White, black, and gray,1 with all their trumpery.
Here pilgrims 2 roam, that strayed so far to seek
In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heaven;
And they who, to be sure of Paradise,3
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,

Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised;

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They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talked, and that first moved:
And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket seems
To wait them with his keys, and now at foot
Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when, lo!
A violent cross wind from either coast
Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues away,
Into the devious air: then might ye see

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Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers tost
And fluttered into rags; then relics, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds: all these, upwhirled aloft,
Fly o'er the backside of the world far off,
Into a Limbo large and broad, since called

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1 White, black, and gray,-The Carmelites, so called from their residence on Mount Carmel, dressed in white: The Dominicans, according to the rule of Dominic, their founder, wore black; while the Franciscans, or followers of Francis, were marked by a gray habit.

2 Pilgrims,-alluding to the pilgrimages to the Saviour's tomb, in the Holy Land, once so fashionable.

3 And they who, to be sure of Paradise,-alluding to an opinion current in the dark ages of Popery, that, to be clothed in a friar's habit at the time of death, was an infallible road to heaven. Bowle.

1 Planets seven;-our solar system: beyond this, the fixed-the sphere of fixed stars; and still farther on, that Crystalline sphere, clear as crystal, to which was attributed a sort of trepidation, so much talked of-to account for certain irregularities in the motions of the stars: beyond this, they passed that first moved, the sphere which was both the first moved and the first mover, communicating its motions to all the lower spheres: beyond this, the Empyrean Heaven, the seat of God and the angels. N.

5 Into a Limbo:-a word derived from the Latin, limbus, a border, or rim, and denoting a fabulous region supposed contiguous to Hell, where it was dreamt that the Patriarchs, and other pious men, who died before the birth of Christ, were to be detained till the Saviour's second coming, when they would be admitted to the privileges of the blest in Heaven. Milton gives this name to the Paradise of Fools, at the backside of the world.

G

The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown

Long after, now unpeopled,1 and untrod.

All this dark globe the fiend found as he passed;
And long he wandered, till at last a gleam

Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste
His travelled steps: 2 far distant he descries,
Ascending by degrees magnificent

Up to the wall of Heaven, a structure high ;
At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared 3
The work as of a kingly palace-gate,
With frontispiece of diamond and gold
Embellished; thick with sparkling orient
The portal shone, inimitable on earth
By model, or by shading pencil drawn.

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gems

The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw 5
Angels ascending and descending, bands
Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled
To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz,

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Dreaming by night under the open sky,

And waking, cried, "This is the gate of Heaven!"

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Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood
There always, but drawn up to Heaven sometimes

Viewless; and underneath a bright sea flowed

Of jasper, or of liquid pearl, whereon
Who after came from earth, sailing, arrived,
Wafted by angels; or flew o'er the lake,
Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds.

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1 Now unpeopled:-i. e. at the time when Satan passed that way as described by the Poet.

2 His travelled steps:-tired, weary steps: used here like the Italian travagliato, and in a sense analogous to travail, a word of the same origin. 3 Compare Tobit xiii. 16, and Revelation xxi. ì1-21.

4 Orient,-bright, shining; like the striking effect of the rising sun; or because the finest gems were found in the East.

5 Whereon Jacob saw,-See Gen. xxviii. 11-17. Padan-Aram; the plains of Aram or Mesopotamia: Luz; the old name of the city near which Jacob dreamed on his way to Padan-Aram.

6 Underneath a bright sea flowed,-called, in the "argument" of this book the waters above the firmament: See b. vii. 1. 619, the glassy sea.

1 Wafted, -as Lazarus was carried by angels, Luke xvi. 22: Rapt, as Elijah was, 2 Kings i. 11.

The stairs were then let down, whether to dare

The fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate

His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss:

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Direct against which opened from beneath,

Just o'er the blissful seat of Paradise,

A passage down to the earth-a passage wide—
Wider by far than that of after-times

Over Mount Sion, and, though that were large,

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Over the Promised Land to God so dear;

By which, to visit oft those happy tribes,

On high behests his angels to and fro

Passed frequent, and his eye with choice regard,1
From Paneäs, the fount of Jordan's flood,

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To Beërsaba, where the Holy Land

Borders on Egypt and the Arabian shore:

So wide the opening seemed, where bounds were set
To darkness, such as bound the ocean wave.

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Satan from hence, now on the lower stair,
That scaled by steps of gold to Heaven gate,
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this world at once. As when a scout,
Through dark and desert ways with peril gone
All night, at last by break of cheerful dawn
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill,
Which to his eye discovers, unaware,
The goodly prospect of some foreign land
First seen, or some renowned metropolis,
With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,
Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams:
Such wonder seized, though after Heaven seen,
The spirit malign; but much more envy seized,
At sight of all this world beheld so fair.

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Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood 555

1 And his eye with choice regard,- Repeat here the first words of the line, "passed frequent."

2 Paneäs,-a city at the foot of a mountain of the same name, ont he con fines of Lebanon, where the river Jordan had its source. This was the northernmost point of the Holy Land, as Beersheba was the southernmost.

In various shapes, old Proteus1 from the sea,
Drained through a limbeck to his native form.
What wonder, then, if fields and regions here*
Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run
Potable gold, when, with one virtuous touch,
The arch-chemic sun, so far from us remote,
Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed,
Here, in the dark, so many precious things,
Of colour glorious and effect so rare!

Here matter new to gaze the devil met
Undazzled: far and wide his eye commands;
For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade,
But all sunshine, as when3 his beams at noon
Culminate from the equator, as they now
Shot upward still direct, whence no way round
Shadow from body opaque can fall; and the air,
No where so clear, sharpened his visual ray
To objects distant far, whereby he soon
Saw within ken a glorious angel stand-

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The same whom John saw also in the sun: 4

His back was turned, but not his brightness hid;
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar

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Circled his head; nor less his locks behind

Illustrious3 on his shoulders fledge with wings

Lay waving round: on some great charge employed

He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep.

Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope

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To find who might direct his wandering flight

To Paradise, the happy seat of man,
His journey's end, and our beginning woe.

1 Old Proteus.—a fabled sea-god who could change himself into various forms; aptly referred to in illustration of the variable operations of the

Alchemists.

↑ Hert.—in the sun. Here, in the dark—in the bowels of this earth; the poet fancifully attributing the formation of gems and precious stones to

the indinence of the sun.

3 As whem--i e. “Ike as when:" as they now. e. assigning the reason why there was no shade, “forasmuch as they now shot upward.”

But first he casts to change his proper shape;1
Which else might work him danger or delay:
And now a stripling Cherub he appears,
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Suitable grace diffused, so well he feigned;

Under a coronet his flowing hair

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In curls on either cheek played; wings he wore

Of many a coloured plume, sprinkled with guid;
His habit fit for speed succint; and heid

Before his decent steps a silver wand.

He drew not nigh unheard; the angel bright,
Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turned,

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Admonished by his ear; and straight was known

The archangel Uriel one of the seven

Who, in God's presence, nearest to his throne,

Stand ready at command, and are his eyes

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That run through all the Heavens, or down to the Eartn

Bear his swift errands, over moist and dry,

O'er sea and land: him Satan thus accosts:

* Criel: for thou of those seven spirits that stand
"In sight of God's high throne, gloriously bright,
The first art wont his great authentic will
Interpreter through highest Heaven to bring,
← Where all his sons thy embassy attend;

And here art likeliest, by supreme decree,
Like honour to obtain, and, as his eye,
To visit oft this new creation round;
Unspeakable desire to see and know

All these his wondrous works, but chiefy man,
"His chief deligin and favour,-him for whom
All these his works so wondrous he ordained,
Hath brought me from the quires of Cherubim
Alone thys wandering. Brigittest Seraph: tell

1 Casts to change has shape:—meditates plans contrives bow. *Decent-in the sense of the Latin word * graceful **

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2 Urael - Hebrew, the name means "God is my light." Hence the tion assigned him in the sur