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LIFE.

  It is not life upon thy gifts to live,
  But to grow fixed with deeper roots in Thee;
  And when the sun and showers their bounties give,
  To send out thick-leaved limbs; a fruitful tree
  Whose green head meets the eye for many a mile,
  Whose spreading boughs a friendly shelter rear,
  And full-faced fruits their blushing welcome smile
  As to its goodly shade our feet draw near. 
  Who tastes its gifts shall never hunger more,
  For ’t is the Father spreads the pure repast,
  Who, while we eat, renews the ready store,
  Which at his bounteous board must ever last;
  And, as the more we to his children lend,
  The more to us doth of his bounty send.

JONES VERY.

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SELECTIONS FROM PARADISE LOST.

BOOK I.

  THE POET’S THEME.

  Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit
  Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
  Brought death into the world and all our woe,
  With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
  Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
  Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
  Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
  That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
  In the beginning how the heavens and earth
  Rose out of Chaos; or if Sion hill
  Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
  Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
  Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song. 
  That with no middle flight intends to soar
  Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
  Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

    And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
  Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
  Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
  Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
  Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss,
  And mad’st it pregnant:  what in me is dark
  Illumine, what is low raise and support;
  That to the height of this great argument
  I may assert eternal Providence,
  And justify the ways of God to men.

BOOK IX.

  THE TEMPTATION.

    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
  Of heavier on himself, fearless returned. 
  By night he fled, and at midnight returned
  From compassing the Earth;

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