Poem for August (2): John Milton (1667) Paradise Lost, Book III, ll. 40-55

The following extract from John Milton´s Paradise Lost, in which he refers to his blindness is another impressive example of someone coping with extreme adversity.

        [...] Thus with the year

       Seasons return, but not to me returns

       Day, or the sweet approach of ev´n or morn,

       Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer´s rose,

       or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

       But cloud instead, and ever-during 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 works to me expunged and razed,

       And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

       So much the rather thou celestial light

       Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers

       Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence

       Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell

       Of things invisible to mortal sight.

John Milton (1667) Paradise Lost, Book III, ll. 40-55, London: Penguin Classics, 2000.

John Milton lived from 1608-1674.