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Nova Solyma, the Ideal City: Or, Jerusalem Regained
Nova Solyma the Ideal City Or Jerusalem Regained Author:John Milton, Samuel Gott Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV THE POWER OF LOVE THE lecture being ended, they returned home. Here they found Joseph's sister, who had come to see him, and excuse her absence fr... more »om home when he last called on her aunt. To see her, and to hear her pleasant converse, brought back their old and passionate dream of love, and when she had gone, Politian took himself apart to a quiet spot, and tried to compose his excitement by self- questioning and reverie. " Ah, woe is me! How doth my passion waste and torture me, and how it hath become mine enemy! And yet, what have I lost, and how can I complain? If I had never beheld this fairest of virgins, I should be now free from my pain ; and now, when I have just enjoyed her presence, I feel the pain keener than ever. " Yet who else is to blamed ? Surely not Dame Nature, whose gifts to my loved one receive and deserve my highest admiration. Surely not the fair maid herself, for she is so artlessly innocent of Love's bewitching power that she knows not that my heart is hers. " How near akin is Love to Envy—that Envy which wastes away with longing for another's treasure ! He too, my friend Eugenius, seems fond of her; but who can endure a rival in love ? You ought to pardon me, Eugenius, if I am no less impressed by her charms than yourself, and cannot give up my blissful hopes. " But who could have believed that her own brother is our rival in love, and tries to keep her away from us ? Well, I suppose the greatest saint could not resist herDivine beauty, nor are the ties of blood able to check Love's great desire when rushing madly on." These thoughts, and worse than these, coursed through his brain, staining his mind and conscience with fancies of murder, plunder, and all that was bad, till the flame of honour, reasserting its power in his brea...« less