The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Be true to Art and Beauty. Milton's creed,
Coldly sublime, grasps not with equal span
The whole of Nature, or the whole of man:
Not by such dreams now prosper or succeed
Nations, whose souls and dawning spirits need
Food other than pale legends Puritan.
Through warmer veins the English red blood ran
When Shakespeare's fire linked thought to ardent deed.

From France and Italy learn the creed of Greece
Renascent. Learn that form is still divine;
Yea, that God's spirit speaks through curve and line
Of shoulder,—that through glory and subtle scent
Of woman's hair angels breathe balm and peace,
On things unutterably pure intent.

The late William Morris confessed himself quite unable to read Milton, on account of that poet's peculiar blending of metaphysical theology with a “cold classicalism.”

“‘For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.’ This verse has been so utterly enigmatical to the translators, and so apparently contradictory to what has preceded it, that they have ventured on an explanation in the margin. ‘That is,’ they say, ‘a covering, in sign that she is under the power of her husband.’ Now the meaning of εξουσια, rendered ‘power’ in the authorised version, is really ‘authority.’ By no possible licence or contortion of terms can it be made to mean ‘covering.’ Still less is there anything to justify an explanation which is in palpable opposition to the words of the text. There can be no better illustration of the pride and ignorance with which man, even to our own day, insists upon woman's subjection to him, than that he should presume to put in a marginal note, which in the minds of the ignorant has almost the authority of the text itself, in explanation of the words, ‘For this cause ought woman to have authority on her head because of the angels,’ this means, ‘a covering, in sign that she is under the power of her husband.’ Had women been the translators, the explanation would have been different. The true internal significance is that woman is the connecting link between man and the angels, and that it is through her affectional atomic union with them that a channel is formed by which alone the Divine Feminine can descend to man; and the reason why the apostles were divinely impressed to forbid the women to shave their heads was, in the inverse sense, analogous to that which caused Delilah to shave the head of Samson when she wished to deprive him of his strength. There is a certain quality which pertains to the electricity that resides in hair, as to its essential atoms, of which, if I spoke further, I should only excite, still more than I have already done, the ridicule and scepticism of men of science, for it is far beyond their ken, which renders it an important factor in the transmission of force derived from those whom Paul calls ‘the angels,’ and to tamper with this transmitting medium of electric magnetic force is to limit woman's power, and therefore her authority in her own special sphere of operations, over man.”—Scientific Religion. By Laurence Oliphant. 1888. Pp. 356, 357.

1 Cor. xi. io.