...about him," where, in response to the "inward prompting" of thoughts that have long "possest" him, he "might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die" (810). It is from those exalted "intentions" that he has been "pluckt" by the "abortive and foredated...

...prompting": besides expressing his national literary aspirations, it expresses his Renaissance ambition to "leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die" (YP 1:810): it highlights his sense of the Bible as poetic (with its "frequent songs"): and it articulates...

...labor of his daughters to fulfill the promise he made in The Reason of Church Government (1642) to "leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die" (RCG, 668). But what of the laboring girls? Romney has also tried to capture their experience of this...

...shaping of a vessel for the transpersonal. Thus it was Milton's lifelong determination "that by labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in...to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die."51 Literature at its highest, and Milton's Paradise Lost is surely the most sublime "work" in...

...daily upon me, that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joyn'd with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps...aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die. These thoughts at once possest me, and these other. That if I were certain to write as men buy Leases,...

...daily upon me, that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joyn'd with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps...aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die" (810). The prophetic quality of Milton's remarks has been demonstrated in the centuries intervening...

...lesse to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intent study . . . joyn'd with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps...to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.19 Milton envisages this great work as a vernacular epic poem, and he considers it specifically...

...unconventional to the point of heresy, and came into conflict with the official Puritan stand. "By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in...after-times, as they should not willingly let it die." (from The Reason of Church Government, 1641) Milton died from 'gout struck in' on November 8, 1674...

...quoted at length from "Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty" Milton's early hope that he "might perhaps leave something so written to after-times as they should not willingly let it die." Melville marked the whole of Milton's magnificent passage, perhaps the greatest statement of literary...