As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."

The poetical temperament is especially liable to misgiving and
despondency, and from this Milton evidently was not exempt. Yet he is
the same Milton who proclaimed a quarter of a century afterwards--

"I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward."

There is something very fine in the steady resolution with which, after
so fully admitting to himself that his promise is yet unfulfilled, and
that appearances are against him, he recurs to his purpose, frankly
owning the while that the gift he craves is Heaven's, and his only the
application. He had received a lesson against over-confidence in the
failure of his solitary effort up to this time to achieve a work on a
large scale. To the eighth and last stanza of his poem, "The Passion of
Christ," is appended the note: "This subject the author finding to be
above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what
was begun, left it unfinished." It nevertheless begins nobly, but soon
deviates into conceits, bespeaking a fatigued imagination. The "Hymn on
the Nativity," on the other hand, begins with two stanzas of far-fetched
prettiness, and goes on ringing and thundering through strophes of
ever-increasing grandeur, until the sweetness of Virgin and Child seem
in danger of being swallowed up in the glory of Christianity; when
suddenly, by an exquisite turn, the poet sinks back into his original
key, and finally harmonizes his strain by the divine repose of
concluding picture worthy of Correggio:--