John Milton
John Milton
John Miltonwas an English poet, polemicist, and man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, written in blank verse...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 December 1608
blown fading soft sooner
O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted, / Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.
fiery shades
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, / Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.
blaze eclipse hope total
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,/ Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse / Without all hope of day!
spray woods
O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray / Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still.
rude winter
It was the winter wild, / While the Heaven-born child, / All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.
among faithful
The seraph Abdiel, faithful found, / Among the faithless, faithful only he.
dark deserts hid night silent sun
The sun to me is dark / And silent as the moon, / When she deserts the night / Hid in her vacant, interlunar cave.
bad exalted merit raised satan
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised / To that bad eminence.
cared less rather
Rather than be less / Cared not to be at all.
armies arms clad ran
Ran on embattled armies clad in iron, / And weaponless himself, / Made arms ridiculous.
side wild
Dingle, or bushy dell of this wild wood, / And every bosky bourn from side to side.
contagion flashy foul hungry lean mist pipes rank rot sheep songs wretched
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs / Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw, / The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, / But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, / Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.
embryos
Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars / White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.
anon bed flames forehead morning ocean tricks
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, / And yet anon repairs his drooping head, / And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore, / Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.