won
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well-touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of these delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

In the last, 'On his deceased Wife,' the allusion to Alcestis is
beautiful, and shows how the poet's mind raised and refined his thoughts
by exquisite classical conceptions, and how these again were enriched
by a passionate reference to actual feelings and images. It is this rare
union that gives such voluptuous dignity and touching purity to Milton's
delineation of the female character:--

Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heav'n without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight:
But O as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

There could not have been a greater mistake or a more unjust piece of
criticism than to suppose that Milton only shone on great subjects, and
that on ordinary occasions and in familiar life his mind was unwieldy,
averse to the cultivation of grace and elegance, and unsusceptible
of harmless pleasures. The whole tenor of his smaller compositions
contradicts this opinion, which, however, they have been cited to
confirm. The notion first got abroad from the bitterness (or vehemence)
of his controversial writings, and has been kept up since with little
meaning and with less truth. His Letters to Donatus and others are not
more remarkable for the display of a scholastic enthusiasm than for that
of the most amiable dispositions. They are 'severe in youthful virtue
unreproved.' There is a passage in his prose-works (the Treatise on
Education) which shows, I think, his extreme openness and proneness to
pleasing outward impressions in a striking point