Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
  Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
  That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
  Nightly I visit:  nor sometimes forget
  Those other two equalled with me in fate,
  I equalled with them in renown,
  Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,[124]
  And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: 
  Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
  Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
  Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
  Tunes her nocturnal note.  Thus with the year
  Seasons return, but not to me returns
  Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
  Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
  Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
  But cloud instead, and ever-during dark,
  Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
  Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
  Presented with a universal blank
  Of nature’s works, to me expunged and rased,
  And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 
  So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
  Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
  Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
  Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
  Of things invisible to mortal sight.

[Footnote 123:  The gutta serena, or cataract.] [Footnote 124:  Homer.]

SATAN.

[From Paradise Lost.]

  He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend
  Was moving toward the shore:  his ponderous shield,
  Etherial temper, massy, large and round,
  Behind him cast; the broad circumference
  Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
  Through optic glass the Tuscan artist[125] views
  At evening from the top of Fesole,[126]
  Or in Valdamo, to descry new lands,
  Rivers or mountains on her spotty globe. 
  His spear (to equal which the tallest pine
  Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
  Of some great ammiral, were but a wand)
  He walked with, to support uneasy steps
  Over the burning marle, not like those steps
  On heaven’s azure; and the torrid clime
  Smote on him sore beside, vaulted with fire. 
  Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
  Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called
  His legions, angel-forms, who lay entranced
  Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
  In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
  High over-arched embower, or scattered sedge
  Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
  Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew
  Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
  While with perfidious hatred they pursued
  The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
  From the safe shore their floating carcasses
  And broken chariot-wheels:  so thick bestrewn,
  Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
  Under amazement of their hideous change.