Milton: Paradise Lost

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste / Brought death into the World, and all our woe, / With loss of Eden, till one greater Man / Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, / Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top / Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire / That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed / In the beginning how the heavens and earth / Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill / Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed / Fast by the oracle of God, I thence / Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, / That with no middle flight intends to soar / Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues / Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. / And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer / Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure, / Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first / Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, / Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss, / And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark / Illumine, what is low raise and support; / That, to the height of this great argument, / I may assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men. / Say first—for Heaven hides nothing from thy view, / Nor the deep tract of Hell—say first what cause / Moved our grand parents, in that happy state, / Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off / From their Creator, and transgress his will / For one restraint, lords of the World besides. / Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? / Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile, / Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived / The mother of mankind, what time his pride / Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host / Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring / To set himself in glory above his peers, / He trusted to have equalled the Most High, / If he opposed, and with ambitious aim / Against the throne and monarchy of God, / Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, / With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power / Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky, / With hideous ruin and combustion, down / To bottomless perdition, there to dwell / In adamantine chains and penal fire, / Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms. / Nine times the space that measures day and night / To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, / Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, / Confounded, though immortal. But his doom / Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought / Both of lost happiness and lasting pain / Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes, / That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, / Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. / At once, as far as Angels ken, he views / The dismal situation waste and wild. / A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, / As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames / No light; but rather darkness visible / Served only to discover sights of woe, / Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace / And rest can never dwell, hope never comes / That comes to all, but torture without end / Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed / With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. / Such place Eternal Justice has prepared / For those rebellious; here their prison ordained / In utter darkness, and their portion set, / As far removed from God and light of Heaven / As from the centre thrice to th’ utmost pole. / Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell! / There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed / With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, / He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side, / One next himself in power, and next in crime, / Long after known in Palestine, and named / Beelzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy, / And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words / Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:— / “If thou beest he—but O how fallen! how changed / From him who, in the happy realms of light / Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine / Myriads, though bright!—if he whom mutual league, / United thoughts and counsels, equal hope / And hazard in the glorious enterprise / Joined with me once, now misery hath joined / In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest / From what height fallen: so much the stronger proved / He with his thunder; and till then who knew / The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those, / Nor what the potent Victor in his rage / Can else inflict, do I repent, or change, / Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind, / And high disdain from sense of injured merit, / That with the Mightiest raised me to contend, / And to the fierce contentions brought along / Innumerable force of Spirits armed, / That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring, / His utmost power with adverse power opposed / In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, / And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? / All is not lost—the unconquerable will, / And study of revenge, immortal hate, / And courage never to submit or yield: / And what is else not to be overcome? / That glory never shall his wrath or might / Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace / With suppliant knee, and deify his power / Who, from the terror of this arm, so late / Doubted his empire—that were low indeed; / That were an ignominy and shame beneath / This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods, / And this empyreal substance, cannot fail; / Since, through experience of this great event, / In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, / We may with more successful hope resolve / To wage by force or guile eternal war, / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.” / So spake th’ apostate Angel, though in pain, / Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair; / And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:— / “O Prince, O Chief of many throned Powers / That led th’ embattled Seraphim to war / Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds / Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King, / And put to proof his high supremacy, / Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate, / Too well I see and rue the dire event / That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat, / Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host / In horrible destruction laid thus low, / As far as Gods and heavenly Essences / Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains / Invincible, and vigour soon returns, / Though all our glory extinct, and happy state / Here swallowed up in endless misery. / But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now / Of force believe almighty, since no less / Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours) / Have left us this our spirit and strength entire, / Strongly to suffer and support our pains, / That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, / Or do him mightier service as his thralls / By right of war, whate’er his business be, / Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire, / Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep? / What can it then avail though yet we feel / Strength undiminished, or eternal being / To undergo eternal punishment?” / Whereto with speedy words th’ Arch-Fiend replied:— / “Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, / Doing or suffering: but of this be sure— / To do aught good never will be our task, / But ever to do ill our sole delight, / As being the contrary to his high will / Whom we resist. If then his providence / Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, / Our labour must be to pervert that end, / And out of good still to find means of evil; / Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps / Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb / His inmost counsels from their destined aim. / But see! the angry Victor hath recalled / His ministers of vengeance and pursuit / Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail, / Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid / The fiery surge that from the precipice / Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder, / Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, / Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now / To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep. / Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn / Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe. / Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, / The seat of desolation, void of light, / Save what the glimmering of these livid flames / Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend / From off the tossing of these fiery waves; / There rest, if any rest can harbour there; / And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, / Consult how we may henceforth most offend / Our enemy, our own loss how repair, / How overcome this dire calamity, / What reinforcement we may gain from hope, / If not, what resolution from despair.” / Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, / With head uplift above the wave, and eyes / That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides / Prone on the flood, extended long and large, / Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge / As whom the fables name of monstrous size, / Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, / Briareos or Typhon, whom the den / By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast / Leviathan, which God of all his works / Created hugest that swim th’ ocean-stream. / Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, / The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, / Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, / With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, / Moors by his side under the lee, while night / Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. / So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay, / Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence / Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will / And high permission of all-ruling Heaven / Left him at large to his own dark designs, / That with reiterated crimes he might / Heap on himself damnation, while he sought / Evil to others, and enraged might see / How all his malice served but to bring forth / Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn / On Man by him seduced, but on himself / Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured. / Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool / His mighty stature; on each hand the flames / Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled / In billows, leave i’ th’ midst a horrid vale. / Then with expanded wings he steers his flight / Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, / That felt unusual weight; till on dry land / He lights—if it were land that ever burned / With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, / And such appeared in hue as when the force / Of subterranean wind transports a hill / Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side / Of thundering Etna, whose combustible / And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire, / Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, / And leave a singed bottom all involved / With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole / Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate; / Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood / As gods, and by their own recovered strength, / Not by the sufferance of supernal Power. / “Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,” / Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat / That we must change for Heaven?—this mournful gloom / For that celestial light? Be it so, since he / Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid / What shall be right: farthest from him is best / Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme / Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, / Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, / Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell, / Receive thy new possessor—one who brings / A mind not to be changed by place or time. / The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. / What matter where, if I be still the same, / And what I should be, all but less than he / Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least / We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built / Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: / Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, / To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: / Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. / But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, / Th’ associates and co-partners of our loss, / Lie thus astonished on th’ oblivious pool, / And call them not to share with us their part / In this unhappy mansion, or once more / With rallied arms to try what may be yet / Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?” / So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub / Thus answered:—“Leader of those armies bright / Which, but th’ Omnipotent, none could have foiled! / If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge / Of hope in fears and dangers—heard so oft / In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge / Of battle, when it raged, in all assaults / Their surest signal—they will soon resume / New courage and revive, though now they lie / Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, / As we erewhile, astounded and amazed; / No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height!” / He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend / Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, / Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, / Behind him cast. The broad circumference / Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb / Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views / At evening, from the top of Fesole, / Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, / Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. / His spear—to equal which the tallest pine / Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast / Of some great ammiral, were but a wand— / He walked with, to support uneasy steps / Over the burning marl, not like those steps / On Heaven’s azure; and the torrid clime / Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. / Nathless he so endured, till on the beach / Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called / His legions—Angel Forms, who lay entranced / Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks / In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades / High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge / Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed / Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew / Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, / While with perfidious hatred they pursued / The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld / From the safe shore their floating carcases / And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown, / Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, / Under amazement of their hideous change. / He called so loud that all the hollow deep / Of Hell resounded:—“Princes, Potentates, / Warriors, the Flower of Heaven—once yours; now lost, / If such astonishment as this can seize / Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place / After the toil of battle to repose / Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find / To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? / Or in this abject posture have ye sworn / To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds / Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood / With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon / His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern / Th’ advantage, and, descending, tread us down / Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts / Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? / Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!” / They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung / Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch / On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, / Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. / Nor did they not perceive the evil plight / In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; / Yet to their General’s voice they soon obeyed / Innumerable. As when the potent rod / Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day, / Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud / Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, / That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung / Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile; / So numberless were those bad Angels seen / Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, / ’Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; / Till, as a signal given, th’ uplifted spear / Of their great Sultan waving to direct / Their course, in even balance down they light / On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain: / A multitude like which the populous North / Poured never from her frozen loins to pass / Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons / Came like a deluge on the South, and spread / Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. / Forthwith, form every squadron and each band, / The heads and leaders thither haste where stood / Their great Commander—godlike Shapes, and Forms / Excelling human; princely Dignities; / And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones, / Though on their names in Heavenly records now / Be no memorial, blotted out and rased / By their rebellion from the Books of Life. / Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve / Got them new names, till, wandering o’er the earth, / Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man, / By falsities and lies the greatest part / Of mankind they corrupted to forsake / God their Creator, and th’ invisible / Glory of him that made them to transform / Oft to the image of a brute, adorned / With gay religions full of pomp and gold, / And devils to adore for deities: / Then were they known to men by various names, / And various idols through the heathen world. / Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last, / Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch, / At their great Emperorr’s call, as next in worth / Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, / While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof? / The chief were those who, from the pit of Hell / Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix / Their seats, long after, next the seat of God, / Their altars by his altar, gods adored / Among the nations round, and durst abide / Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned / Between the Cherubim; yea, often placed / Within his sanctuary itself their shrines, / Abominations; and with cursed things / His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, / And with their darkness durst affront his light. / First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood / Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears; / Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, / Their children’s cries unheard that passed through fire / To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite / Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain, / In Argob and in Basan, to the stream / Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such / Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart / Of Solomon he led by fraud to build / His temple right against the temple of God / On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove / The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence / And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. / Next Chemos, th’ obscene dread of Moab’s sons, / From Aroar to Nebo and the wild / Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon / And Horonaim, Seon’s real, beyond / The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, / And Eleale to th’ Asphaltic Pool: / Peor his other name, when he enticed / Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, / To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. / Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged / Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove / Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate, / Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell. / With these came they who, from the bordering flood / Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts / Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names / Of Baalim and Ashtaroth—those male, / These feminine. For Spirits, when they please, / Can either sex assume, or both; so soft / And uncompounded is their essence pure, / Not tried or manacled with joint or limb, / Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, / Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose, / Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, / Can execute their airy purposes, / And works of love or enmity fulfil. / For those the race of Israel oft forsook / Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left / His righteous altar, bowing lowly down / To bestial gods; for which their heads as low / Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear / Of despicable foes. With these in troop / Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called / Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; / To whose bright image nightly by the moon / Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs; / In Sion also not unsung, where stood / Her temple on th’ offensive mountain, built / By that uxorious king whose heart, though large, / Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell / To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, / Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured / The Syrian damsels to lament his fate / In amorous ditties all a summer’s day, / While smooth Adonis from his native rock / Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood / Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale / Infected Sion’s daughters with like heat, / Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch / Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, / His eye surveyed the dark idolatries / Of alienated Judah. Next came one / Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark / Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off, / In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge, / Where he fell flat and shamed his worshippers: / Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man / And downward fish; yet had his temple high / Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast / Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, / And Accaron and Gaza’s frontier bounds. / Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat / Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks / Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. / He also against the house of God was bold: / A leper once he lost, and gained a king— / Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew / God’s altar to disparage and displace / For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn / His odious offerings, and adore the gods / Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared / A crew who, under names of old renown— / Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train— / With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused / Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek / Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms / Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape / Th’ infection, when their borrowed gold composed / The calf in Oreb; and the rebel king / Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, / Likening his Maker to the grazed ox— / Jehovah, who, in one night, when he passed / From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke / Both her first-born and all her bleating gods. / Belial came last; than whom a Spirit more lewd / Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love / Vice for itself. To him no temple stood / Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he / In temples and at altars, when the priest / Turns atheist, as did Eli’s sons, who filled / With lust and violence the house of God? / In courts and palaces he also reigns, / And in luxurious cities, where the noise / Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, / And injury and outrage; and, when night / Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons / Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. / Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night / In Gibeah, when the hospitable door / Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape. / These were the prime in order and in might: / The rest were long to tell; though far renowned / Th’ Ionian gods—of Javan’s issue held / Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth, / Their boasted parents;—Titan, Heaven’s first-born, / With his enormous brood, and birthright seized / By younger Saturn: he from mightier Jove, / His own and Rhea’s son, like measure found; / So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in Crete / And Ida known, thence on the snowy top / Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air, / Their highest heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, / Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds / Of Doric land; or who with Saturn old / Fled over Adria to th’ Hesperian fields, / And o’er the Celtic roamed the utmost Isles. / All these and more came flocking; but with looks / Downcast and damp; yet such wherein appeared / Obscure some glimpse of joy to have found their Chief / Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost / In loss itself; which on his countenance cast / Like doubtful hue. But he, his wonted pride / Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore / Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised / Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears. / Then straight commands that, at the warlike sound / Of trumpets loud and clarions, be upreared / His mighty standard. That proud honour claimed / Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall: / Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled / Th’ imperial ensign; which, full high advanced, / Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, / With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, / Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while / Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: / At which the universal host up-sent / A shout that tore Hell’s concave, and beyond / Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. / All in a moment through the gloom were seen / Ten thousand banners rise into the air, / With orient colours waving: with them rose / A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms / Appeared, and serried shields in thick array / Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move / In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood / Of flutes and soft recorders—such as raised / To height of noblest temper heroes old / Arming to battle, and instead of rage / Deliberate valour breathed, firm, and unmoved / With dread of death to flight or foul retreat; / Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage / With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase / Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain / From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they, / Breathing united force with fixed thought, / Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed / Their painful steps o’er the burnt soil. And now / Advanced in view they stand—a horrid front / Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise / Of warriors old, with ordered spear and shield, / Awaiting what command their mighty Chief / Had to impose. He through the armed files / Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse / The whole battalion views—their order due, / Their visages and stature as of gods; / Their number last he sums. And now his heart / Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength, / Glories: for never, since created Man, / Met such embodied force as, named with these, / Could merit more than that small infantry / Warred on by cranes—though all the giant brood / Of Phlegra with th’ heroic race were joined / That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side / Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds / In fable or romance of Uther’s son, / Begirt with British and Armoric knights; / And all who since, baptized or infidel, / Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, / Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, / Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore / When Charlemain with all his peerage fell / By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond / Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed / Their dread Commander. He, above the rest / In shape and gesture proudly eminent, / Stood like a tower. His form had yet not lost / All her original brightness, nor appeared / Less than Archangel ruined, and th’ excess / Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen / Looks through the horizontal misty air / Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon, / In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds / On half the nations, and with fear of change / Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone / Above them all th’ Archangel: but his face / Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care / Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows / Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride / Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast / Signs of remorse and passion, to behold / The fellows of his crime, the followers rather / (Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned / For ever now to have their lot in pain— / Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced / Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung / For his revolt—yet faithful how they stood, / Their glory withered; as, when heaven’s fire / Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, / With singed top their stately growth, though bare, / Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared / To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend / From wing to wing, and half enclose him round / With all his peers: attention held them mute. / Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn, / Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last / Words interwove with sighs found out their way:— / “O myriads of immortal Spirits! O Powers / Matchless, but with th’ Almighty!—and that strife / Was not inglorious, though th’ event was dire, / As this place testifies, and this dire change, / Hateful to utter. But what power of mind, / Forseeing or presaging, from the depth / Of knowledge past or present, could have feared / How such united force of gods, how such / As stood like these, could ever know repulse? / For who can yet believe, though after loss, / That all these puissant legions, whose exile / Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend, / Self-raised, and repossess their native seat? / For me, be witness all the host of Heaven, / If counsels different, or danger shunned / By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns / Monarch in Heaven till then as one secure / Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute, / Consent or custom, and his regal state / Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed— / Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall. / Henceforth his might we know, and know our own, / So as not either to provoke, or dread / New war provoked: our better part remains / To work in close design, by fraud or guile, / What force effected not; that he no less / At length from us may find, who overcomes / By force hath overcome but half his foe. / Space may produce new Worlds; whereof so rife / There went a fame in Heaven that he ere long / Intended to create, and therein plant / A generation whom his choice regard / Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven. / Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps / Our first eruption—thither, or elsewhere; / For this infernal pit shall never hold / Celestial Spirits in bondage, nor th’ Abyss / Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts / Full counsel must mature. Peace is despaired; / For who can think submission? War, then, war / Open or understood, must be resolved.” / He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew / Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs / Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze / Far round illumined Hell. Highly they raged / Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms / Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, / Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven. / There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top / Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire / Shone with a glossy scurf—undoubted sign / That in his womb was hid metallic ore, / The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed, / A numerous brigade hastened: as when bands / Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe armed, / Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, / Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on— / Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell / From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts / Were always downward bent, admiring more / The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, / Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed / In vision beatific. By him first / Men also, and by his suggestion taught, / Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands / Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth / For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew / Opened into the hill a spacious wound, / And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire / That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best / Deserve the precious bane. And here let those / Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell / Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings, / Learn how their greatest monuments of fame / And strength, and art, are easily outdone / By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour / What in an age they, with incessant toil / And hands innumerable, scarce perform. / Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, / That underneath had veins of liquid fire / Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude / With wondrous art founded the massy ore, / Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion-dross. / A third as soon had formed within the ground / A various mould, and from the boiling cells / By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook; / As in an organ, from one blast of wind, / To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes. / Anon out of the earth a fabric huge / Rose like an exhalation, with the sound / Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet— / Built like a temple, where pilasters round / Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid / With golden architrave; nor did there want / Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven; / The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon / Nor great Alcairo such magnificence / Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine / Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat / Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove / In wealth and luxury. Th’ ascending pile / Stood fixed her stately height, and straight the doors, / Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide / Within, her ample spaces o’er the smooth / And level pavement: from the arched roof, / Pendent by subtle magic, many a row / Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed / With naptha and asphaltus, yielded light / As from a sky. The hasty multitude / Admiring entered; and the work some praise, / And some the architect. His hand was known / In Heaven by many a towered structure high, / Where sceptred Angels held their residence, / And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King / Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, / Each in his Hierarchy, the Orders bright. / Nor was his name unheard or unadored / In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land / Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell / From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove / Sheer o’er the crystal battlements: from morn / To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, / A summer’s day, and with the setting sun / Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star, / On Lemnos, th’ Aegaean isle. Thus they relate, / Erring; for he with this rebellious rout / Fell long before; nor aught availed him now / To have built in Heaven high towers; nor did he scape / By all his engines, but was headlong sent, / With his industrious crew, to build in Hell. / Meanwhile the winged Heralds, by command / Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony / And trumpet’s sound, throughout the host proclaim / A solemn council forthwith to be held / At Pandemonium, the high capital / Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called / From every band and squared regiment / By place or choice the worthiest: they anon / With hundreds and with thousands trooping came / Attended. All access was thronged; the gates / And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall / (Though like a covered field, where champions bold / Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan’s chair / Defied the best of Paynim chivalry / To mortal combat, or career with lance), / Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, / Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees / In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides. / Pour forth their populous youth about the hive / In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers / Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, / The suburb of their straw-built citadel, / New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer / Their state-affairs: so thick the airy crowd / Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given, / Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed / In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons, / Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room / Throng numberless—like that pygmean race / Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves, / Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side / Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, / Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon / Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth / Wheels her pale course: they, on their mirth and dance / Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; / At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. / Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms / Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, / Though without number still, amidst the hall / Of that infernal court. But far within, / And in their own dimensions like themselves, / The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim / In close recess and secret conclave sat, / A thousand demi-gods on golden seats, / Frequent and full. After short silence then, / And summons read, the great consult began.