Nor need we refer to what every one concedes, that a vein of pure but
austere morals runs through all his works; but Puritan as he was, his
myriad fancy led him into places which Puritanism abjured: the cloisters,
with their dim religious light, in _Il Penseroso_--and anon with mirth he
cries:
Come and trip it as you go,
On the light fantastic toe.
SONNETS.--His sonnets have been variously estimated: they are not as
polished as his other poems, but are crystal-like and sententious, abrupt
bursts of opinion and feeling in fourteen lines. Their masculine power it
was which caused Wordsworth, himself a prince of sonneteers, to say:
In his hand,
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-animating strains....
That to his dead wife, whom he saw in a vision; that to Cyriac Skinner on
his blindness, and that to the persecuted Waldenses, are the most known
and appreciated. That to Skinner is a noble assertion of heart and hope:
Cyriac, this three-years-day these eyes, though clear
To outward view, of blemish and of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot:
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman.
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