Milton: A Poem in Two Books

Its hero is John Milton, who returns from Heaven and unites with the author to explore the relationship between living writers and their predecessors, and to undergo a mystical journey to correct his own spiritual errors.

[4] The preface to Milton includes the poem "And did those feet in ancient time", which was set to music as the hymn called "Jerusalem".

The poem appears after a prose attack on the influence of Greek and Roman culture, which is unfavourably contrasted with "the Sublime of the Bible".

Book I opens with an epic invocation to the muses, drawing on the classical models of Homer and Virgil, which were also used by John Milton in Paradise Lost.

At this point Milton, hearing the Bard's song, appears and agrees to return to earth to purge the errors of his own Puritan imposture and go to "Eternal death".

The poem concludes with a vision of a final union of living and dead, internal and external reality, and male and female, and a transformation of all of human perception.