In one stern strain, which is
put into the mouth of St. Peter, the author "foretells the ruin of our
corrupted clergy, then at their height."
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once and smite no more.
This was Milton's last utterance in English verse before the outbreak
of the civil war, and it sounds the alarm of the impending struggle. In
technical quality _Lycidas_ is the most wonderful of all Milton's poems.
The cunningly intricate harmony of the verse, the pressed and packed
language, with its fullness of meaning and allusion, make it worthy of
the minutest study. In these early poems, Milton, merely as a poet, is
at his best. Something of the Elizabethan style still clings to them;
but their grave sweetness, their choice wording, their originality in
epithet, name, and phrase, were novelties of Milton's own. His English
masters were Spenser, Fletcher, and Sylvester, the translator of Du
Bartas's _La Semaine_, but nothing of Spenser's prolixity, or Fletcher's
effeminacy, or Sylvester's quaintness is found in Milton's pure,
energetic diction. He inherited their beauties, but his taste had been
tempered to a finer edge by his studies in Greek and Hebrew poetry. He
was the last of the Elizabethans, and his style was at once the crown of
the old and a departure into the new.
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