Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery 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 Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,

585

590

Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.
Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled,

595

At certain revolutions, all the damned

Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,

584. Labyrinth. Lethe is compared with Phlegethon, the last mentioned of the four infernal rivers. That was a torrent, but Lethe wound slowly here and there, through country so level that the stream split up into numberless branches continually intertwisting with each other.

587. The idea that Hell contained the extreme of cold as well as of heat, was not uncommon in the Middle Ages, whence it comes to its finest presentation in Dante. Inferno, canto xxxii.

589. Dire hail; "diræ grandinis." Horace, Od. I. ii. 1.

592. Serbonian bog. Lake Serbonis, in northeast Egypt, mentioned by Herodotus, but now dried up.

593. Damiata; Damietta, on one of the mouths of the Nile. Mount Casius; on the Egyptian coast. Diodorus Siculus (xx. 74, 2, 3) mentions the dangers to armies trying to land or anchor there. 595. Frore, frozen.

596. Harpy-footed Furies. The Furies of the Greek mythology were fearful beings in the shape of women, who executed on mankind the punishments due their crimes. Orestes, for instance, was pursued by Furies for having killed his mother. The Harpies were filthy creatures, with bodies of women, but wings and legs of birds. As a rule the two were not confounded.

597. At certain revolutions. At times which came around at certain fixed periods.

From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixed, and frozen round,
Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean sound.

600

Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,

605

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 the attempt,
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards

610

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, the adventurous bands,

615

With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast,
Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found

No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery alp,

620

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

600. Starve. The word originally meant merely to die, as the German sterben at present. In some English dialects it means "to die of cold"; to clam is the word for to die of hunger.

610. Milton stops an instant for the moral: the damned cannot forget.

611. Medusa was one of the Gorgons, whose look turned to stone those on whom it fell.

614. Tantalus was punished in Hades, by standing up to his neck in water, which, as he stooped to drink, receded, and under fruittrees which, when he reached for fruit, drew back.

620. Alp is not often used in the singular with the meaning of mountain.

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse

625

Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

Meanwhile, the adversary of God and man, Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of Hell Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

630

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

635

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,

640

Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,

Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed

Far off the flying fiend. At last appear

Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,

644

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.

The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair;

650

625. Perverse, perverted.

628. For Gorgons see 1. 611 above. The Hydra was a fearful watersnake slain by Hercules. The Chimæra was a formless monster attacked and killed by Bellerophon.

636. This is a famous passage.

See Introd., pp. xlv.-xlvii.

638. Bengala, an old form for Bengal. This was in the early days of the East India Company.

639. Ternate and Tidore are two of the Moluccas or Spice Islands. 641. The wide Ethiopian, now called the Indian Ocean.

The Cape of Good Hope, discovered long before, was at just about this time (1651) settled by the Dutch.

647. Impaled, paled (or fenced) about.

But ended foul in many a scaly fold,

Voluminous and vast; a serpent armed

With mortal sting. About her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never-ceasing barked,
With wide Cerberean mouths, full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore;
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape-
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,

655

660

665

For each seemed either-black it stood as Night,

670

Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

The monster moving onward came as fast

675

With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

655. Cerberean. Cerberus was the three-headed dog which guarded the classical Hades. The appearance of Sin is borrowed from the form of Scylla.

660. Scylla, a maiden of Sicily who, through the rage of Circe, was changed while bathing, as here related, into a hideous being girt about with dogs, and subsequently into a great rock. Scylla and Charybdis stood over against each other in the passage between Italy and Sicily-cf. ll. 1019, 1020 and also the Odyssey, Book xii., and the Eneid, Book iii.

661. Calabria is the toe of the Italian boot. Trinacria is threecornered Sicily.

666-673. A famous description.

The undaunted fiend what this might be admired ;-
Admired, not feared; God and his Son except,
Created thing nought valued he, nor shunned;
And, with disdainful look, thus first began :

66

Whence, and what art thou, execrable Shape! That darest, though grim and terrible, advance Thy miscreated front athwart my way

680

To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass-
That be assured-without leave asked of thee:

685

Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of Heaven."
To whom the goblin, full of wrath, replied:

"Art thou that traitor Angel, art thou he

Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith, till then
Unbroken, and in proud, rebellious arms
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons,
Conjured against the Highest; for which both thou.
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
And reckonest thou thyself with spirits of Heaven,
Hell-doomed! and breathest defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive! and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue

689

695

700

Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart

Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."

So spake the grisly Terror, and in shape,

So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold

705

677. Admired, wondered, as in i. 690 and, generally, in Paradise Lost.

688. Goblin. We associate with the word the idea of smallness and quaintness, but evidently no such meaning was in Milton's mind.

689. Death is at first a loyal servant and very stern with the traitor angel. He afterwards changes his note decidedly.

693. Conjured, conspired; literally, swore together.