Table of Contents
The English Renaissance Period
1485-1603
Introduction
Queen Elizabeth
On Monsiuer’s Departure
Speech to the Troops at Tilbury
Edmund Spenser
from The Faerie Queene, Canto I
Christopher Marlowe
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Sir Walter Raleigh
The Nymphs’s Reply to the Shepherd
What Is Our Life?
Sir Philip Sidney
Sonnet 31 from Astrophil and Stella
Sonnet 39 from Astrophil and Stella
George Peele
A Farewell to Arms
Robert Southwell
The Burning Babe
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 18
Sonnet 29
Sonnet 55
Sonnet 116
Sonnet 130
Translating the Bible into English
King James Bible: Selections from The Book of Job
Ben Jonson
Song to Celia
Daughter, Mother, Spouse of God
6
10
10
11
12
12
26
27
28
28
29
30
30
31
32
32
33
33
34
34
35
35
36
36
37
38
40
40
41
The Early Seventeenth century & the Puritans
1603-1660
Introduction
Aemilia Lanyer
from Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women
John Donne
A Hymn to God the Father
Meditations
Holy Sonnet 10: Death Be Not Proud
44
46
47
48
49
50
53
4

Robert Herrick
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
The Wake
Delight in Disorder
George Herbert
The Altar
Redemption
The Collar
John Milton
from Paradise Lost: Book I
Sonnet 19: On His Blindness
Richard Crashaw
To the Infant Martyrs
from The Flaming Heart
Richard Lovelace
To Althea, from Prison
To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars
John Bunyan
from Pilgrim’s Progress
54
54
55
56
57
57
58
59
60
61
71
72
72
73
74
74
75
76
77
The Restoration and Neoclassical Age
1660-1784
Introduction
John Dryden
Song from The Indian Emperor
from The Aeneid
Katherine Philips
Epitaph
To My Excellent Lucasia, On Our Friendship
Jonathan Swift
A Description of Morning
from Gulliver’s Travels, Part I
Alexander Pope
from An Essay on Man
Samuel Johnson
from The Vanity of Human Wishes
Selections from Dictionary of the English Language
Oliver Goldsmith
The Deserted Village
Phillis Wheatley
To S. M., A Young African Painter on Seeing His Work
96
98
98
99
101
102
103
104
105
106
111
112
113
114
115
117
117
121
122
43
The Early
Seventeenth Century
& the Puritans
1603-1660
60
John Milton
John Milton
(1608-1674)
One of the two great Puritan writers of the seventeenth century, Milton was born in
London in 1608. His life can be divided into three periods, which mirror the events
taking place in England’s political and religious history during his lifetime: the period
before the Great Rebellion and the English Civil Wars, the period of the Commonwealth
and the Protectorate, and the period of the Restoration and following.
Milton’s life prior to the civil wars was primarily concerned with scholarship and reading.
He took a BA and an MA from Cambridge, where he displayed a talent for languages and
excelled academically. Rather than taking orders and entering the Church, as it had been
expected he would, Milton retired to his father’s house in the country, where he lived for
six years, voraciously reading everything he could in Latin, Greek, Italian, and English.
In 1648, to put the finishing touches on his education like any good, well-educated
English gentleman of means, Milton traveled the Continent; but hearing rumblings of
trouble at home in England, he returned in 1639 to a country on the brink of civil war
and political upheaval.
Milton was staunchly on the side of the Parliamentarians, and lent his support in the
form of sharp antipolemical tracts aimed at what he considered to be a corrupt clergy,
antimonarchical pamphlets written against tyrannical governments, and tracts against
state-sanctioned religion. Milton was a Puritan, but also an advocate for religious freedom
who believed in freedom of conscience and the ultimate authority of Scripture on matters
of faith. Upon the establishment of the Commonwealth, Milton served Oliver Cromwell’s
new government as Latin Secretary for the Council of State, a position which essentially
made him the voice of the Commonwealth in international affairs. He defended the new
government against attacks from abroad and handled international correspondence (in
Latin). Apart from the odd occasional poem, almost all of Milton’s written output during
this time was prose. In addition to his political pamphlets, he also wrote on matters of
education, freedom of speech, history, and theology. The strain on his eyes, a result of
constant reading and writing by dim candlelight, caused Milton to go completely blind
by 1652.
After the Protectorate failed and Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660,
Milton was imprisoned for his political and religious views, and for his actions during
the Interregnum. His friends eventually secured his release. It is during this last period
of his life that Milton wrote his most enduring work, one that has taken its place among
the greatest epics of western civilization. Paradise Lost is a 10,000-line epic poem about
the fall of Lucifer from heaven and the Fall and regeneration of Adam and Eve. In it,
Milton establishes his work as a Christian descendant of Homer and Virgil’s epics by
using many of the conventions of classical literature, such as invocation of a heavenly
muse, lengthy similes, epithets, recapitulations of the past, and an in medias res (“in the
middle of things”) beginning. But Milton subverts the definition of “hero” replacing
the vainglorious, self-aggrandizing, victorious warrior of classical literature with the
magnanimous, loving, self-sacrificial figure of Christ as the central exemplar of Christian
heroism. Paradise Lost exhibits a masterly use of blank verse, which came to be known
as Miltonic blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter. This flexible meter allowed
Milton to tell his tale both smoothly and rhythmically, unconstrained by end rhymes
and strict cadences.
John Milton
from
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Paradise Lost: Book I
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss,
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the World besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
61
62
John Milton
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice has prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set,
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to th’ utmost pole.