Enamour'd, artless, young, on foreign ground, Uncertain whither from myself to fly, To thee, dear lady, with an humble sigh, Let me devote my heart, which I have found, By certain proofs not few, intrepid, sound, Good, and addicted to conceptions high: When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky, It rests in adamant, self-wrapt around, As safe from envy and from outrage rude, From hopes and fears that vulgar minds abuse, As fond of genius and fixt solitude, Of the resounding lyre and every muse. Weak you will find it in one only part, Now pierc'd by Love's immedicable dart. * * * * * Milton was three times married. The relations of his first wife, (Mary Powell,) who were violent Royalists, and ashamed or afraid of their connection with a republican, persuaded her to leave him. She absolutely forsook her husband for nearly three years, and resided with her family at Oxford, when that city was the head-quarters of the King's party. "I have so much charity for her," says Aubrey, "that she might not wrong his bed; but what man (especially contemplative,) would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the ennemie partie?" Milton, though a suspicion of the nature hinted at by Aubrey never rose in his mind, was justly incensed at this dereliction. He was on the point of divorcing this contumacious bride, and had already made choice of another[147] to succeed her, when she threw herself, impromptu, at his feet and implored his forgiveness. He forgave her; and when the republican party triumphed, the family who had so cruelly wronged him found a refuge in his house. This woman embittered his life for fourteen or fifteen years. A remembrance of the reconciliation with his wife, and of his own feelings on that occasion, are said to have suggested to Milton's mind the beautiful scene between Adam and Eve, in the tenth book of the Paradise Lost. She ended weeping; and her lowly plight, Immoveable, till peace obtained for faults Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration; soon his heart relented Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair, his reconcilement seeking; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, &c. Milton's second and most beloved wife (Catherine Woodcock) died in child-bed, within a year after their marriage. He honoured her memory with what Johnson (out upon him!) calls a _poor_ sonnet; it is the one beginning Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave; which, in its solemn and tender strain of feeling and modulated harmony, reminds us of Dante. He never ceased to lament her, and to cherish her memory with a fond regret:--she must have been full in his heart and mind when he wrote those touching lines in the Paradise Lost--