Satan rouses his followers with taunts.
The numbers of his flying host.
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern The advantage, and, descending, tread us down Thus drooping, or with linkèd thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? — Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!'
They heard, and were abashed, and up they
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch, On duty sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; Yet to their General's voice they soon obeyed Innumerable. As when the potent rod Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, upcalled a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile: So numberless were those bad Angels seen Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, 'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear Of their great Sultan waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain, - 350 A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the South, and spread Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith from every squadron and each band, The heads and leaders thither haste where stood Their great Commander — Godlike Shapes, and Forms
Excelling human; Princely Dignities;
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones, Though of their names in Heavenly records now Be no memorial, blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the Books of Life. Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the
Through God's high sufferance for the trial of
By falsities and lies the greatest part Of mankind they corrupted to forsake God their Creator, and the invisible
Glory of Him that made them to transform Oft to the image of a brute, adorned With gay religions full of pomp and gold, And devils to adore for deities;
Then were they known to men by various names And various idols, through the heathen world. 375 Say, Muse, their names then known, who first,
Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch,
At their great Emperor's call, as next in worth
The chief leaders, afterwards gods
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof. 380
The chief were those who, from the pit of Hell Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix Their seats, long after, next the seat of God, Their altars by His altar, gods adored Among the nations round, and durst abide Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned Between the Cherubim; yea, often placed Within His sanctuary itself their shrines, Abominations; and with cursed things His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, And with their darkness durst affront His light. First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their children's cries unheard that passed through
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. Next, Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's
From Aroar to Nebo and the wild
Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond
The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleale to the Asphaltic Pool- Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove Of Moloch homicide lust hard by hate
Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell. With these came they who, from the bordering flood
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names Of Baälim and Ashtaroth - those male, These feminine. For Spirits, when they please, Can either sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is their essence pure, Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.
For those the race of Israel oft forsook
Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial gods; for which their heads, as low 435 Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs; In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on the offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king whose heart, though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell
Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
Thammuz, or The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded; the love-tale Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of alienated Judah.
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopped
In his own temple, on the grunsel edge, Where he fell flat, and shamed his' worshipers; Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man And downward fish; yet had his temple high Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,
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