INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. X\ii 



As one who long in populous city pent, 

 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, 

 Forth issuing on a summer morn to breathe 

 Among the pleasant villages and farms. 



But the full extent of his love is only to be felt 

 where he laments the loss of his sight. Speak- 

 ing of light, he says, 



Thee I revisit safe, 

 And feel thy sovran, vital lamp, but thou 

 Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain 

 To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn ; 

 So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, 

 Or dim suffusion veiled : yet not the more 

 Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt 

 Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, 

 Smit with the love of sacred song, but chief 

 Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, 

 That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow . 

 Nightly I visit — 



Thus with the year 

 Seasons return ; but not to me returns 

 Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 

 Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose. 

 Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine ; 

 But cloud instead, and ever-durino- dark 

 Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 

 Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 

 Presented with a universal blank 

 Of Nature's vorks, to me expunged and rased, 

 And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 



Paradise Lost, 1; o. 

 Thomson and Cowper powerfully promoted 

 this spirit amongst their contemporaries ; but 



c 



