And am I now upbraided as the cause

Of thy transgressing? not enough severe,

It seems, in thy restraint! What could I more?

I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold
The danger, and the lurking enemy

That lay in wait; beyond this had been force,
And force upon free will hath here no place.
But confidence then bore thee on, secure
Either to meet no danger, or to find
Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps
I also erred in overmuch admiring
What seemed in thee so perfect that I thought
No evil durst attempt thee. But I rue
That error now, which is become my crime,
And thou the accuser. Thus it shall befall
Him who, to worth in women overtrusting,
Lets her will rule: restraint she will not brook;
And, left to herself, if evil thence ensue,
She first his weak indulgence will accuse.'
Thus they in mutual accusation spent

The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning;
And of their vain contest appeared no end.

ON HIS BLINDNESS

I. SONNET

WHEN I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need

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Either man's work, or his own gifts.

Who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.

Is kingly thousands at his bidding speed

:

And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

II. PARADISE LOST, BOOK III

His state

HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt in eternity-dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun,
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising World of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless Infinite!
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escaped the Stygian Pool,' though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight

Through utter and through middle Darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,

Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;

So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,

1 Styx was the river of the lower world.

2 The disease which caused Milton's blindness was called 'Gutta serena'.

Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
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,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris' and blind Maeonides",
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 clouds 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.

1 A blind Thracian poet: see Propert. ii. 22. 19.

2 Homer was said to have been born in Maeonia (sc. Lydia). The blind prophet of Thebes. Ovid, Met. iii. 323.

A blind prophet-king of Thrace. Ovid, Met. vii. 3.

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III. SAMSON AGONISTES

But chief of all,

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!

Blind among enemies! O worse than chains,
Dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age!

Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,

And all her various objects of delight

Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased.
Inferior to the vilest now become

Of man or worm, the vilest now excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own—
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

O first-created beam, and thou great Word,
'Let there be light, and light was over all,'

Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?
The Sun to me is dark

And silent as the Moon,

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

Since light so necessary is to life,

And almost life itself; if it be true

That light is in the soul,

She all in every part, why was the sight

To such a tender ball as the eye confined,

So obvious and so easy to be quenched,

And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused.
That she might look at will through every pore?

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Then had I not been thus exiled from light;
As in the land of darkness, yet in light
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but, O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave;
Buried, yet not exempt

By privilege of death and burial

From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs;
But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

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