No more of talk where God or angel guest With man, as with his friend, familiar used To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast; permitting him the while Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience: on the part of Heaven Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, That brought into this world a world of woe, Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery, Death's harbinger: sad task! yet argument Not less, but more heroic, than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Perplex'd the Greek, and Cytherea's son; If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse:
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late;
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deem'd; chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights, In battles feign'd; the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung; or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, emblazon'd shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshall'd feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneschals;
The skill of artifice or office mean, Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem. Me, of these Nor skill'd nor studious, higher argument Remains; sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing Depress'd; and much they may, if all be mine, Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear. The sun was sunk, and after him the star Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter "Twixt day and night; and now from end to end Night's hemisphere had veil'd the horizon round; When Satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved In meditated fraud and malice, bent On man's destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless return'd. By night he fled, and at midnight return'd From compassing the earth; cautious of day, Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried His entrance, and forewarn'd the cherubim That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven,
The space of seven continued nights he rode With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line He circled; four times cross'd the car of night From pole to pole, traversing each colour; On the eighth return'd; and, on the coast averse From entrance or cherubic watch, by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place, Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change,
Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise, Into a gulf shot underground; till part Rose up a fountain by the tree of life: In with the river sunk, and with it rose,
Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought Where to lie hid: sea he had search'd, and land From Eden over Pontus, and the pool Mæotis, up beyond the river Ob;
Downward as far antarctic; and in length, West from Orontes to the ocean barr'd At Darien; thence to the land where flows Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roam'd With narrow search; and with inspection deep Consider'd every creature, which of all Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found The serpent subtlest beast of all the field. Him, after long debate irresolute
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose; Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom To enter, and his dark suggestions hide From sharpest sight; for, in the wily snake Whatever slights, none would suspicious mark, As from his wit and native subtlety Proceeding; which, in other beasts observed, Doubt might beget of diabolic power Active within, beyond the sense of brute. Thus he resolved; but first from inward grief His bursting passion into plaints thus pour'd:
O earth, how like to heaven, if not preferr'd More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built With second thoughts, reforming what was old! For what God, after better, worse would build? Terrestrial heaven, danced round by other heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, Light above light, for thee alone, as seems; In thee concentring all their precious beams Of sacred influence! As God in heaven Is centre, yet extends to all; so thou, Centring, receivest from all those orbs: in thee, Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth
Of creatures animate with gradual life,
Of growth, sense, reason, all summ'd up in man. With what delight could I have walk'd thee round,
If I could joy in aught! sweet interchange Of hill, and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crown'd,
Rocks, dens, and caves! But I in none of these Find place or refuge; and the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries: all good to me becomes Bane, and in heaven much worse would be my
But neither here seek I, no, nor in heaven To dwell, unless by mastering heaven's Supreme. Nor hope to be myself less miserable
By what I seek, but others to make such As I, though thereby worse to me redound: For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts; and, him destroy'd, Or won to what may work his utter loss, For whom all this was made; all this will soon Follow, as to him link'd in weal or woe: In woe then; that destruction wide may range. To me shall be the glory sole among
The infernal powers, in one day to have marr'd What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days Continued making; and who knows how long Before had been contriving? though perhaps Not longer than since I, in one night, freed From servitude inglorious well nigh half The angelic name, and thinner left the throng Of his adorers: he, to be avenged, And to repair his numbers thus impair'd, Whether such virtue spent of old now fail'd More angels to create, if they at least
Are his created; or, to spite us more, Determined to advance into our room
A creature form'd of earth; and him endow, Exalted from so base original,
With heavenly spoils, our spoils: what he decreed,
He effected; man he made, and for him built Magnificent this world, and earth his seat, Him lord pronounced; and, O indignity! Subjected to his service angel-wings, And flaming ministers to watch and tend Their earthly charge; of these the vigilance I dread; and, to elude, thus wrapp'd in mist Of midnight vapour glide obscure; and pry In every bush and brake, where hap may find The serpent sleeping; in whose mazy folds To hide me, and the dark intent I bring. O foul descent! that I, who erst contended With gods to sit the highest, am now constrain'd Into a beast; and, mix'd with bestial slime, This essence to incarnate and imbrute, That to the height of deity aspired!
But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? Who aspires, must down as low As high he soar'd; obnoxious, first or last, To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils : Let it; I reck not, so it light well aim'd, Since higher I fall short, on him who next Provokes my envy, this new favourite Of Heaven, this man of clay, son of despite; Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker raised From dust: spite then with spite is best repaid.
So saying, through each thicket dank or dry, Like a black mist low creeping, he held on His midnight search, where soonest he might find
The serpent: him fast sleeping soon he found
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