Well, is it reasonable to claim that I, a pained artist in his garret, ever found paradise?
If so, can it be the exceptionally sad truth that once found, I would so carelessly mislay,
Tempted by angels to the sensuousness of woman thus causing my paradise’s demise?
Perhaps that was John Milton’s temptation too, the poet who was born upon this day.
Dear John was it so?
In that regard the facts I say, born the ninth of December in sixteen hundred and eight,
His Garden of Eden whisked away as mine, vocalised self portrait of his fall from grace
It seems a likely tale to me, no hint of mockery, Milton banished beyond heaven’s gate.
Was his blank verse epic driven by a lapse, a grain of truth so surely hit's us in the face.
Come on, John it was so long ago!
A soaring moment below stairs, the heavenly embrace of a rosy cheeked chamber maid,
My fallen angel, guiding me down the garden path no higher power to pay until ecstasy,
Milton’s fleetingly poetic puff of smoke that Paradise becomes, is all because we strayed,
Childhood bible clutched in hand, we went forth and multiplied, made Paradise a fantasy.
I ask you John, was this, the reason why, Westminster Abbey declined to receive your soul?
A.McTiernan
