The Paradise Lost of MiltonCambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 - 60 sivua Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1827. Excerpt: ... Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; 17 Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son; If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroick song 25 Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroick deemed; chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havock fabled knights In battles feigned; the better fortitude Of patience and heroick martyrdom Unsung; or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, imblazoned shields, 34 Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals; The skill of artifice or office mean, Not that which justly gives heroick name To person, or to poem. Me, of these Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument 42 Remains; sufficient of itself to raise 43 That name, unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing Depressed; and much they may, if all be mine, Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear. The sun was sunk, and after him the star Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter 'Twixt day and night, and now from end to end 51 Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon round: When Satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved In meditated fraud and malice, bent On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless returned. By night he fled, and at midnight returned From compassing the earth; cautious of day, Since Uriel, regent of the sun descried 60 His ent... |