Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers John Milton 47 AN IDYLL1 The place is the Garden of Eden. N Had in her sober livery all things clad; came still evening on, and twilight gray Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests Eve addresses Adam. "With thee conversing I forget all time; 1 From the fourth book of Paradise Lost. With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon, John Milton II POETICAL DRAMA The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 48 THE MEETING OF ELECTRA AND ORESTES1 GAMEMNON, on his return from Troy, was AGA murdered in the palace of Mycena by his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus. Orestes, the victim's son and heir, then a child, was saved by his sister Electra. She gave him to a faithful retainer, who carried him to Phocis. There he grew up in the home of Strophius, King of Crisa near Delphi, the father of his friend Pylades. Many years have passed since then. Electra has One hope alone has hitherto borne her up that The news, however, is false. The old man is not 1 From the tragedy of Electra. The translation is by Lewis Campbell, and is reprinted with the permission of the Oxford University Press. The exposition of events preceding the scene reprinted is adapted--with the permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press-from the note prefixed by Richard Jebb, in The Tragedies of Sophocles, to his prose version of the play. |