loftiness quotes

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last: The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third, she joined the former two.

-John Dryden
  'Epigram on Milton', engraved on the frontispiece to the 1688 edition of Paradise Lost. The three poets are Homer, Virgil and Milton.