Omar: I think though the problem with Milton is not so much his language as that his themes are a bit difficult for the modern secular reader to identify with.
Samuel Johnson argued that Milton invented the [Christian] Devil. A modern secular reader might find that liberating from received opinion about Christianity, just as much as a fundamentalist Christian would find it perplexing that Milton strays far from the biblical text. Plus there are all the classical references which instruct past myths, as did Ovid's Metamorphosis or Dante's Divine Comedy.
The ravishing music of the poetry can be life-changing. The music! And the imagination! For example, when Satan enters earth (and by "earth" Milton meant the entire physical universe) he sees all space/time as a sort of gem hanging on a golden pendant.
Even Milton's Puritan theology has some profound notions, such as the striving for evil works always producing good works in long view ... which harmonizes with Sufi thought, Vedanta, Nagarjuna, Angelus Silesius, Swedenborg, Blake, Goethe, and Emerson.
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