FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158  
159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   >>   >|  
e Blind Poet. Paradise Lost. Milton and Dante. His Faults. Characteristics of the Age. Paradise Regained. His Scholarship. His Sonnets. His Death and Fame. THE BLIND POET. Milton's blindness, his loneliness, and his loss of power, threw him upon himself. His imagination, concentrated by these disasters and troubles, was to see higher things in a clear, celestial light: there was nothing to distract his attention, and he began that achievement which he had long before contemplated--a great religious epic, in which the heroes should be celestial beings and our sinless first parents, and the scenes Heaven, Hell, and the Paradise of a yet untainted Earth. His first idea was to write an epic on King Arthur and his knights: it is well for the world that he changed his intention, and took as a grander subject the loss of Paradise, full as it is of individual interest to mankind. In a consideration of his poetry, we must now first recur to those pieces which he had written at an earlier day. Before settling in London, he had, as we have seen, travelled fifteen months on the Continent, and had been particularly interested by his residence in Italy, where he visited the blind Galileo. The poems which most clearly show the still powerful influence of Italy in all European literature, and upon him especially, are the _Arcades, Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso_, and _Lycidas_, each beautiful and finished, and although Italian in their taste, yet full of true philosophy couched in charming verse. The _Arcades_, (Arcadians,) composed in 1684, is a pastoral masque, enacted before the Countess Dowager of Derby at Harefield, by some noble persons of her family. The _Allegro_ is the song of Mirth, the nymph who brings with her Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, * * * * * Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. The poem is like the nymph whom he addresses, Buxom, blithe, and debonaire. The _Penseroso_ is a tribute to tender melancholy, and is designed as a pendant to the _Allegro_: Pensive nun devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestic train. We fall in love with each goddess in turn, and find comfort for our varying moods from "grave to gay." Burke said he was certain Milto
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158  
159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Paradise
 

Allegro

 

celestial

 
Arcades
 

Penseroso

 

Milton

 

Dowager

 

Harefield

 

Countess

 

pastoral


masque

 
enacted
 

persons

 
brings
 
comfort
 

varying

 

family

 

composed

 

Arcadians

 

beautiful


finished

 

Lycidas

 

couched

 

charming

 

philosophy

 
Italian
 

goddess

 

darkest

 

blithe

 

debonaire


addresses

 

tribute

 
tender
 

Pensive

 

devout

 

steadfast

 

demure

 

melancholy

 

designed

 

pendant


holding
 
wanton
 

cranks

 

jollity

 

wreathed

 
Flowing
 

literature

 
Laughter
 
derides
 

smiles