The Best of Paradise: The Genius of John Milton

These are a few of my favorite passages from Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. Not only do they pull at my heart and personality like no other literature can do, but they also seem to be the most well-written verses found in the whole poem.

Book IV: 75-80

Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell

And in the lowest deep, a lower deep

Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide,

To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.

O then at last relent: is there no place

Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?

Book II: 623-628

A universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good;
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

Book I: 106-109

All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?

Book III; 298-302

So Heav’nly love shall outdo Hellish hate

Giving to death and dying to redeem

So dearly to redeem what Hellish hate,

So easily destroy’d, and still destroys

In those who, when they may, accept not grace

Book III: 335-343 (The LORD speaking)

“New Heav’n and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell,

And after all their tribulations long

See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds

With Joy and Love triumphing, and fair Truth.

Then thou thy regal Scepter shaft lay by,

For regal Scepter then no more shall need,

God shall be All in All. But all ye Gods,

Adore him, who to compass all this dies,

Adore the Son, and honour him as mee.”

Book III: 372-382

Thee Father first they sung Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King; thee Author of all being,
Fountain of Light, thy self invisible [ 375 ]
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sit’st
Thron’d inaccessible, but when thou shad’st
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant Shrine,
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, [ 380 ]
Yet dazzle Heav’n, that brightest Seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes,

Book III: 702-721

For wonderful indeed are all his works,
Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all
Had in remembrance always with delight;
But what created mind can comprehend [ 705 ]
Their number, or the wisdom infinite
That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep.
I saw when at his Word the formless Mass,
This worlds material mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar [ 710 ]
Stood rul’d, stood vast infinitude confin’d;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung:
Swift to their several Quarters hasted then
The cumbrous Elements, Earth, Flood, Aire, Fire, [ 715 ]
And this Ethereal quintessence of Heav’n
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rolled orbicular, and turned to Starrs
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course, [ 720 ]
The rest in circuit walls this Universe.

Book IV: 201-204

Of immortality. So little knows

Any, but God alone, to value right

The good before him, but perverts the best things

To worst abuse, or their meanest use.

Book V: 574-576

As may express them best, though what if Earth,

Be but the shadow of Heaven, and all things therein

Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought?

Book V: 520-522

Attend: that thou art happy, owe to God,

That thou continu’st such, owe to thyself,

That is, to thy obedience, therein stand.

Book IV:725-735

And starry Pole: Thou also mad’st the Night,
Maker Omnipotent, and thou the Day, [ 725 ]
Which we in our appointed work employ’d
Have finisht happy in our mutual help
And mutual love, the Crown of all our bliss
Ordaind by thee, and this delicious place
For us too large, where thy abundance wants [ 730 ]
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground.
But thou hast promis’d from us two a Race
To fill the Earth, who shall with us extoll
Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake,
And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep.