Lines Printed Under The Engraved Portrait Of Milton, In Tonson's Folio Edition Of The Paradise Lost, 1688
Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn.
The first, in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both, the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she joined the former two.