The Acrostic Paradise Lost by John Milton and Terrance Lindall

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Yet how did the poet write his monumental works, especially given the loss of his
eyesight while writing significant treatises both before and during the Civil War? Here
we have the blind poet dictating to an amanuensis (his daughters, as many preferred to
believe for a long time, but in reality his nephew), whole passages defining important
relationships and memorable scenes which are themselves of epic proportion: the creation
of man in Adam and of woman in Eve; Eve seeing herself in the pond for the first time
and likewise our seeing Eve at the same time she sees herself; Adam seeing Eve for the
first time; the moving depiction of the “bower of bliss” and then of the creation; the war
in heaven; the depiction of Satan and hell, with Satan rallying his troops in passages that
take poetry to new heights; the temptation of Eve and then Adam, in equally powerful
scenes, and the departure of Adam and Eve from Eden.
Surely Milton deserves not only our gratitude for the prose treatises he wrote, but also for
the poetry, much of it written under the most dire of circumstances (some thought he
might be put to death for his part in the Civil War and his service to Cromwell, and also
more specifically because of his treatise in defense of “beheading a King”).
Here is a poet to be reckoned with: for standing up in defense of eternal values,
something Milton not only did himself, but something he expected his readers to do as
well; and then to appreciate his poems, his epic verse and organ voice, his epic vision,
and his bringing to life, despite (or perhaps because of) his blindness, something so
unique that Dryden and others long after him have recognized in Milton the genius that
“Surpass’d” Homer and Virgil before him.
As Milton left his supreme poetic gifts for mankind to appreciate in reading his great
works during the centuries following him, so, too, he used his blindness to bring to life
visions befitting the dynamic scope and epic dimensions of his great epic; visions
undertaken in the first, and still one of the greatest illustrated editions of Paradise Lost
published not long after Milton died, in a folio format in 1688. Medina's illustrations,
primarily, are those which appear in the 1688 folio edition of Paradise Lost, but aside
from the significance of what his stature brought to this publishing venture, the 1688
folio remains a highly sought after book today because it is England's first grand
publication and therefore holds its own place for the first time with books printed on the
Continent where books had long been praised for their publishing distinction and artistic
design and success.
Through the centuries John Milton’s Paradise Lost has continued to inspire artists, which
tells us much about Milton and about his great epic, a poem which readily lends itself to
the eye of the artist, and in this, affords all of us a visual perspective, a visual capturing of
the poet’s vision, which words alone can seldom achieve. Commentary and criticism
certainly have their place, but seldom does the written word adequately capture the poet’s