L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas

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Four of Milton's early masterpieces in a single volume: L'Allegro and Il Penseroso (1631), paired odes celebrating the active and contemplative temperaments; Comus (1634), the court masque dramatizing virtue's triumph over temptation; and Lycidas (1637), the elegy for a drowned friend that Milton turned into a meditation on vocation, fame, and the corruption of the Church. Lycidas in particular is often considered the finest short poem in English, condensing enormous intellectual and emotional weight into 193 lines. All four reward reading aloud for the extraordinary music of Milton's verse.