PARADI SE LO ST This page intentionally left blank JO H N M I LTON PARADI S E LO S T Introduced by PH I LI P PULLMAN 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. lt furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Paradise Lost taken from the Oxford World’s Classics edition edited by Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg Introductions © Philip Pullman 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–280619–X EAN 978–0–19–280619–2 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Designed by Bob Elliott Typeset in Monotype Centaur MT and Adobe Garamond by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Italy by Grafiche Industriali CONTENTS Introdu
ion by philip pullman 1 PARADISE LOST Book I 13 Book II 41 Book III 75 Book IV 101 Book V 135 Book VI 165 Book VII 195 Book VIII 219 Book IX 243 Book X 281 Book XI 317 Book XII 347 Afterword 371 A Note on the Illurations 373 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION by philip pullman correspondent once told me a story—which I’ve never been able to trace, and I don’t know whether it’s true—about a bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squire two hundred years ago or more, sitting by his fireside listening to Paradise Lost being read aloud. He’s never read it himself; he doesn’t know the story at all; but as he sits there, perhaps with a pint of port at his side and with a gouty foot propped up on a stool, he finds himself transfixed. Suddenly he bangs the arm of his chair, and exclaims ‘By God! I know not what the outcome may be, but this Lucifer is a damned fine fellow, and I hope he may win!’ Which are my sentiments exactly. I’m conscious, as I write this introduction to the poem, that I have hardly any more pretensions to scholarship than that old gentleman. Many of my comparisons will be drawn from popular literature and film rather than from anything more refined. Learned critics have analysed Paradise Lost and found in it things I could never see, and related it to other works I have never read, and demonstrated the truth of this or that assertion about Milton and his poem that it would never have occurred to me to make, or, having made, to think that I could prove it. But this is how I read this great work, and all I can do is describe that way of reading. A he ory as a poem So I begin with sound. I read Paradise Lost not only with my eyes, but with my mouth. I was lucky enough to study Books I and II for A Level many years ago, and to do so in a small class whose teacher, Miss Enid Jones, had the clear-eyed and old-fashioned idea that we 2 Introdu
ion would get a good sense of the poem if, before we did anything else to it, we read it aloud. So we took it in turns, in that little Sixth Form classroom in Ysgol Ardudwy, on the flat land below the great rock of Harlech Castle, to stumble and mutter and gabble our way through it all, while Miss Jones sat with arms comfortably folded on her desk, patiently helping us with pronunciation, but not encumbering us with meaning. And thus it was that I first read lines like this. Satan is making his way across the wastes of hell towards the new world he intends to corrupt, and a complex and majestic image evokes his distant flight: As when far off at sea a fleet descried Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape Ply stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemed Far off the flying fiend . . . (Book II, lines 636–43) That passage stayed with me for years, and still has the power to thrill me. Ply stemming nightly toward the pole—in those words I could hear the creak of wood and rope, the never-ceasing dash of water against the bows, the moan of the wind in the rigging; I could see the dim phosphorescence in the creaming wake, the dark waves against the restless horizon, the constant stars in the velvet sky; and I saw the vigilant helmsman, the only man awake, guiding his sleeping shipmates and their precious freight across the wilderness of the night. To see these things and hear them most vividly, I found that I had to take the lines in my mouth and utter them aloud. A whisper will do; you don’t have to bellow it, and annoy the neighbours; but air has to pass across your tongue and through your lips. Your body has to be involved. through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, Introdu
ion 3 A universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire. (Book II, lines 618–28) The experience of reading poetry aloud when you don’t fully understand it is a curious and complicated one. It’s like suddenly discovering that you can play the organ. Rolling swells and peals of sound, powerful rhythms and rich harmonies are at your command; and as you utter them you begin to realize that the sound you’re releasing from the words as you speak is part of the reason they’re there. The sound is part of the meaning, and that part only comes alive when you speak it. So at this stage it doesn’t matter that you don’t fully understand everything: you’re already far closer to the poem than someone who sits there in silence looking up meanings and references and making assiduous notes. By the way, someone who does that while listening to music through earphones will never understand it at all. We need to remind ourselves of this, especially if we have anything to do with education. I have come across teachers and student teachers whose job was to teach poetry, but who thought that poetry was only a fancy way of dressing up simple statements to make them look complicated, and that their task was to help their pupils translate the stuff into ordinary English. When they’d translated it, when they’d ‘understood’ it, the job was done. It had the effect of turning the classroom into a torture-chamber, in which everything that made the poem a living thing had been killed and butchered. No one had told such people that poetry is in fact enchantment; that it has the form it does because that very form casts a spell; and that when they thought they were bothered and bewildered, they were in fact being bewitched, and if they let themselves accept the enchantment and enjoy it, they would eventually understand much more about the poem. But if they never learn this truth themselves, they can’t possibly 4 Introdu
ion transmit it to anyone else. Instead, in an atmosphere of suspicion, resentment, and hostility, many poems are interrogated until they confess, and what they confess is usually worthless, as the results of torture always are: broken little scraps of information, platitudes, banalities. Never mind! The work has been done according to the instructions, and the result of the interrogation is measured and recorded and tabulated in line with government targets; and this is the process we call education. However, as I say, I was lucky enough to learn to love Paradise Lost before I had to explain it. Once you do love something, the attempt to understand it becomes a pleasure rather than a chore, and what you find when you begin to explore Paradise Lost in that way is how rich it is in thought and argument. You could make a prose paraphrase of it that would still be a work of the most profound and commanding intellectual power. But the poetry, its incantatory quality, is what makes it the great work of art it is. I found, in that classroom so long ago, that it had the power to stir a physical response: my heart beat faster, the hair on my head stirred, my skin bristled. Ever since then, that has been my test for poetry, just as it was for A. E. Housman, who dared not think of a line of poetry while he was shaving, in case he cut himself. he poem as a ory The question ‘Where should my story begin?’ is, as every storyteller knows, both immensely important and immensely difficult to answer. ‘Once upon a time’, as the fairy-tale formula has it; but once upon a time there was—what? The opening governs the way you tell everything that follows, not only in terms of the organization of the events, but also in terms of the tone of voice that does the telling; and not least, it enlists the reader’s sympathy in this cause rather than that. Alfred Hitchcock once pointed out that if a film opens with a shot of a burglar breaking into a house and ransacking the place, and then, with him, we see through the bedroom window the lights of a car drawing up outside, we think ‘Hurry up! Get out! They’re coming!’ So when the story of Paradise Lost begins, after the invocation to Introdu
ion 5 the ‘heavenly muse’, we find ourselves in Hell, with the fallen angels groaning on the burning lake. And from then on, part of our awareness is always affected by that. This is a story about devils. It’s not a story about God. The fallen angels and their leader are our protagonists, and the unfallen angels, and God the Father and the Son, and Adam and Eve, are all supporting players. And we begin in medias res, in the middle of the action, with the first great battle lost, and the rebel angels just beginning to recover their senses after their vertiginous fall. What an opening! And what scenery! Satan first looks around at The dismal situation waste and wild, A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed . . . (Book I, lines 60–9) C. S. Lewis remarks that for many readers, it’s not just the events of the story that matter: it’s the world the story conjures up. In his own case, he loved the Leather-Stocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper not just for ‘the momentary suspense but that whole world to which it belonged—the snow and the snow-shoes, beavers and canoes, war-paths and wigwams, and Hiawatha names’. The same thing is true for some writers of stories. They are drawn to a particular atmosphere, a particular kind of landscape; they want to wander about in it and relish its special tastes and sounds, even before they know what story they’re going to tell. Whether Milton worked like that I don’t know, but it’s easy to see that his imagination delighted in the scenery of hell, and we see that from the very beginning, with Satan surveying his ‘dungeon horrible’. Books I and II are full of these magnificent and terrifying landscapes, and when the tale reaches Paradise itself, in Book IV, the descriptions reach a peak of sensuous delight that we can almost taste. 6 Introdu
ion But landscapes and atmospheres aren’t enough for a story; something has to happen. And it helps the tightness and propulsion of the story enormously if it’s the protagonist himself who sets the action going, who takes the initiative. It also encourages our interest in the protagonist to develop into admiration. That is exactly what happens here, as the fallen angels, who are devils now, gather themselves after their great fall, and begin to plot their revenge. Revenge is one of the great story-themes, of course, and it’s inspired storytellers of every rank and in every age, from Homer and Aeschylus and Shakespeare to Jeffrey Archer. The interest here is in how Milton handles the narrative. How well does he tell the story? I think it could hardly be told any better. After their first struggle on the burning lake, the fallen angels hold a great debate in Pandaemonium, where the characters of their leaders are vividly revealed: Moloch, the fearless, savage warrior; Belial, graceful, false, and hollow, counselling ‘ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth’; Mammon, intent only on gold and riches; and then Beelzebub, ‘majestic though in ruin’, who sums up all the preceding arguments and then points the way to another world altogether, ‘the happy seat | Of some new race called Man’, and suggests that they make that the target of their vengeance. We can see and hear the plan taking shape, we can feel the surge of determination and energy it brings, and inevitably that makes us curious to know how they’ll bring it off. There is a sort of curiosity that isn’t short-circuited by our knowledge of how things did, in fact, turn out: Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal demonstrates that although we know full well that General de Gaulle was not assassinated, we are still eager to read about how he might have been. And Milton is careful to remind us that it was Satan himself who first thought of this plan, and it is Satan who sets out across the wastes of Hell to find his way to the new world. The hero is firmly in charge. If the opening of a story is important, the closing of one part of it, a chapter, a canto, is important in a different way. The purpose here is to charge the forthcoming pause with tension and expectation. Popular storytellers have always had a firm grasp of this principle; it’s exactly what Conan Doyle does, for example, at the end of the Introdu
ion 7 first episode of The Hound of the Baskervilles, in the Strand Magazine for August 1901. Dr Mortimer has just been describing the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville, and mentions the footprints nearby. ‘A man’s or a woman’s?’ asks Holmes, and Dr Mortimer replies, ‘Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!’ There the episode ends. There was no shortage of eager buyers for the September issue. Storytelling principles hold true, whatever the subject, whatever the medium. Time the pause right, and the audience will be eager for what follows. The break after the end of the second book of Paradise Lost is powerfully charged with tension because it obeys that principle. After his journey to the gates of Hell, and his encounter with Sin and Death, Satan sees the distant vastness of Heaven, And fast by hanging in a golden chain This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge, Accursed, and in a cursèd hour he hies. And there Book II ends, and we pause with that image in our minds. This newly created world, suspended in its golden chain, so beautiful and fresh, knows nothing of what is coming towards it. But we know. To cite Alfred Hitchcock again, who knew more about suspense than most other storytellers, you can depict four men sitting around a table calmly playing cards, and the audience will be on the edge of their seats with tension—as long as the audience knows what the card-players don’t, namely that there is a bomb under the table about to go off. Milton knew that too. There are examples of his great storytelling power all the way through—far too many to mention here. But one we should look at is the very end of the poem. Like the beginning, the end of a story is such an important place that it has a traditional formulaic tag, but ‘and they lived happily ever after’ certainly won’t do in this case. Adam and Eve have chosen to disobey the explicit command of God, and the consequences of this have been laid out for them not only by their own experience of guilt and shame, but by the narrative of the future they’ve heard from the angel Michael. They must 8 Introdu
ion leave Eden: Paradise is now irrecoverably lost. This is a part of the story that has often been illustrated, and in a picture the scene is indeed intensely dramatic, with the man and woman in tears, and the angel with the fiery sword expelling them—just as it is in Burghers’s engraving, reproduced in this edition. But the story closes on a mood, a tender emotional harmony, that is both crystal-clear and profoundly complex. Part of its complexity depends on the interplay between the past and the future, between regret and hope, and this is the very thing that is so difficult to convey in a picture, where the only tense is the present. The best way to experience the full richness of this mood is to read the last lines of the poem aloud, as I’ve suggested earlier, and succumb to the enchantment, because at this point poetry and storytelling come together perfectly. ‘The world was all before them’ implies not only an end but a new beginning. There are many more stories to come. Paradise Lost and its influence A poem is not a lecture; a story is not an argument. The way poems and stories work on our minds is not by logic, but by their capacity to enchant, to excite, to move, to inspire. To be sure, a sound intellectual underpinning helps the work to stand up under intellectual questioning, as Paradise Lost certainly does; but its primary influence is on the imagination. So it was, for instance, with the greatest of Milton’s interpreters, William Blake, for whom the author of Paradise Lost was a lifelong inspiration. ‘Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face,’ he claimed, and in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he wrote what is probably the most perceptive, and certainly the most succinct, criticism of Paradise Lost: ‘The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.’ And Blake’s continuing and passionate interest in Milton resulted in a long (and, frankly, difficult) poem named after the poet, as well as a series of illustrations to Paradise Lost which are some of the most delicate and beautiful water-colours he ever did. Introdu
ion 9 Other poets at the same period felt the influence of Milton, Wordsworth in particular, who began one of his sonnets with the words: Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee; And very near the beginning of his own great long poem, The Prelude, Wordsworth deliberately echoes the phrase in the closing lines of Paradise Lost : The earth is all before me . . . —as if he’s taking hold of a torch passed to him by Milton. Today, nearly three and a half centuries after Paradise Lost was first published, it is more influential than ever. Two separate dramatic adaptations have recently played on the stage in Britain; and only this morning I opened my post to find a American retelling of it, with attractive watercolour illustrations, in an edition for children. It will not go away. In my own case, the trilogy I called His Dark Materials (stealing that very phrase from Book II, line 916, with due acknowledgement in the epigraph) began partly with my memories of reading the poem aloud at school so many years before. As I talked to my publisher, I discovered that he too remembered studying it in the Sixth Form, and we sat at the lunch table swapping our favourite lines; and by the time we’d finished, I seemed to have agreed to write a long fantasy for young readers, which would at least partly, we hoped, evoke something of the atmosphere we both loved in Paradise Lost. So it was the landscape, the atmosphere, that was my starting point. But as the narrative began to form itself on the page, I found that—perhaps drawn by the gravitational attraction of a much greater mass—I was beginning to tell the same story, too. I wasn’t worried about that, because I was well aware that there are many ways of telling the same story, and that this story was a very good one in the first place, and could take a great deal of re-telling. Inevitably, the storyteller’s own preoccupations become visible in the emphasis and the colouring they give to this or that aspect of the 10 Introdu
ion tale. In my case, I found that my interest was most vividly caught by the meaning of the temptation-and-fall theme. Suppose that the prohibition on the knowledge of good and evil were an expression of jealous cruelty, and the gaining of such knowledge an act of virtue? Suppose the Fall should be celebrated and not deplored? As I played with it, my story resolved itself into an account of the necessity of growing up, and a refusal to lament the loss of innocence. The true end of human life, I found myself saying, was not redemption by a nonexistent Son of God, but the gaining and transmission of wisdom. Innocence is not wise, and wisdom cannot be innocent, and if we are going to do any good in the world, we have to leave childhood behind. That is how one modern writer told this great story. It will certainly be told many times again, and each time differently. I think it is the central story of our lives, the story that more than any other tells us what it means to be human. But however many times it is told in the future, and however many different interpretations are made of it, I don’t think that the version created by Milton, blind and ageing, out of political favour, dictating it day by day to his daughter, will ever be surpassed. the verse he measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming. T This page intentionally left blank B OO K I This page intentionally left blank love the audacity of this opening—the sheer nerve of Milton’s declaring that he’s going to pursue ‘Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme’, to ‘justify the ways of God to men’. How could anyone fail to thrill to a story that begins like this? How could any reader not warm to a poet who dares to say it? As the story begins, we meet the rebel angels as they lie stunned and vanquished on the burning lake in hell. Surely there’s no way out for them? But when we read the great description of Satan calling his legions together, with his shield hanging on his shoulders like the moon and his spear mightier than the tallest pine, we realize that the story is in safe hands. The rebels raise the palace of Pandaemonium, with its monstrous grandeur, and gather to decide what they should do. They haven’t been destroyed: ‘war | Open or understood must be resolved.’ P. P. I 
he rgumen his first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man’s disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed; then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was by the command of God driven out of heaven with all his crew into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his angels now fallen into hell, described here, not in the centre (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos: here Satan with his angels lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him; they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded; they rise, their numbers, array of battle, their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in heaven; for that angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandaemonium the palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the deep: the infernal peers there sit in council. T f man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing heavenly muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of chaos: or if Sion hill O 10 18 aradise o book i Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men. Say first, for heaven hides nothing from thy view Nor the deep tract of hell, say first what cause Moved our grand parents in that happy state, Favoured of heaven so highly, to fall off From their creator, and transgress his will For one restraint, lords of the world besides? Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equalled the most high, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God Raised impious war in heaven and battle proud With vain attempt. Him the almighty power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down 20 30 40 book i aradise o To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf Confounded though immortal: but his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes That witnessed huge affliction and dismay Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: At once as far as angels’ ken he views The dismal situation waste and wild, A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed: Such place eternal justice had prepared For those rebellious, here their prison ordained In utter darkness, and their portion set As far removed from God and light of heaven As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. O how unlike the place from whence they fell! There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, He soon discerns, and weltering by his side One next himself in power, and next in crime, Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub. To whom the arch-enemy, And thence in heaven called Satan, with bold words 19 50 60 70 80 20 aradise o book i Breaking the horrid silence thus began. If thou beest he; but O how fallen! how changed From him, who in the happy realms of light Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine Myriads though bright: if he whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise, Joined with me once, now misery hath joined In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest From what height fallen, so much the stronger proved He with his thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? yet not for those, Nor what the potent victor in his rage Can else inflict, do I repent or change, Though changed in outward lustre; that fixed mind And high disdain, from sense of injured merit, That with the mightiest raised me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of spirits armed That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power opposed In dubious battle on the plains of heaven, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? That glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deify his power, Who from the terror of this arm so late Doubted his empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods And this empyreal substance cannot fail, Since through experience of this great event 90 100 110 book i aradise o In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, We may with more successful hope resolve To wage by force or guile eternal war Irreconcilable, to our grand foe, Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven. So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair: And him thus answered soon his bold compeer. O prince, O chief of many thronèd powers, That led the embattled seraphim to war Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds Fearless, endangered heaven’s perpetual king; And put to proof his high supremacy, Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate, Too well I see and rue the dire event, That with sad overthrow and foul defeat Hath lost us heaven, and all this mighty host In horrible destruction laid thus low, As far as gods and heavenly essences Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains Invincible, and vigour soon returns, Though all our glory extinct, and happy state Here swallowed up in endless misery. But what if he our conqueror (whom I now Of force believe almighty, since no less Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours) Have left us this our spirit and strength entire Strongly to suffer and support our pains, That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, Or do him mightier service as his thralls By right of war, whate’er his business be Here in the heart of hell to work in fire, Or do his errands in the gloomy deep; What can it then avail though yet we feel Strength undiminished, or eternal being 21 120 130 140 150 22 aradise o book i To undergo eternal punishment? Whereto with speedy words the arch-fiend replied. Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable Doing or suffering: but of this be sure, To do aught good never will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being the contrary to his high will Whom we resist. If then his providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil; Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from their destined aim. But see the angry victor hath recalled His ministers of vengeance and pursuit Back to the gates of heaven: the sulphurous hail Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid The fiery surge, that from the precipice Of heaven received us falling, and the thunder, Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and boundless deep. Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn, Or satiate fury yield it from our foe. Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend From off the tossing of these fiery waves, There rest, if any rest can harbour there, And reassembling our afflicted powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our enemy, our own loss how repair, How overcome this dire calamity, What reinforcement we may gain from hope, 160 170 180 190 book i aradise o If not what resolution from despair. Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, Briareos or Typhon, whom the den By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream: Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixèd anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays: So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others, and enraged might see How all his malice served but to bring forth Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shown On man by him seduced, but on himself Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance poured. Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled In billows, leave i’ the midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air 23 200 210 220 24 aradise o book i That felt unusual weight, till on dry land He lights, if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire; And such appeared in hue, as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Aetna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singèd bottom all involved With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole Of unblessed feet. Him followed his next mate, Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood As gods, and by their own recovered strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal power. Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost archangel, this the seat That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid What shall be right: furthest from him is best Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields Where joy forever dwells: hail horrors, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell Receive thy new possessor: one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; the almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in hell: 230 240 250 260 book i aradise o Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven. But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, The associates and copartners of our loss Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy mansion, or once more With rallied arms to try what may be yet Regained in heaven, or what more lost in hell? So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub Thus answered. Leader of those armies bright, Which but the omnipotent none could have foiled, If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge Of battle when it raged, in all assaults Their surest signal, they will soon resume New courage and revive, though now they lie Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, As we erewhile, astounded and amazed, No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height. He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, He walked with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marl, not like those steps On heaven’s azure, and the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire; 25 270 280 290 26 aradise o book i Natheless he so endured, till on the beach Of that inflamèd sea, he stood and called His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High overarched imbower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcasses And broken chariot wheels, so thick bestrewn Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. He called so loud, that all the hollow deep Of hell resounded. Princes, potentates, Warriors, the flower of heaven, once yours, now lost, If such astonishment as this can seize Eternal spirits; or have ye chosen this place After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the conqueror? who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from heaven gates discern The advantage, and descending tread us down Thus drooping, or with linkèd thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. Awake, arise, or be forever fallen. They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. 300 310 320 330 book i aradise o Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; Yet to their general’s voice they soon obeyed Innumerable. As when the potent rod Of Amram’s son in Egypt’s evil day Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile: So numberless were those bad angels seen Hovering on wing under the cope of hell ’Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear Of their great sultan waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain; A multitude, like which the populous north Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the south, and spread Beneath Gibralter to the Lybian sands. Forthwith from every squadron and each band The heads and leaders thither haste where stood Their great commander; godlike shapes and forms Excelling human, princely dignities, And powers that erst in heaven sat on thrones; Though of their names in heavenly records now Be no memorial, blotted out and razed By their rebellion, from the books of life. Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve Got them new names, till wandering o’er the earth, Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man, By falsities and lies the greatest part Of mankind they corrupted to forsake God their creator, and the invisible Glory of him that made them, to transform 27 340 350 360 370 28 aradise o book i Oft to the image of a brute, adorned With gay religions full of pomp and gold, And devils to adore for deities: Then were they known to men by various names, And various idols through the heathen world. Say, muse, their names then known, who first, who last, Roused from the slumber, on that fiery couch, At their great emperor’s call, as next in worth Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof ? The chief were those who from the pit of hell Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix Their seats long after next the seat of God, Their altars by his altar, gods adored Among the nations round, and durst abide Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned Between the cherubim; yea, often placed Within his sanctuary itself their shrines, Abominations; and with cursèd things His holy rites, and solemn feasts profaned, And with their darkness durst affront his light. First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears, Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud Their children’s cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of hell. Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab’s sons, 380 390 400 book i aradise o From Aroar to Nebo, and the wild Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Horonaim, Seon’s realm, beyond The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleale to the Asphaltic Pool. Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, To do him wanton rites; which cost them woe. Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate; Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell. With these came they, who from the bordering flood Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male, These feminine. For spirits when they please Can either sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is their essence pure, Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, Can execute their airy purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfil. For those the race of Israel oft forsook Their living strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down To bestial gods; for which their heads as low Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear Of despicable foes. With these in troop Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs, In Sion also not unsung, where stood 29 410 420 430 440 30 aradise o book i Her temple on the offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king, whose heart though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer’s day, While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale Infected Sion’s daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when by the vision led His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of alienated Judah. Next came one Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark Maimed his brute image, heads and hands lopped off In his own temple, on the groundsel edge, Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers: Dagon his name, sea monster, upward man And downward fish: yet had his temple high Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon And Accaron and Gaza’s frontier bounds. Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. He also against the house of God was bold: A leper once he lost and gained a king, Ahaz his sottish conqueror, whom he drew God’s altar to disparage and displace For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn His odious offerings, and adore the gods Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared A crew who under names of old renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train 450 460 470 book i aradise o With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape The infection when their borrowed gold composed The calf in Oreb: and the rebel king Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, Likening his maker to the grazèd ox, Jehovah, who in one night when he passed From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke Both her first born and all her bleating gods. Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love Vice for itself: to him no temple stood Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he In temples and at altars, when the priest Turns atheist, as did Eli’s sons, who filled With lust and violence the house of God. In courts and palaces he also reigns And in luxurious cities, where the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury and outrage: and when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night In Gibeah, when the hospitable door Exposed a matron to avoid worse rape. These were the prime in order and in might; The rest were long to tell, though far renowned, The Ionian gods, of Javan’s issue held Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth Their boasted parents; Titan Heaven’s first born With his enormous brood, and birthright seized By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove His own and Rhea’s son like measure found; So Jove usurping reigned: these first in Crete 31 480 490 500 510 32 aradise o book i And Ida known, thence on the snowy top Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds Of Doric land; or who with Saturn old Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, And o’er the Celtic roamed the utmost isles. All these and more came flocking; but with looks Downcast and damp, yet such wherein appeared Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost In loss itself; which on his countenance cast Like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears. Then straight commands that at the warlike sound Of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared His mighty standard; that proud honour claimed Azazel as his right, a cherub tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled The imperial ensign, which full high advanced Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies: all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent A shout that tore hell’s concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise into the air With orient colours waving: with them rose A forest huge of spears: and thronging helms Appeared, and serried shields in thick array Of depth immeasurable: anon they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mode 520 530 540 550 book i aradise o Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised To height of noblest temper heroes old Arming to battle, and instead of rage Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved With dread of death to flight or foul retreat, Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they Breathing united force with fixèd thought Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed Their painful steps o’er the burnt soil; and now Advanced in view, they stand, a horrid front Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise Of warriors old with ordered spear and shield, Awaiting what command their mighty chief Had to impose: he through the armèd files Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse The whole battalion views, their order due, Their visages and stature as of gods, Their number last he sums. And now his heart Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength Glories: for never since created man, Met such embodied force, as named with these Could merit more than that small infantry Warred on by cranes: though all the Giant brood Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds In fable or romance of Uther’s son Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Morocco, or Trebizond, Or whom Bizerta sent from Afric shore When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell 33 560 570 580 34 aradise o By Fontarabia. Thus far these beyond Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed Their dread commander: he above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone Above them all the archangel: but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast Signs of remorse and passion to behold The fellows of his crime, the followers rather (Far other once beheld in bliss) condemned Forever now to have their lot in pain, Millions of spirits for his fault amerced Of heaven, and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood, Their glory withered. As when heaven’s fire Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines, With singèd top their stately growth though bare Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With all his peers: attention held them mute. Thrice he essayed, and thrice in spite of scorn, Tears such as angels weep burst forth: at last Words interwove with sighs found out their way. O myriads of immortal spirits, O powers book i 590 600 610 620 book i aradise o Matchless, but with almighty, and that strife Was not inglorious, though the event was dire, As this place testifies, and this dire change Hateful to utter: but what power of mind Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth Of knowledge past or present, could have feared, How such united force of gods, how such As stood like these, could ever know repulse? For who can yet believe, though after loss, That all these puissant legions, whose exile Hath emptied heaven, shall fail to reascend Self-raised, and repossess their native seat? For me be witness all the host of heaven, If counsels different, or danger shunned By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute, Consent or custom, and his regal state Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed, Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall. Henceforth his might we know, and know our own So as not either to provoke, or dread New war, provoked; our better part remains To work in close design, by fraud or guile What force effected not: that he no less At length from us may find, who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe. Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife There went a fame in heaven that he ere long Intended to create, and therein plant A generation, whom his choice regard Should favour equal to the sons of heaven: Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere: For this infernal pit shall never hold Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss 35 630 640 650 36 aradise o book i Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts Full counsel must mature: peace is despaired, For who can think submission? War then, war Open or understood must be resolved. He spake: and to confirm his words, outflew Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty cherubim; the sudden blaze Far round illumined hell: highly they raged Against the highest, and fierce with graspèd arms Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven. There stood a hill not far whose grisly top Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic ore, The work of sulphur. Thither winged with speed A numerous brigade hastened. As when bands Of pioneers with spade and pickaxe armed Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific: by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire That riches grow in hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane. And here let those Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings 660 670 680 690 book i aradise o Learn how their greatest monuments of fame, And strength and art are easily outdone By spirits reprobate, and in an hour What in an age they with incessant toil And hands innumerable scarce perform. Nigh on the plain in many cells prepared, That underneath had veins of liquid fire Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude With wondrous art founded the massy ore, Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross: A third as soon had formed within the ground A various mould, and from the boiling cells By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook, As in an organ from one blast of wind To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes. Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation, with the sound Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did there want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven, The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon, Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile Soon fixed her stately height, and straight the doors Opening their brazen folds discover wide Within her ample spaces, o’er the smooth And level pavement: from the archèd roof Pendent by subtle magic many a row Of starry lamps and blazing cressets fed With naphtha and asphaltus yielded light As from a sky. The hasty multitude 37 700 710 720 730 38 aradise o book i Admiring entered, and the work some praise And some the architect: his hand was known In heaven by many a towered structure high, Where sceptred angels held their residence, And sat as princes, whom the supreme king Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright. Nor was his name unheard or unadored In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o’er the crystal battlements; from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer’s day; and with the setting sun Dropped from the zenith like a falling star, On Lemnos the Aegaean isle: thus they relate, Erring; for he with this rebellious rout Fell along before; nor aught availed him now To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scape By all his engines, but was headlong sent With his industrious crew to build in hell. Meanwhile the wingèd heralds by command Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony And trumpets’ sound throughout the host proclaim A solemn council forthwith to be held At Pandaemonium, the high capital Of Satan and his peers: their summons called From every band and squarèd regiment By place or choice the worthiest; they anon With hundreds and with thousands trooping came Attended: all access was thronged, the gates And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall (Though like a covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the soldan’s chair Defied the best of paynim chivalry To mortal combat or career with lance) 740 750 760 book i aradise o Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In springtime, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothèd plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarmed and were straitened; till the signal given, Behold a wonder! they but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that pygmean race Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course, they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, Though without number still amidst the hall Of that infernal court. But far within And in their own dimensions like themselves The great seraphic lords and cherubim In close recess and secret conclave sat A thousand demigods on golden seats, Frequent and full. After short silence then And summons read, the great consult began. 39 770 780 790 This page intentionally left blank B OO K II This page intentionally left blank he leaders of the rebel angels debate their next course of action, and decide to take their revenge by seducing the ‘new race called Man’ to their party. Satan sets off alone to undertake this great task, and the rest of the book concerns his journey to the gates of hell and out into the chaos beyond, and ends with a glimpse of the distant new world hanging in a golden chain, no bigger than a star beside the moon, beautiful and ignorant of the malice moving towards it. Apart from that magical cliffhanger of an ending, what never fails to thrill me in Book II is the sensuous power of the language, from the opening ‘where the gorgeous East with richest hand | Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold’, through the savage wilderness that Satan traverses with such labour and determination: ‘O’er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare, | With head, hands, wings or feet pursues his way, | And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.’ No one, not even Shakespeare, surpasses Milton in his command of the sound, the music, the weight and taste and texture of English words. P. P. T 
he rgumen he consultation begun, Satan debates whether another battle be to be hazarded for the recovery of heaven; some advise it, others dissuade: a third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan, to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature equal or not much inferior to themselves, about this time to be created: their doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan their chief undertakes alone the voyage, is honoured and applauded. The council thus ended, the rest betake them several ways and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to hell gates, finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them, by whom at length they are opened, and discover to him the great gulf between hell and heaven; with what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the power of that place, to the sight of this new world which he sought. T igh on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence; and from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain war with heaven, and by success untaught His proud imaginations thus displayed. Powers and dominions, deities of heaven, For since no deep within her gulf can hold Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen, I give not heaven for lost. From this descent Celestial virtues rising, will appear More glorious and more dread than from no fall, And trust themselves to fear no second fate: Me though just right, and the fixed laws of heaven H 10 46 aradise o book ii Did first create your leader, next free choice, With what besides, in counsel or in fight, Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss Thus far at least recovered, hath much more Established in a safe unenvied throne Yielded with full consent. The happier state In heaven, which follows dignity, might draw Envy from each inferior; but who here Will envy whom the highest place exposes Foremost to stand against the thunderer’s aim Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share Of endless pain? where there is then no good For which to strive, no strife can grow up there From faction; for none sure will claim in hell Precedence, none, whose portion is so small Of present pain, that with ambitious mind Will covet more. With this advantage then To union, and firm faith, and firm accord, More than can be in heaven, we now return To claim our just inheritance of old, Surer to prosper than prosperity Could have assured us; and by what best way, Whether of open war or covert guile, We now debate; who can advise, may speak. He ceased, and next him Moloch, sceptred king Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in heaven; now fiercer by despair: His trust was with the eternal to be deemed Equal in strength, and rather than be less Cared not to be at all; with that care lost Went all his fear: of God, or hell, or worse He recked not, and these words thereafter spake. My sentence is for open war: of wiles, More unexpert, I boast not: them let those Contrive who need, or when they need, not now. For while they sit contriving, shall the rest, 20 30 40 50 book ii aradise o Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait The signal to ascend, sit lingering here Heaven’s fugitives, and for their dwelling place Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame, The prison of his tyranny who reigns By our delay? no, let us rather choose Armed with hell flames and fury all at once O’er heaven’s high towers to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into horrid arms Against the torturer; when to meet the noise Of his almighty engine he shall hear Infernal thunder, and for lightning see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his angels; and his throne itself Mixed with Tartarean sulphur, and strange fire, His own invented torments. But perhaps The way seems difficult and steep to scale With upright wing against a higher foe. Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench Of that forgetful lake benumb not still, That in our proper motion we ascend Up to our native seat: descent and fall To us is adverse. Who but felt of late When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, With what compulsion and laborious flight We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy then; The event is feared; should we again provoke Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find To our destruction: if there be in hell Fear to be worse destroyed: what can be worse Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned In this abhorrèd deep to utter woe; Where pain of unextinguishable fire Must exercise us without hope of end The vassals of his anger, when the scourge 47 60 70 80 90 48 aradise o book ii Inexorably, and the torturing hour Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus We should be quite abolished and expire. What fear we then? what doubt we to incense His utmost ire? which to the height enraged, Will either quite consume us, and reduce To nothing this essential, happier far Than miserable to have eternal being: Or if our substance be indeed divine, And cannot cease to be, we are at worst On this side nothing; and by proof we feel Our power sufficient to disturb his heaven, And with perpetual inroads to alarm, Though inaccessible, his fatal throne: Which if not victory is yet revenge. He ended frowning, and his look denounced Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous To less than gods. On the other side up rose Belial, in act more graceful and humane; A fairer person lost not heaven; he seemed For dignity composed and high exploit: But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low; To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear, And with persuasive accent thus began. I should be much for open war, O peers, As not behind in hate; if what was urged Main reason to persuade immediate war, Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success: When he who most excels in fact of arms, In what he counsels and in what excels Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair 100 110 120 book ii aradise o And utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. First, what revenge? the towers of heaven are filled With armèd watch, that render all access Impregnable; oft on the bordering deep Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing Scout far and wide into the realm of night, Scorning surprise. Or could we break our way By force, and at our heels all hell should rise With blackest insurrection, to confound Heaven’s purest light, yet our great enemy All incorruptible would on his throne Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mould Incapable of stain would soon expel Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope Is flat despair: we must exasperate The almighty victor to spend all his rage, And that must end us, that must be our cure, To be no more; sad cure; for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion? and who knows, Let this be good, whether our angry foe Can give it, or will ever? how he can Is doubtful; that he never will is sure. Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, Belike through impotence, or unaware, To give his enemies their wish, and end Them in his anger, whom his anger saves To punish endless? wherefore cease we then? Say they who counsel war, we are decreed, Reserved and destined to eternal woe; Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, 49 130 140 150 160 50 aradise o book ii What can we suffer worse? is this then worst, Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms? What when we fled amain, pursued and struck With heaven’s afflicting thunder, and besought The deep to shelter us? this hell then seemed A refuge from those wounds: or when we lay Chained on the burning lake? that sure was worse. What if the breath that kindled those grim fires Awaked should blow them into sevenfold rage And plunge us in the flames? or from above Should intermitted vengeance arm again His red right hand to plague us? what if all Her stores were opened, and this firmament Of hell should spout her cataracts of fire, Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall One day upon our heads; while we perhaps Designing or exhorting glorious war, Caught in a fiery tempest shall be hurled Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey Of racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk Under yon boiling ocean, wrapped in chains; There to converse with everlasting groans, Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved, Ages of hopeless end; this would be worse. War therefore, open or concealed, alike My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye Views all things at one view? he from heaven’s height All these our motions vain, sees and derides; Not more almighty to resist our might Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles. Shall we then live thus vile, the race of heaven Thus trampled, thus expelled to suffer here Chains and these torments? better these than worse By my advice; since fate inevitable Subdues us, and omnipotent decree 170 180 190 book ii aradise o The victor’s will. To suffer, as to do, Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust That so ordains: this was at first resolved, If we were wise, against so great a foe Contending, and so doubtful what might fall. I laugh, when those who at the spear are bold And venturous, if that fail them, shrink and fear What yet they know must follow, to endure Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain, The sentence of their conqueror: this is now Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear, Our supreme foe in time may much remit His anger, and perhaps thus far removed Not mind us not offending, satisfied With what is punished; whence these raging fires Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames. Our purer essence then will overcome Their noxious vapour, or inured not feel, Or changed at length, and to the place conformed In temper and in nature, will receive Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain; This horror will grow mild, this darkness light, Besides what hope the never-ending flight Of future days may bring, what chance, what change Worth waiting, since our present lot appears For happy though but ill, for ill not worst, If we procure not to ourselves more woe. Thus Belial with words clothed in reason’s garb Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, Not peace: and after him thus Mammon spake. Either to disenthrone the king of heaven We war, if war be best, or to regain Our own right lost: him to unthrone we then May hope when everlasting fate shall yield To fickle chance, and Chaos judge the strife: The former vain to hope argues as vain 51 200 210 220 230 52 aradise o book ii The latter: for what place can be for us Within heaven’s bound, unless heaven’s lord supreme We overpower? Suppose he should relent And publish grace to all, on promise made Of new subjection; with what eyes could we Stand in his presence humble, and receive Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne With warbled hymns, and to his godhead sing Forced hallelujahs; while he lordly sits Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers, Our servile offerings? This must be our task In heaven, this our delight; how wearisome Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue By force impossible, by leave obtained Unacceptable, though in heaven, our state Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek Our own good from ourselves, and from our own Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess, Free, and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easy yoke Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear Then most conspicuous, when great things of small, Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse We can create, and in what place soe’er Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain Through labour and endurance. This deep world Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst Thick clouds and dark doth heaven’s all-ruling sire Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, And with the majesty of darkness round Covers his throne; from whence deep thunders roar Mustering their rage, and heaven resembles hell? As he our darkness, cannot we his light Imitate when we please? This desert soil 240 250 260 270 book ii aradise o Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold; Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise Magnificence; and what can heaven show more? Our torments also may in length of time Become our elements, these piercing fires As soft as now severe, our temper changed Into their temper; which must needs remove The sensible of pain. All things invite To peaceful counsels, and the settled state Of order, how in safety best we may Compose our present evils, with regard Of what we are and where, dismissing quite All thoughts of war: ye have what I advise. He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain The sound of blustering winds, which all night long Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull Seafaring men o’erwatched, whose bark by chance Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay After the tempest: such applause was heard As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased, Advising peace: for such another field They dreaded worse than hell: so much the fear Of thunder and the sword of Michael Wrought still within them; and no less desire To found this nether empire, which might rise By policy, and long process of time, In emulation opposite to heaven. Which when Beelzebub perceived, than whom, Satan except, none higher sat, with grave Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone, Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 53 280 290 300 54 aradise o book ii The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look Drew audience and attention still as night Or summer’s noontide air, while thus he spake. Thrones and imperial powers, offspring of heaven, Ethereal virtues; or these titles now Must we renounce, and changing style be called Princes of hell? for so the popular vote Inclines, here to continue, and build up here A growing empire; doubtless; while we dream, And know not that the king of heaven hath doomed This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt From heaven’s high jurisdiction, in new league Banded against his throne, but to remain In strictest bondage, though thus far removed, Under the inevitable curb, reserved His captive multitude: for he, be sure In height or depth, still first and last will reign Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part By our revolt, but over hell extend His empire, and with iron sceptre rule Us here, as with his golden those in heaven. What sit we then projecting peace and war? War hath determined us, and foiled with loss Irreparable; terms of peace yet none Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given To us enslaved, but custody severe, And stripes, and arbitrary punishment Inflicted? and what peace can we return, But to our power hostility and hate, Untamed reluctance, and revenge though slow, Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice In doing what we most in suffering feel? Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need With dangerous expedition to invade 310 320 330 340 book ii aradise o Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, Or ambush from the deep. What if we find Some easier enterprise? There is a place (If ancient and prophetic fame in heaven Err not), another world, the happy seat Of some new race called Man, about this time To be created like to us, though less In power and excellence, but favoured more Of him who rules above; so was his will Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath, That shook heaven’s whole circumference, confirmed. Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn What creatures there inhabit, of what mould, Or substance, how endued, and what their power, And where their weakness, how attempted best, By force or subtlety: though heaven be shut, And heaven’s high arbitrator sit secure In his own strength, this place may lie exposed The utmost border of his kingdom, left To their defence who hold it: here perhaps Some advantageous act may be achieved By sudden onset, either with hellfire To waste his whole creation, or possess All as our own, and drive as we were driven, The puny habitants, or if not drive, Seduce them to our party, that their God May prove their foe, and with repenting hand Abolish his own works. This would surpass Common revenge, and interrupt his joy In our confusion, and our joy upraise In his disturbance; when his darling sons Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse Their frail original, and faded bliss, Faded so soon. Advise if this be worth Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires. Thus Beelzebub 55 350 360 370 56 aradise o book ii Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence, 380 But from the author of all ill could spring So deep a malice, to confound the race Of mankind in one root, and earth with hell To mingle and involve, done all to spite The great creator? But their spite still serves His glory to augment. The bold design Pleased highly those infernal states, and joy Sparkled in all their eyes; with full assent They vote: whereat his speech he thus renews. Well have ye judged, well ended long debate, 390 Synod of gods, and like to what ye are, Great things resolved, which from the lowest deep Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate, Nearer our ancient seat; perhaps in view Of those bright confines, whence with neighbouring arms And opportune excursion we may chance Re-enter heaven; or else in some mild zone Dwell not unvisited of heaven’s fair light Secure, and at the brightening orient beam Purge off this gloom; the soft delicious air, 400 To heal the scar of these corrosive fires Shall breathe her balm. But first whom shall we send In search of this new world, whom shall we find Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering feet The dark unbottomed infinite abyss And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his airy flight Upborne with indefatigable wings Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive The happy isle; what strength, what art can then 410 Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe Through the strict sentries and stations thick Of angels watching round? Here he had need All circumspection, and we now no less book ii aradise o Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we send, The weight of all and our last hope relies. This said, he sat; and expectation held His look suspense, awaiting who appeared To second, or oppose, or undertake The perilous attempt: but all sat mute, Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; and each In others’ countenance read his own dismay Astonished: none among the choice and prime Of those heaven-warring champions could be found So hardy as to proffer or accept Alone the dreadful voyage; till at last Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised Above his fellows, with monarchal pride Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus spake. O progeny of heaven, empyreal thrones, With reason hath deep silence and demur Seized us, though undismayed: long is the way And hard, that out of hell leads up to light; Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire, Outrageous to devour, immures us round Ninefold, and gates of burning adamant Barred over us prohibit all egress. These passed, if any pass, the void profound Of unessential night receives him next Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being Threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf. If thence he scape into whatever world, Or unknown region, what remains him less Than unknown dangers and as hard escape. But I should ill become this throne, O peers, And this imperial sovereignty, adorned With splendour, armed with power, if aught proposed And judged of public moment, in the shape Of difficulty or danger could deter Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume 57 420 430 440 450 58 aradise o book ii These royalties, and not refuse to reign, Refusing to accept as great a share Of hazard as of honour, due alike To him who reigns, and so much to him due Of hazard more, as he above the rest High honoured sits? Go therefore mighty powers, Terror of heaven, though fallen; intend at home, While here shall be our home, what best may ease The present misery, and render hell More tolerable; if there be cure or charm To respite or deceive, or slack the pain Of this ill mansion: intermit no watch Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek Deliverance for us all: this enterprise None shall partake with me. Thus saying rose The monarch, and prevented all reply, Prudent, lest from his resolution raised Others among the chief might offer now (Certain to be refused) what erst they feared; And so refused might in opinion stand His rivals, winning cheap the high repute Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they Dreaded not more the adventure than his voice Forbidding; and at once with him they rose; Their rising all at once was as the sound Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend With awful reverence prone; and as a god Extol him equal to the highest in heaven: Nor failed they to express how much they praised, That for the general safety he despised His own: for neither do the spirits damned Lose all their virtue; lest bad men should boast Their specious deeds on earth, which glory excites, Or close ambition varnished o’er with zeal. Thus they their doubtful consultations dark 460 470 480 book ii aradise o Ended rejoicing in their matchless chief: As when from mountain tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o’erspread Heaven’s cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o’er the darkened landscape snow, or shower; If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings. O shame to men! Devil with devil damned Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational, though under hope Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace, Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife Among themselves, and levy cruel wars, Wasting the earth, each other to destroy: As if (which might induce us to accord) Man had not hellish foes enough besides, That day and night for his destruction wait. The Stygian council thus dissolved; and forth In order came the grand infernal peers, Midst came their mighty paramount, and seemed Alone the antagonist of heaven, nor less Than hell’s dread emperor with pomp supreme, And Godlike imitated state; him round A globe of fiery seraphim enclosed With bright emblazonry, and horrent arms. Then of their session ended they bid cry With trumpets’ regal sound the great result: Toward the four winds four speedy cherubim Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy By herald’s voice explained: the hollow abyss Heard far and wide, and all the host of hell With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim. Thence more at ease their minds and somewhat raised By false presumptuous hope, the rangèd powers 59 490 500 510 520 60 aradise o book ii Disband, and wandering, each his several way Pursues, as inclination or sad choice Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till this great chief return. Part on the plain, or in the air sublime Upon the wing, or in swift race contend, As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields; Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form. As when to warn proud cities war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds, before each van Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms From either end of heaven the welkin burns. Others with vast Typhoean rage more fell Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air In whirlwind; hell scarce holds the wild uproar. As when Alcides from Oechalia crowned With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines, And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw Into the Euboic sea. Others more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall By doom of battle; and complain that fate Free virtue should enthral to force or chance. Their song was partial, but the harmony (What could it less when spirits immortal sing?) Suspended hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense,) Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 530 540 550 book ii aradise o Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and apathy, and glory and shame, Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy: Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm Pain for a while or anguish, and excite Fallacious hope, or arm the obdurèd breast With stubborn patience as with triple steel. Another part in squadrons and gross bands, On bold adventure to discover wide That dismal world, if any clime perhaps Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers that disgorge Into the burning lake their baleful streams; Abhorrèd Styx the flood of deadly hate, Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe the river of oblivion rolls Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks, Forthwith his former state and being forgets, Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain. Beyond this flood a frozen continent Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damietta and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air 61 560 570 580 590 62 aradise o book ii Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire. Thither by harpy-footed Furies haled, At certain revolutions all the damned Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infixed, and frozen round, Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire. They ferry over this Lethean sound Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment, And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, All in one moment, and so near the brink; But fate withstands, and to oppose the attempt Medusa with gorgonian terror guards The ford, and of itself the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest: through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, A universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire. Meanwhile the adversary of God and man, Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design, 600 610 620 630 book ii aradise o Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell Explores his solitary flight; sometimes He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left, Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars Up to the fiery concave towering high. As when far off at sea a fleet descried Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape Ply stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemed Far off the flying fiend: at last appear Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock, Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape; The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of hell hounds never ceasing barked With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb, And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled, Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these Vexed Scylla bathing in the sea that parts Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore: Nor uglier follow the Night-hag, when called In secret, riding through the air she comes Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon Eclipses at their charms. The other shape, 63 640 650 660 64 aradise o book ii If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The monster moving onward came as fast With horrid strides, hell trembled as he strode. The undaunted fiend what this might be admired, Admired, not feared; God and his son except, Created thing nought valued he nor shunned; And with disdainful look thus first began. Whence and what art thou, execrable shape, That darest, though grim and terrible, advance Thy miscreated front athwart my way To yonder gates? through them I mean to pass, That be assured, without leave asked of thee: Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof, Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heaven. To whom the goblin full of wrath replied, Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he, Who first broke peace in heaven and faith, till then Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms Drew after him the third part of heaven’s sons Conjured against the highest, for which both thou And they outcast from God, are here condemned To waste eternal days in woe and pain? And reckon’st thou thyself with spirits of heaven, Hell-doomed, and breath’st defiance here and scorn Where I reign king, and to enrage thee more, Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment, False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings, Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart 670 680 690 700 book ii aradise o Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before. So spake the grisly terror, and in shape, So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold More dreadful and deform: on the other side Incensed with indignation Satan stood Unterrified, and like a comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head Levelled his deadly aim; their fatal hands No second stroke intend, and such a frown Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds With heaven’s artillery fraught, come rattling on Over the Caspian, then stand front to front Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow To join their dark encounter in midair: So frowned the mighty combatants, that hell Grew darker at their frown, so matched they stood; For never but once more was either like To meet so great a foe: and now great deeds Had been achieved, whereof all hell had rung, Had not the snaky sorceress that sat Fast by hell gate, and kept the fatal key, Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between. O father, what intends thy hand, she cried, Against thy only son? What fury O son, Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart Against thy father’s head? and know’st for whom; For him who sits above and laughs the while At thee ordained his drudge, to execute Whate’er his wrath, which he calls justice, bids, His wrath which one day will destroy ye both. She spake, and at her words the hellish pest Forbore, then these to her Satan returned: So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange Thou interposest, that my sudden hand 65 710 720 730 66 aradise o book ii Prevented spares to tell thee yet by deeds What it intends; till first I know of thee, What thing thou art, thus double-formed, and why In this infernal vale first met thou call’st Me father, and that phantasm call’st my son? I know thee not, nor ever saw till now Sight more detestable than him and thee. To whom thus the portress of hell gate replied; Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem Now in thine eye so foul, once deemed so fair In heaven, when at the assembly, and in sight Of all the seraphim with thee combined In bold conspiracy against heaven’s king, All on a sudden miserable pain Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide, Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright, Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed Out of thy head I sprung: amazement seized All the host of heaven; back they recoiled afraid At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign Portentous held me; but familiar grown, I pleased, and with attractive graces won The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing Becam’st enamoured, and such joy thou took’st With me in secret, that my womb conceived A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose, And fields were fought in heaven; wherein remained (For what could else) to our almighty foe Clear victory, to our part loss and rout Through all the empyrean: down they fell Driven headlong from the pitch of heaven, down Into this deep, and in the general fall I also; at which time this powerful key 740 750 760 770 book ii aradise o Into my hand was given, with charge to keep These gates for ever shut, which none can pass Without my opening. Pensive here I sat Alone, but long I sat not, till my womb Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. At last this odious offspring whom thou seest Thine own begotten, breaking violent way Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew Transformed: but he my inbred enemy Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out Death; Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resounded Death. I fled, but he pursued (though more, it seems, Inflamed with lust than rage) and swifter far, Me overtook his mother all dismayed, And in embraces forcible and foul Engendering with me, of that rape begot These yelli...
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