One of John Milton's most famous phrases, this; perhaps his most famous phrase of all. It's from 'Lycidas' (1638) of course. Lines 190-93, the last of the poem:
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,Well here's a surprising thing: Milton more-or-less plagiarised these lines from Phineas Fletcher's allegorical epic The Purple Island (1633):
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.
But see, the stealing night with softly pace,Naughty Milton!
To flie the Western Sunne, creeps up the East;
Cold Hesper 'gins unmask his evening face,
And calls the winking starres from drouzie rest:
Home then my lambes; the falling drops eschew:
To morrow shall ye feast in pastures new,
And with the rising Sunne banquet on pearled dew. [6:77]
There's some context for this in Gary M. Bouchard's article "Phineas Fletcher: The Piscatory Link between Spenserian and Miltonic Pastoral" (Studies in Philology 89:2, 1992, pp. 232-243). ("Piscatory link" is a term we should all use more often!) Bouchard connects the "Mantles blew" to blue-clad "fisher-boyes" in Fletcher's "Eclogue VII", saying these are the only two instances of blue clothing for workers in pastorals (which is not quite accurate -- the more recent Complete Poems and Essential Prose of John Milton notes that there were a few other instances, such as in William Browne's Shepherd's Pipe). Milton certainly seems to have read at least some of Fletcher's work. Some people have seen the influence of Fletcher's Locustae on Milton's very early Gunpowder Plot poem, "In Quintem Novembris", but if Milton was accurate in dating it to his own 17th year, then that's probably impossible, unless Milton read it in manuscript.
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