📔 Paradise Regained

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; […]