Paradise lost

PARADISE LOST, by John Milton.

Biography
John Milton was born in 1608 in a protestant family of London; he studied in Cambridge Master of Arts. He lived in his father’s house while he studied andcomposed poetry. He went to Italy in 1639 but when the Civil War broke out he return to England and he became a Puritan that fought for the Puritan cause. Because of his Puritan idealism he gave upin poetry for nearly twenty years, during the Civil War he composed political and religious prose pamphlets. In 1649 he became the Latin Secretary of Cromwell’s Council of State and he defended thePuritan government in the eyes of the European nations. In the same year he wrote Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio to defend the execution of Charles I. In 1660 he wrote Paradise Lost. He died in 1674.Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is the most important poem of John Milton and the last and greatest epic Renaissance poem. It is formed by twelve books, written in blank verse (unrhymed iambicpentameter). It presents the biblical story of man’s loss of Paradise and God´s promise of final salvation. Milton wrote Paradise Lost after his retirement from the political life when Cromwell´s Commonwealthfell, by this time he was already blind.

 
SATAN TAKES POSSESSION OF HELL
“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,”
Said then the lost archangel, “this the seat
That we must change forheaven, this the mournful gloom
For that celestial night? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equaled, forcehath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells: hail, horrors, hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor: one who bringsA mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be,...