by John Milton
905
Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise46
Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
Hee47 rules a moment; Chaos Umpire sits,
And by decision more imbroils the fray
By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter
910
Chance48 governs all. Into this wild Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes49 mixt
Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,
915
Unless th’ Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wild Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look’d a while,
Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith
920
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less peal’d
With noises loud and ruinous (to compare
Great things with small) then when Bellona50 storms,
With all her battering Engines bent to rase
Som Capital City; or less then if this frame
925
Of Heav’n were falling, and these Elements
In mutinie had from her Axle torn
The stedfast Earth. At last his Sail-broad Vans
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoak
Uplifted spurns the ground, thence many a League
930
As in a cloudy Chair ascending rides
Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuitie: all unawares
Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour
935
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud
Instinct51 with Fire and Nitre hurried him
As many miles aloft: that furie stay’d,
Quencht in a Boggie Syrtis,52 neither Sea,
940
Nor good dry Land: nigh founderd on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now both Oar and Sail.
As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness
With winged course ore Hill or moarie Dale,
945
Pursues the Arimaspian,53 who by stelth
Had from his wakeful custody purloind
The guarded Gold: So eagerly the fiend
Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings or feet pursues his way,
950
And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes:
At length a universal hubbub wild
Of stunning sounds and voices all confus’d
Born through the hollow dark assaults his ear
With loudest vehemence: thither he plyes,
955
Undaunted to meet there what ever power
Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the neerest coast of darkness lyes
Bordering on light; when strait behold the Throne
960
Of Chaos, and his dark Pavilion spread54
Wide on the wasteful Deep; with him Enthron’d
Sat Sable-vested Night, eldest of things,
The Consort of his Reign; and by them stood
Orcus and Ades,55 and the dreaded name
965
Of Demogorgon; Rumor next and Chance,
And Tumult and Confusion all imbroild,
And Discord with a thousand various mouths.
T’ whom Satan turning boldly, thus. Ye Powers
And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss,
970
Chaos and ancient Night, I come no Spy,
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your Realm, but by constraint
Wandring this darksome Desart, as my way
Lies through your spacious Empire up to light,
975
Alone, and without guide, half lost,56 I seek
What readiest path leads where your gloomie bounds
Confine with Heav’n; or if som other place
From your Dominion won, th’ Ethereal King
Possesses lately, thither to arrive
980
I travel this profound,57 direct my course;
Directed, no mean recompence it brings
To your behoof, if I that Region lost,
All usurpation thence expell’d, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
985
(Which is my present journey) and once more
Erect the Standard there of ancient Night;
Yours be th’ advantage all, mine the revenge.
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old
With faultring speech and visage incompos’d58
990
Answer’d. I know thee, stranger, who thou art,
That mighty leading Angel, who of late
Made head against Heav’ns King, though overthrown.
I saw and heard, for such a numerous Host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep
995
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and Heav’n Gates
Pourd out by millions her victorious Bands
Pursuing. I upon my Frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve,
1000
That little which is left so to defend,
Encroacht on still through our intestine broils
Weakning the Scepter of old Night: first Hell
Your dungeon stretching far and wide beneath;
Now lately Heav’n and Earth, another World
1005
Hung ore my Realm, link’d in a golden Chain
To that side Heav’n from whence your Legions fell:
If that way be your walk, you have not farr;
So much the neerer danger; go and speed;
Havock and spoil and ruin are my gain.
1010
He ceas’d; and Satan staid not to reply,
But glad that now his Sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacritie and force renew’d
Springs upward like a Pyramid59 of fire
Into the wild expanse, and through the shock
1015
Of fighting Elements, on all sides round
Environ’d wins his way; harder beset
And more endanger’d, then when Argo60 pass’d
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling Rocks:
Or when Ulysses on the Larbord shunnd
1020
Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool61 steard.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Mov’d on, with difficulty and labour hee;
But hee once past, soon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
1025
Following his track, such was the will of Heav’n,
Pav’d after him a broad and beat’n way
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling Gulf
Tamely endur’d a Bridge of wondrous length
From Hell continu’d reaching th’ utmost Orb
1030
Of this frail World;62 by which the Spirits perverse
With easie intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence
1035
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heav’n
Shoots farr into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins
Her fardest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works a brok’n foe
1040
With tumult less and with less hostile din,
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light
And like a weather-beaten Vessel holds
Gladly the Port, though Shrouds and Tackle torn;
1045
Or in the emptier waste, resembling Air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leasure to behold
Farr off th’ Empyreal Heav’n, extended wide
In circuit, undetermind square or round,63
With Opal Towrs and Battlements adorn’d
1050
Of living Saphire, once his native Seat;
And fast by hanging in a golden Chain
This pendant world,64 in bigness as a Starr
Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.
Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge,
1055
Accurst, and in a cursed hour he hies.
* * *
1 Hormuz, on the Persian gulf, was famous for precious gems.
2 a custom in eastern empires.
3 since angels were made of heavenly quintessence.
4 proclaimed (an evil).
5 Compare the “red Lightning” of I, 175; red was the color of the horse of war in Rev. vi. 4, which carried a great sword. See also Horace, Odes, I, ii, 2-3.
6 Compare Ajax’s punishment (Aeneid, I, 44-45; VI, 75).
7 Ps. ii. 4: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.”
8 Compare Matt. xi. 30: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
9 referring to Atlas who bore the earth on his shoulders.
10 revolt.
11 younger, weak.
12 Adam and Eve.
13 Compare I, 20-22.
14 See I, 650-56.
15 test.
16 unknown.
17 without essence, since it is “abortive” (l. 441) or prematurely brought forth.
18 direct your thoughts to.
19 Compare Matt. xxiv. 31: “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
20 the alloy (brass) of which trumpets were made.
21 proclaimed.
22 referring to a hundred-headed giant.
23 Hercules; see Vice-Chancellor, n. 5.
24 compact.
25 in northern Egypt.
26 to die.
27 whose punishment in hell was never to clutch the grapes he reached for or drink from the water in which he stood.
28 islands of the Moluccas.
29 Through the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope.
30 making headway despite difficulty.
31 See James i. 15: “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
32 Sicilian; see Mask, n. 29.
33 Hecate.
34 The introduction of Death at l. 666 suggests the beast of Revelation (see xiii. 18).
35 as cited in Rev. xii. 4: “And his [the great red dragon’s] tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.…”
36 a constellation extending into the northern hemisphere; the name means “serpent-bearer.” Satan, “Incenst with indignation” at Death, is metaphorically a comet which lights up the northerly regions of Ophiucus (that is, himself as combiner of fire and ice); as comet he challenges Death with the “cold” instruments of death, pestilence and war. A nova (sometimes cited as a comet) appeared in the northern sky in 1618, the year in which the religious Thirty Years’ War began.
37 that is, Jesus who resisted Satan’s temptations and who triumphed over death.
38 alluding to the birth of Athena (goddess of wisdom) from the head of Jove. Jas. i. 15 cites the procreation of sin and death, but parody of the Trinity underlies the passage. Eve was created from Adam’s left side (VIII, 465); note also ll. 868–70.
39 referring to the Latin meanings “unnatural” and a “portent”; the emphasis is on her “monstrous” being.
40 bred physically within and bred incestuously.
41 pliable.
42 primeval darkness, thus hell.
43 Likewise Eve opens the gates by transgression, but she cannot undo what is past.
44 the four qualities of elements and humours-fire, choler: hot and dry; air, blood: hot and moist; water, phlegm: cold and moist; earth, melancholy: cold and dry.
45 desert and a city in Libya.
46 balance.
47 one of the champions of l. 898.
48 The chance of Chaos opposes the providence of God.
49 The phrase recalls I, 20-22, for the whole passage and underscores the sexual imagery connected with Chaos, Satan, and Adam after the fall, in sharp contrast to the Father’s begetting of His Son. The causes are Ramus’ forces by which things exist: nothing has been born yet from their confusion but potential birth is imminent. (See VII, 232 ff., and n. 26.)
50 Roman goddess of war.
51 charged.
52 an inlet on the coast of Libya.
53 a Scythian tribe.
54 Ps. xviii. 11: “He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.”
55 Hades.
56 Compare Adam and Eve’s expulsion, XII, 632-649.
57 deep, abyss.
58 disturbed.
59 chosen because of the supposed etymological source in “pyre.”
60 the ship of Jason and the Argonauts.
61 Scylla, seen here to be a symbol of Sin.
62 The building of the bridge is described in X, 293-324. The language in these two passages derives from Matt. vii. 13: “for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction.”
63 Compare X, 381, and see Rev. xxi. 16: “And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.”
64 the whole universe within the Crystalline Sphere.
BOOK III
THE ARGUMENT
God sitting on his Throne sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shews him to the Son who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own Justice and Wisdom from all imputation, having created Man free and able enough to have withstood his Tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduc’t. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards Man; but God again declares, that Grace cannot be extended towards Man without the satisfaction of divine Justice; Man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and therefore with all his Progeny devoted to death must dye, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his Punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a Ransom for Man: the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all Names in Heaven and Earth; commands all the Angels to adore him; they obey, and hymning to thir Harps in full Quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Mean while Satan alights upon the bar convex of this Worlds outer-most Orb; where wandring he first finds a place since call’d the Lymbo of Vanity; what persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the Gate of Heaven, describ’d ascending by stairs, and the waters above the Firmament that flow about it: His passage thence to the Orb of the Sun; he finds there Uriel the Regent of that Orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner Angel; and pretending a zealous desire to behold the new Creation and Man whom God had plac’t here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on Mount Niphates.
Hail holy Light, ofspring of Heav’n first-born,
Or of t
h’ Eternal Coeternal beam
May I express thee unblam’d? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
5
Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.1
Or hear’st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun,
Before the Heav’ns thou wert, and at the voice
10
Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escap’t the Stygian Pool, though long detain’d
15
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes then to th’ Orphean2 Lyre
I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav’nly Muse to venture down
20
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou
Revisit’st not these eyes, that rowl in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
25
So thick a drop serene3 hath quencht thir Orbs,
Or dim suffusion veild. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill,
Smit with the love of sacred Song; but chief
30
Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath
That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor somtimes forget
Those other two equal’d with me in Fate,
So were I equal’d with them in renown,
35
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,4
And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid