138. MORNING PRAYER OF ADAM AND EVE. (Book V.) These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then, In these thy lowest works; yet these declare Him first, him last, him midst, and without end. If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow, To hill or valley, fountain or fresh shade, FROM PARADISE REGAINED.' 139. ATHENS. (Book IV.) Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, City, or suburban, studious walks and shades: Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites To studious musing: there Ilissus rolls His whispering stream: within the walls then view Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next: By voice or hand; and various-measured verse, And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, In chorus or iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne: To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear, From Heaven descended to the low-roof'd house Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home, 140. FROM 'SAMSON AGONISTES.' Lament of Samson. O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eased, Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:" Without all hope of day! O first-created Beam, and thou great Word, "Let there be light, and light was over all;" Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? The sun to me is dark, And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. She all in every part; why was this sight And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, By privilege of death and burial, From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs; But made hereby obnoxious more To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes. FROM THE SONNETS. 141. SONNET ON HIS OWN 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." 142. ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT. Avenge, oh Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 143. FROM THE AREOPAGITICA. ARGUMENT FOR THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors,—for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself; kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth |