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 the Aonian mount, † while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou knowest; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss,
And made 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.

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Suporta live

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 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
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

* A small river near the temple of Jerusalem. Cf. Isa. viii. 6.

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That is, above what other poets have attempted; the Aonian Mount

in Baotia being the supposed haunt of the Muses.

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 s

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 had 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 the 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 the Arch-Enemy,

And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words

Breaking the horrid silence thus began.

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"If thou beest he; but oh, how fallen! how changed V

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,

* Milton seems to have used these words to signify gloom.

rymurat

Satan

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+ Dr. Bentley reads outer here, and in many other places of this poem. Spenser justifies the present reading by frequently using the word utter for

outer.

That is, thrice as far as it is from the centre of the earth (which is the centre of the world according to Milton's system, ix. 103, x. 671) to the pole of the world; for it is the pole of the universe, far beyond the pole of the earth, which is here called the "utmost pole."-Newton.

The lord of flies, an idol worshipped at Ekron, a city of the Philistines. 2 Kings i. 2.

That with the mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention 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,
Irreconcileable 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.

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"O prince, O chief of many throned powers,
That led the embattled seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,

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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,

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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 the arch fiend replied.
"Fall'n 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 oft-times 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 has spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
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 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,

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A very material objection has been made to this and some other passages of the poem, wherein the good angels are represented as pursuing the rebel host with fire and thunderbolts down through Chaos even to the gates of Hell, as being contrary to the account which the angel Raphael gives to Adam in the Sixth Book. And it is certain that there the good angels are ordered to "stand still only and behold," and the Messiah alone expels them out of Heaven.

With head up-lift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extending 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 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

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Moors by his side under the lea, while night
Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays:

So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay,

Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence

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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 serve but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shown
On man by him seduced; but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance poured.
Forthwith upright he rears, from off the pool,
His mighty nature; on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and rolled
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
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuel'd entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singèd bottom all involved

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Typhon is the same with Typhoeus. That the den of Typhoeus was in Cilicia, of which Tarsus was a celebrated city, we are told by Pindar and Pomponius Mela.

+ Milton seems to regard the leviathan as identical with the whale.

The Cape di Faro, a promontory of Sicily, about a mile and a half from Italy.