves
Of pine, or monumental oak,

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