The Book of the Epic: The World's Great Epics Told in Story

between man and angels, as his song must now change to a tragic note, because vile distrust has entered Paradise. Then he describes how Satan, driven away from Eden by Gabriel,...

she would like, Clorinda proposes to Argantes that they steal out of the city by night, and by chemical means set fire to the engines with which the Christians are threatening t...

Lusitanians for all their pains and indemnify them for their past hardships, leads them to her "Isle of Joy." Here she and her nymphs entertain them in the most acceptable mytho...

Charlemagne arrives on the battle-field and, gazing around him, perceives nothing but corpses. Receiving no answer to his repeated call for the twelve peers, Charlemagne groans...

Empire) proceeds to exalt certain rulers, especially those glorified spirits which form the pupil of his eye (David), and his eyelids (Trajan, Hezekiah, Constantine). As he ment...

to "justify the ways of God to man," Milton states the fall was due to the serpent, who, in revenge for being cast out of heaven with his hosts, induced the mother of mankind to...

is beginning to close in upon the French, that the peers become aware of their danger. Oliver, Roland's bosom friend, the first to descry the enemy, calls out that this ambush i...

Britomart, only child of King Ryenee, had from earliest childhood so longed to be a boy that, instead of devoting her time to womanly occupations, she practised manly sports unt...

The next adventure in the Faerie Queene is that of Sir Guyon,--personifying Temperance,--who is escorted everywhere by a black-garbed palmer,--Prudence or Abstinence,--at whose...

Sir Artegall, the noble champion of justice, or lord deputy of Ireland, sets forth at Gloriana's behest to defend Irena, or Ireland. He is attended by Talus, an iron man, whose...

Sir Calidore, who, in the poem, impersonates Courtesy (or Sir Philip Sidney), now meets Artegall, declaring the queen has despatched him to track and slay the Blatant Beast,--an...

The king, our Emperor Carlemaine, Hath been for seven full years in Spain. From highland to sea hath he won the land; City was none might his arm withstand; Keep and castle alik...

As Britomart conjectured, Sir Scudamore, deeming it impossible she should survive the heat of the flames which had so sorely scorched him, persuaded the nurse to ride on with hi...

proclaim in trumpet tones that justice and pity shall be exacted, and that no man shall be saved without them. He adds that eternal judgment is incomprehensible to mortal ken, t...