Second of Satan sprung, all-conqu❜ring Death, What think'st thou of our empire now, tho' earn'd With travel difficult? Not better far
Than still at Hell's dark threshold to' have sat watch,
Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half starved? 595
Whom thus the Sin-born monster answer'd soon:
To me, who with eternal famine pine,
Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven;
There best, where most with ravin I may meet;
Which here, tho' plenteous, all too little seems
To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corpse.
To whom the incestuous mother thus reply'd:
Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flow'rs,
Feed first, on each beast next, and fish, and fowl,
No homely morsels; and whatever thing
The scythe of Time mows down, devour unspared;
Till I in Man, residing through the race,
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect,
And season him thy last and sweetest prey.
This said, they both betook them sev'ral ways, 610 Both to destroy or unimmortal make
All kinds, and for destruction to mature
Sooner or later; which th' Almighty seeing,
From his transcendent seat the Saints among,
To those bright Orders utter'd thus his voice:
See with what heat these dogs of Hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created, and had still
Kept in that state, had not the folly' of Man
Let in these wasteful furies, who impute
Folly to me! So doth the prince of Hell
And his adherents, that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess
A place so heav'nly, and conniving seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,
That laugh as if, transported with some fit
Of passion, I to them had quitted all,
At random yielded up to their misrule,
And know not that I call'd and drew them thither, My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth Which Man's polluting sin with taint hath shed
601. Unhide-bound, not filled out, with a skin hanging
loose and flabby.
On what was pure, till cramm'd and gorged, nigh With suck'd and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,
Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave at last 635
Thro' Chaos hurl'd, obstruct the mouth of Hell
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.
Then Heav'n and Earth renew'd, shall be made pure
To sanctity, that shall receive no stain:
Till then, the curse pronounced on both precedes. 640
He ended, and the heav'nly audience loud
Sung Halleluiah, as the sound of seas,
Through multitude that sung: Just are thy ways,
Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works;
Who can extenuate thee! Next, to the Son, 645 Destined Restorer of mankind, by whom
New Heav'n and Earth shall to the ages rise,
Or down from Heav'n descend. Such was their song, While the Creator, calling forth by name
His mighty Angels, gave them several charge, 650
As sorted best with present things. The sun
Had first his precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable; and from the north to call
Decrepit winter; from the south to bring
Solstitial summer's heat. To the blank moon
Her office they prescribed; to th' other five
Their planetary motions and aspects
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite
Of noxious efficacy, and when to join
In synod unbenign; and taught the fix'd
Their influence malignant when to show'r,
Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous; to the winds they set
Their corners, when with bluster to confound
Sea, air, and shore, the thunder when to roll
With terror through the dark aereal hall.
Some say, he bid his Angels turn askance
The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more
From the sun's axle; they with labour push'd
Oblique the centric globe. Some say, the sun
Was bid turn reins from th' equinoctial road
647. Rev. xxi. 2.
643. Rev. xv. 3. xvi. 7.
656. Blank moon, like the French word blanc, white.
Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins
Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain
By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn, to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on earth with verdant flow'rs,
Equal in days and nights, except to those
Beyond the polar circles; to them day
Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun,
To recompense his distance, in their sight
Had rounded still th' horizon, and not known
Or east or west, which had forbid the snow
From cold Estotiland, and south as far
Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit
The sun, as from Thyéstean banquet, turn'd
His course intended; else how had the world
Inhabited, though sinless, more than now,
Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat?
These changes in the Heav'ns, tho' slow, produced
Like change on sea and land; sideral blast,
Vapour and mist, and exhalation hot,
Corrupt and pestilent: now from the north
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,
Bursting their brazen dungeon, arm'd with ice,
And snow, and hail, and stormy gust, and flaw,
Boreas, and Cæcias, and Argestes loud,
And Thrascias, rend the woods, and seas upturn; 700
With adverse blast upturns them from the south
Notus and Afer black, with thund'rous clouds
From Serraliona. Thwart of these as fierce
Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
Eurus and Zephyr, with their lateral noise,
Sirocco and Libecchio. Thus began
Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord, first,
686. Estotiland, a country in North America, near Hudson's Bay.-Magellan, a part of South America.
688. Thyestean banquet; Thyestes is said to have been banqueted by his brother on the bodies of his murdered children. 696. Norumbega, a province of North America.-Samoieda, a province of Muscovy.
699. The names of the north, north-west, north-east, the south, and south-west winds.-Serraliona, a range of mountains to the south-west of Africa.-Sirocco and Libecchio, the south-east and south-west winds.
Daughter of Sin, among th' irrational,
Death introduced, through fierce antipathy.
Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl,
And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving, 711
Devour'd each other; nor stood much in awe
Of man, but fled him, or with count'nance grim
Glared on him passing. These were from without
The growing miseries, which Adam saw
Already' in part, though hid in gloomiest shade,
To sorrow' abandon'd, but worse felt within ;
And in a troubled sea of passion tost,
Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint:
O miserable of happy'! Is this the end
Of this new glorious world, and me so late
The glory of that glory, who now, become
Accursed of blessed, hide me from the face
Of God, whom to behold was then my height
Of happiness? Yet well, if here would end
The misery. I deserved it, and would bear
My own deservings; but this will not serve;
All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,
Is propagated curse! O voice once heard
Delightfully, Increase and multiply,'
Now death to hear! For what can I increase
Or multiply, but curses on my head!
Who, of all ages to succeed, but feeling
The evil on him brought by me, will curse
Ill fare our ancestor impure!
For this we may thank Adam! but his thanks
Shall be the execration! So besides
Mine own that bide upon me, all from me
Shall with a fierce reflux on me redound;
On me, as on their natural centre, light
Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious garden? As my will
Concurr'd not to my being, it were but right
And equal to reduce me to my dust;
740. Bentley proposes to cut out the following ten lines as unworthy of Milton's genius and a detriment to the poem.
Desirous to resign and render back
All I received, unable to perform
Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that,
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes! Inexplicable
Thy justice seems; yet, to say truth, too late
I thus contest: then should have been refused
Those terms whatever, when they were proposed.
Thou didst accept them. Wilt thou' enjoy the good,
Then cavil the conditions? And though God
Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son
Prove disobedient, and reproved, retort,
Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not.
Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee
That proud excuse? yet him not thy election,
But natural necessity begot.
God made thee' of choice his own, and of his own
To serve him: thy reward was of his grace;
Thy punishment then, justly', is at his will.
Be' it so, for I submit: his doom is fair,
That dust I am, and shall to dust return.
O welcome hour whenever! Why delays
His hand to execute what his decree
Fix'd on this day? Why do I overlive,
Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out
To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet
Mortality, my sentence, and be earth
Insensible! How glad would lay me down,
As in my mother's lap! There I should rest,
And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more
Would thunder in my ears! No fear of worse
To me and to my offspring would torment me
With cruel expectation! Yet one doubt
Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die ;
Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man
Which God inspired, cannot together perish
With this corporeal clod! then in the grave,
Or in some other dismal place, who knows
But I shall die a living death! O thought
Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath
Of life that sinn'd. What dies but what had life 790
And sin? the body, properly, hath neither.
All of me then shall die. Let this appease
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