133. EVENING IN EDEN. (Book IV.)
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale: She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
134. MORNING PRAYER OF ADAM AND EVE. (Book V.)
These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty! Thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then, Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these heavens To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine. Speak, ye who best can tell, ye sons of light, Angels for ye behold him, and with songs And choral symphonies, day without night, Circle his throne rejoicing; ye in heaven, On earth join all ye creatures to extol
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end. Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere, While day arises, that sweet hour of prime. Thou sun, of this great world both eye and soul, Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st, And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fall'st. Moon, that now meet'st the orient sun, now fly'st, With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies;
And ye five other wandering fires, that move
In mystic dance not without song, resound His praise, who out of darkness called up light.
Air, and ye elements, the eldest birth
Of nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform; and mix
And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change Vary to our great Maker still new praise. Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray, Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, In honor to the world's great Author rise; Whether to deck with clouds the uncolored sky, Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers, Rising or falling, still advance his praise.
His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines, With every plant, in sign of worship wave. Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow, Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise. Join voices, all ye living souls: ye birds, That, singing, up to heaven-gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep; Witness if I be silent, morn or even,
To hill or valley, fountain or fresh shade, Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise. Hail, universal Lord! be bounteous still To give us only good; and if the night Have gathered aught of evil or concealed, Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.
FROM "PARADISE REGAINED."
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold Where on the Ægean shore a city stands, Built nobly; pure the air, and light the soil; Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits,
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City, or suburban, studious walks and shades: See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There flowery hill Hymettus with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites
To studious musing: there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world, Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:
There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand; and various-measured verse, Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called, Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own: Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate, and chance, and change in human life; High actions, and high passions best describing: Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne:
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and the Stoic severe :
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home, Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight: These rules will render thee a king complete Within thyself; much more with empire joined.
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased, Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first-created Beam, and thou great Word, "Let there be light, and light was over all;" Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? The sun to me is dark,
And silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Since light so necessary is to life, And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the soul,
She all in every part; why was this sight To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and easy to be quenched? And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, That she might look at will through every poie? Then had I not been thus exiled from light, As in the land of darkness, yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death, And buried; but, O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave; Buried, yet not exempt,
By privilege of death and burial,
From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs;
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
FROM THE SONNETS.
137. SONNET ON HIS Own Blindness.
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He, returning, chide; "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait."
138. ON THE Late MassaCRE IN PIEDMONT. Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truths so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundred fold, who, having learned thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
139. ARGUMENT FOR THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.
I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors, - for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself; kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and revolutions
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