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“He seemed to me to enjoy a triumph over me. Methought I heard him say, ‘Ay!

When I was come to The age of fifteen year In all this lond, neither free not bond, Methought I had no peer.

Third in line was the Milton sonnet, “Methought I saw my late espoused saint,” a poem drenched in grief, loss, and longing, a poem I’ve loved since adolescence, a poem that I thought, perhaps, they wouldn’t entirely understand.

The final harmonies are supposed to illustrate the passage in the twenty-first canto of the Paradiso:— I saw rear'd up, In colour like to sun-illumined gold, A ladder, which my ken pursued in vain, So lofty was the summit; down whose steps I saw the splendours in such multitude Descending, every light in heaven, methought, Was shed thence.

"I thought you were still sleeping, sir knight," he said; "but I ventured to wake you, as, by Heaven's good will, it seems there will be a battle shortly, and methought you would like to hear such tidings, and be present at such a deed."