To fill thy od'rous lamp with deeds of light,
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure
Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends
Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night,
Hast gain'd thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure."
It will be seen, that he combined with his rhymes much of the freedom and force of blank verse. He never allows the absence of good strong sense nor the presence of unmeaning or useless words in order to make out the rhyme.
By printing his sonnets compactly without separating the stanzas from each other Milton carried on his sentences, as he found desirable, from stanza to stanza, frequently without any close at the end of a stanza, sometimes just beginning near the end. In this case the separation of the stanzas by spaces would evidently be absurd. Read the last five lines of his sonnet to Cromwell:—
"Peace hath her victories
No less renown'd than war: new foes arise
Threat'ning to bind our souls with sec'lar chains.—