Cyriack, this three years’ day these eyes, though clear,
  To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
  Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
  Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
  Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
  Or man, or woman.  Yet I argue not
  Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
  Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
  Right onward.  What supports me, dost thou ask? 
  The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
  In Liberty’s defence, my noble task,
  Of which all Europe talks from side to side. 
  This thought might lead me through the world’s vain masque
  Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

(3)

  Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
  Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
  Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
  Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
  From the hard season gaining?  Time will run
  On smoother, till Favonius reinspire
  The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
  The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. 
  What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
  Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
  To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
  Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? 
  He who of those delights can judge, and spare
  To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

(4)

  Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench
  Of British Themis, with no mean applause,
  Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,
  Which others at their bar so often wrench,
  To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
  In mirth that after no repenting draws;
  Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,
  And what the Swede intend, and what the French. 
  To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
  Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
  For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
  And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
  That with superfluous burden loads the day,
  And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of their proper chronological places in the printed editions.  They must have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight:  for how are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with Milton’s circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness?  There is no mistake in the matter, however.  In Milton’s own second or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which we have printed them,—­with the exception of No. 2, which had then to be omitted on account of its political point,—­come immediately after the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to about the same date as No. 2, the opening—­words of which