Introduction

The poems of John Milton (1608-74) have inspired readers for generations and the selection in this new edition spans his entire career, from his earliest works to the magnificent epics of his later life.

The devotional On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, his first great poem, anticipates the probing religious questions of Paradise Lost.

Works such as L’Allegro and Il Penseroso consider divisions of loyalties, while A Masque (Comus) explores Milton’s great theme of temptation, and the pastoral elegy Lycidas contemplates mortality and the meaning of human life.

This volume includes considerable selections from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained — Milton’s late epics on the Fall of Man and Christ’s temptation in the wilderness — and the complete Samson Agonistes, in which the great hero undergoes a profound crisis of faith in his final hours.