John Milton

But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused From under ashes into sudden flame

My rising is thy fall

Behold the kings of the Earth how they oppress Thy chosen, to what highth thir pow'r unjust They have exalted, and behind them cast All fear of thee, arise and vindicate Thy Glory, free thy people from thir yoke

Be frustrate, all ye stratagems of Hell, And devilish machinations come to nought.

To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

Attic tragedies of stateliest and most regal argument.

In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.

Ornate rhetoric thought out of the rule of Plato... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.

Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

I shall detain you no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct ye to a hillside, where I will point ye out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else …

Litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees.

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents.

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue: Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; 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 …

Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world.

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: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed …

Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook.

Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).

It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return!