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Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell

From Heaven, for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more

The richest 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,
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 innumerable1 scarce perform.
Nigh on the plain in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Slunced 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 organ3 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

1 There were 360,000 men employed for nearly twenty years upon a single pyramid.

2 Bullion is here an adjective. The sense is: "they founded or melted the ore that was in the mass, by separating or severing each kind, that is, the sulphur, earth, &c., from the metal; and after that they scummed the dross that floated on the top of the burning ore."Pearce.

3 On which instrument Milton was himself a performer.

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 inshrine
Belus or Serapis2 their gods, or seat

3

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile
Stood 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 archéd roof
Pendent by subtle magic many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets 3 fed
With naphtha and asphaltus yielded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude
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 fell1

1 This introduction of a modern name is rather clumsy.

2 Belus the son of Nimrod, second king of Babylon, and the first man worshipped for a god, by the Chaldæans styled Bel, by the Phoenicians, Baal. Serapis, the same with Apis, the god of the Egyptians.-Hume.

3 A cresset is any great blazing light, as a beacon. So Shakspeare, 1 Hen. IV. act. iii.:

" at my nativity

The front of Heaven was full of fiery shapes,

Of burning cressets."

4 Compare Homer, Il. i., where Vulcan (the same as Mulciber) describes his misfortune :

"Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,

Hurled headlong downward, from the ethereal height,

Tost all the day in rapid circles round;

Nor, till the sun descended, touched the ground;

Breathless I fell, in giddy motion lost;

The Sinthians raised me on the Lemnian coast."-Pope.

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 Ægean isle: thus they relate,
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout

Fell long 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 winged heralds by command

Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony

And trumpet's sound, throughout the host proclaim
A solemn council forthwith to be held

At Pandemonium, the high capital

Of Satan and his peers: their summons called
From every band and squaréd 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 Panim 2 chivalry

To mortal combat, or career with lance),

Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees 3
In spring time, 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 smoothéd plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd

1i.e means, contrivances.

2 Pagan.

3 "As from some rocky clift the shepherd sees
Clustering in heaps on heaps the driving bees,
Rolling, and blackening, swarms succeeding swarms,
With deeper murmurs and more hoarse alarms;
Dusky they spread, a close embodied crowd,
And o'er the vale descends the living cloud."

-Pope's Iliad, book ii.

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 moon1
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.2 After short silence then
And summons read, the great consult began.

1 This alludes to the part which the moon is supposed to play in the revels of elves and fairies.

2 So we have in Latin frequens senatus, a full house. And he makes use of the same expression in English prose. "The assembly was full and frequent according to summons.' See his History of England in the reign of Edward the Confessor.-Newton.

END OF THE FIRST BOOK

BOOK II.

THE ARGUMENT.

The 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 concerring another world, and another kind of creature equal or not much inferior to themselves, about this time to be created: their doubt who should 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 Hellgates, 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.

HIGH On a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus1 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

1 An island in the Persian Gulf, celebrated for its wealth in diamonds.

2 Not that Ormus and Ind were in the west, but the sense is that the throne of Satan outshone diamonds, or pearls and gold, the choicest whereof are produced in the east. Spenser expresses the same thought thus, F. Q. iii. 4, 23.

"that it did pass

The wealth of th' east, and pomp of Persian kings."

And the east is said to "shower them on her kings," in allusion to the

16.

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