Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Milton
Page 68
Thy mortal sight to fail; objects divine
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Must needs impair and wearie human sense:
Henceforth what is to com I will relate,
Thou therefore give due audience, and attend.
This second sours of Men, while yet but few;
And while the dread of judgement past remains
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Fresh in thir minds, fearing the Deitie,
With some regard to what is just and right
Shall lead thir lives, and multiplie apace,
Labouring the soil, and reaping plenteous crop,
Corn wine and oyl; and from the herd or flock,
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Oft sacrificing Bullock, Lamb, or Kid,
With large Wine-offerings pour’d, and sacred Feast,
Shall spend thir dayes in joy unblam’d, and dwell
Long time in peace by Families and Tribes
Under paternal rule; till one2 shall rise
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Of proud ambitious heart, who not content
With fair equalitie, fraternal state,
Will arrogate Dominion undeserv’d
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess
Concord and law of Nature from the Earth,
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Hunting (and Men not Beasts shall be his game)
With Warr and hostile snare such as refuse
Subjection to his Empire tyrannous:
A mightie Hunter thence he shall be styl’d
Before the Lord, as in despite of Heav’n,
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Or from Heav’n claming second Sovrantie;
And from Rebellion shall derive his name,
Though of Rebellion others he accuse.
Hee with a crew, whom like Ambition joyns
With him or under him to tyrannize,
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Marching from Eden towards the West, shall find
The Plain,3 wherein a black bituminous gurge
Boils out from under ground, the mouth of Hell;
Of Brick, and of that stuff they cast to build
A Citie and Towr, whose top may reach to Heav’n;
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And get themselves a name, least far disperst
In foraign Lands thir memorie be lost,
Regardless whether good or evil fame.
But God who oft descends to visit men
Unseen, and through thir habitations walks
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To mark thir doings, them beholding soon,
Comes down to see thir Citie, ere the Tower
Obstruct Heav’n Towrs, and in derision sets
Upon thir Tongues a various4 Spirit to rase
Quite out thir Native Language, and instead
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To sow a jangling noise of words unknown:
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud
Among the Builders; each to other calls
Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage,
As mockt they storm; great laughter was in Heav’n
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And looking down, to see the hubbub strange
And hear the din; thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion nam’d.5
Whereto thus Adam fatherly displeas’d.
O execrable Son so to aspire
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Above his Brethren, to himself assuming
Authoritie usurpt, from God not giv’n:
He gave us onely over Beast, Fish, Fowl
Dominion absolute; that right we hold
By his donation; but Man over men
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He made not Lord; such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free.
But this Usurper his encroachment proud
Stayes not on Man; to God his Tower intends
Siege and defiance: Wretched man! what food
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Will he convey up thither to sustain
Himself and his rash Armie, where thin Air
Above the Clouds will pine his entrails gross,
And famish him of Breath, if not of Bread?
To whom thus Michael. Justly thou abhorr’st
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That Son, who on the quiet state of men
Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue
Rational Libertie; yet know withall,
Since thy original lapse, true Libertie
Is lost, which alwayes with right Reason dwells
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Twinn’d, and from her hath no dividual being:
Reason in man obscur’d, or not obeyd,
Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart Passions catch the Government
From Reason, and to servitude reduce
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Man till then free. Therefore since hee permits
Within himself unworthie Powers to reign
Over free Reason, God in Judgement just
Subjects him from without to violent Lords;
Who oft as undeservedly enthrall
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His outward freedom: Tyrannie must be,
Though to the Tyrant thereby no excuse.
Yet somtimes Nations will decline so low
From vertue, which is reason, that no wrong,
But Justice, and some fatal curse annext
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Deprives them of thir outward libertie,
Thir inward lost: Witness th’ irreverent Son6
Of him who built the Ark, who for the shame
Don to his Father, heard this heavie curse,
Servant of Servants, on his vitious Race.7
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Thus will this latter, as the former World,
Still tend from bad to worse, till God at last
Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw
His presence from among them, and avert
His holy Eyes; resolving from thenceforth
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To leave them to thir own polluted wayes;
And one peculiar Nation to select
From all the rest, of whom to be invok’d,
A Nation from one faithful man8 to spring:
Him on this side Euphrates yet residing,
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Bred up in Idol-worship; O that men
(Canst thou believe?) should be so stupid grown,
While yet the Patriark liv’d, who scap’d the Flood,
As to forsake the living God, and fall
To worship thir own work in Wood and Stone
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For Gods! yet him God the most High voutsafes
To call by Vision from his Fathers house,
His kindred and false Gods, into a Land
Which he will shew him, and from him will raise
A mightie Nation, and upon him showr
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His benediction so, that in his Seed
All Nations shall be blest; he straight obeys,
Not knowing to what Land, yet firm believes:
I see him, but thou canst not, with what Faith
He leaves his Gods, his Friends, and native Soil9
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Ur of Chaldæa, passing now the Ford
To Haran, after him a cumbrous Train
Of Herds and Flocks, and numerous servitude;
Not wandring poor, but trusting all his wealth
With God, who call’d him, in a land unknown.
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Canaan he now attains, I see his Tents
Pitcht about Sechem, and the neighbouring Plain
Of Moreh; there by promise he receaves
Gift to his Progenie of all that Land;
From Hamath Northward to the Desert South
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(Things by thir names I call, though yet unnam’d)
From Hermon East to the great Western Sea,
Mount Hermon, yonder Sea, each place behold
In prospect, as I point them; on the shoar
Mount Carmel; here the double-founted stream
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Jordan, true limit Eastward; but his Sons
Shall dwell to Senir, that long ridge of Hills.
This ponder, that all Nations of the Earth
Shall in his Seed be blessed; by that Seed
Is meant thy great deliverer, who shall bruise
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The Serpents head; whereof to thee anon
Plainlier shall be reveald. This Patriarch blest,
Whom faithful Abraham due time shall call,
A Son,10 and of his Son a Grand-child leaves,
Like him in faith, in wisdom, and renown;
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The Grandchild with twelve Sons increast, departs
From Canaan, to a Land hereafter call’d
Egypt, divided by the River Nile;
See where it flows, disgorging at seaven mouths
Into the Sea: to sojourn in that Land
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He comes invited by a yonger Son11
In time of dearth, a Son whose worthy deeds
Raise him to be the second in that Realm
Of Pharao: there he dies, and leaves his Race
Growing into a Nation, and now grown
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Suspected to a sequent King,12 who seeks
To stop thir overgrowth, as inmate guests
Too numerous; whence of guests he makes them slaves
Inhospitably, and kills thir infant Males:
Till by two brethren (those two brethren call
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Moses and Aaron) sent from God to claim
His people from enthralment, they return
With glory and spoil back to thir promis’d Land.
But first the lawless Tyrant, who denies
To know thir God, or message to regard,
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Must be compell’d by Signes and Judgements dire;
To blood unshed the Rivers must be turnd,
Frogs, Lice and Flies must all his Palace fill
With loath’d intrusion, and fill all the land;
His Cattel must of Rot and Murren die,
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Botches and blains must all his flesh imboss,13
And all his people; Thunder mixt with Hail,
Hail mixt with fire must rend th’ Egyptian Skie
And wheel on th’ Earth, devouring where it rouls;
What it devours not, Herb, or Fruit, or Grain,
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A darksom Cloud of Locusts swarming down
Must eat, and on the ground leave nothing green:
Darkness must overshadow all his bounds,
Palpable darkness, and blot out three dayes;
Last with one midnight stroke all the first-born
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Of Egypt must lie dead. Thus with ten wounds
The River-dragon14 tam’d at length submits
To let his sojourners depart, and oft
Humbles his stubborn heart, but still as Ice
More hard’n’d after thaw, till in his rage
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Pursuing whom he late dismiss’d, the Sea
Swallows him with his Host, but them lets pass
As on drie land between two christal walls,
Aw’d by the rod of Moses so to stand
Divided, till his rescu’d gain thir shoar:
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Such wondrous power God to his Saint will lend,
Though present in his Angel, who shall goe
Before them in a Cloud, and Pillar of Fire,
By day a Cloud, by night a Pillar of Fire,
To guide them in thir journey, and remove
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Behind them, while th’ obdurat King pursues:
All night he will pursue, but his approach
Darkness defends15 between till morning Watch;
Then through the Firey Pillar and the Cloud
God looking forth will trouble all his Host
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And craze16 thir Chariot wheels: when by command
Moses once more his potent Rod extends
Over the Sea; the Sea his Rod obeys;
On thir imbattell’d ranks the Waves return,
And overwhelm thir Warr: the Race elect
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Safe towards Canaan from the shoar advance
Through the wild Desert, not the readiest way,
Least entring on the Canaanite allarmd
Warr terrifie them inexpert, and fear
Return them back to Egypt, choosing rather
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Inglorious life with servitude; for life
To noble and ignoble is more sweet
Untraind in Armes, where rashness leads not on.
This also shall they gain by thir delay
In the wide Wilderness, there they shall found
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Thir government, and thir great Senate17 choose
Through the twelve Tribes, to rule by Laws ordaind:
God from the Mount of Sinai, whose gray top
Shall tremble, he descending, will himself
In Thunder Lightning and loud Trumpets sound
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Ordain them Laws; part such as appertain
To civil Justice, part religious Rites
Of sacrifice, informing them, by types
And shadows, of that destind Seed to bruise
The Serpent, by what means he shall achieve
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Mankinds deliverance. But the voice of God
To mortal ear is dreadful; they beseech
That Moses might report to them his will,
And terror cease; he grants what they besaught
Instructed that to God is no access
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Without Mediator, whose high Office now
Moses in figure18 beares, to introduce
One greater, of whose day he shall foretell,
And all the Prophets in thir Age the times
Of great Messiah shall sing. Thus Laws and Rites
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Establisht, such delight hath God in Men
Obedient to his will, that he voutsafes
Among them to set up his Tabernacle,
The holy One with mortal Men to dwell:
By his prescript a Sanctuary is fram’d
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Of Cedar, overlaid with Gold, therein
An Ark, and in the Ark his Testimony,
The Records of his Cov’nant, over these
A Mercie-seat19 of Gold between the wings
Of two bright Cherubim, before him burn
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Seaven Lamps20 as in a Zodiac representing
The Heav’nly fires; over the Tent a Cloud
Shall rest by Day, a fiery gleam by Night,
Save when they journie, and at length they come,
Conducted by his Angel to the Land
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Promis’d to Abraham and his Seed: the rest
Were long to tell, how many Battels fought,
How many Kings destroyd, and Kingdoms won,
Or how the Sun shall in mid Heav’n stand still
A day entire, and Nights due course adjourn,
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Mans voice commanding,21 Sun in Gibeon stand,
And thou Moon in the vale of Aialon,
Till Israel overcome; so call the third
From Abraham, Son of Isaac, and from him
His whole descent, who thus shall Canaan win.
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Here Adam interpos’d. O sent from Heav’n,
Enlightner of my darkness, gracious things
Thou hast reveald, those chiefly which concern
Just Abraham and his Seed: now first I find
Mine eyes true op’ning, and my heart much eas’d,
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Erwhile perplext with thoughts what would becom
Of mee and all Mankind; but now I see
His day, in whom all Nations shall be blest,
Favour unmerited by me, who sought
Forbidd’n knowledge
by forbidd’n means.
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This yet I apprehend not, why to those
Among whom God will deigne to dwell on Earth
So many and so various Laws are giv’n;
So many Laws argue so many sins
Among them; how can God with such reside?
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To whom thus Michael. Doubt not but that sin
Will reign among them, as of thee begot;
And therefore was Law giv’n them to evince
Thir natural pravitie,22 by stirring up
Sin against Law to fight; that when they see
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Law can discover sin, but not remove,
Save by those shadowie23 expiations weak,
The bloud of Bulls and Goats, they may conclude
Some bloud more precious must be paid for Man,
Just for unjust, that in such righteousness
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To them by Faith imputed, they may find
Justification towards God, and peace
Of Conscience, which the Law by Ceremonies
Cannot appease, nor Man the moral part
Perform, and not performing cannot live.
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So Law appears imperfet, and but giv’n
With purpose to resign them in full time
Up to a better Cov’nant, disciplin’d
From shadowie Types to Truth, from Flesh to Spirit,
From imposition of strict Laws, to free
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Acceptance of large Grace, from servil fear
To filial, works of Law to works of Faith.
And therefore shall not Moses, though of God
Highly belov’d, being but the Minister
Of Law, his people into Canaan lead;
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But Joshua whom the Gentiles Jesus call,24
His Name and Office bearing, who shall quell
The adversarie Serpent, and bring back
Through the worlds wilderness long wanderd man
Safe to eternal Paradise of rest.
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Meanwhile they in thir earthly Canaan plac’t
Long time shall dwell and prosper, but when sins