Wand'ring the wilderness, whatever place, For Adam and his chofen fons, whom thou Where they shall dwell fecure, when time fhall be, But thou, infernal ferpent, fhalt not long Or lightning, thou fhalt fall from heav'n, trod down 68 PARADISE, etc. IV. 632. Bound, and to torment fent before their time. Hail Son of the Most High, heir of both worlds, Queller of Satan, on thy glorious work Now enter, and begin to fave mankind. Thus they the Son of God our Saviour meek Sung victor, and from heav'nly feast refresh'd Brought on his way with joy; he unobferv'd Home to his mother's house private return'd. THE END. SAMSON AGONISTES, A DRAMATIC POEM. The AUTHOR JOHN MILTO N. Tragoedia eft imitatio actionis feriae, etc. per mifericordiam et metum perficiens talium affectuum luftrationem. ARISTOT. Poet. Cap. 6. E 3 DRAMATIC POEM WHICH IS CALLED TRAGEDY. RAGEDY, as it was anciently compos'd, hath been ever held the graveft, moraleft, and most profitable of all other poems: Therefore faid by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of thofe and fuch like paffions, that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, ftirr'd up by reading or seeing thofe paffions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his affertion: For fo in phyfic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, four against four, salt to remove falt humours. Hence philofophers and other graveft writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, fre poets, both to adorn and The apostle Paul him quently cite out of tragic illuftrate their difcourfe. felf thought it not unworthy to infert a verfe of Euripides into the text of Ho ly Scripture, i Cor. xv. 33. and l'araeus.commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book as a tragedy, into acts diftinguifh'd each by a chorus of heavenly harpings, and fong between. Heretofore men in higheft dignity have laboured not a little to be thought able to compofe a trage dy. Of that honour Dionyfius the elder was no less ambitious, than: |