Table of Contents The English Renaissance Period 1485-1603 Introduction 6 Queen Elizabeth 10 On Monsiuer s Departure 10 Speech to the Troops at Tilbury 11 Edmund Spenser 12 from The Faerie Queene, Canto I 12 Christopher Marlowe 26 The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 27 Sir Walter Raleigh 28 The Nymphs s Reply to the Shepherd 28 What Is Our Life? 29 Sir Philip Sidney 30 Sonnet 31 from Astrophil and Stella 30 Sonnet 39 from Astrophil and Stella 31 George Peele 32 A Farewell to Arms 32 Robert Southwell 33 The Burning Babe 33 William Shakespeare 34 Sonnet 18 34 Sonnet 29 35 Sonnet 55 35 Sonnet 116 36 Sonnet 130 36 Translating the Bible into English 37 King James Bible: Selections from The Book of Job 38 Ben Jonson 40 Song to Celia 40 Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God 41 The Early Seventeenth century & the Puritans 1603-1660 Introduction 44 Aemilia Lanyer 46 from Eve s Apology in Defense of Women 47 John Donne 48 A Hymn to God the Father 49 Meditations 50 Holy Sonnet 10: Death Be Not Proud 53
4 Robert Herrick 54 To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 54 The Wake 55 Delight in Disorder 56 George Herbert 57 The Altar 57 Redemption 58 The Collar 59 John Milton 60 from Paradise Lost: Book I 61 Sonnet 19: On His Blindness 71 Richard Crashaw 72 To the Infant Martyrs 72 from The Flaming Heart 73 Richard Lovelace 74 To Althea, from Prison 74 To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars 75 John Bunyan 76 from Pilgrim s Progress 77 The Restoration and Neoclassical Age 1660-1784 Introduction 96 John Dryden 98 Song from The Indian Emperor 98 from The Aeneid 99 Katherine Philips 101 Epitaph 102 To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship 103 Jonathan Swift 104 A Description of Morning 105 from Gulliver s Travels, Part I 106 Alexander Pope 111 from An Essay on Man 112 Samuel Johnson 113 from The Vanity of Human Wishes 114 Selections from Dictionary of the English Language 115 Oliver Goldsmith 117 The Deserted Village 117 Phillis Wheatley 121 To S. M., A Young African Painter on Seeing His Work 122
43 The Early Seventeenth Century & the Puritans 1603-1660
60 John Milton John Milton (1608-1674) One of the two great Puritan writers of the seventeenth century, Milton was born in London in 1608. His life can be divided into three periods, which mirror the events taking place in England s political and religious history during his lifetime: the period before the Great Rebellion and the English Civil Wars, the period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, and the period of the Restoration and following. Milton s life prior to the civil wars was primarily concerned with scholarship and reading. He took a BA and an MA from Cambridge, where he displayed a talent for languages and excelled academically. Rather than taking orders and entering the Church, as it had been expected he would, Milton retired to his father s house in the country, where he lived for six years, voraciously reading everything he could in Latin, Greek, Italian, and English. In 1648, to put the finishing touches on his education like any good, well-educated English gentleman of means, Milton traveled the Continent; but hearing rumblings of trouble at home in England, he returned in 1639 to a country on the brink of civil war and political upheaval. Milton was staunchly on the side of the Parliamentarians, and lent his support in the form of sharp antipolemical tracts aimed at what he considered to be a corrupt clergy, antimonarchical pamphlets written against tyrannical governments, and tracts against state-sanctioned religion. Milton was a Puritan, but also an advocate for religious freedom who believed in freedom of conscience and the ultimate authority of Scripture on matters of faith. Upon the establishment of the Commonwealth, Milton served Oliver Cromwell s new government as Latin Secretary for the Council of State, a position which essentially made him the voice of the Commonwealth in international affairs. He defended the new government against attacks from abroad and handled international correspondence (in Latin). Apart from the odd occasional poem, almost all of Milton s written output during this time was prose. In addition to his political pamphlets, he also wrote on matters of education, freedom of speech, history, and theology. The strain on his eyes, a result of constant reading and writing by dim candlelight, caused Milton to go completely blind by 1652. After the Protectorate failed and Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, Milton was imprisoned for his political and religious views, and for his actions during the Interregnum. His friends eventually secured his release. It is during this last period of his life that Milton wrote his most enduring work, one that has taken its place among the greatest epics of western civilization. Paradise Lost is a 10,000-line epic poem about the fall of Lucifer from heaven and the Fall and regeneration of Adam and Eve. In it, Milton establishes his work as a Christian descendant of Homer and Virgil s epics by using many of the conventions of classical literature, such as invocation of a heavenly muse, lengthy similes, epithets, recapitulations of the past, and an in medias res ( in the middle of things ) beginning. But Milton subverts the definition of hero replacing the vainglorious, self-aggrandizing, victorious warrior of classical literature with the magnanimous, loving, self-sacrificial figure of Christ as the central exemplar of Christian heroism. Paradise Lost exhibits a masterly use of blank verse, which came to be known as Miltonic blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter. This flexible meter allowed Milton to tell his tale both smoothly and rhythmically, unconstrained by end rhymes and strict cadences.
John Milton 61 from Paradise Lost: Book I 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 5 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 10 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 15 Above th Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples th upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know st; Thou from the first 20 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, 25 I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view, Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause Moved our grand parents in that happy state, 30 Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off From their Creator, and transgress his will For one restraint, lords of the World besides. Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? Th infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile 35 Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride
62 John Milton Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host Of rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, 40 He trusted to have equalled the Most High, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God, Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power 45 Hurled headlong flaming from th ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th Omnipotent to arms. 50 Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, Confounded, though immortal. But his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought 55 Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes, That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. At once, as far as Angels ken, he views 60 The dismal situation waste and wild. A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light; but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, 65 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. 70 Such place Eternal Justice has prepared For those rebellious; here their prison ordained In utter darkness, and their portion set, As far removed from God and light of Heaven As from the centre thrice to th utmost pole.