John Milton

From “Paradise Lost”

 

 

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.
Evil, be thou my good.

 

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

 

For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.

 

O fairest of creation! last and best
Of all God's works! creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!
How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,
Defaced, deflowered, and now to Death devote?

 

The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.



Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things:
One foot he centered, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, `Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds,
This be thy just circumference, O world.'

- Paradise Lost (VII.224-31)
"Whence the Soul / Reason receives, and reason is her being, / Discursive, or intuitive; discourse / Is oftest Yours, the latter most is ours, / Differing but in degree, of kind the same."

Back to the database of writers | Send more excerpts | Back to Literature | Home