He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed Great things with small) than when Bellona storms In mutiny had from her axle torn The steadfast Earth! At last his sail-broad vans Uplifted spurns the ground. Thence many a league, Audacious; but that seat soon failing (meeting A vast vacuity all unawares), Fluttering his pennons vain plumb down he drops As many miles aloft. That fury stayed― Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea Nor good dry land-nigh foundered, on he fares; Half flying, behoves him now both oar and sail. The guarded gold so eagerly the Fiend O'er bog o'er steep, through strait, rough, dense or rare, At length a universal hubbub wild, Of stunning sounds and voices all confused, Bordering on light; when, straight behold the throne 920 930 940 950 and is there Encountered by "the Anarch old." Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread The consort of his reign; and by them stood "Ye Powers And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss, The secrets of your realm, but (by constraint What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds I travel this profound. Direct my course- } -} "I know thec, stranger, who thou art—) That mighty leading Angel who of late Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown. Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates 51 960 970 980 999 Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here 1000 Encroached on still [continually] through your intestine He ceased, and Satan stayed not to reply; But he, once passed (soon after, when man fell- Following his track: such was the will of Heaven!) Over the dark abyss (whose boiling gulf Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length), Of this frail world, by which the Spirits perverse To tempt or punish mortals, except whom 1010 1020 1030 1 First, my territory has been encroached upon for your dungeon; now more is taken for another world. But "our intestine broils' has its advocates. See line 978. and faintly sees Earth far off. But now at last the sacred influence Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven A glimmering dawn: here Nature first begins (As from her outmost works a broken foe [retires] 1040 1050 BOOK III. God, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created: shews him to the Son, who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free, and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praise to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards man; but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of divine justice: man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and, therefore, with all his progeny, devoted to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man: The Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in Heaven and Earth; commands all the angels to adore him. They obey, and by hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile, Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity: what persons and things fly up thither thence comes to the gate of heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: his passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and man, whom God had placed there, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed: alights first on mount Niphates. |