At the time when Paradise Lost was written, Heroic Couplet was in fashion and it was considered as the only fit metre for poetry. In these hands of the dramatists themselves, the blank verse had become degenerate and loose and was hard to be distinguished from prose. Milton's originality is seen in his boldly adapting blank verse for the purpose of poetry. Before him, blank verse had been effectively used by dramatists, like Marlowe and Shakespeare, but it had not been used, with any success, by the poets. >Milton's early poetry reveals his mastery over the use of rhyme his later poetry including Paradise Lost brings out his skill in the handling of blank verse (Iambic Pentametre line without Rhyme). The sonnets are in rhyme, too, though Milton departs from the Elizabethan convention in following the Petrarchan pattern of dividing the sonnet into an 'Octave' and a 'Sestet'. Milton's early poems, as Raleigh points out, 'grew on Elizabethan soil, and drank Elizabethan air.' L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, as well as Lycidas, bring out his skill in the handing of rhyme in short lines of four, even three or two, stresses and his sonnets reveal his mastery over the sonnet form. The lilting, dancing measure of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, the delicate songs of Arcades and Comus, and the 'rich and sonorous harmony' of Lycidas-are all ultimately derived from the music of the Elizabethans, which Milton never ceased to admire in spite of his indictment of rhyme. In his Preface to Paradise Lost he expresses his contempt for rhyme and says that rhyme is, 'no necessary adjunct or true ornament of a poem or good verse, in longer verse especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre.' However, his early or minor poems are in rhyme and are read with greater interest by the reader than his great works in blank verse. Milton was a great metrical artist, one who used a number of metres and verse forms with great art and skill.

Paradise regained and samson agonistes