In darkness from excessive splendour born,
By gods unseen, unless thro' lustre lost.
Throned inaccessible, but when thou shadest
The full blaze of thy beams, and . . .
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
(Of God in each case.)

As when a wretch, from thick, polluted air,
Darkness, and stench, and suffocating damps,
And dungeon-horrors, by kind fate, discharg'd
Climbs some fair eminence, where ether pure
Surrounds him, and Elysian prospects rise,
His heart exults, his spirits cast their load.
As one who, long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight.

Whence descends

Urania, my celestial guest! who deigns
Nightly to visit me, so mean.

Descend from Heaven, Urania.

Of my celestial patroness, who deigns

Her nightly visitation unimplored.

Smit with the pomp of lofty sentiments.

Smit with the love of sacred song.

Fall, how profound! like Lucifer's, the fall!...

.... hurl'd headlong, hurl'd at once

To night! to nothing!

Ib. iv (i. 64).

P. L. iii. 377-82.

Ib. iv (i. 69).

P. L. ix. 445-9; cf. iii. 543–53.

Ib. v (i. 84).

P. L. vii. 1.

P. L. ix. 21-2.

Ib. vii (i. 155). P. L. iii. 29.

Ib. vii (i. 157).

Ib. ix (i. 279).

THOMAS WARTON1

When chants the milk-maid at her balmy pail,
And weary reapers whistle o'er the vale.
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,

And the milkmaid singeth blithe.

O'er Isis' willow-fringed banks I stray'd.
By the rushy-fringèd bank,

Where grows the willow and the osier dank.

I fram'd the Doric lay.

O for the warblings of the Doric ote,

That wept the youth deep-whelm'd in ocean's tide!
And he, sweet master of the Doric oat.
But now my oat proceeds. ...

With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.

From her loose hair the dropping dew she press'd.
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.

No more thy love-resounding sonnets suit
To notes of pastoral pipe, or oaten flute.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to the oaten flute.

My Muse divine still keeps her wonted state,
The mien erect, and high majestic gait.
That Albion still shall keep her wonted state.
Come, but keep thy wonted state,
With even step, and musing gait.

To hold short dalliance with the tuneful Nine.
With her, as years successive glide,

I'll hold divinest dalliance.

Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse.

Ye cloisters pale.

The studious cloisters pale.

I see the sable-suited Prince advance.

Till civil-suited Morn appear.

Sat sable-vested Night.

The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipp'd ark.

She rests her weary feet, and plumes her wings.
Her painted wings Imagination plumes.
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.

To drop the sweeping pall of scepter'd pride.
To throw the scepter'd pall of state aside.
In sceptred pall come sweeping by.

With even step he walk'd, and constant hand.
With even step, and musing gait.

Triumph of Isis, 3-4.

Allegro, 63-5.

Ib. 6.

Comus, 890-1.

Ib. 8.

Elegy on Prince of Wales, 1-2. King's Birthday, 1786, 27.

Lycidas, 88, 189.

Triumph of Isis, 17. Comus, 863.

Ib. 21-2.

Lycidas, 32-3.

Ib. 75-6 (original form). New Year 1786, 90.

Penseroso, 37-8.

Triumph of Isis, 98.

Approach of Summer, 336-7.
P. L. ix. 443.

Triumph of Isis, 153.
Penseroso, 156.

Ib. 240.