Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/147

Rh it, was his theme. His hero, the majestic Satan of his own creation, outvies the Æschylean demigod. The Puritan bard, like Dante, idealized an era and a religion. In the matter and style of the sublimest epic of Christendom its maker's individuality everywhere is felt. The blind seer seems dictating it throughout. We see his head bowed upon his breast; we hear the prophetic voice rehearsing its organ-tones; and thus we should see and hear, even if we could forget that outburst at the opening of the Third Book, wherein, after the radiant conception of the "Eternal coeternal beam," the sonorous declaration of his purposed higher flight, and the pathetic references to his blindness, his final invocation enables all after-time to recognize the inward light from which his imagination drew its splendor:

Milton's eventide sonnets, incomparable for virility and eloquence, are also nobly pathetic; His sonnets. there are no personal strains more full of heroic endurance. Not again was there a minstrel so resolved on personal expression, yet so creative, so full of conviction that often begat didacticism, yet so sensitive to impressions of beauty, until we come to Shelley—and his flight, alas! was ended, while,