5. Blank Verse and Religious
Traditions
The Verse
“The Measure is English Heroic Verse without
Rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of
Virgil in Latin; the Rhyme being no necessary
Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good
Verse, in longer works especially, but the
invention of a barbarous age…”
6. Poetry and Theodicy
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 heighth of this
great Argument/ I may assert Eternal
Providence/ and justify the ways of
God to men.
7. Milton’s Satan
Heav’n calld Satan, with bold words
“Awake, Arise or be
Breaking the Horrid Silence thus
began. forever Fallen!”
“If thou beest hee; but O how fall’n!
how chang’d”
8. Satan: Imagination and
Freedom
“…Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and In itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
…And what Should I be, all but less than hee
Whom Thunder hath made Greater? Here at
least We shall be free;
…Here we may reign secure, And in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”
9. Satan’s Cohort
Beelzebub
Moloch “Horrid King besmear’d with blood/
Of human sacrifice, and parent’s tears…”
Chemos (Heathen Deity) “th’obscene dread
of Moab’s Sons…”
Rimmon (Syrian god) “Whose delightful Seat
Was fair Damascus…”
Baalim and Astaroth “Astarte, Queen of
Heav’n , with Crescent Horns.”
Ashtaroth (plural of the gods prefixed by
Baal, and of the forms of the goddess
Ashtoreth.)
10. Satan’s Cohort… Cont.
Thammuz “Whose annual wound in Lebanon
allur’d/ The Syrian Damsels to lament his
fate.”
Rimmon (Syrian god) “Whose Delightful seat
was in Fair Damascus.”
Dagon “Sea Monster”
Belial “….came last, than whom a Spirit more
lewd Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to
love Vice for itself: to him no temple stood or
Altar smok’d; yet who more oft than hee in
Temples and at Altars, when the Priest Turns
Atheist…”
13. Milton’s Satan and the “Fortunate
Fall”
All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the
causes of the following/ Errors. 1.That Man has
two real existing principles Viz: a Body and a
Soul./ 2.That Energy. Called Evil. Is alone from
the Body. & that Reason./ calld Good. is alone
from the Soul./3. That God will torment Man in
Eternity for following his Ener-/gies.
15. Newton’s Rainbow
"Poetry is true in that it corresponds to a Reality transcending the world of sense.
According to Blake, poetry is the vehicle of Vision, and 'Vision or Imagination is a
Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably,' outside 'the things
of Vegetative & Generative Nature.'"- MH Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp.
