mple wooer,
Since from myself I stand in doubt to fly,
Lady, to thee my heart's poor gift would I
Offer devoutly; and by tokens sure
I know it faithful, fearless, constant, pure,
In its conceptions graceful, good, and high.
When the world roars, and flames the startled sky;
In its own adamant it rests secure;
As free from chance and malice ever found,
And fears and hopes that vulgar minds confuse,
As it is loyal to each manly thing
And to the sounding lyre and to the Muse.
Only in that part is it not so sound
Where Love hath set in it his cureless sting."

It is highly probable that the very reaction from party strife turned
the young man's fancies to thoughts of love in the spring of 1643.
Escorted, we must fear, by a chorus of mocking cuckoos, Milton, about
May 21st, rode into the country on a mysterious errand. It is a ghoulish
and ogreish idea, but it really seems as if the elder Milton quartered
his progeny upon his debtors, as the ichneumon fly quarters hers upon
caterpillars. Milton had, at all events for the last sixteen years, been
regularly drawing interest from an Oxfordshire squire, Richard Powell
of Forest Hill, who owed him L500, which must have been originally
advanced by the elder Milton. The Civil War had no doubt interfered with
Mr. Powell's ability to pay interest, but, on the other hand, must have
equally impaired Milton's ability to exact it; for the Powells were
Cavaliers, and the Parliament's writ would run but lamely in loyal
Oxfordshire. Whether Milton went down on this eventful Whitsuntide in
the capacity of a creditor cannot now be known; and a like uncertainty
envelops the precise manner of the metamorphosis of Mary Powell into
Mary Milton. The maiden of seventeen may have charmed him by her
contrast to the damsels of the metropolis, she may have shielded him
from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the
Royalist headquarters, she may have won his heart while pleading for her
harassed father; he may have fancied hers a mind he could mould to
perfect symmetry and deck with every accomplishment, as the Gods
fashioned and decorated Pandora. Milton also seems to imply that his, or
his bride's, better judgment was partly overcome by "the persuasion of
friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all." It is
possible, too, that he had long been intimate with his debto