As when from mountain tops the dusky clouds,
Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heav'n's cheerful face, the low'ring element
Scowls o'er the darken'd landscape snow, or shower;
If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet
Extend his ev'ning beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
O shame to men! devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heav'nly grace; and God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:1
As if, which might induce us to accord,
Man had not hellish foes enow besides,
That day and night for his destruction wait.
The Stygian council thus dissolved; and forth
In order came the grand infernal peers;
Midst came their mighty paramount, and seem'd
Alone th' antagonist of heav'n, nor less
Than hell's dread emperor, with pomp supreme
And God-like imitated state: him round
A globe of fiery Seraphim inclosed
With bright emblazonry and horrent2 arms.
Then of their session ended they bid cry
With trumpets regal sound the great result:
Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim
Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy,3
By heralds' voice explain'd: the hollow abyss
Heard far and wide, and all the host of hell
With deaf'ning shout return'd them loud acclaim.
Thence more at ease their minds, and somewhat raised
By false presumptuous hope, the rangèd Powers
Disband, and wand'ring each his several way
An allusion to the age of civil strife and controversies in which Milton's lot vas cast.
3 Gold or silver trumpets. Herald's alchemy would be "or and argent."
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice
Leads him perplex'd, where he may likeliest find
Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain
The irksome hours, till his great chief return.
Part, on the plain or in the air sublime,
Upon the wing or in swift race contend,
As at the Olympian games, or Pythian fields:
Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form.
As when to warn proud cities war appears
Waged in the troubled sky,' and armies rush
To battle in the clouds, before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
From either end of heav'n the welkin burns.
Others with vast Typhoan rage more fell
Rend
up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind:2 hell scarce holds the wild uproar.
As when Alcides from Echalia crown'd
With conquest felt th' envenom'd robe, and tore
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of Eta threw
Into th' Euboic sea. Others more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battle; and complain that fate
Free virtue should enthral to force or chance.
Their song was partial; but the harmony,
What could it less when spirits immortal sing?
Suspended hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet,
For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense,
1 These appearances in the clouds have been frequently recorded. On the Mont d'Or, the night before the battle in which Philip von Arteveldt was killed, an armed host was seen contending in the sky.
2 Alluding to the war of the Titans. Hercules, named Alcides after his grandfather, Alceus. On his return
from the conquest of Echalia, a city of Boeotia, he received from his wife the envenomed robe of the Centaur. clung to him, and could only be removed with the flesh. In his agony the demigod tore up pines by the roots, and threw Lichas, the messenger who had brought him the robe, from the top of Mount Eta into the Eubean Sea,
Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute;
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy:
Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
Another part in squadrons and gross bands,
On bold adventure to discover wide
That dismal world, if any clime perhaps,
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks
Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge
Into the burning lake their baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx,' the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the river of oblivion, rolls
Her wat'ry labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure, and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies, dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail; which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice;
A gulf profound as that Serbonian2 bog
The names and qualities of these rivers are all taken from the Greek mythology.
2 Serbonis was a huge bog in Egypt, sometimes so covered with sand as to
be indistinguishable from the land. It was 200 furlongs long, and 1,000 round. Damietta was a city on one of the eastern mouths of the Nile.
Betwixt Damiata and mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Burns frore,' and cold performs th' effect of fire,
Thither by harpy-footed Furies haled
At certain revolutions all the damn'd
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round,
Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean sound
Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so near the brink:
But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt
Medusa,2 with Gorgonian terror guards
The ford, and of itself the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In confused march forlorn, th' advent'rous bands,
With shudd'ring horror pale, and eyes aghast,
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest through many a dark and dreary vale
They pass'd, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimæras 3 dire.
1 Frostily. See Ecclus. xlii. 20, 21.
2 Medusa was a Gorgon of horrid beauty, who had the power of turning those who gased on her inte stone.
Forgetfulness could never be permitted to the lost spirits.
Monsters of the heathen mythology,
Meanwhile the adversary of GOD and man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of hell
Explores his solitary flight; sometimes
He scours the right-hand coast, sometimes the left;
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.
As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore,' whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood
Through the wide Æthiopian to the Cape
Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole: so seem'd
Far off the flying fiend. At last appear
Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof;
And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape; 2
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean 3 mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peel: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen.
Far less abhorr'd than these
Vex'd Scylla bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:4
Nor uglier follow the Night-hag, when call'd
1 Two of the Molucca islands.
2 Here begins the famous allegory of Milton, which is a sort of paraphrase of St. James i. 15: "Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.'
3 Like those of Cerberus, the dog with three heads, supposed to keep the gate of hell.
4 Trinacria was the ancient name for Sicily. Scylla and Charybdis were the whirlpools between it and Italy.
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