The following are some of the finest instances: 

“------His hand was known
In Heaven by many a tower’d structure high;—­
Nor was his name unheard or unador’d
In ancient Greece:  and in the Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber:  and how he fell
From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’er the chrystal battlements; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer’s day; and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, the AEgean isle:  thus they relate,
Erring.”—­

“------But chief the spacious hall
Thick swarm’d, both on the ground and in the air,
Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings.   As bees
In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow’rs
Fly to and fro:  or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubb’d with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs.   So thick the airy crowd
Swarm’d and were straiten’d; till the signal giv’n,
Behold a wonder!   They but now who seem’d
In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race
Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course:  they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.”

I can only give another instance, though I have some difficulty in leaving off.

      “Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood
      So high above the circling canopy
      Of night’s extended shade) from th’ eastern point
      Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears
      Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
      Beyond the horizon:  then from pole to pole
      He views in breadth, and without longer pause
      Down right into the world’s first region throws
      His flight precipitant, and winds with ease
      Through the pure marble air his oblique way
      Amongst innumerable stars that shone
      Stars distant, but nigh hand seem’d other worlds;
      Or other worlds they seem’d or happy isles,” &c.

The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down as if it had itself wings.  Milton has himself given us the theory of his versification—­

      “Such as the meeting soul may pierce
      In notes with many a winding bout
      Of linked sweetness long drawn out.”

Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his vaulting Pegasus into a rocking-horse.  Read any other blank verse but Milton’s,—­Thomson’s, Young’s, Cowper’s, Wordsworth’s,—­and it will be found, from the want of the same insight into “the hidden soul of harmony,” to be mere lumbering prose.