...love. His most sensual encounter in L' Allegro is with poetic song: And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse...a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running. (11. 135-142) Here Milton...

...continues: ...immortal verse... .. .with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, I40 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice...of harmony, That Orpheus' self may heave his head I45 From golden slumber on a bed Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won...

...sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child, Warble his native Wood-notes wild. And ever against eating Cares, 135 Lap me in soft Lydian Airs, Married to immortal verse,...all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; 104. Friar's Lantern: the will-o'-the-wisp. 132. Comedy resembles the figure on the title 105-110....

...the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness, long drawn out: With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice,...all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony, The subject here is song — specifically, how singing, while it may lead us through a thousand complications,...

...relief, as Milton described in L' Allegro: with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice...all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony. (139-44) Milton seems to have considered the verse paragraph as his unit of construction. The syntactical...