John Milton
John Milton
John Miltonwas an English poet, polemicist, and man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, written in blank verse...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 December 1608
absolutely active books bred certain contain dead intellect life living purest soul whose
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a certain potency of life in them, to be as active as the soul whose progeny they are; they preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them.
love obey whom
Be strong, live happy, and love, but first of all Him whom to love is to obey
heaven hell rule serve
Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven
blest pair voice
Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'n's joy,/ Sphere-born harmonious sisters, voice and verse.
black dreadful fierce shook stood ten terrible
Black it stood as night, / Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, / And shook a dreadful dart.
dark deserts hid night silent sun
The sun to me is dark / And silent as the moon, / When she deserts the night / Hid in her vacant, interlunar cave.
anon bed flames forehead morning ocean tricks
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, / And yet anon repairs his drooping head, / And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore, / Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
gorgeous presenting sometime sweeping tale tragedy
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy / In sceptred pall come sweeping by, / Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, / Or the tale of Troy divine.
art knitting listen loose thou thy train twisted
Sabrina fair, / Listen where thou art sitting/ Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, / In twisted braids of lilies knitting / The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.
side wild
Dingle, or bushy dell of this wild wood, / And every bosky bourn from side to side.
astray behold head highest led near riding wandering wide
To behold the wandering moon, / Riding near her highest noon, / Like one that had been led astray / Through the heav'n's wide pathless way; / And oft, as if her head she bowed, / Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
busy cities hum please
Towered cities please us then / And the busy hum of men.
arabian bird knows lay nor second self woods
Like that self-begotten bird / In the Arabian woods embost, / That no second knows nor third, / And lay ere while a holocaust.
deep devour fly hell lower lowest opens seems suffer
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n