Quotes
Quotes - Milton
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth.
That golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.
The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger.
I will tell you now
What never yet was heard in tale or song,
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.
Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crush'd the sweet poison of misused wine.
These my sky-robes spun out of Iris' woof.
The star that bids the shepherd fold.
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice morn, on th' Indian steep
From her cabin'd loop-hole peep.
When the gray-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.
O welcome, pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!
Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smil'd!
Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul
And lap it in Elysium.
Such sober certainty of waking bliss.
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play i' th' plighted clouds.
It were a journey like the path to heaven,
To help you find them.
With thy long levell'd rule of streaming light.
Virtue could see to do what virtue would
By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,
Where with her best nurse Contemplation
She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the midday sun.
The unsunn'd heaps
Of miser's treasure.
'T is chastity, my brother, chastity:
She that has that is clad in complete steel.
Some say no evil thing that walks by night,
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,
No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.
So dear to heav'n is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heav'nly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on th' outward shape.
