Literature of the world : an introductory study . to escape death at thehands of the new closing years werepassed in seclusion andin the composition of hisgreat epic Paradise Lostand other late poems. Hedied in 1674. Miltons literary activ-ity falls naturally into thethree distinct periods ofhis life—youth and prep-aration, public career, andretirement. The studious cloisters pale at Cambridge and the happy leisure of the yearsthat followed are marked by the production of LAUegro, IIPenseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and a few lesser poems. Theyare all in the popular pastoral form, but are
Literature of the world : an introductory study . to escape death at thehands of the new closing years werepassed in seclusion andin the composition of hisgreat epic Paradise Lostand other late poems. Hedied in 1674. Miltons literary activ-ity falls naturally into thethree distinct periods ofhis life—youth and prep-aration, public career, andretirement. The studious cloisters pale at Cambridge and the happy leisure of the yearsthat followed are marked by the production of LAUegro, IIPenseroso, Comus, Lycidas, and a few lesser poems. Theyare all in the popular pastoral form, but are quite free from theartificial conceits and unreal sentiment of that form as practicedby most other poets. Indeed, even in these early poems Mil-ton achieved an almost faultless style—concrete, restrained, andyet adequate, sufficiently varied to suit the several themes dealtwith, and of a remarkable musical quality. LAUegro and IIPenseroso are descriptive poems portraying the gayer andgraver aspects of the poets youthful experience. They have. JOHN MILTON 382 LITERATURE OF THE WORLD the freshness, spontaneity, and measured joy of a deeply poetic andsensitive nature awake to the delights of rural landscape and lifeon the one hand and of midnight hours of study and contemplationon the other. Nowhere in our literature have these satisfactions ofthe eye and of the mind found so happy an expression. Comusis cast in the form of a masque and is perhaps the most nearly per-fect example of this form in English literature. In this poem Mil-ton presents a more deeply serious theme, revealing beneath thesurface narrative of pastoral adventure an indictment of the vicious-ness of the English court and of the shallow and empty pursuits ofhuman life in general. The truly virtuous and constant soul is rareindeed, but when it does appear among us it is invulnerable to allhostile circumstance and temptation. In Lycidas Miltons tonebecomes increasingly serious and even stern. He mourns the dea
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