John Milton

Still govern thou my song,

Urania, and fit audience find, though few.

Knowledge forbidd'n?

Suspicious, reasonless. Why should thir Lord

Envie them that? can it be sin to know,

Can it be death? and do they onely stand

By Ignorance, is that thir happie state,

The proof of thir obedience and thir faith?

O fair foundation laid whereon to build

Thir ruine! Hence I will excite thir minds

With more desire to know, and to reject

Envious commands, invented with designe

To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt

Equal with Gods; aspiring to be such,

They taste and die: what likelier can ensue?

So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found;

Among the faithless, faithful only he.

There Leviathan

Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,

And seems a moving land, and at his gills

Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

Morn,

Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand

Unbarred the gates of light.

The timely dew of sleep.

All seemed well pleased, all seemed but were not all.

As Jupiter

On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds

That shed May flowers.

A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,

And pavement stars,—as stars to thee appear

Seen in the galaxy, that milky way

Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest

Powder'd with stars.

With thee conversing I forget all time,

All seasons, and their change; all please alike.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun

When first on this delightful land he spreads

His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,

Glist'ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth

After soft showers; and sweet the coming on

Of grateful ev'ning mild; then silent night

With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,

And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:

But neither breath of morn when she ascends

With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun

On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,

Glist'ring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,

Nor grateful ev'ning mild, nor silent night

With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon

Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.

Imparadis'd in one another's arms.

How few somtimes may know, when thousands err.