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No equal, ranging through the dire attack

Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length
Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled
Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway
Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down
Wide wasting such destruction to withstand
He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield,
A vast circumference. At his approach
The great Archangel from his warlike toil
Surceased, and glad, as hoping here to end
Intestine war in Heaven, the arch-foe subdued
Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile frown
And visage all inflamed, first thus began:

Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt,
Unnamed in Heaven, now plenteous as thou seest
These acts of hateful strife, hateful to all,
Though heaviest by just measure on thyself
And thy adherents! how hast thou disturbed
Heaven's blessed peace, and into nature brought
Misery, uncreated till the crime

Of thy rebellion! how hast thou instilled
Thy malice into thousands, once upright

And faithful, now proved false ! But think not here
To trouble holy rest; Heaven casts thee out

From all her confines. Heaven, the seat of bliss,
Brooks not the works of violence and war.
Hence, then, and evil go with thee along,
Thy offspring, to the place of evil, Hell;
Thou and thy wicked crew! there mingle broils,
Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom,

Or some more sudden vengeance, winged from God,
Precipitate thee with augmented pain.

So spake the Prince of Angels; to whom thus
The Adversary: Nor think thou with wind
Of airy threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not. Hast thou turned the least of these
To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise
Unvanquished, easier to transact with me

That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats
To chase me hence? Err not, that so shall end
The strife which thou call'st evil, but we style
The strife of glory; which we mean to win,
Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell
Thou fablest; here, however, to dwell free,

If not to reign: meanwhile thy utmost force,
And join him named Almighty to thy aid,
I fly not, but have sought thee far and nigh.
They ended parley, and both addressed for fight
Unspeakable, for who, though with the tongue
Of Angels, can relate, or to what things
Liken on earth conspicuous, that may lift
Human imagination to such hight

Of godlike power? for likest gods they seemed.
Stood they, or moved, in stature, motion, arms,
Fit to decide the empire of great Heaven.
Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air
Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields
Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood

In horror: from each hand with speed retired,
Where erst was thickest fight, the angelic throng,
And left large field, unsafe within the wind
Of such commotion; such as, to set forth

Great things by small, if, nature's concord broke,
Among the constellations war were sprung,

Two planets rushing from aspéct malign

Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky

Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound. MILTON

SATAN IN HELL.

Taz infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels; by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equaled the Most High,
If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven, and battle proud,
With vein attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantinehains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.

Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness, and lasting pain,
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate:
At once, as far as Angel's ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild:
A dungeon horrible on all sides round

As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell; hope never comics
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever burning sulphur unconsumed :
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the center thrice to the utmost pole.
Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and weltering by his side,
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub.

THE SAME, CONTINUED.

THUS Satan talking to his nearest mate
With head uplift above the waves, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besidea
Prone on the flood, extended long and large
Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge,
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove;
Briarens or Typhon, whom the den

MILTON

By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature: on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and rolied
In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire:
And such appeared in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna; whose combustible
And fueled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds
And leave a singéd bottom all involved

With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole
Of unblessed feet. Him followed his next mate:
Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.

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Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost Archangel, — this the seat That we must change for Heaven; this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so! since he, Who now is sovereign, can dispose and bid

What shall be right: furthest from him is best,

Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells!

Hail horrors! hail

Infernal world! And thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor! one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time:
The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaveu.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be; all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy; will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
The associates and copartners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion; or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?

THE SAME, CONTINUED.

HE scarce had ceased, when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, He walked with, to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle, not like those steps On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire: Nathless he so endured, till on the beach Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced. Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallambrosa, where the Etrurian shades, High overarched, embower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed

Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,

While with perfidious hatred they pursued

The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses

And broken chariot wheels: so thick bestrown,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.

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