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
dapper fairy sand
On the tawny sands and shelves trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
bogs fierce bitter
And feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.
thieves youth subtle
Time is the subtle thief of youth.
done boast
Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do.
religious eye blow
And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced choir below, In service high, and anthems clear As may, with sweetness, through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
son paradise able
But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuity; ay me, that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head; both Death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in me all Paradise Lost Posterity stands cursed: fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons; O were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!
self earth centre
And the earth self-balanced on her centre hung.
weed sea dank
Have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea.
wells
All seemed well pleased, all seemed, but were not all.
morning hands light
Morn, Wak'd by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarr'd the gates of light.
house temples towers
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground.
hypocrite mysterious innocence
Nor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial love refused: Whatever hypocrites austerely talk Of purity and place and innocence, Defaming as impure what God declares Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
garden two joy
Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude.
evil promise followers
That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.