It's a sort of better version of Kipling's 'If'.

With which Michael began this thread!

tp -

There are gifts differing - English is my first and only language and I can pick up on the subtleties.  I have not a hope of understanding in another language in any detail or expressing myself with more ability than a four year old.  You are far more gifted linguistically than I am.

T-i-n is a clever lad and nice guy, as we all know (even though like Milton he went to Cambridge) and he understands contemporary English poetry in a way that make me feel very old fashioned.

Don't worry about not understanding Milton: as I say he is not very fashionable, and he was not a fun person.

Milton isn't all solemn impenetrability.  Here's a warm and relaxed poem of his to help get through a blustery January night:

Song On May Morning

Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
Hail bounteous May that dost inspire
Mirth and youth, and warm desire,
Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing,
Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song,
And welcom thee, and wish thee long.

And just to show I know Milton wasn't a horrible sexist really, here is his sonnet on his dead wife.  tp - the point about the last line is that Milton was blind, so when he woke from his dream, he was back in night.

Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint
Purification in the Old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear as in no face with more delight.
But, oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Yes, and incidentally, Milton's another poetic precursor referred to in Eliot's Four Quartets, in the lines:

When I think of a king at nightfall
Or of one who died blind and quiet,
Why should we [??worship] these dead men more than the dying?

There's this thing called Google, tinners, which lets you - oh never mind...

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.