November 14, 2005
Two weeks ago, I was reading what is perhaps the best of the 12 books in Paradise Lost and I came across a familiar passage:
Invincible: abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely, saw and pined
His loss~
I thought I'd never read Milton before, but these lines were instantly familiar to me; I knew them by heart. I worked my way backwards, following fragments (the green volume on my mother's bookshelf, the smell of the paper, scanning the lines for those perfectly hinged words - invincible, abashed - a tone of voice, afraid, in awe), until it all came flooding back in full, and I thought I'd write something about it. And I began to...
And then I stopped. And stopped. To paraphrase the words of another David: biographies are too close to obituaries, and I wasn't ready to write this part of mine just yet.
Since then, I've finished the poem, and things have happened and I've some serious catching up to do.
Posted by David Lowery at November 14, 2005 12:10 AM