The new To sit indulgent, and with him partake but true Rural repast, permitting him the while heroic Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change
Those notes to tragic-foul distrust, and breach Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience ; on the part of Heaven,
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given, 10 That brought into this World a world of woe, Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery, Death's harbinger. Sad task! yet argument Not less but more heroic than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire, cr Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial Patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse,
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late,
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights 30 In battles feigned (the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung), or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast The Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals: The skill of artifice or office mean; Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem! Me, of these Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing t Depressed; and much they may if all be mine, Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.
The Sun was sunk, and after him the Star Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring Twilight upon the Earth, short arbiter 'Twixt day and night, and now from end to end Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon round, When Satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved In meditated fraud and malice, bent On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless returned. By night he fled, and at midnight returned From compassing the Earth-cautious of day Since Uriel, Regent of the Sun, descried His entrance, and forewarned the Cherubim That kept their watch. Thence, full of anguish, driven,
The space of seven continued nights he rode With darkness-thrice the equinoctial line He circled, four times crossed the car of Night From pole to pole, traversing each colure- On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse From entrance or cherubic watch by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place
Satan (Now not, though Sin, not Time, first wrought chooses the change)
the Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise, for his Into a gulf shot under ground, till part disguise Rose up a fountain by the Tree of Life. In with the river sunk, and with it rose, Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought Where to lie hid. Sea he had searched and land From Eden over Pontus, and the Pool Mæotis, up beyond the river Ob; Downward as far antarctic; and, in length, West from Orontes to the ocean barred At Darien, thence to the land where flows Ganges and Indus. Thus the orb he roamed With narrow search, and with inspection deep Considered every creature, which of all Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field. Him, after long debate, irresolute
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom To enter, and his dark suggestions hide From sharpest sight; for in the wily snake Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark, As from his wit and native subtlety Proceeding, which, in other beasts observed, Doubt might beget of diabolic power Active within beyond the sense of brute. Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief His bursting passion into plaints thus poured :- 'O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as built 100 With second thoughts, reforming what was old! For what God, after better, worse would build?
Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other His Heavens, That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, In thee concentring all their precious beams Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou Centring receiv'st from all those orbs; in thee, Not in themselves, all their known virtue ap-
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth Of creatures animate with gradual life
Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man. With what delight could I have walked thee round,
If I could joy in aught-sweet interchange Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned,
Rocks, dens, and caves! But I in none of these Find place or refuge; and the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries; all good to me becomes
Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my
But neither here seek I, no, nor in Heaven, To dwell, unless by mastering Heaven's Supreme; Nor hope to be myself less miserable
By what I seek, but others to make such As I, though thereby worse to me redound. For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts; and him destroyed, Or won to what may work his utter loss,
He will For whom all this was made, all this will soon mar the Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe: six days In woe then, that destruction wide may range To me shall be the glory sole among
The Infernal Powers, in one day to have marred What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days Continued making, and who knows how long Before had been contriving? though perhaps Not longer than since I in one night freed From servitude inglorious well nigh half The Angelic Name, and thinner left the throng Of his adorers. He, to be avenged, And to repair his numbers thus impaired- Whether such virtue, spent of old, now failed More Angels to create (if they at least Are his created), or to spite us more— Determined to advance into our room A creature formed of earth, and him endow, Exalted from so base original, With heavenly spoils, our spoils. What he de-
He effected; Man he made, and for him built Magnificent this World, and Earth his seat, Him Lord pronounced, and, O indignity! Subjected to his service Angel-wings And flaming ministers, to watch and tend Their earthy charge. Of these the vigilance I dread, and to elude, thus wrapt in mist Of midnight vapour, glide obscure, and pry In every bush and brake, where hap may find 160 The Serpent sleeping, in whose mazy folds To hide me, and the dark intent I bring. O foul descent! that I, who erst contended With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
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