The bait

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will some new pleasures prove

Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,

With silken lines, and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run

Warmed by thy eyes, more than the sun.

And there the'enamoured fish will stay,

Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,

Each fish, which every channel hath,

Will amorously to thee swim,

Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth,

By sun, or moon, thou darkenest both,

And if myself have leave to see,

I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,

And cut their legs, with shells and weeds,

Or treacherously poor fish beset,

With strangling snare, or windowy net:

Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest

The bedded fish in banks out-wrest,

Or curious traitors, sleavesilk flies

Bewitch poor fishes' wandering eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,

For thou thyself art thine own bait,

That fish, that is not catched thereby,

Alas, is wiser far than I.

6.2. Английская революция как переход к новой эпохе. Расцвет публицистических жанров, активное участие литературы в общественно-политической борьбе. Творчество Джона Мильтона. Поэма «Потерянный рай»: проблематика и дискуссионные аспекты ее трактовки.

6.2.1. The English Revolution is a general designation for the period in English history from 1640 to 1660. It began with the calling of the Long Parliament by King Charles I and proceeded through two civil wars, the trial and execution of the king, the republican experiments of Oliver Cromwell, and, ultimately, the restoration of King Charles II.

The immediate cause, however, was Charles’s attempt (1637) to impose the Anglican liturgy in Scotland. The Presbyterian Scots rioted; then they raised an army to defend their church. In 1640 their army occupied the northern counties of England. The Long Parliament, summoned by Charles to raise money in support of his war against the Scots, demanded reforms as the price for aid. The political quarrel became an armed conflict. Most of the Lords and some members of the House of Commons sided with the king (thus making it technically incorrect to call it a war between king and Parliament). Parliament secured the support of the Scottish army. Meanwhile, Cromwell, an outspoken Member of Parliament and a military genius, was perfecting his regiment of cavalry, which soon earned the name Ironsides. Parliament won the crucial battle and Charles surrendered to the Scots, who turned him over to Parliament.

Charles escaped. He made an alliance with the Scots, who pledged to restore him to the throne if he promised to make Presbyterianism the official religion of both kingdoms. The second civil war took place, with the army and Parliament fighting against Scotland and the king. A Scottish army was defeated by Cromwell in a battle at Preston. Other Royalist opposition was soon suppressed. The army, now firmly in control, proceeded to purge Parliament of its Presbyterian members. Found guilty of treason, Charles was executed on January 30, 1649. The Parliament then abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords, and declared England a Commonwealth. The king’s death deeply affected the people and made the creation of a stable government more difficult. The power resided in Cromwell and the army. Only the will of Cromwell and the force of the New Model Army held things together over the next years. After Cromwell had died, the Long Parliament was recalled, which restored Charles II to the throne.
The English Revolution was the first of the so-called great revolutions. It began as a protest against an oppressive and uncompromising government. A moderate constitutional phase was followed by the use of military force, then the violent overthrow of the government, experiments with new institutions, the rule of a virtual dictator, and, finally, a restoration that embodied some new practices within the older tradition. The revolution was important because it generated new political and religious ideas. Many of them are reflected in the works of the greatest writer of the period, John Milton (1608-1674).

6.2.2. Milton's rich, dense verse was a powerful influence on succeeding English poets, and his prose was devoted to the defense of civil and religious liberty. Milton is often considered the greatest English poet after Shakespeare. Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, and educated at Saint Paul's School and Christ's College, University of Cambridge. He intended to become a clergyman in the Church of England, but growing dissatisfaction with the state of the Anglican clergy led him to abandon this purpose.

Till about 30, he lived in his father's country home preparing himself for his poetic career by entering upon an ambitious program of reading the Latin and Greek classics and ecclesiastical and political history. He toured France and Italy, where he met the leading literary figures of the day.

Milton returned to England in July 1639, settled in a house in London, and prepared to take in pupils. Milton had returned to England with plans for an Arthurian epic; like other ambitious poets of the Renaissance, he hoped to write the great modern heroic poem. But he was also deeply anxious about the Puritan cause. The years 1641-60 he gave almost wholly to pamphleteering in the cause of religious and civil liberty. Notoriety came in 1643, with Milton's pamphlet Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, which was followed by three more tracts on the same theme. His preoccupation with the subject of divorce was presumably hastened by his own marital disaster. In the tracts Milton argued that the sole cause admitted for divorce – adultery – might be less valid than incompatibility and that the forced yoke of a loveless marriage was a crime against human dignity.

In 1644 Milton published what are for modern readers his best-known pamphlets, Of Education and Areopagitica.

The first of the two is one of the last in a long line of European expositions of Renaissance humanism. His aim was to mold boys into enlightened, cultivated, responsible citizens and leaders on the basis of the study of the ancient classics, in due subordination to the Bible and Christian teaching. But he also gave notable emphasis to science.

Areopagitica is on the freedom of the press and was specifically written to protest an order issued by Parliament the previous year requiring government approval and licensing of all published books. He defends the free circulation of ideas as essential to moral and intellectual development. Two weeks after the execution of Charles I, Milton's first political tract appeared. In it he expounds the doctrine that power resides always in the people, who delegate it to a sovereign but may, if it is abused, resume it and depose or even execute the tyrant.

A month later he was invited to become secretary for foreign languages to Cromwell's Council of State. In the winter of 1651-52Milton lost his eyesight; blindness became complete when Milton was only 43. Blindness reduced his strictly secretarial duties, though he continued through 1659 as a translator of state letters. His last political pamphlet was published in March 1660.

When the Restoration came, Milton, as a noted defender of the regicides, was in real danger. Anyway, it may have been decided that the blind writer was now harmless and that token proceedings against him would be enough.

6.2.3. Yet there was considerable energy in Milton. Though i t is not known when Paradise Lost was actually begun, poet's most famous lines were composed after the Restoration. Paradise Lost, an epic poem in blank verse, was finished by 1665.

It tells the story of Satan's rebellion against God and his expulsion from heaven and the subsequent temptation and expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The main motives and events of Paradise Lost had abundant literary precedent, though they were handled with powerful originality.

Milton centers the first two books of his poem on the figure of Satan and his legions as they lie in hell. Much has been written about Milton's powerful characterization of Satan, who is one of the supreme figures in world literature. Satan has, on a superhuman scale, the strength, the courage, and the capacity for leadership that belong to the ancient epic hero, but these qualities are all perverted in being devoted to evil.

The portrayal of Adam and Eve is a symbolic rendering of Milton's vision of perfection, but it is presented when the reader accompanies Satan into the garden, so that idyllic innocence and happiness are seen only under the shadow of evil.