Three poets, in three distant ages born, <br />Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn. <br />The first, in loftiness of thought surpassed; <br />The next, in majesty; in both, the last. <br />The force of nature could no further go; <br />To make a third, she joined the former two.<br /><br />John Dryden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lines-printed-under-the-engraved-portrait-of-milton-in-tonson-s-folio-edition-of-the-paradise-lost-1688/
