Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate'er his business be
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy deep;
What can it then avail, though yet we feel
Strength undiminish'd, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?
Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-Fiend reply'd:
Fall'n Cherub, to be weak is miserable
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see, the angry victor hath recall'd
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heav'n; the sulph'rous hail
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of Heav'n received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage, 175
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep,
Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimm'ring of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
There rest, if any rest can harbour there,
170. Dr. Bentley has pointed out a contradiction between this passage and one in the sixth book. It is here said that the good angels pursued the fallen ones down to hell; in the other place, it is asserted, that the Messiah alone expelled them from heaven. The variation has been accounted for by the account being given by different relators-The one by the discomfited Satan, the other by the angel Raphael.
And reassembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope
If not what resolution from despair.
Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides
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 warr'd on Jove,
Briareos, or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created Lugest that swim the ocean stream;
Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays:
So stretch'd out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay Chain'd on the burning lake, nor ever thence
Had ris'n or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heav'n
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
196. Virgil describes the bulk of one of the giants in the same manner. En. vi. 596.
199. Typhon or Typhorus was one of the rebel giants, and Imprisoned by Jupuer under Mount Etna, or, as others say, in a cave near Tarsus, a city in Cilicia.
201. It has been questioned whether Milton supposed the Leviathan to be a whale or a crocodile.-It is most probable his ima gination made him content with the description of this animal given in Job, and that his critical industry was not at all engaged In settling the question.
204. Bentley has given a curious instance of his utter want of poetical feeling in proposing to change this epithet nightfoundered into nigh-foundered.
209. This verse, by its laboured length, well expresses the idea of Satan & immense bulk.
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shewn
On Man, by him seduced; but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance pour'd. 220
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driv'n backward slope their pointing spires, and roll'd
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight 223
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burn'd
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appear'd in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side
Of thund'ring Etna, whose combustible
And fuel'd entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with min'ral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him follow'd his next mate,
Both glorying to have 'scap'd the Stygian flood
As Gods, and by their own recover'd strength, 240
Not by the suffrance of Supernal Power.
Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best. Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail 250
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 Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
226. Said to be borrowed from Spenser, Book 1. Canto 2. 231. Winds is sometimes read instead of wind.
232. Pelorus is a Sicilian promontory now called Capo di Faro. 246. Sovran is abridged from the Italian Sovrano.
234. This sentiment is the great foundation on which the Stoles built their whole system of Ethics.
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; th' 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,
Th' associates and copartners of our loss,
Lie thus astonish'd on th' 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
Regain'd in heav'n, or what more lost in Hell? 270
So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub
Thus answer'd: Leader of those armies bright,
Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foil'd,
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lie
Grov'ling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we ere while, astounded and amazed,
No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious height.
He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend
Was moving tow'rd the shore; his pond'rous 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 Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, on her spotty globe.
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
263. The same sentiment is put by Eschylus into the mouth of Prometheus, and it was the well-known saying of Julius Cæsar, that he would rather be the first man in a village, than the second in Rome.
287. So Homer and Ossian compare the shields of their heroes. 289. Fesole and Valdarno, the one a city, the other a valley, in Tuscany.
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,
He walk'd 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 call'd
His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arch'd imbow'r; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd
Hath vex'd 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 carcases
And broken chariot wheels: so thick bestrown,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the flow'r of heav'n, once yours, now lost, If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
T'adore the conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
With scatter'd arins and ensigns, till anon
293. Milton here again enlarges on the idea of the great preceding poets, who had given their heroes a pine for their wanda
294. Ammiral from the German amiral or the Italian ammiraglio. 303. A fanious valley in Tuscany. The name is compounded of vallis and umbra.
305. Orion is the most stormy of the constellations, and, as the Red Sea abounds with sedge, it is here represented as exercising its influence over it.
307. Pharaoh has been supposed to be the same with Busiris, which opinion Milton appears to have held. Chivalry is used in the poets to denote, not only those who fight on horses, but those who go to battle in chariots drevt. by them.
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