Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part, such concord is in Heaven.

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Thee, Father," first they sung, Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,

Eternal King: thee, Author of all being,
Fountain of light, thyself invisible

Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt'st
Throned inaccessible, but1 when thou shad'st
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine,
Dark with excessive bright2 thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
Thee," next they sang, "of all creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,

In whose conspicuous count'nance, without cloud
Made visible, the Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no creature can behold; 4 on thee
Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides,
Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.
He Heaven of Heavens, and all the powers therein
By thee created, and by thee threw down
The aspiring dominations: thou that day
Thy Father's dreadful thunder didst not spare,
Nor stop thy flaming chariot wheels, that shook
Heaven's everlasting frame, while o'er the necks
Thou drov'st of warring angels disarrayed.
Back from pursuit thy powers with loud acclaim

1 i. e. except.

2 Milton has the same thought of darkness occasioned by glory, v. 599, "Brightness had made invisible." This also explains his meaning here; the excess of brightness had the effect of darkness, invisibility. What an idea of glory! the skirts only not to be looked on by the beings nearest to God, but when doubly or trebly shaded by a cloud and both wings. What, then, is the full blaze?-Richardson. The same thought in Spenser's hymn of Heavenly Beauty, but more languidly expressed:

"With the great glory of that wondrous light,
His throne is all encompasséd around,

And hid in his own brightness from the sight
Of all that look thereon," &c.

-Thyer.

3 Cf. Is. vi. 2.

4 John i. 18, xiv. 9.

Thee only1 extolled, Son of thy Fathers might,
To execute fierce vengeance on his foes,
Not so on man: him, through their malice fallen,
Father of mercy and grace, thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity incline:
No sooner did thy dear and only Son

Perceive thee purposed not to doom frail man
So strictly, but much more to pity inclined,
He,2 to appease thy wrath, and end the strife
Of mercy and justice in thy face discerned,
Regardless of the bliss wherein he sat
Second to thee, offered himself to die
For man's offence. O unexampled love,
Love no where to be found less than Divine!
Hail, Son of God, Saviour of men! thy name
Shall be the copious matter of my song
Henceforth, and never shall my harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin."

Thus they in Heaven, above the starry sphere,
Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent.
Meanwhile upon the firm opacous globe 3

Of this round world, whose first convex divides
The luminous inferior orbs inclosed

From Chaos and the inroad of Darkness old,
Satan alighted walks: a globe far off

It seemed, now seems a boundless continent,
Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night
Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms
Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky;
Save on that side which from the wall of Heaven,
Though distant far, some small reflection gains
Of glimmering air less vexed with tempest loud:
Here walked the fiend at large in spacious field.
As when a vulture on Imaus bred,

1 i. e. thee, and thee only.

2 Supply "than'

or "but" before "he."

3 Satan's walk upon the outside of the universe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but upon his nearer approach looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble: as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation, between that mass of matter which was wrought into a world, and that shapeless, unformed heap of materials which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something astonishingly great and wild.-Addison.

4 Imaus is a celebrated mountain in Asia; its name significs "snowy," in the language of the inhabitants, according to Pliny,

Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey
To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids

On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;

But in his way lights on the barren plains

Of Sericana, where Chineses drive

With sails and wind their cany waggons light;
So on this windy sea of land, the fiend
Walked up and down alone, bent on his prey;
Alone, for other creature in this place
Living or lifeless to be found was none;
None yet, but store hereafter from the earth
Up hither like aërial vapours flew

Of all things transitory and vain, when sin
With vanity had filled the works of men;
Both all things vain, and all who in vain things
Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame,
Or happiness in this or the other life;

All who have their reward on earth, the fruits
Of painful superstition and blind zeal,
Nought seeking but the praise of men, here find
Fit retribution, empty as their deeds;

All th' unaccomplished works of Nature's hand,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed,
Dissolved on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,

Till final dissolution, wander here,

Not in the neighbouring moon,' as some have dreamed; Those argent fields more likely habitants,

Translated saints, or middle spirits, hold,

lib. vi. cap. 21, "incolarum lingua nivosum significante;" and therefore it is said here, "whose snowy ridge." It is the boundary to the east of the Western Tartars, who are called "roving," as they live chiefly in tents, and remove from place to place for the convenience of pasturage, their herds of cattle and what they take in hunting being their principal subsistence. Ganges and Hydaspes are famous rivers of India; and Serica is a region betwixt China to the east, and th mountain Imaus to the west; and what our author here says of the Chinese he seems to have taken from Heylin's Cosmography, p. 867, where it is said, "Agreeable unto the observation of modern writers, the country is so plain and level that they have carts and coaches driven with sails, as ordinarily as drawn with horses, in these parts." -Newton.

1 Ariosto particularly, in his "Orlando Furioso," cant. 34, st. 70, &c.

Betwixt the angelical and human kind.

Hither of ill-joined sons and daughters born
First from the ancient world those giants came
With many a vain exploit, though then renowned:
The builders next of Babel on the plain

Of Sennaar,1 and still with vain design

New Babels, had they wherewithal, would build :
Others came single; he who to be deemed
A god, leaped fondly into Etna flames,
Empedocles; and he who to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leaped into the sea,
Cleombrotus; and many more too long,
Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars,
White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery.
Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek
In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heaven ;1
And they who to be sure of Paradise
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,

Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised;
They pass the planets seven,5 and pass the fixed,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talked, and that first moved;

Shinar.

2 The scholar of Pythagoras, a philosopher and poet, born at Agrigentum, in Sicily: he wrote of the nature of things in Greek, as Lucretius did in Latin verse. He, stealing one night from his followers, threw himself into the flaming Etna, that being nowhere to be found he might be esteemed to be a god, and to be taken up into Heaven; but his iron pattens, being thrown out by the fury of the burning mountain, discovered his defeated ambition, and ridiculed his folly. Hor. de Art. Poet. 464:

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"Deus immortalis haberi

Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Ætnam
Insiluit."

-Hume.

3 The name is rightly placed the last word in the sentence, as 'Empedocles" was before. He was called Ambraciota of Ambracia, a city of Epirus in Greece. Having read over Plato's book of the "Soul's Immortality and Happiness in another Life," he was so ravished with the account of it that he leaped from a high wall into the sea, that he might immediately enjoy it.-Newton.

4 An allusion to Luke xxiv. 5 sq.

5 He speaks here according to the ancient astronomy, adopted and improved by Ptolemy. "They pass the planets seven," our planetary or solar system, "and" beyond this "pass the fixed," the firmament or sphere of the fixed stars; "and" beyond this that crystalline sphere," the crystalline Heaven, clear as crystal, to which the Ptole

And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket seems
To wait them with his keys, and now at foot
Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when lo!
A violent cross wind from either coast

Blows them transverse ten thousand leagues awry
Into the devious air; then might ye see

Cowls, hoods, and habits with their wearers tost
And fluttered into rags; then relics, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,

The sport of winds: all these upwhirled aloft
Fly o'er the backside of the world far off
Into a limbo large and broad, since called
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown
Long after, now unpeopled, and untrod.
All this dark globe the fiend found as he passed,
And long he wandered, till at last a gleam
Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste
His travelled steps; far distant he descries,
Ascending by degrees magnificent

Up to the wall of Heaven, a structure high;
At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared
The work as of a kingly palace gate,
With frontispiece of diamond and gold
Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems
The portal shone, inimitable on earth
By model, or by shading pencil drawn.
The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw
Angels ascending and descending, bands
Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled
To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz,
Dreaming by night under the open sky,

And waking cried, 'This is the gate of Heaven.'
Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood
There always, but drawn up to Heaven sometimes
Viewless; and underneath a bright sea flowed
Of jasper, or of liquid pearl, whereon

Who after came from earth, sailing arrived,

maics attributed a sort of libration, or shaking (the "trepidation" so much talked of), to account for certain irregularities in the motion of the stars; "and" beyond this "that first moved," the primum mobile, the sphere which was both the first moved and the first mover, communicating its motions to all the lower spheres; and beyond this was the empyrean Heaven.-Newton.

1 Tired, wearied.