This collection gathers John Milton's English and Italian poems, including the minor poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. It ranges from shorter lyrics to grand biblical and classical epics, exploring faith, temptation, freedom, and human fall and restoration. Worth listening for its rich verse, profound imagery, and enduring influence on English poetry.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN
MILTON
By John Milton
Transcriber's Notes:
This e-text contains all of Milton's poems in English and
Italian. Poems in Latin have been omitted.
The original spelling, capitalisation and punctuation have been retained as far as possible. Characters not in the ANSI standard set have been replaced by their nearest equivalent.
The AE & OE digraphs have been transcribed as two letters.
Accented letters in the Italian poems have been replaced by the unaccented letter.
No italics have been retained.
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the poem to which they refer; in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained they have been moved to the end of the book.
Fifty engravings by Gustave Dore have been
provided in "Paradise Lost"
PREFACE by the Rev. H. C. Beeching, M. A. This edition of Milton's Poetry is a reprint, as careful as Editor and Printers have been able to make it, from the earliest printed copies of the several poems. First the 1645 volume of the Minor Poems has been printed entire; then follow in order the poems added in the reissue of 1673; the Paradise Lost, from the edition of 1667; and the Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes from the edition of 1671. The most interesting portion of the book must be reckoned the first section of it, which reproduces for the first time the scarce small octavo of 1645. The only reprint of the Minor Poems in the old spelling, so far as I know, is the one edited by Mitford, but that followed the edition of 1673, which is comparatively uninteresting since it could not have had Milton's oversight as it passed through the press. We know that it was set up from a copy of the 1645 edition, because it reproduces some pointless eccentricities such as the varying form of the chorus to Psalm cxxxvi; but while it corrects the errata tabulated in that edition it commits many more blunders of its own. It is valuable, however, as the editio princeps
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