EDMUND WALLER: 1605-1687.

Waller figured on the popular side in the Long Parliament, but afterwards became a royalist. His poetry chiefly consists in complimentary verses. He wrote a panegyric on Cromwell, which is one of his most vigorous poems. At the Restoration he was ready with a congratulatory address to Charles II. It was considered inferior to the verses on Cromwell, and the king is said to have told the poet of the disparity. 'Poets, sire,' replied the witty courtier, 'succeed better in fiction than in truth.'

ON A GIRDLE.

That which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind:
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer;
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair.
Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.

OLD AGE AND DEATH.

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more;
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made :
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home:

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

JOHN MILTON: 1608-1674

Milton, among English poets inferior only to Shakspeare, was the son of a London scrivener. He received his education at St Paul's School, London, and at Christ's College, Cambridge. In his 21st year he had written his grand Hymn on the Nativity, which is considered one of the finest odes in the language. From Cambridge he retired to his father's house at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where he spent five years in the study of classical literature. During this period he wrote the beautiful masques of Comus and Arcades; Lycidas, an exquisite elegy on a college companion, who perished by shipwreck on his passage from Chester to Ireland; and two charming descriptive pieces, entitled L'Allegro (The Man of Mirth) and Il Penseroso (The Melancholy Man). In middle life, being of republican principles, he employed himself in writing pamphlets in favour of the Commonwealth, and afterwards acted as Latin secretary to Cromwell. Unceasing study had affected his eyesight, and in 1652 he became totally blind. At the Restoration he retired to Chalfont, in Bucks, where, in 1665, he completed his great epic, Paradise Lost, which had been commenced in 1658. In 1671 he produced Paradise Regained, a sequel to Paradise Lost, but much inferior to it, and Samson Agonistes, a dramatic poem on the story of Samson. He died in 1674, and was buried in the chancel of St Giles', Cripplegate, in London. (For specimens of Milton's Prose, see Readings in English Prose, page 33.)

FROM THE HYMN ON THE NATIVITY.

No war or battle's sound,

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hooked chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sov'reign lord was by.

But peaceful was the night,

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began:

The winds, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kissed,

Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. . .

The shepherds on the lawn,

Or ere the point of dawn,

Sat simply chatting in a rustic row; Full little thought they then

That the mighty Pan 1

Was kindly come to live with them below; Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

When such music sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,

As never was by mortal finger strook,

Divinely warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blissful rapture took :

The air, such pleasure loath to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close....

At last surrounds their sight

A globe of circular light,

That with long beams the shamefaced night arrayed; The helmed cherubim,

And sworded seraphim,

Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,

Harping in loud and solemn quire,

With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born heir....

The oracles are dumb;

No voice or hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.

Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos 2 leaving.

No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell....

But see, the Virgin blest

Hath laid her Babe to rest;

Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:

1 The god of shepherds.

2 In Phocis, the seat of the oracle of Apollo.

Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fixed her polished car,

Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable

Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.

FROM L'ALLEGRO.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee

Jest, and youthful Jollity,

Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,

And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty :
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free :
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet brier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine :
While the cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before :
Sometimes walking not unseen
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,

....

the goddess of youth

Robed in flames, and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures;
Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied:
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide:
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.

adorned

FROM PARADISE LOST.

SATAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN. Book iv.

O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice; and add thy name,
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless king.
Ah, wherefore? He deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,