Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books

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Hayes & Zell, 1854 - 312 pages
 

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Page 58 - Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song...
Page 97 - When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening
Page 81 - Me miserable ! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair ? "Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ; " And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
Page 98 - Shine not in vain ; nor think, though men were none, That heaven would want spectators, God want praise. Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep. All these with ceaseless praise his works behold Both day and night...
Page 20 - Arch-Angel ruin'd, and the excess Of glory obscured : as when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
Page 58 - Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
Page 44 - Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, A universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire.
Page 35 - A pillar of state ; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care ; And princely counsel in his face yet shone Majestic, though in ruin : sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies ; his look Drew audience and attention still as night, Or summer's noontide air...
Page 25 - In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubb'd with balm, expatiate, and confer Their state affairs...
Page 17 - With lust and violence the house of God? In courts and palaces he also reigns, And in luxurious cities, where the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury, and outrage: And when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

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