The Hymn / John Milton

It was the winter wild,

While the heaven-born Child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;

Nature in awe to Him

Had doffed her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize:

It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

On Time / John Milton

Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,

Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,

Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;

And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,

Which is no more than what is false and vain,

And merely mortal dross;

So little is our loss,

So little is thy gain.

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity / John Milton

This is the month, and this the happy morn,

Wherein the Son of Heav'n's Eternal King,

Of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring;

For so the holy sages once did sing

That He our deadly forfeit should release,

And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

Lycidas / John Milton

In this monody the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637; and by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,

And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

L'Allegro / John Milton

This is the companion piece to Milton's "Il Penseroso".

Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night raven sings;

There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

Il Penseroso / John Milton

This is the companion piece to Milton's "L'Allegro".

Hence, vain deluding joys,

The brood of folly without father bred,

How little you bestead,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!

Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,

As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,

Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.

At a Solemn Music / John Milton

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy,

Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse,

Wed your divine sounds, and mixed pow'r employ,

Dead things with inbreathed sense able to pierce;

And to our high-raised phantasy present

That undisturbed song of pure concent,

Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne

To Him that sits thereon,

An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare / John Milton

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.