The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For Eloquence the foul, song charms the sense,) Others apart fat on a hill retir'd, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandring mazes loft. Of good and evil much they argu'd then, Of happiness and final misery, Paffion and apathie, and glory and shame, Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy : Yet with a pleasing forcerie 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 forrow, black and deep; Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these a flow and filent stream, Lethe the river of oblivion rowls Her watry 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 gulph profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and mount Casus old, Where armies whole have funk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire. Thither by harpy footed furies hail'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd
Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce, From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immoveable, infixt, and frozen round, Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire. They ferry over this Lethean found Both to and fro, their forrow 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 with Gorgonian terror guards The foord, and of itself the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on In confus'd march forlorn, th'adventrous bands With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast
New'd first their lamentable lot, and found To reft: through many a dark and drearie vale They pass'd, and many a region dolorous, Ore many a frozen, many a fierie Alpe,
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 monftrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd, Gorgions and Hydra's, and Chimeras dire. Mean while the adversary of God and man, Satan with thoughts inflam'd of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell Explores his folitary flight; sometimes
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left, Now shaves with level wing the deep, then foares Up to the fiery concave towring high. As when far off at sea a fleet descri'd Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds Close failing from Bengala, or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicie drugs: they on the trading flood Through the wide Ethiopian to the cape Ply stemming nightly toward the pole. So feem'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, impal'd with circling fire
Yet unconsum'd. Before the gates there fat On either fide a formidable shape;
The one feem'd woman to the waste, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous, and vast, a ferpent arm'd With mortal fsting: about her middle round A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing bark'd With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal: yet, when they lift, 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 abhor'd than these Vex'd Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore: Nor uglier follow the night hag, when call'd In secret, riding through the air she comes Lur'd 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 call'd, that shape had none Diftinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Of fubstance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, For each feem'd either; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand, and from his feat The monster moving onward came as fast With horrid strides, hell trembl'd as he strode. Th'undaunted fiend what this might be admir'd, Admir'd, not fear'd; God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valu'd he nor shun'd And with disdainful look thus first began. Whence and what art thou, execrable shape, That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance Thy miscreated front athwart my way To yonder gates? through them I mean to pass, That be affur'd, without leave askt of thee : Retire, or tafte thy folly, and learn by proof, Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heav'n. To whom the goblin full of wrath reply'd, Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he, Who first broke peace in heav'n and faith, till then Unbrok'n, and in proud rebellious arms Drew after him the third part of heav'n's fons Conjur'd against the highest, for which both thou And they outcast from God, are here condemn'd To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
Leaft with a whip of scorpions I pursue
And reck'n'st thou thyself with spirits of heav'n, Hell-doom'd, and breath'st 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,
Thy lingring, or with one stroke of this dart
So spake the griefly terrour, and in shape,
So speaking, and so threatning, grew tenfold
• More dreadful and deform: on th'other side in
Incenst with indignation Satan stood
Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd, That fires the length of Ophiucus huge
Strange horror feise thee, and pangs unfelt before.
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