Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/145

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" War to the last he waged with all

The tyrant canker-worms of Earth;

Baron and duke, in hold and hall,

Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth;

He used Rome's harlot for his mirth;

Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime;

But valiant souls of knightly worth

Transmitted to the rolls of Time."

The antique charm, meanwhile, had fled to England, ever attaching itself to the youth of From Chaucer to Milton. poesy in each new land. The English springtime!—to be young in it is very heaven, since it is the fairest of all such seasons in all climes. It gladdens the meadows and purling streams of Dan Chaucer's Tales and Romaunts, and in their minstrelsy he forgot himself, like a child that roams afield in May. With Spenser, and the Tudor sonneteers, the self-expressive poetry of England fairly begins. They, and their common antique and Italian models, were the teachers of Milton in his youth. The scholar gave us what is still in the front rank of our English masterpieces and, with one exception, the latest of those rhythmical creations which belong to the world at large.

Milton in his epic appears less determinedly as the rhapsodist in person than Dante in "Paradise Lost." the "Divine Comedy." He sees his vision by invocation of the Muse, while the Florentine is "personally conducted," one may say, on his tour through the three phantasmal abodes. Doubtless "Paradise Lost" is the more objective work;