Our Torments Also May In

For Books Are Not Absolutely Dead Things, But Do Contain A Potency Of Life In Them To Be As Active As That Soul Was Whose Progeny They Are; Nay, They Do Preserve As In A Vial The Purest Efficacy And Extraction Of That Living Intellect That Bred Them.

We Should Be Wary What Persecution We Raise Against The Living Labors Of Public Men, How We Spill That Seasoned Life Of Man, Preserved And Stored Up In Books, Since We See A Kind Of Homicide May Be Thus Committed, Sometimes A Martyrdom; And If It Extend To The Whole Impression, A Kind Of Massacre, Whereof The Execution Ends Not In The Slaying Of An Elemental Life, But Strikes At The Ethereal And Fifth Essence, The Breath Of Reason Itself; Slays An Immortality Rather Than A Life.

The Love-lorn Nightingale Nightly To Thee Her Sad Song Mourneth Well.

Lifted Up So High I Disdained Subjection, And Thought One Step Higher Would Set Me Highest.

What In Me Is Dark Illumine, What Is Low Raise And Support, That To The Height Of This Great Argument I May Assert Eternal Providence, And Justify The Ways Of God To Men. 1 Paradise Lost. Book I. Line 22.