The Poetical Works of John Milton


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Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:  
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power  
Of harmony in tones and numbers hit  
By voice or hand, and various-measur'd verse,  
Aeolian charms and Dorian Lyric Odes,  
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,  
Blind Melesigenes thence Homer call'd,  
Whose Poem Phoebus challeng'd for his own.  
Thence what the lofty grave Tragoedians taught  
In Chorus or Iambic, teachers best  
260  
Of moral prudence, with delight receiv'd  
In brief sententious 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,  
Those antient, whose resistless eloquence  
Wielded at will that fierce Democratie,  
Shook the Arsenal and fulmin'd over Greece,  
To Macedon, and Artaxerxes Throne;  
270  
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,  
From Heaven descended to the low-rooft house  
Of Socrates, see there his Tenement,  
Whom well inspir'd the Oracle pronounc'd  
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issu'd forth  
Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools  
Of Academics old and new, with those  
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692 693 694 695 696

Quick Jump
1 198 395 593 790