John Milton

Selected Longer Poems and Prose

John Milton, Tony Davies, Tony Davies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317762164
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

An edition of Milton's later work rk includes the text of six books of Paradise Lost, The History of Britain and the whole of Samson Agonistes. Through his introduction, commmentary and full annotations, Tony Davies sets the works in their political and cultural contexts, and discusses such themes as the `heroic'; sexuality and gender; and Milton's interrogation of the meaning of history.

JOHN MILTON

Selected Longer Poems and Prose

Paradise Lost

The verse

The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.

Book I

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater man

Restore us and regain that blissful seat, 5

Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed

In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of chaos; or if Sion hill 10

Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence

Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above th’Aonian mount while it pursues 15

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first

Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread 20

Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss

And mad’st it pregnant. What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support,

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal providence, 25

And justify the ways of God to men.

Say first, for heaven hides nothing from thy view

Nor the deep tract of hell, say first what cause

Mov’d our grand parents in that happy state,

Favour’d of heaven so highly, to fall off 30

From their creator, and transgress his will

For one restraint, lords of the world besides?

Who first seduc’d them to that foul revolt?

Th’ infernal serpent; he it was whose guile

Stirr’d up with envy and revenge deceiv’d 35

The mother of mankind, what time his pride

Had cast him out from heaven with all his host

Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring

To set himself in glory above his peers

He trusted to have equall’d the most high 40

If he oppos’d, and with ambitious aim

Against the throne and monarchy of God

Rais’d impious war in heaven and battle proud

With vain attempt. Him the almighty power

Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’etherial sky 45

With hideous ruin and combustion down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

In adamantine chains and penal fire

Who durst defy th’omnipotent to arms.

Nine times the space that measures day and night 50

To mortal men he with his horrid crew

Lay vanquish’d, rolling in the fiery gulf,

Confounded though immortal; but his doom

Reserv’d him to more wrath, for now the thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 55

Torments him. Round he throws his baleful eyes

That witness’d huge affliction and dismay

Mix’d with obdurate pride and steadfast hate....