No equal, ranging through the dire attack
Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down Wide wasting such destruction to withstand He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield, A vast circumference. At his approach The great Archangel from his warlike toil Surceased, and glad, as hoping here to end Intestine war in Heaven, the arch-foe subdued Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile frown And visage all inflamed, first thus began:
Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt, Unnamed in Heaven, now plenteous as thou seest These acts of hateful strife, hateful to all, Though heaviest by just measure on thyself And thy adherents! how hast thou disturbed Heaven's blessed peace, and into nature brought Misery, uncreated till the crime
Of thy rebellion! how hast thou instilled Thy malice into thousands, once upright
And faithful, now proved false ! But think not here To trouble holy rest; Heaven casts thee out
From all her confines. Heaven, the seat of bliss, Brooks not the works of violence and war. Hence, then, and evil go with thee along, Thy offspring, to the place of evil, Hell; Thou and thy wicked crew! there mingle broils, Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom,
Or some more sudden vengeance, winged from God, Precipitate thee with augmented pain.
So spake the Prince of Angels; to whom thus The Adversary: Nor think thou with wind Of airy threats to awe whom yet with deeds Thou canst not. Hast thou turned the least of these To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise Unvanquished, easier to transact with me
That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats To chase me hence? Err not, that so shall end The strife which thou call'st evil, but we style The strife of glory; which we mean to win, Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell Thou fablest; here, however, to dwell free,
If not to reign: meanwhile thy utmost force, And join him named Almighty to thy aid, I fly not, but have sought thee far and nigh. They ended parley, and both addressed for fight Unspeakable, for who, though with the tongue Of Angels, can relate, or to what things Liken on earth conspicuous, that may lift Human imagination to such hight
Of godlike power? for likest gods they seemed. Stood they, or moved, in stature, motion, arms, Fit to decide the empire of great Heaven. Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood
In horror: from each hand with speed retired, Where erst was thickest fight, the angelic throng, And left large field, unsafe within the wind Of such commotion; such as, to set forth
Great things by small, if, nature's concord broke, Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets rushing from aspéct malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound. MILTON
Taz 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 equaled 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 vein 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 adamantinehains 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 Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: At once, as far as Angel's 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 comics 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 center 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.
THE SAME, CONTINUED.
THUS Satan talking to his nearest mate With head uplift above the waves, and eyes That sparkling blazed; his other parts besidea 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; Briarens 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: Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature: on each hand the flames, Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and rolied 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 fueled entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds And leave a singéd bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole Of unblessed 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: furthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, Where joy forever dwells!
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 Heaveu. 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; the 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, The associates and copartners 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?
THE SAME, CONTINUED.
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 admiral, 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 His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced. Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallambrosa, where the Etrurian shades, High overarched, 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 carcasses
And broken chariot wheels: so thick bestrown, Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change.
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