Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/281

Rh Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect, With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights, In battles feigned—the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung—or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and torneament; then marshalled feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals; The skill of artifice or office mean, Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem. Me, of these Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument Remains, sufficient of itself to raise That name, unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing, Depressed; and much they may if all be mine, Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear. The sun was sunk, and after him the star Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter 'Twixt day and night; and now from end to end Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon round, When Satan, who late fled, before the threats Of Gabriel, out of Eden, now improved In meditated fraud and malice, bent On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap