Milton's L'allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas |
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Common terms and phrases
Adonais Æneid allusion ancient beauty Ben Jonson brother Browne called Cambridge character charm chastity Class classical Comus Corineus darkness daughter Dict edition Elizabethan enchanter English epithet Essays Estrildis Explain eyes fair flowers genius goddess golden grace Greek Hales hath Heaven Il Penseroso imagination Jerram John Milton Jove Keightley L'Al L'Allegro Lady Landor Latin lines Literature Locrine look up etymology Lord Brackley Lycidas masque Masson meaning Melancholy Milton mind mirth Monody mortal Muse nature Neptune night nymph Odyssey Paradise Lost passage pastoral poetry Penseroso perhaps phrase poem poet poetic prose quoted by Todd referring Robin Goodfellow Sabrina says Schmidt seems sense Shakespeare Shakspere Shakspere's shepherd sing sister solemn song soul Spenser Spir spirit star supposed sweet thee Theocritus thou thought Thyrsis Trent verb Verity verse Virgil Virtue Warton wood word youth
Popular passages
Page xi - Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Page 50 - YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due : For Lycidas* is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer : Who would not sing for Lycidas ? He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
Page 6 - With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus...
Page xlix - Memory and her siren daughters ; but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases.
Page 51 - Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield, and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn...
Page 5 - Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. Towered cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold...
Page 21 - Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night ? I did not err: there does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
Page 53 - Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake Creep and intrude and climb into the fold ! Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Page 52 - Ay me ! I fondly dream — Had ye been there — for what could that have done ? What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar His gory visage down the stream was sent, Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore...
Page 12 - Or the unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.