And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, 20

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 highth of this great argument10
I may assert Eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames

No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover14 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,15 and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utterie darkness, and their portion set,

70

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.*

cause

Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off 30
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?

The 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,11 with all his host

40

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 monarchy12 of God
Raised impious war in Heaven, and battle
proud,

With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.

Nine times the space that measures day and night

50

| And thence in Heaven called Satan,17 with bold words

Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:'If thou beest he-but Oh 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 highth fallen: 18 so much the
stronger proved

91

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?

110

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 bis empire 19-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 120
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.'

So spake the 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 the embattled Seraphim20 to war Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds 130 Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual King, And put to proof his high supremacy, Whether upheld by strength, or chance,

fate!

or

140

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 vigor 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 force21 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?

150

What can it then avail, though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?'

Whereto with speedy words the Arch-Fiend replied:

160

"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 labor 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,

170

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.*

181

Let us not slip the 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 tend22
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbor there;
And, reassembling our afflicted23 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.'

191

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,† 22 make our way (a 23 beaten down (a Latinism) Latinism) Even above the resonance to be felt everywhere through Milton's verse this line rises with a resonance of its own.

The Titans were the children of Uranus and Gaea (Heaven and Earth). Briareos and Typhon were Gigantes, sometimes said to have been imprisoned beneath mountains, thus representing the forces of earthquake and vol

cano.

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast Leviathan,24 which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the 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,

200

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,
209
Chained25 on the burning lake; nor ever thence
Had26 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

219

In billows, leave i' the 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 231
Torn from Pelorus, 27 or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed28 with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the
sole

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell, 251
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,28
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but29 less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at
least

We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: 260
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,
The associates and co-partners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on the 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?'

270

So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub Thus answered: :-'Leader of those armies bright

Which but the 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, 280
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed:
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth!'
He scarce had ceased when the superior
Fiend

shield,

'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 sovran can dispose and bid

Ethereal temper,30 massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast. The broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist31 views
At evening from the top of Fesole,32
Or in Valdarno,33 to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.

28 Cp. p. 155, 1. 75. 29 only

30 of ethereal temper 31 scientist (though possibly referring to

290

Galileo as a maker of telescopes)

32 Fiesole, a hill above Florence.

33 Valley of the Arno.

His spear to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral,34 were but a wand-
He walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marle, 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 300
His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced,
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa,35 where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion36 armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves
o'erthrew

Busiris37 and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen,38 who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases 310
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 320
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
The advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!'

330

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,39 in Egypt's evil day,

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, the 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: 350
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons+0
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith, from 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; 360

Though of 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 the invisible
Glory of him that made them, to transform 370
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions41 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

Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch, first, who last, At their great Emperor's call, as next in worth Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, While crowd the promiscuous stood yet aloof. 380

The chief were those who, from the pit of

Hell

* Three

lines of infinite sadness. Conversely, Dante does not allow the name of Christ to be spoken in his Inferno.