Hide their diminish'd heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell how glorious once above thy sphere!
'Till pride, and worse ambition, threw me down,
Warring in heaven against heaven's matchless King.
Ah, wherefore! He deserved no such return
From me, whom He created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with His good
Upbraided none; nor was His service hard.
What could be less than to afford Him praise,
(The easiest recompense,) and pay Him thanks :
How due! yet all His good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice: lifted up so high
I 'sdain'd subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest; and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome still paying, still to owe :
Forgetful what from Him I still received;
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged: what burden then?
O, had His powerful destiny ordain'd
Me some inferior angel! I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition. Yet why not? Some other power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part: but other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken; from within,
Or from without, to all temptations arm'd.
Hadst thou the same free will, and power to stand? Thou hadst! Whom hast thou then, or what, to' accuse, But heaven's free love, dealt equally to all?
Be then His love accurst, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.
Nay, curst be thou! since against His thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide;
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
O, then, at last relent! Is there no place
Left for repentance? none for pardon left?
None left, but my submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The' Omnipotent. Ah me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain ;
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of hell.
With diadem and sceptre high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery such joy ambition finds!
But
say I could repent, and could obtain, By act of grace, my former state; how soon Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feign'd submission swore! Ease would recant Vows made in pain, as violent as void;
(For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep ;)
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall. So should I purchase dear
Short intermission, bought with double smart.
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far
From granting He, as I from begging peace.
All hope excluded thus, behold! in stead
Of us out-cast, exiled, His new delight
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So farewell hope! and with hope, farewell fear!
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost:
Evil, be thou my good! By thee at least
Divided empire with heaven's King I hold;
By thee, and more than half perhaps, will reign:
As man ere long, and this new world, shall know.
[SAMSON'S LAMENT.
O DARK, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!
O first-created Beam, and Thou great Word,
"Let there be light, and light was over all;"
Why am I thus bereaved Thy prime decree?
The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as the' eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exiled from light,
As in the land of darkness, yet in light,
To live a life half-dead, a living death,
And buried; but, O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave:
Buried, yet not exempt,
By privilege of death and burial,
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs;
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
FROM "COMUS."
CAN any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify its hidden residence :
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven-down
Of darkness, till it smiled! I have oft heard
My mother Circe with the Syrens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs;
Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul,
And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause.
Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense,
And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself;
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now.
FROM "LYCIDAS."
AND call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.-
Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more; For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
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