Began to bloom; but soon for man’s offence
To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,
And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,
And where the river of bliss, through midst of Heaven,
Rolls o’er Elysian flowers her amber stream.
In 1671 Milton issued his last volume of poetry, which contained Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The former poem, which tells of Christ’s temptation and victory, is complementary to the earlier epic, and Milton hoped that it would surpass its predecessor. In this his hopes were dashed. It is briefer and poorer than Paradise Lost; it lacks the exalted imagination, the adornment, and the ornate rhythms of the earlier poem. There is little action, the characters are uninteresting, and the work approaches Paradise Lost only in a few outstanding passages.
Samson Agonistes, which tells of Samson’s death while a prisoner of the Philistines, has a curious interest, for in the Biblical hero Milton saw more than one resemblance to himself. In form the work has the strict unity of time, place, and action universal in Greek tragedy. In style it is bleak and bare, in places harsh and forbidding; but in several places Milton’s stubborn soul is wrung with pity and exalted by the hope that looks beyond. The speech of Samson’s father over his dead son is no inappropriate epitaph for Milton himself:
Come, come, no time for lamentation now,
Nor much more cause; Samson hath quit himself
Like Samson, and heroically hath finished