第 29 页

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,

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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 fabrick wonderful

Of absolute perfection! therein Man

Placed in a Paradise, by our exile

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,

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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 publick 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

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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 Amphisbaena 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 or 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,

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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 Megaera: 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,

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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 Dictaean Jove was born.

Mean while 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 thinkest 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?

Whom thus the Sin-born monster answered soon.

To me, who with eternal famine pine,

Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven;

There best, where most with ravine I may meet;

Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems

To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corps.

To whom the incestuous mother thus replied.

Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers,

Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl;

No homely morsels! and, whatever thing

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The sithe of Time mows down, devour unspared;

Till I, in Man residing, through the race,

His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect;

And season him thy last and sweetest prey.

This said, they both betook them several ways,

Both to destroy, or unimmortal make

All kinds, and for destruction to mature

Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing,

From his transcendent seat the Saints among,

To those bright Orders uttered thus his voice.

See, with what heat these dogs of Hell advance

To waste and havock yonder world, which I

So fair and good created; and had still

Kept in that state, had not the folly of Man

Let in these wasteful furies, who impute

Folly to me; so doth the Prince of Hell

And his adherents, that with so much ease

I suffer them to enter and possess

A place so heavenly; and, conniving, seem

To gratify my scornful enemies,

That laugh, as if, transported with some fit

Of passion, I to them had quitted all,

At random yielded up to their misrule;

And know not that I called, and drew them thither,

My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth

Which Man’s polluting sin with taint hath shed

On what was pure; til, crammed and gorged, nigh burst

With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling

Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,

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Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave, at last,

Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of Hell

For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.

Then Heaven and Earth renewed shall be made pure

To sanctity, that shall receive no stain:

Till then, the curse pronounced on both precedes.

He ended, and the heavenly audience loud

Sung Halleluiah, as the sound of seas,

Through multitude that sung: Just are thy ways,

Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works;

Who can extenuate thee? Next, to the Son,

Destined Restorer of mankind, by whom

New Heaven and Earth shall to the ages rise,

Or down from Heaven descend.—Such was their song;

While the Creator, calling forth by name

His mighty Angels, gave them several charge,

As sorted best with present things. The sun

Had first his precept so to move, so shine,

As might affect the earth with cold and heat

Scarce tolerable; and from the north to call

Decrepit winter; from the south to bring

Solstitial summer’s heat. To the blanc moon

Her office they prescribed; to the other five

Their planetary motions, and aspects,

In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite,

Of noxious efficacy, and when to join

In synod unbenign; and taught the fixed

Their influence malignant when to shower,

Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,

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Should prove tempestuous: To the winds they set

Their corners, when with bluster to confound

Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll

With terrour through the dark aereal hall.

Some say, he bid his Angels turn ascanse

The poles of earth, twice ten degrees and more,

From the sun’s axle; they with labour pushed

Oblique the centrick globe: Some say, the sun

Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road

Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven

Atlantick Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,

Up to the Tropick Crab: thence down amain

By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales,

As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change

Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring

Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers,

Equal in days and nights, except to those

Beyond the polar circles; to them day

Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun,

To recompense his distance, in their sight

Had rounded still the horizon, and not known

Or east or west; which had forbid the snow

From cold Estotiland, and south as far

Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit

The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turned

His course intended; else, how had the world

Inhabited, though sinless, more than now,

Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat?

These changes in the Heavens, though slow, produced

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Like change on sea and land; sideral blast,

Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot,

Corrupt and pestilent: Now from the north

Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,

Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice,

And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw,

Boreas, and Caecias, and Argestes loud,

And Thrascias, rend the woods, and seas upturn;

With adverse blast upturns them from the south

Notus, and Afer black with thunderous clouds

From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce,

Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,

Eurus and Zephyr, with their lateral noise,

Sirocco and Libecchio. Thus began

Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first,

Daughter of Sin, among the irrational

Death introduced, through fierce antipathy:

Beast now with beast ‘gan war, and fowl with fowl,

And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving,

Devoured each other; nor stood much in awe

Of Man, but fled him; or, with countenance grim,

Glared on him passing. These were from without

The growing miseries, which Adam saw

Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade,

To sorrow abandoned, but worse felt within;

And, in a troubled sea of passion tost,

Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint.

O miserable of happy! Is this the end

Of this new glorious world, and me so late

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The glory of that glory, who now become

Accursed, of blessed? hide me from the face

Of God, whom to behold was then my highth

Of happiness!—Yet well, if here would end

The misery; I deserved it, and would bear

My own deservings; but this will not serve:

All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,

Is propagated curse. O voice, once heard

Delightfully, Encrease and multiply;

Now death to hear! for what can I encrease,

Or multiply, but curses on my head?

Who of all ages to succeed, but, feeling

The evil on him brought by me, will curse

My head? Ill fare our ancestor impure,

For this we may thank Adam! but his thanks

Shall be the execration: so, besides

Mine own that bide upon me, all from me

Shall with a fierce reflux on me rebound;

On me, as on their natural center, light

Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys