Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, Instruct me, for thou knowest; Thou from the first man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise where-Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread, In he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark the command of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, Illumine; what is low raise and support; into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem That to the height of this great argument hagens into the midst of things, presenting Satan with this I may assert eternal Providence, angels now fallen into Hell, described here, not in the centre, And justify the ways of God to men.
(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
sa.ne 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
a 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. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep: the infernal peers there sit In council.
Or man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our wo, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heav'nly 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 Heav'ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion hill
Say first, for Heav'n 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? Th' infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile Stirr'd 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 equall'd the Most High If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God, Raised impious war in Heav'n, and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the almighty power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arins. Nine times the space that measures day and right To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, Confounded, though immortal: but his doom
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flowed Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
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,
Doubted his empire; that were low indeed, That were an ignominy, and shame beneath This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of gods
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames And this empyreal substance can not fail;
No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of wo,
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 heav'n, As from the centre thrice to th' 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 welt'ring by his side One next himself in power, and next in crime, Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub. To whom th' arch enemy,
Since, through experience of this great event, In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, We may with more successful hope resolve To wage, by force or guile, eternal war, Irreconcileable to our grand foe, Who now triumphs, and, in th' excess of joy Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of Heaven."
So spake th' 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 throned powers, That led th' embattled seraphim to war Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds Fearless, endangered Heav'n'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
And thence in Heav'n called Satan, with bold words In horrible destruction laid thus low, Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
As far as the gods and heavenly essences
"If thou beest he; but O how fall'n! how Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains changed
From him, who, in the happy realms of light, Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst out- shine
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 fall'n; 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,
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 in 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
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed Strength undiminished, or eternal being,
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 tho' the field be lost? All is not lost; th' 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
To undergo eternal punishment?"
Whereto with speedy words th' arch fiend replies
"Fall'n 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 ofttimes may succeed, so as perhaps Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from their destined aimn. But see! the angry victor hath recalled His ministers of vengeance and pursuit Back to the gates of Heaven. the sulphurous bad,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder, Wing'd 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 th' occasion, whether scorn, Or satiate fury, yield it from our foc.
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 tent 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; 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 beside Prone on the flood, extending 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 th' ocean stream: Him, haply, slumb'ring on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind Moors by the side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished 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 crime she 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' th' midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air
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 Etna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom all involved With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole
Of unblest 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: farthest from him is best, Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made sa- preme
Above his equals! Farewell, happy fields, Where joy for ever 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: Better to reign in hell, than serve in Heaven! But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, Th' associates and copartners of our loss, Lie thus astonished on th' 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 Beelezebub Thus answered. "Leader of those armies bright, Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foile 11 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 le Groveling 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 en Was moving toward the shore: his pond'ru 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 Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn in Norwegian hills to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, He walked with, to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle, not like those steps On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime Smote on him sore beside, vaulted with fire: Nathless he so endured, till on the beach, Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades, High over-arch'd, embower; 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 bestrown, 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,
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, th' 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 barb'rous sons Came like a deluge on the south, and spread Beneath Gibraltar 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, wand'ring o'er the earth, Through God's high suff'rance for the trial of man, By falsities and lies the greatest part Of mankind they corrupted to forsake God their Creator, and th' invisible Glory of him that made them to transform Oft to the image of a brute, adorned With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
Warriors, the flower of Heaven! once yours, now And devils to adore for deities: 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 T'adore the conqueror? who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood, With scatter'd arms and ensigns, till anon Ilis swift pursuers from heaven gates discern Th' advantage, and descending, tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!"
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 strana, 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 altars; gods adored Among the nations round; and durst abide Jehovah thund'ring out of Sion, throned Between the Cherubim, yea, often placed
They heard, and were abashed, and up they Within his sanctuary itself their shrines,
Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch On duty, sleeping found, by whom they dread, Rouse, and bestir themselves ere well awake. 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,
Abominations; and with cursed 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 andtimbrels loud Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud 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, From Aroer 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 Elêalé to th' 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 wo. Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged E'en 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 bord'ring flood
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names Of Baälim 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 manacied 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 Heav'n, 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 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, head and hands lopt off In his own temple, on the grunsel 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 conqu'ror, 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,
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 Th' 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 grazed 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, Th' 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 seiza ] By younger Saturn; he from mightier Juve, His own and Rhea's son, ake measure find;
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