Paradise Lost - John Milton (classic reads .txt) 📗

Thus they their doubtful consultations dark Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief: As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o’erspread Heaven’s cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o’er the darkened landscape snow or shower, If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.

O shame to men! Devil with devil damned Firm concord holds; men only disagree Of creatures rational, though under hope Of heavenly grace, and, God proclaiming peace, Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife Among themselves, and levy cruel wars Wasting the earth, each other to destroy: As if (which might induce us to accord) Man had not hellish foes enow besides, That day and night for his destruction wait!

The Stygian council thus dissolved; and forth In order came the grand infernal Peers: Midst came their mighty Paramount, and seemed Alone th’ antagonist of Heaven, nor less Than Hell’s dread Emperor, with pomp supreme, And godlike imitated state: him round A globe of fiery Seraphim enclosed

With bright emblazonry, and horrent arms.

Then of their session ended they bid cry With trumpet’s regal sound the great result: Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy, By herald’s voice explained; the hollow Abyss Heard far adn wide, and all the host of Hell With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim.

Thence more at ease their minds, and somewhat raised By false presumptuous hope, the ranged Powers Disband; and, wandering, each his several way Pursues, as inclination or sad choice Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till his great Chief return.

Part on the plain, or in the air sublime, Upon the wing or in swift race contend, As at th’ Olympian games or Pythian fields; Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form: As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds; before each van Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears, Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms From either end of heaven the welkin burns.

Others, with vast Typhoean rage, more fell, Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar:—

As when Alcides, from Oechalia crowned With conquest, felt th’ envenomed robe, and tore Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines, And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw Into th’ Euboic sea. Others, more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing

With notes angelical to many a harp

Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall By doom of battle, and complain that Fate Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.

Their 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 retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate—

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.

Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery,

Passion and apathy, and glory and shame: Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!—

Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm Pain for a while or anguish, and excite Fallacious hope, or arm th’ obdured breast 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 yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge Into the burning lake their baleful streams—

Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud

Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton, Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls

Her watery 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 wild, 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 haled, At certain revolutions all the damned Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infixed, and frozen round Periods of time,—thence hurried back to fire.

They ferry over this Lethean sound

Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment, And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe, All in one moment, and so near the brink; But Fate withstands, and, to oppose th’ attempt, Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards

The ford, and of itself the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on

In confused march forlorn, th’ adventurous bands, With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast, Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp, 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, Obominable, inutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man, Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell Explores his solitary flight: sometimes He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left; Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars Up to the fiery concave towering high.

As when far off at sea a fleet descried Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood, Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock, Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable Shape.

The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold, Voluminous and vast—a serpent armed With mortal sting. About her middle round A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb, And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore; Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called In secret, riding through the air she comes, Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon Eclipses at their charms. The other Shape—

If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either—black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The monster moving onward came as fast With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

Th’ undaunted Fiend what this might be admired—

Admired, not feared (God and his Son except, Created thing naught valued he nor shunned), And with disdainful look thus first began:—

“Whence and what art thou, execrable Shape, That dar’st, though grim and terrible, advance Thy miscreated front athwart my way

To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass, That be assured, without leave asked of thee.

Retire; or taste thy folly, and learn by proof, Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heaven.”

To whom the Goblin, full of wrath, replied:—

“Art thou that traitor Angel? art thou he, Who first broke peace in Heaven and faith, till then Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms Drew after him the third part of Heaven’s sons, Conjured against the Highest—for which both thou And they, outcast from God, are here condemned To waste eternal days in woe and pain?

And reckon’st thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven Hell-doomed, and breath’st defiance here and scorn, Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more, Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment, False fugitive; and to thy speed add wings, Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.”

So spake the grisly Terror, and in shape, So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold, More dreadful and deform. On th’ other side, Incensed with indignation, Satan stood Unterrified, and like a comet burned, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In th’ arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head Levelled his deadly aim; their fatal hands No second stroke intend; and such a frown Each cast at th’ other as when two black clouds, With heaven’s artillery fraught, came rattling on Over the Caspian,—then stand front to front Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow To join their dark encounter in mid-air.

So frowned the mighty combatants that Hell Grew darker at their frown; so matched they stood; For never but once more was wither like To meet so great a foe. And now great deeds Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had rung, Had not the snaky Sorceress, that sat Fast by Hell-gate and kept the fatal key, Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between.

“O father, what intends thy hand,” she cried, “Against thy only son? What fury, O son, Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart Against thy father’s head? And know’st for whom?

For him who sits above, and laughs the while At thee, ordained his drudge to execute Whate’er his wrath, which he calls justice, bids—

His wrath, which one day will destroy ye both!”

She spake, and at her words the hellish Pest Forbore: then these to her Satan returned:—

“So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange Thou interposest, that my sudden hand, Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds What it intends, till first I know of thee What thing thou art, thus double-formed, and why, In this infernal vale first met, thou call’st Me father, and that phantasm call’st my son.

I know thee not, nor ever saw till now Sight more detestable than him and thee.”

T’ whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied:—

“Hast thou forgot me, then; and do I seem Now in thine eye so foul?—once deemed so fair In Heaven, when at th’ assembly, and in sight Of all the Seraphim with thee combined In bold conspiracy against Heaven’s King,