Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from their destined aim. But see! the angry victor hath recall'd
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail, Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder, Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage, 175 Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and boundless deep Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn, Or satiate fury, yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any est can harbour there; And, reassembling our afflicted Powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our Enemy; our own loss how repair; How overcome this dire calamity;
What reinforcement we may gain from hope; If not, what resolution from despair.
Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides 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 war'd on Jove; Briareos or Typhon, whom the den By ancient Tarsus held; or that seabeast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream: Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays:
So stretch'd out huge in length the Archfiend lay, Chain'd on the burning lake: nor ever thence
Had risen, or heaved his head; but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs; That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others; and, enraged, might see How all his malice served but to bring forth Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown On Man by him seduced; but on himself Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance, pour'd. 220 Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature: on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale.
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burn'd
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire:
And such appear'd in hue, as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side Of thundering Etna, whose combustible And fuel'd entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole Of unbless'd feet. Him follow'd his next mate: Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood As Gods, and by their own recover'd strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.
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 Sov'reign, can dispose and bid
What shall be right: furthest from him is best, Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever 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 inake a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. 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 Mere 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 ellied arms to try what may be yet
Regain'd in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell? 270 So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub Thus answer'd. Leader of those armies bright, Which but the Omnipotent none could have foil'd! If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge Of battle when it raged, in all assaults Their surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive; though now they lie Groveling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed: No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height.
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 Fesolé,
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 ammiral, were but a wand, He walk'd 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 call'd His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks, In Vallambrosa, where the Etrurian shades,
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. He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep Of Hell resounded! Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the flower of Heaven! once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal Spirits; or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conqueror! who now beholds Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood, With scatter'd arms and ensigns; till anon His swift pursuers from Heaven gates discern The advantage, and descending, tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!
They heard, and were abash'd, and up they sprung Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, nor the fierce pains not feel; Yet to their General's voice they soon obey'd; Innumerable. As when the potent rod Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day, Waved round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile: So numberless were those bad Angels seen Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, "Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear Of their great Sultan, waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain; A multitude, like which the populous North Pour'd never from her frozen loins, to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the South, and spread Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith from every squadron, and each band,
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