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Me off-topic, Dave, but relating to your summer night and thunderstorm---and being born in B'Ham. Here's the url for a NYT article on a Yale U exhibit of many works of David Cox, marvelously talented w/c and oil painter, born in Birmingham England in 1873: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/arts/design/27cox.html The exhibition, which just closed in New Haven, will travel to the Birmingham Museums and Gallery where it will be on view from January 31 to May 3, 2009. Best, Judy 2009/1/4 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> > Ah Stephen, my memory failed me: it's 'at the mill' not 'mills', > though I think I prefer my mistake. > > I remember first reading Milton: it was on a summer night when I was > 15 and there was a thunderstorm. I've never been able to decide > whether I like Milton or not, he's simultaneously impressive and > disagreeable: > > The sun to me is dark > And silent as the moon > When she deserts the night > Hid in her vacant interlunar cave > > It's a weird bumpy rhythm, yes, but the last line is so beautiful, it > sings (try it, it really does). > > He can be so sexist, in our terms, that it borders on the hilarious: > > But who is this, what thing of sea or land? > Female of sex it seems > > But as Hopkins rightly observed the metric effects in Samson Agonistes > are extraordinary. > > Pound loathed Milton, egotists who want to be strong men never get on. > Pre-Christmas I was at a carol service at our cathedral ( I do go the > church on and off although I don't believe a word of it) and Milton's > ode 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity' was read: I'd never heard it > performed in public before: the impression was of something very > organised but bumpy to the point of bumptiousness, it wanted to > overbear. > > Never went to uni meself, me ducks. > > Best > > Dave > >