Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NATURE UNIMPAIRED BY TIME by JOHN MILTON

Poet Analysis

First Line: AH, HOW THE HUMAN MIND WEARIES HER SELF
Last Line: THE WORLD, CONSUMED IN ONE ENORMOUS PYRE!
AH, how the human mind wearies herself
With her own wanderings, and, involved in gloom
Impenetrable, speculates amiss!
Measuring, in her folly, things divine
By human; laws inscribed on adamant
By laws of man's device, and counsels fixt
For ever by the hours that pass and die.
How?--shall the face of Nature then be ploughed
Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last
On the great parent fix a sterile curse?
Shall even she confess old age, and halt,
And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows?
Shall foul Antiquity with Rust, and Drought,
And Famine, vex the radiant worlds above?
Shall Time's unsated maw crave and ingulf
The very heavens, that regulate his flight?
And was the Sire of all able to fence
His works, and to uphold the circling worlds,
But, through improvident and heedless haste,
Let slip the occasion?--so, then, all is lost--
And in some future evil hour yon arch
Shall crumble and come thundering down, the poles
Jar in collision, the Olympian king
Fall with his throne, and Pallas, holding forth
The terrors of the Gorgon shield in vain,
Shall rush to the abyss, like Vulcan hurled
Down into Lemnos, through the gate of heaven.
Thou also, with precipitated wheels,
Phoebus, thy own son's fall shalt imitate,
With hideous ruin shalt impress the deep
Suddenly, and the flood shall reek, and hiss,
At the extinction of the lamp of day.
Then too shall Haemus, cloven to his base,
Be shattered, and the huge Ceraunian hills,
Once weapons of Tartarean Dis, immersed
In Erebus, shall fill himself with fear.
No. The Almighty Father surer laid
His deep foundations, and, providing well
For the event of all, the scales of fate
Suspended in just equipoise, and bade
His universal works, from age to age,
One tenor hold, perpetual, undisturbed.
Hence the prime mover wheels itself about
Continual, day by day, and with it bears
In social measure swift the heavens around.
Not tardier now is Saturn than of old,
Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars.
Phoebus, his vigour unimpaired, still shows
The effulgence of his youth, nor needs the god
A downward course, that he may warm the vales;
But, ever rich in influence, runs his road,
Sign after sign, through all the heavenly zone.
Beautiful, as at first, ascends the star
From odoriferous Ind, whose office is
To gather home betimes the ethereal flock,
To pour them o'er the skies again at eve,
And to discriminate the night and day.
Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes and wanes
Alternate, and, with arms extended still,
She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams.
Nor have the elements deserted yet
Their functions: thunder, with as loud a stroke
As erst, smites through the rocks, and scatters them.
The East still howls, still the relentless North
Invades the shuddering Scythian, still he breathes
The winter, and still rolls the storms along.
The king of ocean, with his wonted force,
Beats on Pelorus; o'er the deep is heard
The hoarse alarm of Triton's sounding shell;
Nor swim the monsters of the AEgean sea
In shallows, or beneath diminished waves.
Thou, too, thy ancient vegetative power
Enjoyest, O earth! Narcissus still is sweet;
And, Phoebus! still thy favourite, and still
Thy favourite Cytherea! both retain
Their beauty; nor the mountains, ore-enriched
For punishment of man, with purer gold
Teemed ever, or with brighter gems the deep.
Thus in unbroken series all proceeds;
And shall, till wide involving either pole,
And the immensity of yonder heaven,
The final flames of destiny absorb
The world, consumed in one enormous pyre!



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