Paradise Lost

“ How beautiful is this green world, which we inhabit! See yonder, how the moonlight mingles with the mist! What a glorious night is this! Truly every man has a Paradise around him until he sins, and the angel of an accusing conscience drives him from his Eden. And even then there are holy hours, when this angel sleeps, and man comes back, and, with the innocent eyes of a child, looks into his lost Paradise again,--into the broad gates and rural solitudes of Nature. ”

“ Daylight chases away this illusion, but brings back the reality of Christian work, whose rugged but cheerful tasks replace the delicious but ineffectual dreams of Paradise Lost, by the hope of contributing, in some humble measure, toward restoring in a province of fallen earth the lineaments of Paradise Regained. ”

“ Paradise Lost will not bear--it could at no time, not even in the most theological of ages, have borne--the more searching tests of realism, of verisimilitude, and credibility. It is all the greater skill in the poet that by his careful handling of our imagination and feelings he actually does produce "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith." The less it will endure the trial as a system or theory of the universe, the more wonderful does it appear as a work of art. ”

“ There was the fallen world, as men call it, shining in glory and gladness, because God was there; here was the way into the lost Paradise, yea, the door into an infinitely higher Eden than that ever had or ever could have been, iron-clamped and riveted, gloomy and low-browed like the entrance to a sepulchre, and surrounded with the grim heads of grotesque monsters of the deep. ”

“ Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradise Lost; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as nice but as dull, as less to be censured for want of candour, than pitied for want of sensibility. ”

“ It may be, could we look with seeing eyes, This spot we stand on is a Paradise Where dead have come to life and lost been found, Where Faith has triumphed, Martyrdom been crowned, Where fools have foiled the wisdom of the wise; From this same spot the dust of saints may rise, And the King's prisoners come to light unbound. O earth, earth, earth, hear thou thy Maker's Word: "Thy dead thou shalt give up, nor hide thy slain"-- Some who went weeping forth shall come again Rejoicing from the east or from the west, As doves fly to their windows, love's own bird Contented and desirous to the nest. ”

“ But Paradise Regained was written as a sequel to Paradise Lost, and, as in the first poem the poet showed that Paradise was lost by the yielding of Adam and Eve to Satan, so in the second, he wished to show that Paradise was regained by the resistance of Christ to temptation, Satan's defeat signifying the regaining of Paradise for men by giving them the hope of Christ's second coming. ”

“ They decide to strike him through his child, and they plot the fall of man. In short, Paradise Lost is an intensely dramatic story of the loss of Eden. The greatest actors that ever sprang from a poet's brain appear before us on the stage, which is at one time the sulphurous pit of hell, at another the bright plains of heaven, and at another the Elysium of our first parents.
In form the poem is an epic in twelve books, containing a total of 10,565 lines. It is written in blank verse of wonderful melody and variety. ”

“ Or, if he could, how is it that, when a memorable love has been followed by a memorable bereavement, even suppose that God would replace the sufferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience, and offer to cancel the woe, but so that the sweet face which had caused the woe should also be obliterated—vehemently would every man shrink from the exchange! In the Paradise Lost, this strong instinct of man—to prefer the heavenly, mixed and polluted with the earthly, to a level experience offering neither one nor the other—is divinely commemorated. ”

“ There is not a thing I would not go through to reach you. Every time I think of your smiling face, the gates of Paradise are lost in oblivion. There is not one, oh Rose of the Moon, that could take your place in my heart. ”

“ Wandering this darksome desert, as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to light,
Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek
What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds
Confine with Heaven ”

“ For the charming legend of Paradise was to many Christian minds of this time what the long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had been to the Hellenic poets and the Roman elegist--the theme of much vivid imagery and highly-coloured word-painting.
Eternal spring softens the air, a healing flame floods the world with light, all the elements glow in healing warmth; as the shades of night fade, day rises.... ”

“ His faithful, and receive them into bliss,
Whether in Heaven or Earth; for then the Earth
Shall all be Paradise, far happier place
Than this of Eden, and far happier days.
So spake the Arch-Angel Michael; then paused,
As at the world’s great period; and our sire,
Replete with joy and wonder, thus replied.
O Goodness infinite, Goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! ”

“ Let us not lose either; let us make Death our own; in a richer, deeper, and more solemn earnestness of life. So those souls which have gone from our ark, and seemed lost over the gloomy ocean of the unknown, shall return to us, bearing the olive-leaves of Paradise. ”

“ The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and over-burdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions. ”

“ Paradise RegainedSoon after the completion of Paradise Lost, Thomas Ellwood, a friend of Milton, asked one day after reading the Paradise manuscript, "But what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" It was in response to this suggestion that Milton wrote the second part of the great epic, known to us as Paradise Regained. The first tells how mankind, in the person of Adam, fell at the first temptation by Satan and became an outcast from Paradise and from divine grace; the second shows how mankind, in the person of Christ, withstands the tempter and is established once more in the divine favor. ”

“ Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those That tell of saddest thought.”—“The golden conception of a Paradise is the poet's guiding thought.” There is a universal feeling that we are not now in our natural state; that we are far away from home; that we are exiles from our true habitation. Keble, Groans of Nature: “Such thoughts, the wreck of Paradise, Through many a dreary age, Upbore whate'er of good or wise Yet lived in bard or sage.”Poetry and music echo the longing for some possession lost. ”

“ Immortal amarant, a flower which once In Paradise, fast by the tree of life, Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft shading the fount of life, And where the river of bliss through midst of Heaven Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream; ”

“ Nowhere is loftier or more beautiful imagery employed, or wrought into 74more exquisite forms. A few short and simple words paint pictures that the world looks upon with astonishment from age to age. Paradise Lost, the most sublime imaginative poem in the language of man, drew much of its inspiration from a few passages in Genesis. Job and Isaiah are without rivals in the power of picturing by means of words, sublime objects beyond the grasp of mortal vision. ”

“ Then the angel takes Adam and Eve by the hand and leads them out by the eastern gate into the world. Gazing backward, our first parents catch their last glimpse of Paradise and behold at the gate the angel with a flaming sword. Thus, hand in hand, dropping natural tears, they pass out into the world to select their place of rest, having Providence only for their guide.
PARADISE REGAINED Having sung of Paradise Lost, Milton proposes as theme for a new epic "Paradise Regained." ”

“ In Paradise Regained we are conscious of a purposed restraint of strength. The simplicity of its style is an experiment, an essay of a new theory of poetic words. The simplicity of Samson Agonistes is a flagging of the forces, a drying up of the rich sources from which had once flowed the golden stream of suggestive phrase which makes Paradise Lost a unique monument of the English language. ”

“ His presence to these narrow bounds confined
Of Paradise, or Eden: this had been
Perhaps thy capital seat, from whence had spread
All generations; and had hither come
From all the ends of the earth, to celebrate
And reverence thee, their great progenitor.
But this pre-eminence thou hast lost, brought down
To dwell on even ground now with thy sons:
Yet doubt not but in valley, and in plain,
God is, as here; and will be found alike
Present ”

“ As human passions did not enter the world before the Fall, there is in the Paradise Lost little opportunity for the pathetick; but what little there is has not been lost. That passion which is peculiar to rational nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and the horrors attending the sense of the Divine Displeasure, are very justly described and forcibly impressed. ”

“ but away, there was always an aching for home, and the stern religion cast somewhat of a shadow over me, though, strangely enough, hell never came into my dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in "Paradise Lost." After reading that, the devil was to me no horned and hoofed horror, but the beautiful shadowed archangel, and I always hoped that Jesus, my ideal Prince, would save him in the end. ”

“ Whatever feeling of inconsistency is experienced in reading the Paradise Lost may be traced, perhaps, to the fact that the necessities of the story obliged the poet not to attempt to make the rate of causation among those beings as extraordinary as his description of them as phenomena. ”

“ I am now to examine Paradise Lost, a poem, which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the human mind. ”

“ It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the Paradise Regained, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is chained on the burning lake, in Paradise Lost. It is the prophetical wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from external injustice. ”

“ What I am trying to get at, is that we have all a lost Eden in the past and a Paradise Regained in the future. 'Twixt two unbounded seas of happiness we stand on the narrow and arid sand-spit of the present and cast a wishful eye. In hot weather particularly the wishful eye, when directed toward the lost Eden of boyhood, lights on and lingers near the Old Swimming-hole. ”

“ It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript, and to be seen in a library [11] at Cambridge, that he had digested his thoughts on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were anciently called Mysteries; and Philips had seen what he terms part of a tragedy, beginning with the first ten lines of Satan's address to the Sun. These mysteries consist of allegorical persons; such as Justice, Mercy, Faith. Of the tragedy or mystery of Paradise Lost there are two plans:
Paradise Lost. ”

“ You will readily see that with this view restitution or restoration is out of the question, and the Paradise that was lost will forever remain lost, and the earth and its history be a blot upon the pages of the Divine plan of the ages. Of the millions which the earth has produced, it is claimed that not one has ceased to be and never can cease to be. ”

“ The lost paradise is quickly regained through divine meditation. ”

“ only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith, Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, By name to come called charity, the soul Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier far.— Let us descend now therefore from this top Of speculation; ”

“ To me, who with eternal famine pine, Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven; There best, where most with ravine I may meet; Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corps. ”

“ Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God.
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 10.
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 16.
What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men. [223:1]
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.
As far as angels' ken. ”

“ Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature's loveliness? It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly, nor stay in it forever. ”

“ Hope elevates, and joy Brightens his crest; as when a wandering fire, Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night Condenses, and the cold environs round, Kindled through agitation to a flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive light, Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool ”

“ This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great Deep. ”