Of that Plutonian hall, invisible

Ascended his high throne; which, under state
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end
Was placed in regal lustre. Down a while
He sat, and round about him saw unseen:
At last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head
And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter; clad
With what permissive glory since his fall
Was left him, or false glitter: all amazed
At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng

Bent their aspect, and whom they wished beheld,
Their mighty Chief returned: loud was the acclaim:
Forth rushed in haste the great consulting peers,
Raised from their dark Divan, and with like joy
Congratulant approached him; who with hand
Silence, and with these words attention, won.
Thrones! Dominations! Princedoms! Virtues !

Powers!

For in possession such, not only of right,
I call ye, and declare ye now; returned
Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth
Triumphant out of this infernal pit
Abominable, accursed, the house of woe,
And dungeon of our tyrant: now possess,
As lords, a spacious world, to our native Heaven
Little inferiour, by my adventure hard

With peril great achieved. Long were to tell

What I have done; what suffered; with what pain Voyaged th' unreal, vast, unbounded deep

Of horrible confusion; over which

By Sin and Death a broad way now is paved,

To expedite your glorious march: but I
Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to ride
The untractable abyss, plunged in the womb
Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild;
That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely opposed
My journey strange, with clamorous uproar
Protesting Fate supreme: thence how I found
The new-created world, which fame in Heaven
Long had foretold, a fabriek wonderful,
Of absolute perfection! therein Man
Placed in a Paradise, by our exíle

Made happy: him by fraud I have seduced
From his Creator; and, the more to encrease
Your wonder, with an apple: he, thereat
Offended, worth your laughter! hath given up
Both his beloved Man, and all his world,
To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us,
Without our hazard, labour, or alarm;
To range in, and to dwell, and over Man
To rule, as over all he should have ruled.
True is, me also he hath judged, or rather
Me not, but the brute serpent, in whose shape
Man I deceived: that which to me belongs
Is enmity, which he will put between

Me and mankind; I am to bruise his heel;

His seed (when is not set) shall bruise my head:

A world who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain?Ye have the account
Of my performance: what remains, ye Gods,

But

up,

and enter now into full bliss?

So having said, a while he stood, expecting

Their universal shout, and high applause,
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound

Of public scorn: he wondered, but not long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more :
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare;
His arms clung to his ribs; his legs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell
A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom: he would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue
To forked tongue; for now were all transformed
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories

To his bold riot: dreadful was the din

Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters head and tail,
Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear,

And Dipsas; (not so thick swarmed once the soil
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle
Ophiusa,) but still greatest he the midst,
Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
Ingendered in the Pythian vale on slime,
Huge Python! and his power no less he seemed
Above the rest still to retain: they all
Him followed, issuing forth to the open field,
Where all yet left of that revolted rout,
Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just array;

Sublime with expectation when to see

In triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief:
They saw, but other sight instead! a croud
Of ugly serpents: horrour on them fell,
And horrid sympathy; for, what they saw,

They felt themselves, now changing: down their arms,
Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast;
And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form
Catched by contagion; like in punishment,

As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant
Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame

Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There

stood

A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change, (His will, who reigns above) to aggravate

Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
Used by the Tempter: on that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining

For one forbidden tree a multitude

Now risen, to work them further woe or shame;
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain;
But on they rolled in heaps, and, up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curled Megara: greedily they plucked
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed;
This more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit

Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected: oft they assayed,
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft,
With hatefullest disrelish writhed their jaws,
With soot and cinders filled: so, oft they fell

Into the same illusion; not as Man,

Whom they triumphed, once lapsed. Thus were they plagued

And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss,
Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed;
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo

This annual humbling certain numbered days,
To dash their pride, and joy, for Man seduced.
However, some tradition they dispersed

Among the Heathen, of their purchase got,
And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called
Ophion, with Eurynome (the wide-
Encroaching Eve perhaps) had first the rule
Of high Olympus; thence by Saturn driven
And Ops, ere yet Dictaan Jove was born.

Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair
Too soon arrived; Sin, there in power before,
Once actual; now in body, and to dwell
Habitual habitant; behind her Death,
Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet
On his pale horse: to whom Sin thus began.

Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death! What think'st thou of our empire now, though earned With travel difficult, not better far

Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have sat watch, Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved?