John Milton

See how from far upon the Eastern rode / The star-led Wizards haste with odours sweet: / O run, prevent them with thy humble ode, / And lay it lowly at his blessed feet; / Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet, / And joyn thy voice unto the Angel Quire, / From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow'd fire.

A thousand fantasies / Begin to throng into my memory.

Sometimes 5 Imprimaturs are seen together dialogue-wise in the Piatza of one Title page, complementing and ducking each other with their shav'n reverences, whether the Author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his Epistle, shall to the Presse or to the spunge.

That those evills of Prelaty which before from five or six and twenty Sees were distributivly charg'd upon the whole people, will now light wholly upon learning, is not obscure to us […]

[T]hat mysterious iniquity provokt and troubl'd at the first entrance of Reformation, sought out new limbo's and new hells wherein they might include our Booke also within the number of their damned.

But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter.

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.

Then to the well-trod stage anon, / If Jonsons learned Sock be on, / Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe, / Warble his native Wood-notes wilde,

There on beds of violets blue, / And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew, / Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, / So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

There, under ebon shades... in dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

Right against the eastern gate, / Where the great sun begins his state, / Robed in flames, and amber light, / The clouds in thousand liveries dight […].

[…] I send him back again for a phylactery to stitch upon his arrogance, that censures not onely before conviction so bitterly without so much as one reason giv'n, but censures the Congregation of his Governors to their faces, for not being so hasty as himself to censure.

He who writes himself Martyr by his own inscription, is like an ill painter, who by writing on a shapeless picture which he hath drawn, is fain to tell passengers what shape it is, which else no man could imagine.

He on his side / Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love / Hung over her enamoured.

Forth rush the levant and the ponent winds.

Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, / While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof.

Much pleasure we have lost while we abstained / From this delightful fruit, nor known till now / True relish, tasting.

more, it seems, inflamed with lust than rage

Meanwhile the eternal eye, whose sight discerns Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount, And from within the golden lamps that burn Nightly before him, saw without their light Rebellion rising,—saw in whom, how spread Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes Were banded to oppose his high decree;

His fair large front and eye sublime declared / Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks / Round from his parted forelock manly hung / Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:

Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons / Conjured against the Highest.

With solemn adoration down they [the angels] cast / Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold; / Immortal Amarant, a Flour which once / In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life / Began to bloom, but soon for mans offence / To Heav'n remov'd where first it grew, there grows, / And flours aloft shading the Fount of Life, […]

[T]he Cohort bright / Of watchful Cherubim; four faces each / Had, like a double Janus, all thir shape / Spangl'd with eyes more numerous then those / Of Argus, and more wakeful then to drouze, […]

Who, for so many benefits received, / Turned recreant to God, ingrate and false, / And so of all true good himself despoiled;

Under his special eye / Abstemious I grew up and thrived amain; / He led me on to mightiest deeds / Above the nerve of mortal arm / Against the uncircumcised, our enemies;

Who, for so many benefits received, / Turned recreant to God, ingrate and false, / And so of all true good himself despoiled;

Crystal and myrrhine cups, embossed with gems / And studs of pearl.

Then swoll'n with pride into the snare I fell / Of fair, fallacious looks, venereal trains, / Softn'd with pleasure and voluptuous life; [...]

So Dagon shall be magnifi'd, and God, / Besides whom is no God, compar'd with Idols, / Disglorifi'd, blasphem'd, and had in scorn […]

I shall, thou say'st, expel / A brutish monster: what if I withal / Expel a Devil who first made him such?

Riches are mine, Fortune is in my hand; / They whom I favour thrive in wealth amain, / While Virtue, Valour, Wisdom sit in want.

Immediately / Was Samson as a public servant brought, / In thir state Livery clad; before him Pipes / and Timbrels, on each side went armed guards, / Both horse and foot before him and behind / Archers, and Slingers, Cataphracts and Spears.

[He] with holiest Meditations fed, / Into himself descended, and at once / All his great work to come before him set; […]