The secrets of your realm: but, by constraint
Wandering this darksome desert, as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to light,
Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek

975

What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds

Confine with Heaven; or if some other place,

From your dominion won, the ethereal King
Possesses lately, thither to arrive

980

I travel this profound; direct my course;
Directed, no mean recompense it brings
To your behoof: if I that region lost,
All usurpation thence expell'd, reduce
To her original darkness, and your sway
(Which is my present journey,) and once more
Erect the standard there of ancient Night;
Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge!
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,

985

Answer'd I know thee, stranger, who thou art, 990 That mighty leading Angel, who of late

Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown

I saw and heard; for such a numerous host

Fled not in silence through the frighted deep,
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven gates

'Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve
That little which is left so to defend,

995

1000

1005

Encroach'd on still through your intestine broils
Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first Hell,
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath;
Now lately Heaven, and Earth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm, link'd in a golden chain
To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell
If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger; go, and speed'
Havoc, and spoil, and ruin are my gain.

He ceased; and Satan staid not to reply,
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity, and force renew'd,
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,

Into the wide expanse; and, through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environ'd, wins his way; harder beset
And more endanger'd than when Argo pass'd
Through Bosporus, betwixt the justling rocks:
(Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunn'd
Charybdis,) and by the other whirlpool steer'd.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on with difficulty and labour he :

But, he once pass'd, soon after, when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain

1010

1018

1020

Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
Paved after him a broad and beaten way

1026

Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf

Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,

From Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb

Of this frail world; by which the Spirits perverse

With easy intercourse pass to and fro

1031

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom

God and good Angels guard by special grace.)

But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven 1035
Shoots far into the bosom of dim night

A glimmering dawn; Here Nature first begins
Her furthest verge, and Chaos to retire

As from her outmost works a broken foe
With tumult less, and with less hostile din;

That Satan with less toil, and now with ease,
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light;
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn ;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold

Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide

1040

1045

In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorn'd
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,

1050

This pendent world, in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

1055

5 *

PARADISE LOST

BOOK III.

Sod, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand; foretels the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created Man free, and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards Man: But God again declares, hat grace cannot be extended towards Man without the satisfaction of divine justice: Man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and, therefore, with all his progeny, devoted to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for Man: The Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in Heaven and Earth; commands all the Angels to adore him: They obey, and hymning to their harps in full thoir, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity: What persons and things fly up thither: Thence comes to the gate of Heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: His passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner Angel; and, pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and Man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habi. tation, and is directed: Alights first on mount Niphates.

HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born,

Or of the Eternal coeternal beam,

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Lefore the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep
Won from the void and formless infinite.

Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphéan lyre,

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;

Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sov'reign vital lamp; but thon
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash'd thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equal'd with me in fate,
So were I equal'd with them in renown!
Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides ;
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return: but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and everduring dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank

Of natures works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

50