John Milton - Paradise Lost and Its Sequel, Paradise Regained (Illustrated Edition)

Thir 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,)

Others apart sat 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 lost.

Of good and evil much they argu’d then,

Of happiness and final misery,

Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,

Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie:

Yet with a pleasing sorcerie could charm

Pain for a while or anguish, and excite

Fallacious hope, or arm th’ obdured brest

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 yeild them easier habitation, bend

Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks

Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge

Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;

Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,

Sad Acheron of Sorrow, black and deep;

Cocytus, nam’d of lamentation loud

Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton

Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,

Lethe the River of Oblivion roules

Her watrie 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 wilde, 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,

Where Armies whole have sunk: the parching Air

Burns frore, and cold performs th’ 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

Thir soft Ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immovable, infixt, and frozen round,

Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.

They ferry over this Lethean Sound

Both to and fro, thir sorrow to augment,

And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach

The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose

In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,

All in one moment, and so neer the brink;

But fate withstands, and to oppose th’ attempt

Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards

The Ford, and of it self 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

View’d first thir lamentable lot, and found

No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile

They pass’d, and many a Region dolorous,

O’re 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 monstrous, all prodigious things,

Abominable, inutterable, and worse

Then Fables yet have feign’d, or fear conceiv’d,

Gorgons and Hydra’s, and Chimera’s dire.

Gorgons and Hydra’s, and Chimera’s dire.

Before the Gates there sat On either side a formidable shape;

Mean while the Adversary of God and Man,

Satan with thoughts inflam’d of highest design,

Puts on swift wings, and toward the Gates of Hell

Explores his solitary flight; som times

He scours the right hand coast, som times the left,

Now shaves with level wing the Deep, then soares

Up to the fiery concave touring high.

As when farr off at Sea a Fleet descri’d

Hangs in the Clouds, by AEquinoctial Winds

Close sailing from Bengala, or the Iles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence Merchants bring

Thir spicie Drugs: they on the trading Flood

Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape

Ply stemming nightly toward the Pole. So seem’d

Farr off the flying Fiend: at last appeer

Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid Roof,

And thrice threefold the Gates; three folds were Brass,

Three Iron, three of Adamantine Rock,

Impenitrable, impal’d with circling fire,

Yet unconsum’d. Before the Gates there sat

On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem’d Woman to the waste, and fair,

But ended foul in many a scaly fould

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 mouths full loud, and rung

A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,

If aught disturb’d thir noyse, into her woomb,

And kennel there, yet there still bark’d and howl’d

Within unseen. Farr less abhorrd then these

Vex’d Scylla bathing in the Sea that

Calabria from the hoarce Trinacrian shore:

Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call’d

In secret, riding through the Air she comes