The Complete Poetry of John Milton (142 page)

   220     
Teaching not taught; the childhood shews the man,

               
As morning shews the day. Be famous then

               
By wisdom; as thy Empire must extend,

               
So let extend thy mind o’re all the world,

               
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend,

   225     
All knowledge is not couch’t in
Moses
Law,

               
The
Pentateuch
²⁸
or what the Prophets wrote,

               
The
Gentiles
also know, and write, and teach

               
To admiration, led by Natures light;

               
And with the
Gentiles
much thou must converse,

   230     
Ruling them by perswasion as thou mean’st,

               
Without thir learning how wilt thou with them,

               
Or they with thee hold conversation meet?

               
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute

               
Thir Idolisms, Traditions, Paradoxes?

   235     
Error by his own arms is best evinc’t.

               
Look once more e’re we leave this specular Mount

               
Westward, much nearer by Southwest, behold

               
Where on th’
Ægean
shore a City stands

               
Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,

   240     
Athens
the eye of
Greece
, Mother of Arts

               
And Eloquence, native to famous wits

               
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

               
City or Suburban, studious walks and shades;

               
See there the Olive Grove of
Academe
,

   245     
Plato
’s retirement, where the
Attic
Bird
²⁹

               
Trills her thick-warbl’d notes the summer long,

               
There flowrie hill
Hymettus
with the sound

               
Of Bees industrious murmur oft invites

               
To studious musing; there
Ilissus
rouls

   250     
His whispering stream; within the walls then view

               
The schools of antient Sages; his
³⁰
who bred

               
Great
Alexander
to subdue the world,

               
Lyceum
there, and painted
Stoa
³¹
next:

               
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power

   255     
Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

               
By voice or hand, and various-measur’d verse,

               
Æolian
charms and
Dorian Lyric
Odes,
³²

               
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,

               
Blind
Melesigenes
thence
Homer
call’d,

   260     
Whose Poem
Phœbus
challeng’d for his own.

               
Thence what the lofty grave Tragœdians taught

               
In
Chorus
or
Iambic
, teachers best

               
Of moral prudence, with delight receiv’d

               
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat

   265     
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 Democratic,

   270     
Shook the Arsenal and fulmin’d over
Greece
,

               
To
Macedon
, and
Artaxerxes
³³
Throne;

               
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,

               
From Heav’n descended to the low-rooft house

               
Of
Socrates
, see there his Tenement,

   275     
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

               
Sirnam’d
Peripatetics
,
³⁴
and the Sect

   280     
Epicurean
, and the
Stoic
severe;

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

               
Till time mature thee to a Kingdom’s waight;

               
These rules will render thee a King compleat

               
Within thy self, much more with Empire joyn’d.

   285  
      
       To whom our Saviour sagely thus repli’d.

               
Think not but that I know these things, or think

               
I know them not; not therefore am I short

               
Of knowing what I ought: he who receives

               
Light from above, from the fountain of light,

   290     
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;

               
But these are false, or little else but dreams,

               
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.

               
The first and wisest of them all
³⁵
profess’d

               
To know this only, that he nothing knew;

   295     
The next
³⁶
to fabling fell and smooth conceits,

               
A third sort
³⁷
doubted all things, though plain sence;

               
Others
³⁸
in vertue plac’d felicity,

               
But vertue joyn’d with riches and long life,

               
In corporal pleasure he,
³⁹
and careless ease,

   300     
The Stoic last in Philosophic pride,

               
By him call’d vertue; and his vertuous man,

               
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing

               
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,

               
As fearing God nor man, contemning all

   305     
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,

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

               
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,

               
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.

               
Alas what can they teach, and not mislead;

   310     
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 awrie,

               
And in themselves seek vertue, and to themselves

   315     
All glory arrogate, 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

   320     
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,

               
An empty cloud. However many books

               
Wise men have said are wearisom; who reads

               
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

               
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,

   325     
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek)

               
Uncertain and unsettl’d still remains,

               
Deep verst in books and shallow in himself,

               
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

               
And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;

   330     
As Children gathering pibles on the shore.

               
Or if I would delight my private hours

               
With Music or with Poem, where so soon

               
As in our native Language can I find

               
That solace? All our Law and Story strew’d

   335     
With Hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscrib’d,

               
Our Hebrew Songs and Harps in
Babylon
,

               
That pleas’d so well our Victors ear, declare

               
That rather
Greece
from us these Arts deriv’d;

               
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing

   340     
The vices of thir Deities, and thir own

               
In Fable, Hymn, or Song, so personating

               
Thir Gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.

               
Remove their swelling Epithetes thick laid

               
As varnish on a Harlots cheek, the rest,

   345     
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,

               
Will far be found unworthy to compare

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

               
Where God is prais’d aright, and Godlike men,

               
The Holiest of Holies, and his Saints;

   350     
Such are from God inspir’d, not such from thee;

               
Unless where moral vertue is express’t

               
By light of Nature not in all quite lost.

               
Thir Orators thou then extoll’st, as those

               
The top of Eloquence, Statists
⁴⁰
indeed,

   355     
And lovers of thir 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 thir majestic unaffected stile

   360     
Then 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.

   365  
      
       So spake the Son of God; but Satan now

               
Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent,

               
Thus to our Saviour with stern brow reply’d.

           
      
       Since neither wealth, nor honour, arms nor arts,

               
Kingdom nor Empire pleases thee, nor aught

   370     
By me propos’d 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