Without dimension, where length, breadth, Half Blying; behoves him now both oar and and height,

sail.

And time, and place are lost; where eldest As when a gryphon through the wilderness
Night,
With winged course, o`er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloin'd
The guarded gold: So eagerly the Fiend
O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough,
dense, or rare,

With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues ba
[flies:
way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or
At length a universal hubbub wild
Of stunning sound and voices all confus'd,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions
fierce,

Strive here for mast'ry, and to battle bring
Their embryon atoms; they around the flag
Of each his faction, in their several clans,
Light-arm'd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or
slow,

Swarm populous, unnumber'd as the sands
Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil,
Levied to side with warring winds, and poise
Their lighter wings. To whom these most
adbere,

He rules a moment; Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray
By which he reigus: next him high arbiter
Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature, aud perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mix'd
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds:
Into this wild abyss the wary Fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pond'ring his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less peal'd
With noises loud and ruinous (to compare
Great things with small) than when Bellona
storms,

With all her battering engines bent to raze
Some capital city; or less than if this frame
Of Heav'n were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn
The steadfast earth. At last his sail-broad

And Spirits of this nethermost abyss,
Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy,
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your realm, but by constraint
Wand ring this darksome desert, as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to
fight,

Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek
What readiest path leads where your gloomy
bounds

vans

He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke
Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a
league,
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides
Audacious; but that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuity: all unawares
Fluttering his pennous vain, plump down he
drops

Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft: that fury stay'd,
Quench'd in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea,

Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,

Nor good dry land: nigh founder'd on he| With falt'ring speech and visage incompos'd, Answer'd. I know thee, stranger, who thou art,

fares,

Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,

Confine with Heav'n; or if some other place,
From your dominion won, th' etherial king
Possesses lately, thither to arrive
I travel this profound; direct my course;
Directed no mean recompence it brings
To your behoof, if I that region lost,
All usurpation thence expell'd, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey) and once more
Erect the standard there of ancient Night;
Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge.

That mighty leading Angel, who of late Made head against Heav'n's king, though overthrown.

I saw and heard, for such a numerous host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and Heav'n
gates

Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve
That little which is left so to defend,
Encroach'd on still through your intestine
broils,

Weak'ning the sceptre of old Night: first Hell Your dungeon stretching far and wide beneath;

Now lately Heav'n and Earth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm, link'd in a golden chain
To that side Heav'n from whence your legions
fell:

Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour he;
But he once past, soon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of
Heaven,

Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environ'd wins his way; harder beset

And more endanger'd, than when Argo pass'd
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling

Pav'd after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endur'd a bridge of wond'rous length
From Hell continued reaching the utmost orb
Of this frail world; by which the Spirits
perverse

If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger; go and speed;
Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain.

He ceas'd; and Satan stay'd not to reply, But glad that now his sea should find a shore;

With fresh alacrity and force renew'd
Springs upward like a pyramid of fire

Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off th' empyreal Heav'n, extended wide

Into the wild expanse, and through the In circuit, undetermin'd square or round,

shock

With opal tow'rs and battlements adorn'd
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by hanging in a golden chain
This pendant world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
Thither full fraught with mischievous re
venge,

With easy intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the wall of Heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works a broken foe
With tumult less and with less hostile din,
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,
And like a weather-beaten vessel holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle

torn;

rocks:

Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunn'd
Charybdis, and by th' other whirlpool steer'd. Accurs'd, and in a cursed hour he bies.
So he with difficulty and labour hard

END OF THE SECOND BOOK..

D

PARADISE LOST.

BOOK III.

THE ARGUMENT.

God sitting on his throne sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shews him to the Son who sat at his right hand foretels the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created Man free and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God ren. ders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards Man; but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended towards Man without the satisfaction of divine justice; Man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and therefore with all his progeny devoted to death must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for Mau: the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in Heaven and Earth; commands all the Angels to adore him; they obey, and hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Mean while Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering The first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity; what persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the gate of Heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: His passage thence to the orb of the Sun; he finds there Uriel the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner Angel; and pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and Man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on Mount Niphates.

HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heav'n first

born,

Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
So were I equal'd with them in renown,

Or of th' Eternal coeternal beam

light,

May I express thee unblam'd? Since God is Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus prophets old:
Theu feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the
year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or mora,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of Knowledge fair
Presented with au universal blank
Of Nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her
powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from
thence

And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the Heav'ns thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap'd the Stygian pool, though long des-
tain'd

In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness

borne

With other notes than to th' Orphean lyre
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,
Taught by the heav'nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare: thec 1 revisit safe,
Aud feel thy sov'reign vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their
orbs,

Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flow'ry brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,

Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

Now had the almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyréan where he sits
High thron'd above all height, bent down his

eye,

His own works and their works at once to
view:
About him all the sanctities of Heav'n
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight re
ceiv'd