Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (21 page)

O shame to
⁴⁹⁶
men! Devil with devil damned

Firm concord holds, men only disagree

Of creatures rational, though under hope

Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace,

Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife

Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,

Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:

As if (which might induce us to accord)

Man had not Hellish foes enow
⁵⁰⁴
besides,

That day and night for his destruction wait.

   The Stygian Counsel thus dissolved; and forth

In order came the grand infernal Peers:

Midst came their mighty Paramount, and seemed

Alone th’ antagonist of Heav’n, nor less

Than Hell’s dread Emperor with pomp supreme,

And God-like
⁵¹¹
imitated state; him round

A globe of fiery Seraphim enclosed

With bright emblazonry
⁵¹³
, and horrent arms.

Then of their session ended they bid cry

With trumpets’ regal sound the great result:

Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim

Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy
⁵¹⁷

By herald’s voice explained: the hollow abyss

Heard far and wide, and all the host of Hell

With deaf’ning shout, returned them loud acclaim.

Thence more at ease their minds and somewhat raised

By false presumptuous hope, the rangèd powers

Disband, and wand’ring, each his several way

Pursues, as inclination or sad choice

Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find

Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain
⁵²⁶

The irksome hours, till this great chief return.

Part on the
⁵²⁸
plain, or in the air sublime

Upon the wing, or in swift race contend,

As at th’ Olympian Games or Pythian fields
⁵³⁰
;

Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal
⁵³¹

With rapid wheels, or fronted
⁵³²
brigades form.

As when to warn proud cities war appears

Waged in the troubled sky
⁵³³
, and armies rush

To battle in the clouds, before each van
⁵³⁵

Prick forth
⁵³⁶
the airy knights, and couch their spears

Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms

From either end of heav’n the welkin
⁵³⁸
burns.

Others with vast Typhoean
⁵³⁹
rage more fell

Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air

In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar.

As when
⁵⁴²
Alcides from Oechalia crowned

With conquest, felt th’ envenomed robe, and tore

Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,

And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw

Into th’ Euboic Sea. Others more mild,

Retreated in a silent valley, sing

With notes angelical to many a harp

Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall

By doom of battle; and complain that fate

Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance.

Their song was partial
⁵⁵²
, but the harmony

(What could it less when spirits immortal sing?)

Suspended
⁵⁵⁴
Hell, and took with ravishment

The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet

(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)

Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts
⁵⁵⁸
more elevate, and reasoned high

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

And found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost.

Of good and evil much they argued then,

Of happiness and final misery,

Passion and apathy
⁵⁶⁴
, and glory and shame,

Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy:

Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm

Pain for a while or anguish, and excite

Fallacious hope, or arm th’ obdurèd
⁵⁶⁸
breast

With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

Another part in squadrons and gross
⁵⁷⁰
bands,

On bold adventure to discover wide

That dismal world, if any clime perhaps

Might yield them easier habitation, bend

Four ways their flying march, along the banks

Of four
⁵⁷⁵
infernal rivers that disgorge

Into the burning lake their baleful streams;

Abhorrèd Styx the flood of deadly hate,

Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;

Cocytus, named of lamentation loud

Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton

Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

Far off from these a slow and silent stream,

Lethe the river of oblivion rolls

Her wat’ry labyrinth, whereof who drinks,

Forthwith his former state and being forgets,

Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

Beyond this flood a frozen continent

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land

Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems

Of ancient pile
⁵⁹¹
; all else deep snow and ice,

A gulf profound as that Serbonian Bog

Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,

Where armies whole have sunk
⁵⁹²
: the parching air

Burns frore
⁵⁹⁵
, and cold performs th’ effect of fire.

Thither by harpy-footed
⁵⁹⁶
Furies haled,

At certain revolutions all the damned

Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,

From beds of raging fire to starve
⁶⁰⁰
in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immovable, infixed, and frozen round,

Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.

They ferry over this Lethean sound
⁶⁰⁴

Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,

And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach

The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose

In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,

All in one moment, and so near the brink;

But fate withstands, and to oppose th’ attempt

Medusa
⁶¹¹
with Gorgonian terror guards

The ford, and of itself the water flies

All taste of living wight
⁶¹³
, as once it fled

The lip of Tantalus
⁶¹⁴
. Thus roving on

In confused march forlorn, th’ advent’rous bands

With shudd’ring horror pale, and eyes aghast

Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found

No rest: through many a dark and dreary vale

They passed, and many a region dolorous,

O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp,

Rocks, caves,
⁶²¹
lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,

A universe of death, which God by curse

Created evil, for evil only good,

Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,

Abominable, inutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,

Gorgons and Hydra
⁶²⁸
s, and Chimeras dire.

   Meanwhile the Adversary
⁶²⁹
of God and man,

Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design,

Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of Hell

Explores
⁶³²
his solitary flight; sometimes

He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left,

Now shaves
⁶³³
with level wing the deep, then soars

Up to the fiery concave tow’ring high.

As when far off at sea a fleet descried

Hangs in the clouds
⁶³⁶
, by equinoctial
⁶³⁷
winds

Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood

Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape

Ply stemming nightly toward the pole
⁶⁴²
. So seemed

Far off the flying Fiend: at last appear

Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,

Three iron, three of adamantine rock,

Impenetrable, impaled
⁶⁴⁷
with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat

On either side a formidable shape;

The one
⁶⁵⁰
seemed woman to the waist, and fair,

But ended foul in many a scaly fold

Voluminous
⁶⁵²
and vast, a serpent armed

With mortal sting
⁶⁵³
: about her middle round

A cry
⁶⁵⁴
of Hell-hounds never ceasing barked

With wide Cerberean
⁶⁵⁵
mouths full loud, and rung

A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep,

If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,

And kennel
⁶⁵⁸
there, yet there still barked and howled,

Within unseen.
⁶⁵⁹
Far less abhorred than these

Vexed Scylla bathing in the sea that parts

Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:

Nor uglier follow the night-hag
⁶⁶²
, when called

In secret, riding through the air she comes

Lured
⁶⁶⁴
with the smell of infant blood, to dance

With Lapland
⁶⁶⁵
witches, while the laboring moon

Eclipses at their charms. The other shape,

If shape it might be called that shape had none

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,

For each seemed either; black it stood as night,

Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head

The likeness of a kingly crown
⁶⁷³
had on.

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

The monster moving onward came as fast

With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

Th’ undaunted Fiend what this might be admired
⁶⁷⁷
,

Admired, not
⁶⁷⁸
feared; God and his Son except,

Created thing naught valued he nor shunned;

And with disdainful look thus first began.

   “Whence and
⁶⁸¹
what art thou, execrable shape,

That dar’st, though grim and terrible, advance

Thy miscreated front
⁶⁸³
athwart my way

To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,

That be assured, without leave asked of thee:

Retire, or taste
⁶⁸⁶
thy folly, and learn by proof,

Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of Heav’n.”

   To whom the Goblin full of wrath replied,

“Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he,

Who first broke peace in Heav’n and faith, till then

Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms

Drew after him
⁶⁹²
the third part of Heav’n’s sons

Conjured
⁶⁹³
against the highest, for which both thou

And they outcast from God, are here condemned

To waste eternal days in woe and pain?

And reckon’st thou thyself with spirits of Heav’n,

Hell-doomed
⁶⁹⁷
, and breath’st defiance here and scorn,

Where I reign king, and to enrage thee more,

Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,

False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,

Lest with a
⁷⁰¹
whip of scorpions I pursue

Thy ling’ring, or with one stroke of this dart

Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.”

   So spake the grisly terror, and in shape,

So speaking
⁷⁰⁵
and so threat’ning, grew tenfold

More dreadful and deform: on th’ other side

Incensed with indignation Satan stood

Unterrified
⁷⁰⁸
, and like a comet burned,

That fires the length of Ophiucus
⁷⁰⁹
huge

In th’ Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
⁷¹⁰

Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head

Leveled his deadly aim; their fatal hands

No second stroke intend, and such a frown

Each cast
⁷¹⁴
at th’ other, as when two black clouds

With Heav’n’s artillery fraught, come rattling on

Over the Caspian
⁷¹⁶
, then stand front to front

Hov’ring a space, till winds the signal blow

To join their dark encounter in mid air:

So frowned the mighty combatants, that Hell

Grew darker at their frown, so matched they stood;

For never but once more was either like

To meet so great a foe
⁷²²
: and now great deeds

Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had rung,

Had not the snaky sorceress that sat

Fast by Hell gate, and kept the fatal key,

Ris’n, and with hideous outcry rushed between.

   “O father, what intends thy hand,” she cried,

“Against thy only son? What fury O son,

Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart

Against thy father’s head? And know’st for whom;

For him who sits above and laughs the while

At thee ordained his drudge, to execute

Whate’er his wrath, which he calls justice, bids,