The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems (151 page)

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And eloquence, native to famous wits

Or hospitable,
⁷¹⁵¹
in her sweet recess,
⁷¹⁵²

City or suburban, studious walks and shades.

See there the olive-grove of Academe,
⁷¹⁵³

Plato’s retirement,
⁷¹⁵⁴
where the Attic bird
⁷¹⁵⁵

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.

There flow’ry hill, Hymettus,
⁷¹⁵⁶
with the sound

Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus
⁷¹⁵⁷
rolls

His whispering stream. Within the walls then view

The schools of ancient sages—his
⁷¹⁵⁸
who bred
⁷¹⁵⁹

Great Alexander to subdue the world,

Lyceum
⁷¹⁶⁰
there, and painted Stoa
⁷¹⁶¹
next.

There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power

Of harmony, in tones and numbers
⁷¹⁶²
hit
⁷¹⁶³

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,

Aeolian
⁷¹⁶⁴
charms
⁷¹⁶⁵
and Dorian
⁷¹⁶⁶
lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,

Blind Melesigenes,
⁷¹⁶⁷
thence Homer called,

Whose poem Phoebus
⁷¹⁶⁸
challenged
⁷¹⁶⁹
for his own.

Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught

In chorus or iambic,
⁷¹⁷⁰
teachers best

Of moral prudence,
⁷¹⁷¹
with delight received

In brief sententious
⁷¹⁷²
precepts, while they treat

Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,

High actions and high passions best describing.

Thence to the famous orators repair,
⁷¹⁷³

Those ancient whose resistless eloquence

Wielded
⁷¹⁷⁴
at will that fierce democraty,

Shook the Arsenal,
⁷¹⁷⁵
and fulmined
⁷¹⁷⁶
over Greece

To Macedon
⁷¹⁷⁷
and Artaxerxes’
⁷¹⁷⁸
throne.

To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,

From Heav’n descended to the low-roofed house

Of Socrates—see there his tenement,
⁷¹⁷⁹

Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced

Wisest of men, from whose mouth issued forth

Mellifluous
⁷¹⁸⁰
streams, that watered all the schools

Of Academics old and new, with those

Surnamed
⁷¹⁸¹
Peripatetics,
⁷¹⁸²
and the sect

Epicurean,
⁷¹⁸³
and the Stoic severe.

“These here revolve
⁷¹⁸⁴
or, as thou lik’st, at home,

Till time mature thee to a kingdom’s weight.

These rules will render thee a king complete

Within thyself, much more with empire joined.”

To whom our Savior sagely thus replied:

“Think not but that I know these things, or think

I know them not. Not therefore am I short
⁷¹⁸⁵

Of knowing what I ought. He who receives

Light from above, from the Fountain of Light,

No other doctrine needs, though
⁷¹⁸⁶
granted
⁷¹⁸⁷
true.

But these are false, or little else but dreams,

Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.

The first and wisest
⁷¹⁸⁸
of them all professed

To know this only, that he nothing knew.

The next
⁷¹⁸⁹
to fabling fell and smooth conceits.

A third sort
⁷¹⁹⁰
doubted all things, though plain sense.

Others in virtue placed felicity,

But virtue joined with riches and long life.

In corporal pleasure he,
⁷¹⁹¹
and careless ease.

The Stoic last, in philosophic pride

(By him called virtue) and his virtuous man,

Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing

Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,

As fearing God nor man, contemning
⁷¹⁹²
all

Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life—

Which, when he lists,
⁷¹⁹³
he leaves, or boasts he can,

For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,

Or subtle shifts,
⁷¹⁹⁴
conviction to evade.

“Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

And how the world began, and how man fell,

Degraded by himself, on grace depending?

Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,

And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves

All glory arrogate,
⁷¹⁹⁵
to God give none,

Rather accuse Him under usual names,

Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who, therefore, seeks in these

True wisdom finds her not, or by delusion

Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,

An empty cloud. However many books,

Wise men have said, are wearisome. Who
⁷¹⁹⁶
reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior

(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?),

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys

And trifles for
⁷¹⁹⁷
choice
⁷¹⁹⁸
matters, worth a sponge,
⁷¹⁹⁹

As
⁷²⁰⁰
children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Or if I would delight my private hours

With music or with poem, where so soon

As in our native language
⁷²⁰¹
can I find

That solace? All our Law and story strewn
⁷²⁰²

With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,

Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon

That pleased so well our victor’s ear, declare

That rather Greece from us these arts derived—

Ill imitated while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities, and their own,

In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
⁷²⁰³

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.

Remove their swelling epithets, thick-laid

As varnish
⁷²⁰⁴
on a harlot’s cheek, the rest,

Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,

Will far be found unworthy to compare

With Sion’s songs, to all true tastes excelling,

Where God is praised aright and godlike men,

The Holiest of Holies and His Saints.

Such are from God inspired, not such from thee,
⁷²⁰⁵

Unless where
⁷²⁰⁶
moral virtue is expressed

By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.

Their orators thou then extoll’st as those

The top of eloquence—statists
⁷²⁰⁷
indeed,

And lovers of their country, as may seem.

But herein to our prophets far beneath,

As men divinely taught, and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government,

In their majestic, unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,

What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat.

These only, with our Law, best form a king.”

So spoke the Son of God. But Satan, now

Quite at a loss ( for all his darts were spent),
⁷²⁰⁸

Thus to our Savior, with stern brow, replied:

“Since neither wealth nor honor, arms nor arts,

Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught

By me proposed in life contemplative

Or active, tended on by glory or fame,

What dost thou in this world? The wilderness

For thee is fittest place! I found thee there,

And thither will return thee. Yet remember

What I foretell thee. Soon thou shalt have cause

To wish thou never had’st rejected, thus

Nicely
⁷²⁰⁹
or cautiously, my offered aid,

Which would have set thee in short time with ease

On David’s throne, or throne of all the world,

Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,

When prophecies of thee are best fulfilled.

Now, contrary, if I read aught in Heav’n,

Or Heav’n write aught of Fate, by what the stars

Voluminous,
⁷²¹⁰
or single characters

In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
⁷²¹¹

Sorrows and labors, opposition, hate,

Attends thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries,

Violence and stripes
⁷²¹²
and, lastly, cruel death.

A kingdom they portend
⁷²¹³
thee, but what kingdom,

Real or allegoric, I discern
⁷²¹⁴
not,

Nor when. Eternal sure—as without end,

Without beginning, for no date prefixed

Directs
⁷²¹⁵
me in the starry rubric
⁷²¹⁶
set.”

So saying, he took ( for still he knew his power

Not yet expired), and to the wilderness

Brought back the Son of God, and left him there,

Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,

As daylight sunk, and brought in louring
⁷²¹⁷
night,

Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,