May I contented there expire!
Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,
I fall on some base heart unblest--
Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven--
And lose my everlasting rest!
Or than that other piece (too beautiful and too intense to be cited as a sudden illustration of a thesis) beginning--
Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why
Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny
The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye?
The wind bloweth where it listeth; the wandering fire of song touches the hearts and lips of whom it will. Milton built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a great trench about the altar, and he put the wood in order, and loaded the altar with rich exotic offerings, cassia and nard, odorous gums and balm, and fruit burnished with golden rind. But the fire from Heaven descended on the hastily piled altars of the sons of Belial, and left Milton's gorgeous altar cold.