See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and love triumphing, and fair truth.”
—Paradise Lost, book iii, lines 334-338.
“So shall the world go on,
To good malignant, to bad men benign;
Under her own weight, groaning; till the day
Appear of respiration to the just,
And vengeance to the wicked, at return
Of Him so lately promised to thy aid,
The woman’s seed; obscurely then foretold,