Thread: Paradise Lost

Any Milton fans on the PB?

What do you think of this work?

I am absolutely devoted to Milton and Paradise Lost is my idea of pure sublimity. Also, I enjoy his political and theological treatises as well. What other works of Milton have you read?

I didn't enjoy Paradise Lost as much as I should have.

It's an excellent poem in epic style. I used to be a poet for the John Milton Society. It was quite fun! I'm particularly fond of the opening invocation:

Sing Heav'nly Muse,that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song

Good stuff!

I have read Paradise Lost and own the Penguin copy of Milton's complete poems in my library. However, I have never read Paradise Regained. Is it up to par with Lost?

Originally Posted by DD2009

I have read Paradise Lost and own the Penguin copy of Milton's complete poems in my library. However, I have never read Paradise Regained. Is it up to par with Lost?

It's not quite as epic in scope (after all, it simply deals with Christ's temptation in the wilderness), but if you liked Paradise Lost, then you'll probably like its sequel as well. Satan still speaks in that curiously grandiose, convoluted way of his which is so much fun to read (and memorize!) and Christ rebuts him with some no-nonsense, Milton-style logic.

1645
THE PASSION
by John Milton

I
Ere-while of Musick, and Ethereal mirth,
Wherwith the stage of Ayr and Earth did ring,
And joyous news of heav'nly Infants birth,
My muse with Angels did divide to sing;
But headlong joy is ever on the wing,
In Wintry solstice like the shortn'd light
Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living night.

II

For now to sorrow must I tune my song,
And set my Harpe to notes of saddest wo,
Which on our dearest Lord did sease er'e long,
Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse then so,
Which he for us did freely undergo.
Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight
Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight.

III

He sov'ran Priest stooping his regall head
That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,
Poor fleshly Tabernacle entered,
His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies;
O what a Mask was there, what a disguise!
Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,
Then lies him meekly down fast by his Brethrens side.

IV

These latter scenes confine my roving vers,
To this Horizon is my Phoebus bound,
His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,
And former sufferings other where are found;
Loud o're the rest Cremona's Trump doth sound;
Me softer airs befit, and softer strings
Of Lute, or Viol still, more apt for mournful things.

V

Befriend me night best Patroness of grief,
Over the Pole thy thickest mantle throw,
And work my flatter'd fancy to belief,
That Heav'n and Earth are colour'd with my wo;
My sorrows are too dark for day to know:
The leaves should all be black whereon I write,
And letters where my tears have washt a wannish white.

VI

See see the Chariot, and those rushing wheels,
That whirl'd the Prophet up at Chebar flood,
My spirit som transporting Cherub feels,
To bear me where the Towers of Salem stood,
Once glorious Towers, now sunk in guiltles blood;
There doth my soul in holy vision sit
In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatick fit.

VII

Mine eye hath found that sad Sepulchral rock
That was the Casket of Heav'ns richest store,
And here though grief my feeble hands up-lock,
Yet on the softned Quarry would I score
My plaining vers as lively as before;
For sure so well instructed are my tears,
That they would fitly fall in order'd Characters.

VIII

Or should I thence hurried on viewles wing,
Take up a weeping on the Mountains wilde,
The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring
Would soon unboosom all their Echoes milde,
And I (for grief is easily beguild)
Might think th' infection of my sorrows loud,
Had got a race of mourners on som pregnant cloud.

This Subject the Author finding to be above the yeers he had, when
he wrote it, and nothing satisfi'd with what was begun, left it
unfinisht.

Link: The Poems of John Milton

Hauntingly beautiful...I wish that I could write that sort of juvenilia!

Paradise Lost is amazing. You won't find many who would disagree. Paradise Regained...not so great.
The one irritating thing about studying Paradise Lost, as I did for my BA in Humanities, in a modern classroom is how the professors almost always contend that Lucifer is a "romantic hero" in Paradise Lost. It is as if they have never read the work.

Originally Posted by Grillsy

Paradise Lost is amazing. You won't find many who would disagree. Paradise Regained...not so great.
The one irritating thing about studying Paradise Lost, as I did for my BA in Humanities, in a modern classroom is how the professors almost always contend that Lucifer is a "romantic hero" in Paradise Lost. It is as if they have never read the work.

I think "romantic" would be appropriate to Milton's mindset, as romance was part of man's revolt against God (mind you, I'm not positing cupidity as original sin, nor was Milton). Man's lust unchained was what led to the fall.

As for a hero, you've got to be kidding me!! He would be a romantic antagonist.

Cheers,

-----Added 10/21/2009 at 01:21:50 EST-----

Sonnet: On his blindness

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

[quote=Christusregnat;704676]

Originally Posted by Grillsy

As for a hero, you've got to be kidding me!! He would be a romantic antagonist.

I was just about to post something similar to what you said, but you summed my own opinion up. Romantic antagonist -- precisely the way I would describe Milton's Satan.

Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity is one of my favourites

I love Paradise Lost, but I haven't read anything else Milton has written. I was actually reading it in a college course on Christian literature when I was first learning about Reformed theology, and I found some of satan's soliloquies to be more helpful to my thinking on predestination versus free well than anything else I was reading at the time.

But I also had a good laugh at the part when satan goes to check out those new humans, and the demons were bored in hell and trying to occupy themselves with various activies and:

Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost. (Book II, 557-561)

I haven't read the book yet but I have the album by Symphony X.

(For power and prog metal fans only!!!!)

But I also had a good laugh at the part when satan goes to check out those new humans, and the demons were bored in hell and trying to occupy themselves with various activies

Paradise Lost is full of wonderful touches.
My children when they were quite small loved the bit where the devils were turned into snakes, tried to eat fruit which turned to cinders and ashes, and then
"...with hatefullest disrelish writhed their jaws..."

they thought that was very neat, - poetry that actually makes you do the thing it's talking about!