"Benighted Travellers"

"A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and a written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering."

From Meditations in Time of Civil War  W. B. Yeats

"Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in som high lonely Towr,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,… "

Il Penseroso  John Milton

Undiscovered letters

"Sign of the Vulture,
St. Paul's Churchyard,
London
Nov. 1, 1678

Dear Mr. Bunyan,
Many thanks for letting me see the manuscript of Pilgrim's Progress, which I am returning as I am afraid we cannot envisage a use for it in the foreseeable future.  The fact is, there really isn't much demand for travel books at this moment in time.  Also it is a bit gloomy in places.

Are you interested in madrigals, at all?  We find there is a  growing demand for books of this nature.  We would also be quite interested in something based on your prison experiences.

Incidentally, I am afraid we have had to put Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners on the remainder list.  It didn't do as well as expected.  Perhaps it is unfortunate that it came out at the same time as Paradise Lost.

Yours sincerely,
Thos. Jarvis
Printer and bookbinder. "

Tonight Josephine, and other undiscovered letters  Michael Green

A poet's poet

"Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy & England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd;
The next in majesty,  in both the last:
The force of nature could no farther go;
To make a third she joined the former two."

Lines Printed under the engraved Portrait of Milton, in Tonson's Folio edition of The Paradise Lost  John Dryden