Group 14 Experiment 1a
Word Count: 350

No more of talk where God or Angel guestWith Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd,To sit indulgent, and with him partakeRural repast; permitting him the whileVenial discourse unblam'd. I now must changeThose notes to tragick; foul distrust, and breachDisloyal on the part of Man, revolt,And disobedience: on the part of HeavenNow alienated, distance and distaste,Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given,That brought into this world a world of woe,Sin and her shadow Death, and MiseryDeath's harbinger: Sad talk!yet argumentNot less but more heroick than the wrathOf stern Achilles on his foe pursuedThrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rageOf Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd;Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so longPerplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son:If answerable style I can obtainOf my celestial patroness, who deignsHer nightly visitation unimplor'd,And dictates to me slumbering; or inspiresEasy my unpremeditated verse:Since first this subject for heroick songPleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late;Not sedulous by nature to inditeWars, hitherto the only argumentHeroick deem'd chief mastery to dissectWith long and tedious havock fabled knightsIn battles feign'd; the better fortitudeOf patience and heroick martyrdomUnsung; or to describe races and games,Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd shields,Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knightsAt joust and tournament; then marshall'd feastServ'd up in hall with sewers and seneshals;The skill of artifice or office mean,Not that which justly gives heroick nameTo person, or to poem.Me, of theseNor skill'd nor studious, higher argumentRemains; sufficient of itself to raiseThat name, unless an age too late, or coldClimate, or years, damp my intended wingDepress'd; and much they may, if all be mine,Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear.The sun was sunk, and after him the starOf Hesperus, whose office is to bringTwilight upon the earth, short arbiter"twixt day and night, and now from end to endNight's hemisphere had veil'd the horizon round:When satan, who late fled before the threatsOf Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'dIn meditated fraud and malice, bentOn Man's destruction, maugre what might hapOf heavier on himself, fearless returnedFrom compassing the earth; cautious of day,Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descriedHis entrance, and foreworned the CherubimThat kept their watch; thence

This is part of the "I like tacos project".