автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  The Poetical Works of John Milton

John Milton

The Collected Poetical Works Of John Milton

 

John Milton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents:

 

 

Preface By The Rev. H. C. Beeching, M. A.

The Stationer To The Reader.

 

Miscellaneous Poems.

On The Morning Of Christs Nativity.

The Passion.

On Time.

Upon The Circumcision.

At A Solemn Musick.

An Epitaph On The Marchioness Of Winchester.

Song On May Morning.

On Shakespear (1630).

Another On The Same.

L'allegro.

Il Penseroso.

Sonnets.

Arcades.

Lycidas.

A Mask Presented At Ludlow-Castle, 1634. &C.

Anno Aetatis 17. On The Death Of A Fair Infant Dying Of A Cough.

The Fifth Ode Of Horace. Lib. I.

Sonnets.

On The New Forcers Of Conscience Under The Long Parliament.

On The Lord Gen. Fairfax At The Seige Of Colchester.

To The Lord Generall Cromwell May 1652.

To Sr Henry Vane The Younger.

To Mr. Cyriack Skinner Upon His Blindness.

Psal. I. Done Into Verse, 1653.

Psal. Ii Done Aug. 8. 1653. Terzetti.

Psal. Iii. Aug. 9. 1653

Psal. Iv. Aug. 10.1653.

Psal. V. Aug. 12.1653.

Psal. Vi Aug. 13. 1653.

Psal. Vii. Aug. 14. 1653.

Psal. Viii. Aug. 14. 1653.

Psal. Lxxx.

Psal. Lxxxi.

Psal. Lxxxii.

Psal. Lxxxiii.

Psal. Lxxxiv.

Psal Lxxxv.

Psal. Lxxxvi.

Psal. Lxxxvii

Psal. Lxxxviii

 

Collection Of Passages Translated In The Prose Writings.

[From Of Reformation In England, 1641.]

[From Reason Of Church Government, 1641.]

[From Apology For Smectymnuus, 1642.]

[From Areopagitica, 1644.]

[From Tetrachordon, 1645.]

[From The Tenure Of Kings And Magistrates, 1649.]

[From History Of Britain, 1670.]

 

Paradise Lost.

On Paradise Lost.

The Verse.

Book I.

Book Ii.

Book Iii.

Book Iv.

Book V.

Book Vi.

Book Vii.

Book Viii.

Book Ix.

Book X.

Book Xi.

Book Xii.

 

Paradise Regained.

The First Book.

The Second Book.

The Third Book.

The Fourth Book.

 

Samson Agonistes

Of That Sort Of Dramatic Poem Which Is Call'd Tragedy.

The Argument.

 

 

 

 

The Collected Poetical Works Of John Milton, J. Milton

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Germany

 

ISBN: 9783849629397

 

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John Milton – A Primer

 

John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608. He was the third child and namesake of a prosperous scrivener (lawyer and law stationer) whose puritanical leanings did not prevent him from conforming to the established church, from cultivating with some success the art of music, and from giving his children a liberal education and a pleasant, happy home. From this father Milton must have inherited much of his genius — a genius fostered by the wisdom and liberality of the parent to an extent that can scarcely be paralleled in our literary annals, save in the cases of Robert Browning and John Stuart Mill. To his mother, too, he owed not a little, as every good man does as well as to his early tutors, with whom he seems to have been on especially affectionate terms. The noted musicians who frequented his father's house must also have had an influence on him, and later, his friendship with Charles Diodati ; but the direct influence of his fellows seems to have counted for less with Milton than with any other great world-poet. The indirect influence of men .through their books counted, however, for more with him than can be estimated in words. From his earliest youth he was an omnivorous reader and student, and to this day he stands as our most learned poet and cultured artist, Ben Jonson not excepted.

 

About 1620 Milton entered St. Paul's School as a day scholar and remained there until 1625, when he commenced residence, during the Easter term, at Christ's College, Cambridge. Although he continued his university studies for seven years, taking his B.A. in 1629 and his M.A. in 1632, he plainly did not enter into the spirit of the place ; and he heads the list of great English men of letters who have been more or less out of sympathy with their alma mater — a list that includes such names as Dryden, Gibbon, and Shelley. But he was laying the broad foundations of his character and his culture. The personal purity preserved through all temptation and ridicule (his fellow students dubbed him lady as much on this account, we cannot doubt, as on account of his conspicuous beauty of face and figure) enabled him to expound as no other poet has ever done

 

" — the sage

And serious doctrine of Virginity ; "

 

the self-absorption in the pursuit of high ideals, the proud aloofness from common things and common men that characterized him, may have lessened his human sympathies, but assuredly made possible that supremely ideal love of religion and his native land that prompted and accomplished the noblest deed of patriotic self-sacrifice that has yet been recorded to the credit of our race ; and finally it is almost impossible to believe that he would ever have become master of so profound and exact an erudition and so serene and balanced a culture had he not profited by that systematic training and discipline of the faculties which is alone imparted in full measure by a historic university. In view of these facts, we may well conclude that Cambridge meant more to Milton than he was himself aware of, and we can afford to leave to his biographers the question whether he was actually "whipt" by his unsympathetic tutor, one William Chappell. But we should remember that during his university course he found time to write much of his Latin verse, as well as such great English poems as the ode "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", the epitaph "On Shakespeare ", and the sonnet "On his being arrived at the age of twenty-three." This was no slight actual accomplishment in verse, but more important was the formation of the resolution to which he consistently adhered — to order his life.

 

" As ever in his great Task-Master's eye."

 

When he left Cambridge the young student betook himself to his father's residence at Horton in Buckinghamshire. Although he had criticized the administration of the university, he was pressed to take a fellowship, but that would have meant practically taking orders and, while such had once been his intention, he felt that he could not conscientiously pursue the latter course. Theological difficulties do not seem to have beset him, for he subscribed the Articles and his Arian proclivities were a matter of later j-ears. It was at the organization of the church then controlled by Laud, who was fostering to the best of his abilities the high church reaction that the Puritan idealist looked askance. If Milton had continued at Cambridge he would have been the centre of many an academic dispute; it is impossible to say what would have happened if he had entered the church in any active way and been brought into personal contact with Laud. The genius of Boswell would have failed to do justice to that encounter; it would have needed a Shakespeare.

 

If Milton read his own character as we now do and restrained his ardent nature that he might allow his powers to ripen through solitude and study, he more than deserves the epithets he bestowed upon his favorite Spenser — " sage and serious." If he did not fully understand himself but simply felt conscious of high powers and a mission to fulfill, he deserves all the praise that so amply belongs to those " who only stand and wait." But much praise is also due to the father who, now that his business career was over and his chief interest was necessarily centered in his children's success, was content to do his share of waiting till the genius of his son should in the fullness of time be manifest to the world. That genius was slowly developing through study, contemplation, intercourse with nature, and occasional wooing of the muse. He mastered the classics and the chief writers of more recent times until he may fairly be said to have lived with them. He contemplated life with all its possibilities and became more firmly fixed in his determination to devote himself to the service of humanity, to lead a life that should be a true poem, and to leave behind him some child of his imagination that posterity would not willingly let die. He watched also with poignant anguish the headlong course of Charles and Laud toward destruction and saw that they would involve in ruin, not merely themselves but the nation for which he already felt the burning passion of the man who not loving easily still loves well. But he also contemplated the serene beauty of the peaceful landscape around him and the spirit of nature took hold upon him — not as it had done on Shakespeare and was to do on Wordsworth — but in a true, noble, and elevating way. Finally he wrote verse to relieve his pent up feelings or to oblige friends, but never without keeping his eyes fixed upon the masters of his craft, and registering a solemn vow not to allow himself to be tempted by easy praise to abandon the arduous upward path on which his feet were set. It is to the five years (1632— 1637) spent at Horton that we are said to owe L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas — a fact that should make the little Buckinghamshire village second only to Stratford in interest to all lovers of English poetry.

 

In the spring of 1638 Milton undertook to put the finishing touch upon his education by setting out for Italy. The spell that she exercises on every liberal soul, had already been felt by him through the medium of her great poets, but it was not to be permanently sealed upon his spirit as it has been since upon Byron, Shelley, Landor, and Browning. He was fitter than these to penetrate into Italy's secret and it is interesting to speculate what a longer residence there would have meant for him ; but that was not to be. Yet we may be sure that no nobler stranger has ever since apostolic times set foot upon that sacred soil so often trod by alien feet — not Chaucer or Goethe, not Luther or Bayard. Shakespeare never saw the land that his genius so often adorned and Dante was its native — and it is with Shakespeare and Dante alone that we can safely compare Milton. The details of his journey are scant but even the few facts we know must be here rapidly passed over. He gave and received compliments, was hospitably entertained, discussed philosophy sagely and religion imprudently, proved that although he was an angel not an Angle, the Angles were not entirely barbarous, heard Leonora Baroni sing — and met Galileo. " The meeting between the two great blind men of their century," writes Dr. Garnett, " is one of the most picturesque in history ; it would have been more pathetic still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in ' Paradise Lost,' or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet."

 

The young traveler had been some time in Naples when news from England warned him of the fact that the political and ecclesiastical crisis had come, and that it was his duty as a true patriot to turn his face homeward. He accordingly relinquished his design of proceeding to Sicily and Greece, and after another visit to Florence, which fascinated him, and a short stay at Geneva where he probably learned of the death of his friend Diodati, he once more set foot on English soil toward the end of July, 1639. Here his first duty was an act of piety — he wrote his greatest and practically his last Latin poem — the Epithaphium Damonis in honor of Diodati — a tribute the exquisite sincerity and beauty of which its foreign medium of expression could not impair but unfortunately obscures to those of his countrymen whose classical education has been neglected. Then he set himself to a less congenial but in every way honorable task, he began to teach his two nephews, Edward and John Phillips. Milton as a schoolmaster may suggest to some the veriest profanation of genius, to others that irony of fate at which we smile or jest ; but no one who has read the tractate entitled " Of Education," or rightly gauged Milton's character, or comprehended the true dignity of the teacher's office will ever regret the quiet months spent by the poet-pedagogue in the house in Aldersgate street where he could smile grimly at the failure of the attempts to subdue Scotland and wait for the Long Parliament to throw open the door concealing " that two-handed engine."

 

For a short space after his return Milton seems to have formulated no plan of action that concerned the outer world, but he did contemplate a great poem that should be his lifework, although he could not definitely settle upon a theme. "King Arthur" was abandoned for a lesser though great poet. " Paradise Lost " was begun as a drama and fortunately laid aside for epic treatment. The times began to call for something besides poetry and Milton felt that he had something else in him to give. For twenty years he wrote no verse save a comparatively small number of sonnets — great it is true — and his silence curing a period when most poets do their best work has been regretted by many an admirer and by more than one able critic. This regret is natural but probably unreasonable as we shall soon see.

 

The humbling of Charles, the arrest and imprisonment of Laud, and the execution of Strafford, had shown the religious and political reformers their power, and had brought into prominence not merely men of action but also a crowd of zealous and advanced theorists and of visionary schemers for the ordering of church and state. It is always so with revolutions. The French had their Abbe Siéyès and we Americans had scores of theorists from Jefferson down. But no such ideal reformer as Milton has ever since lifted his voice above the din of party and faction — and if we convict him of partisanship, we must nevertheless figure him to ourselves as a seraphic partisan. His first utterances were naturally on the subject of episcopacy. As Dr. Garnett has pointed out, it is difficult for us now not merely to see any great force in Milton's arguments, but to comprehend at all the point of view maintained by him in the five tractates of 1841—42. It was not a question of expediency that he was considering ; it was a question whether God or the devil should rule in England, if not in the world. The sublime confidence with which he promulgated his ideas of church polity moves our wonder; the impassioned language in which he clothed those ideas moves not only our admiration but a sense of our infinite inferiority. Such swelling periods of prophecy and denunciation, of high purpose and holy hope have been possible to one man alone — to the future author of " Paradise Lost." Whether or not we love Laud less and Milton more, whether or not we seek or shun the arena of religious controversy, we cannot but conclude that the crisis which called forth the following dithyrambic utterance was not lacking in momentous results to England's literature or to the character and work of her noblest son :

 

"Then amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty measures, to sing and and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvelous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day when Thou, the Eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and distributing national honors and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth ; where they undoubtedly, that by their labors, counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones into their glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in over-measure forever."

 

The out-break of war in the autumn of 1642 forced upon Milton the question whether he should take up arms in defense of the principles he advocated. We do not know his exact course of reasoning, but we can infer it. He could serve his country and his God better with his pen than with his sword, so instead of fighting, he wrote his sonnet " When the Assault was Intended to the City" — that superb plea for the inviolability of the " Muse's bower." To blame Milton for not becoming a soldier is like blaming Washington for not writing an epic on the Revolutionary War after he had sheathed his sword. The man whose imagination was already revolving the war in heaven was not wanted on the fields of Naseby and Dunbar ; the prophet of the glories of a renovated and redeemed England had faith enough to believe that God would, in due season, show forth the man who should render those glories possible. He could not foresee that the representatives of the people for whom he sang and Cromwell fought would one day refuse the need of a statue to their greatest ruler and soldier; but could he rise from the dead he would set the seal of his approval upon the fiery protest against a nation's ingratitude recently wrung from a poet into whom he has breathed not a little of his own impassioned eloquence and love of liberty :

 

" The enthroned Republic from her kinglier throne

Spake, and her speech was Cromwell's. Earth has known

No lordlier presence. How should Cromwell stand

By kinglets and by queenlings hewn in stone?"

 

But while Oxford was protesting her loyalty and Cornwall was rising in arms and the king's cause seemed by no means hopeless, Milton for the first time in his life apparently, was falling in love. Exactly how this came about is not known. He seems to have gone to Oxfordshire in the spring of 1643 to collect a debt from a Cavalier squire, Richard Powell by name, and to have returned to London in a month with this gentleman's daughter, Mary, as his bride. A party of her relatives soon after visited the pair and the young wife appears to have enjoyed their dancing more than she did her husband's philosophizing, for she shortly left him under promise of return and took up her abode with her father, from whose protection she could not be induced to withdraw for about two years. Whether Milton began his pamphleteering on divorce before or after his wife's desertion is a moot point ; indeed this whole matrimonial affair is the most mysterious, perhaps, on record save that of a very different character — Sam Houston of San Jacinto fame. But Milton wrote four learned treatises on divorce while Houston consoled himself with a Cherokee squaw. The divorce literature was too strong diet even for his co-religionists and had to be published without license — a fact to which we owe the greatest and best known of his prose writings — the noble "Areopagitica ; a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England."

 

We cannot discuss here Milton's view of what an ideal marriage ought to be, or his notions about divorce which he threatened to put into practice, and can say only a word about his relations to his wives and to women in general. On the last of these points he has been much criticized, not always with entire justice. We know that his first wife returned to him of her own accord, a fact which is decidedly in his favor. We have his sonnet to his second wife, Katherine Woodcock, by which any woman might be proud to think she would be remembered; and with his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, he seems to have lived as congenially as could be expected when all the circumstances are taken into account. His daughters by his first wife have won a sympathy which they hardly deserve. Reading aloud in a language one doesn't understand is not an enjoyable task ; but what are we to say of the characters and dispositions of women who could lack reverence for such a father? Admiration and sympathy are two of the noblest attributes of womanhood, and who has ever been fitter to elicit them than Milton in his blindness? Perhaps the best excuse for these daughters is that they were trained by their mother. We may dismiss this unpleasant topic with the remark that it is well to note that in the scanty tale of Milton's English sonnets there are four addressed to women, in which there is not a line to make us believe that he had a low estimate of the sex, and much to convince us that he was capable of extending to them that intelligent admiration which the mass of mankind are only just beginning to recognize as their due.

 

In 1645 or rather in the early part of 1646 at the solicitation of Humphrey Moseley the publisher, Milton brought out the first edition of his poems, English and Latin. He prefixed a quotation from Virgil which showed that he regarded the publication as premature. It was an unpropitious time for the Muses, but it was not many years before he was plagiarized from in a shocking manner by Robert Barron, and if imitation is the sincerest flattery, he ought to have been pleased, but probably was not. Meantime his school seems to have prospered and he worked away at his studies, gathering materials for his " History of England," and perhaps writing his treatise " De Doctrina Christiana " which did not see the light until 1825. In 1647 his father died and the consequent improvement in his circumstances led him to give up all his pupils save his nephews. So he lived on and looked out at the swift succession of events that seemed about to change entirely the course of English history. He was still conscious of great powers and still yearning for an opportunity to do something for his people, but he preferred a scholarly seclusion, as he tells us, to a station " at the doors of the court with a petitioner's face."

 

With the king's death, however, a change took place in Milton's affairs. Charles was beheaded on January 30, 1649; in exactly two weeks Milton had published his pamphlet " The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates " in which he maintained the right of " any who have the Power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and after due Conviction, to depose, and put him to Death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected, or denied to do it." This was a bold and certainly expeditious defense of the actions of his party ; how bold may be somewhat realized when we remember how the news of the execution of Louis XVI. nearly a century and a half later resounded through Europe. Even the philosophic mind of Burke was unhinged by the latter catastrophe ; the prior and more astounding event simply woke Milton up. Merely as a private citizen with convictions of his own he dared to defend a deed which had filled a whole people with horror and consternation ; to the seductions of sympathy stimulated by the timely appearance of the " Eikon Basilike" he opposed the warning voice of reason and the high clear strains of duty. The popular leaders could overlook him no longer and he was offered the post of Latin Secretary to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The salary was ample and the position such as even a Milton could accept, for he was not merely to carry on diplomatic correspondence in the language of scholars but, we cannot doubt, to be the recognized spokesman of his party. As Dr. Garnett happily expresses it, he was to be the " Orpheus among the Argonauts of the Commonwealth."

 

His first work that we need notice is his " Eikonoklastes " a reply to the "Eikon Basilike " of Bishop Gauden, then believed by many to be the work of the "Royal Martyr " himself. Milton seems to have shirked the task knowing that to accomplish it effectively would necessitate depreciation of the dead king and much chaffering over straws. In spite of this known reluctance on his part and of the obvious fact that much of his matter and manner was determined by circumstances that he could not control, critics have not ceased to search his book minutely for data on which to rest charges against his personal integrity, his consistency, even his taste in literature. But he was soon to undertake a greater task. The learned Frenchman, Salmasius, had been employed to unmask the batteries of his ponderous erudition, so valued at the time, in defense of Charles I. His " Defensio Regia " appeared in the latter part of 1649, and Milton was directed by the Council to answer it. He did at the cost of his sight.

 

For some years his eyes had been failing and one was already gone. He was advised that any further strain would speedily induce total blindness, yet he never wavered in the performance of his duty. He calmly faced the loss of a sense that every true scholar must value more than life itself; he put from him all anticipation of the noble pleasure he had looked forward to deriving from the first sight of his great poem in print ; he may even have despaired of ever composing that poem at all ; he looked forward to the miseries of a cheerless old age, and without repining accepted a commission that could not under any circumstances have been specially grateful to him — all because he deemed it right that his country and party should make a proper reply to the charges that had been laid against them in the forum of European opinion. If a sublimer act of patriotic self-sacrifice has ever been performed it has surely never been recorded. And yet critics have been found who could calmly dissect the " Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Salmasium " and argue from it that its author had not merely a bad cause, but a bad temper and a worse taste. There have been critics who have imagined that it is proper to judge a seventeenth century controversialist by standards more talked about than acted upon in the nineteenth. There have even been friends of Milton who forgetting that the man is and ought to be greater than the poet, have wished that he had never performed this act of self-sacrifice that makes him the true Milton of song and history.

 

And now by the Spring of 1652 the Milton who had won the plaudits of cultivated Italians for his beauty and his grace, the Milton who had looked on Nature's face and found her fair, the Milton who had at last been brought to mingle with the affairs of men at a critical juncture in his country's history, was totally blind, an object of pity, a man who was apparently without a future. It was due to the fact that he was Milton and no one else that he did not succumb but became the poet of " Paradise Lost." The mention of this great poem, however, reminds us that we may pass over his " Second Defense of the People of England," his answer to Moras, and his ecclesiastical treatises all accomplished with the assistance of coadjutors, one of whom was Andrew Marveil, which brings us to the year of the Stuart Restoration (1660,) when of course his political occupation was gone. That occupation while it may not have given him the position he deserved in the councils of his party (it is not even certain that he and Cromwell were ever face to face) had given him a knowledge of men and affairs which was to be of immense service to him in the coming years of retirement when he was to be permitted to resume his higher and natural role of inspired poet. It seems as idle to argue that " Paradise Lost " would have been the poem it is without the often regretted poetic interregnum of 1640-1660 as it is to argue that Milton could have been as great a man without it. Those critics may indeed be right who maintain that Milton's nature was subdued to what it worked in " like the dyer's hand," that the Puritan controversialist sometimes got the better of the poet long after occasion for controversy had passed away, but this is only to claim that Milton had not the universality of genius, the absolute perfection of artistic balance that characterize Homer and Shakespeare alone — a claim no true critic will think of disputing for a moment.

 

It is difficult to say exactly how the defender of the regicides escaped with the mild punishment of having his writings against Charles I. burned by the hangman. Perhaps his blindness helped him, perhaps the entreaties of influential friends. The " Muse's bower" was spared (though removed more than once) to become the resort of a few congenial spirits and of an occasional admirer like Dryden, and in due time the poet of " Lycidas " culminated in the author of the greatest poem since the " Divine Comedy."

 

As we have seen Milton had long since resolved to use his powers in the production of a poem as noble as he must have felt those powers to be, and after examining and rejecting many subjects had finally determined on "Paradise Lost " as the most sublime and worthy theme. He had even practically determined on the equally sublime metrical form in which his epic should be cast before he began really working upon the latter in 1658. The story of its composition under the difficulties imposed by his blindness, his lack of a permanent and trained amanuensis, and his curious susceptibility to the effects of the seasons upon his temperament, has been often told and just as often the apparent irony of the circumstances of its publication in 1667 has formed the subject of critical homilies. Mr. Symmons may have driven a hard bargain though there is room to doubt it, but he did better by Milton and his epic than a good many modern critics have done who are not supposed to hold chairs in the School of Cobbett. We are told now that people do not read "Paradise Lost" and that its subject is antiquated and a little absurd, especially since the theory of evolution has thrown grave doubts upon the lion's ever having pawed to extricate his hinder parts. If this be true of the public, and if our critics are to judge poets from the point of view of Cobbett's so-called common sense or of Huxley's epoch-making science, it may well be doubted whether printer Symmons was not more a child of the Muses than one is likely to-day to jostle on the streets of one of our great cities. But Symmons' niggardly pounds have either been quite worn out or have forgotten that they ever took part in a shabby transaction, and a similar fate awaits the Cobbett critics and the public that pays attention to them. "Paradise Lost" has set a seal upon Milton's glory that can be effaced or unloosed by angelic power alone — by the might of the angel who shall in the fullness of time blow the last trump.

 

The Quaker Ellwood's query as to what Milton had to say of " Paradise Regained " after so much told of " Paradise Lost," may or may not have had much to do with the composition of that pendant poem, and Milton's partiality for it may have been exaggerated, but surely those persons, and they are many, who refrain from reading it now that its author's fame has made precious everything he touched, stand greatly in their own light. Neither it nor " Samson Agonistes." published with it in one volume in 1671, can claim the preeminence in our poetry that belongs of right to " Paradise Lost," "Comus," and " Lycidas," but none the less both poems are worthy of Milton, and therefore of our admiration and love. They may give evidence of the declining power of the genius that gave them birth (although as we are somewhat in the dark as to the exact time of their composition, this is not certain) or they may represent that genius moving in regions less elevated and pure, but they are worthy to shine through their own luster and to live through their own vitality. Their comparative unpopularity is proof of nothing save of the proverbial isolation of the noble, but their existence is proof of the fact that in a blind old age, Milton would be content with nothing less than a strenuous and lofty use of his divinely bestowed powers. He could not, like his Nazarene hero, pull down the pillars of an ungodly state upon the heads of its citizens, although he would not have shirked the self-destruction involved, but he could still sing in exultant tones of the triumphs of virtue and of the justice and majesty and mercy of God.

 

That mercy was shown him in his last years in fuller measure than he perhaps himself expected or than his political or ecclesiastical foes would have admitted to be his due. From the moment that his safety after the Restoration was assured until his death on November 8, 1674, he lived a comparatively calm and peaceful life. The great Fire and Plague disturbed him, as was natural, but not seriously, his darkness was ever with him, but was shot through with visions of glory denied to all men save his three compeers Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante ; his home though now comfortable was hardly congenial, but he had a few choice friends and a memory stored with the best that the world of literature had to give. Thus he lived and thus he died, and although his " soul was like a star and dwelt apart," we feel glad that it had its earthly setting in a pure and cloudless sky. Yet before we take our leave of him in this imperfect sketch, let us remember that there are two facts that make a knowledge of hie life and work essential to all persons that would fain have the slightest claim to be considered cultured men.

 

The first is that Milton has unquestionably influenced his country's literature more than any other English man of letters, unless it be Shakespeare. Although he did not live to reap the reward of the fame that " Paradise Lost " began to attract, even before the close of the seventeenth century, he must have felt sure that he had built himself an enduring monument. His conviction was true. Certainly from the appearance of Addison's criticism of the great epic to the present day no English poet of any note has failed at one time or another to pass under his spell. Even Pope borrowed from him, and Thomson, Dyer, Collins and Gray were his open disciples. What Cowper and Wordsworth would have been without him, it is hard to imagine. The youthful Keats imitated him and Shelley sang that " his clear sprite yet reigns o'er earth, the third among the sons of light." As for Landor, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and Swinburne their direct or indirect debt to him is plain to every student. With regard to his prose the case has been somewhat different. It is the old story of the bow of Ulysses, but it cannot be doubted that if on the formal side our modern writers look back to Cowley and Dryden, there has never been a writer of sonorous and eloquent prose who did not owe more than he was perhaps aware of to the author of " Areopagitica."

 

The second fact is equally patent but less often insisted upon. It is that in the triumphal progress of the Anglo-Saxon race, whether in the mother island, in America, or in Australia, whatever has been won for the cause of civic or religious or mental liberty, has been won along lines that Milton would have approved in the main had he been living, has been won by men more or less inspired by him, and will be kept only by men who are capable of appreciating rightly the height and breadth and depth of his splendid and ineffable personality.

 

W. P. Trent.

 

 

 

Preface By The Rev. H. C. Beeching, M. A.

 

This edition of Milton's Poetry is a reprint, as careful as Editor and Printers have been able to make it, from the earliest printed copies of the several poems. First the 1645 volume of the Minor Poems has been printed entire; then follow in order the poems added in the reissue of 1673; the Paradise Lost, from the edition of 1667; and the Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes from the edition of 1671.

 

The most interesting portion of the book must be reckoned the first section of it, which reproduces for the first time the scarce small octavo of 1645. The only reprint of the Minor Poems in the old spelling, so far as I know, is the one edited by Mitford, but that followed the edition of 1673, which is comparatively uninteresting since it could not have had Milton's oversight as it passed through the press. We know that it was set up from a copy of the 1645 edition, because it reproduces some pointless eccentricities such as the varying form of the chorus to Psalm cxxxvi; but while it corrects the errata tabulated in that edition it commits many more blunders of its own. It is valuable, however, as the editio princeps of ten of the sonnets and it contains one important alteration in the Ode on the Nativity. This and all other alterations will be found noted where they occur. I have not thought it necessary to note mere differences of spelling between the two editions but a word may find place here upon their general character. Generally it may be said that, where the two editions differ, the later spelling is that now in use. Thus words like goddess, darkness, usually written in the first edition with one final s, have two, while on the other hand words like vernall, youthfull, and monosyllables like hugg, farr, lose their double letter. Many monosyllables, e.g. som, cours, glimps, wher, vers, aw, els, don, ey, ly, so written in 1645, take on in 1673 an e mute, while words like harpe, windes, onely, lose it. By a reciprocal change ayr and cipress become air and cypress; and the vowels in daign, vail, neer, beleeve, sheild, boosom, eeven, battail, travailer, and many other words are similarly modernized. On the other hand there are a few cases where the 1645 edition exhibits the spelling which has succeeded in fixing itself, as travail (1673, travel) in the sense of labour; and rob'd, profane, human, flood and bloody, forest, triple, alas, huddling, are found where the 1673 edition has roab'd, prophane, humane, floud and bloudy, forrest, tripple, alass and hudling. Indeed the spelling in this later edition is not untouched by seventeenth century inconsistency. It retains here and there forms like shameles, cateres, (where 1645 reads cateress), and occasionally reverts to the older-fashioned spelling of monosyllables without the mute e. In the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, it reads—' And som flowers and some bays.' But undoubtedly the impression on the whole is of a much more modern text.

 

In the matter of small or capital letters I have followed the old copy, except in one or two places where a personification seemed not plainly enough marked to a modern reader without a capital. Thus in Il Penseroso, l. 49, I print Leasure, although both editions read leasure; and in the Vacation Exercise, l. 71, Times for times. Also where the employment or omission of a capital is plainly due to misprinting, as too frequently in the 1673 edition, I silently make the correction. Examples are, notes for Notes in Sonnet xvii. l. 13; Anointed for anointed in Psalm ii. l.12.

 

In regard to punctuation I have followed the old printers except in obvious misprints, and followed them also, as far as possible, in their distribution of roman and italic type and in the grouping of words and lines in the various titles. To follow them exactly was impossible, as the books are so very different in size.

 

At this point the candid reader may perhaps ask what advantage is gained by presenting these poems to modern readers in the dress of a bygone age. If the question were put to me I should probably evade it by pointing out that Mr. Frowde is issuing an edition based upon this, in which the spelling is frankly that of to-day. But if the question were pressed, I think a sufficient answer might be found. To begin with, I should point out that even Prof. Masson, who in his excellent edition argues the point and decides in favour of modern spelling, allows that there are peculiarities of Milton's spelling which are really significant, and ought therefore to be noted or preserved. But who is to determine exactly which words are spelt according to the poet's own instructions, and which according to the printer's whim? It is notorious that in Paradise Lost some words were spelt upon a deliberate system, and it may very well happen that in the volume of minor poems which the poet saw through the press in 1645, there were spellings no less systematic. Prof. Masson makes a great point of the fact that Milton's own spelling, exhibited in the autograph manuscript of some of the minor poems preserved in Trinity College, Cambridge, does not correspond with that of the printed copy. [Note: This manuscript, invaluable to all students of Milton, has lately been facsimiled under the superintendence of Dr. Aldis Wright, and published at the Cambridge University press]. This is certainly true, as the reader may see for himself by comparing the passage from the manuscript given in the appendix with the corresponding place in the text. Milton's own spelling revels in redundant e's, while the printer of the 1645 book is very sparing of them. But in cases where the spelling affects the metre, we find that the printed text and Milton's manuscript closely correspond; and it is upon its value in determining the metre, quite as much as its antiquarian interest, that I should base a justification of this reprint. Take, for instance, such a line as the eleventh of Comus, which Prof. Masson gives as:—

 

        Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats.

 

A reader not learned in Miltonic rhythms will certainly read this

 

        Amongst th' enthroned gods

 

But the 1645 edition reads:

 

        Amongst the enthron'd gods

 

and so does Milton's manuscript. Again, in line 597, Prof. Masson reads:

 

        It shall be in eternal restless change

        Self-fed and self-consumed.  If this fail,

        The pillared firmament is rottenness,  &c.

 

But the 1645 text and Milton's manuscript read self-consum'd; after which word there is to be understood a metrical pause to mark the violent transition of the thought.

 

Again in the second line of the Sonnet to a Nightingale Prof. Masson has:

 

        Warblest at eve when all the woods are still

 

but the early edition, which probably follows Milton's spelling though in this case we have no manuscript to compare, reads 'Warbl'st.' So the original text of Samson, l. 670, has 'temper'st.'

 

The retention of the old system of punctuation may be less defensible, but I have retained it because it may now and then be of use in determining a point of syntax. The absence of a comma, for example, after the word hearse in the 58th line of the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, printed by Prof. Masson thus:—

 

        And some flowers, and some bays

        For thy hearse to strew thy ways,

 

but in the 1645 edition:—

 

        And som Flowers, and som Bays,

        For thy Hears to strew the ways,

 

goes to prove that for here must be taken as 'fore.

 

Of the Paradise Lost there were two editions issued during Milton's lifetime, and while the first has been taken as our text, all the variants in the second, not being simple misprints, have been recorded in the notes. In one respect, however, in the distribution of the poem into twelve books instead of ten, it has seemed best, for the sake of practical convenience, to follow the second edition. A word may be allowed here on the famous correction among the Errata prefixed to the first edition: 'Lib. 2. v. 414, for we read wee.' This correction shows not only that Milton had theories about spelling, but also that he found means, though his sight was gone, to ascertain whether his rules had been carried out by his printer; and in itself this fact justifies a facsimile reprint. What the principle in the use of the double vowel exactly was (and it is found to affect the other monosyllabic pronouns) it is not so easy to discover, though roughly it is clear the reduplication was intended to mark emphasis. For example, in the speech of the Divine Son after the battle in heaven (vi. 810-817) the pronouns which the voice would naturally emphasize are spelt with the double vowel:

 

                                 Stand onely and behold

        Gods indignation on these Godless pourd

        By mee; not you but mee they have despis'd,

        Yet envied; against mee is all thir rage,

        Because the Father, t'whom in Heav'n supream

        Kingdom and Power and Glorie appertains,

        Hath honourd me according to his will.

        Therefore to mee thir doom he hath assign'd.

 

In the Son's speech offering himself as Redeemer (iii. 227-249) where the pronoun all through is markedly emphasized, it is printed mee the first four times, and afterwards me; but it is noticeable that these first four times the emphatic word does not stand in the stressed place of the verse, so that a careless reader might not emphasize it, unless his attention were specially led by some such sign:

 

        Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life

        I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;

        Account mee man.

 

In the Hymn of Creation (v.160-209) where ye occurs fourteen times, the emphasis and the metric stress six times out of seven coincide, and the pronoun is spelt yee; where it is unemphatic, and in an unstressed place, it is spelt ye. Two lines are especially instructive:

 

Speak yee who best can tell, ye Sons of light (l. 160);

 

and

 

        Fountains and yee, that warble, as ye flow,

        Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise (l. 195).

 

In v. 694 it marks, as the voice by its emphasis would mark in reading, a change of subject:

 

        So spake the false Arch-Angel, and infus'd

        Bad influence into th' unwarie brest

        Of his Associate; hee (i. e. the associate) together calls,

 

&c.

 

An examination of other passages, where there is no antithesis, goes to show that the lengthened form of the pronoun is most frequent before a pause (as vii. 95); or at the end of a line (i. 245, 257); or when a foot is inverted (v. 133); or when as object it precedes its verb (v. 612; vii. 747), or as subject follows it (ix. 1109; x. 4). But as we might expect under circumstances where a purist could not correct his own proofs, there are not a few inconsistencies. There does not seem, for example, any special emphasis in the second wee of the following passage:

 

                                        Freely we serve.

        Because wee freely love, as in our will

        To love or not; in this we stand or fall  (v. 538).

 

On the other hand, in the passage (iii. 41) in which the poet speaks of his own blindness:

 

                                Thus with the Year

        Seasons return, but not to me returns

        Day, &c.

 

where, if anywhere, we should expect mee, we do not find it, though it occurs in the speech eight lines below. It should be added that this differentiation of the pronouns is not found in any printed poem of Milton's before Paradise Lost, nor is it found in the Cambridge autograph. In that manuscript the constant forms are me, wee, yee. There is one place where there is a difference in the spelling of she, and it is just possible that this may not be due to accident. In the first verse of the song in Arcades, the MS. reads:

 

        This, this is shee;

 

and in the third verse:

 

        This, this is she alone.

 

This use of the double vowel is found a few times in Paradise Regain'd: in ii. 259 and iv. 486, 497 where mee begins a line, and in iv. 638 where hee is specially emphatic in the concluding lines of the poem. In Samson Agonistes it is more frequent (e.g. lines 124, 178, 193, 220, 252, 290, 1125). Another word the spelling of which in Paradise Lost will be observed to vary is the pronoun their, which is spelt sometimes thir. The spelling in the Cambridge manuscript is uniformly thire, except once when it is thir; and where their once occurs in the writing of an amanuensis the e is struck through. That the difference is not merely a printer's device to accommodate his line may be seen by a comparison of lines 358 and 363 in the First Book, where the shorter word comes in the shorter line. It is probable that the lighter form of the word was intended to be used when it was quite unemphatic. Contrast, for example, in Book iii. l.59: His own works and their works at once to view with line 113: Thir maker and thir making and thir Fate. But the use is not consistent, and the form thir is not found at all till the 349th line of the First Book. The distinction is kept up in the Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes, but, if possible, with even less consistency. Such passages, however, as Paradise Regain'd, iii. 414-440; Samson Agonistes, 880-890, are certainly spelt upon a method, and it is noticeable that in the choruses the lighter form is universal.

 

Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes were published in 1671, and no further edition was called for in the remaining three years of the poet's lifetime, so that in the case of these poems there are no new readings to record; and the texts were so carefully revised, that only one fault (Paradise Regain'd, ii. 309) was left for correction later. In these and the other poems I have corrected the misprints catalogued in the tables of Errata, and I have silently corrected any other unless it might be mistaken for a various reading, when I have called attention to it in a note. Thus I have not recorded such blunders as Lethian for Lesbian in the 1645 text of Lycidas, line 63; or hallow for hollow in Paradise Lost, vi. 484; but I have noted content for concent, in At a Solemn Musick, line 6.

 

In conclusion I have to offer my sincere thanks to all who have collaborated with me in preparing this Edition; to the Delegates of the Oxford Press for allowing me to undertake it and decorate it with so many facsimiles; to the Controller of the Press for his unfailing courtesy; to the printers and printer's reader for their care and pains. Coming nearer home I cannot but acknowledge the help I have received in looking over proof-sheets from my sister, Mrs. P. A. Barnett, who has ungrudgingly put at the service of this book both time and eyesight. In taking leave of it, I may be permitted to say that it has cost more of both these inestimable treasures than I had anticipated. The last proof reaches me just a year after the first, and the progress of the work has not in the interval been interrupted. In tenui labor et tenuis gloria. Nevertheless I cannot be sorry it was undertaken.

 

H. C. B.

 

YATTENDON RECTORY, November 8, 1899.

 

 

The Stationer To The Reader.

 

It is not any Private respect of gain, Gentle Reader, for the slightest Pamphlet is now adayes more vendible then the Works of learnedest men; but it is the love I have to our own Language that hath made me diligent to collect, and set forth such Peeces in Prose and Vers as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our tongue: and it's the worth of these both English and Latin poems, not the flourish of any prefixed encomions that can invite thee to buy them, though these are not without the highest Commendations and Applause of the learnedst Academicks, both domestic and forrein: And amongst those of our own Countrey, the unparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eaton, Sir Henry Wootton: I know not thy palat how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is; perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that incouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Wallers late choice Peeces, hath once more made me adventure into the World, presenting it with these ever-green, and not to be blasted Laurels. The Authors more peculiar excellency in these studies, was too well known to conceal his Papers, or to keep me from attempting to sollicit them from him. Let the event guide it self which way it will, I shall deserve of the age, by bringing into the Light as true a Birth, as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spencer wrote; whose Poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated, as sweetly excell'd. Reader, if thou art Eagle-eied to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal.

 

Thine to Command

HUMPH. MOSELEY.

Miscellaneous Poems.

 

ON THE MORNING OF CHRISTS NATIVITY.

  Compos'd 1629.

 

  I

 

  This is the Month, and this the happy morn

  Wherin the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,

  Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,

  Our great redemption from above did bring;

  For so the holy sages once did sing,

  That he our deadly forfeit should release,

  And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

 

  II

 

  That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,

  And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,

  Wherwith he wont at Heav'ns high Councel-Table,                      10

  To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

  He laid aside; and here with us to be,

  Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,

  And chose with us a darksom House of mortal Clay.

 

  III

 

  Say Heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

  Afford a present to the Infant God?

  Hast thou no vers, no hymn, or solemn strein,

  To welcom him to this his new abode,

  Now while the Heav'n by the Suns team untrod,

  Hath took no print of the approching light,                          20

  And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

 

  IV

 

  See how from far upon the Eastern rode

  The Star-led Wisards haste with odours sweet,

  O run,  prevent them with thy humble ode,

  And lay it lowly at his blessed feet;

  Have thou the honour first, thy Lord to greet,

  And joyn thy voice unto the Angel Quire,

  From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow'd fire.

  The Hymn.

 

  I

 

  IT was the Winter wilde,

  While the Heav'n-born-childe,                                        30

  All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;

  Nature in aw to him

  Had doff't her gawdy trim,

  With her great Master so to sympathize:

  It was no season then for her

  To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour.

 

  II

 

  Only with speeches fair

  She woo'd the gentle Air

  To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,

  And on her naked shame,                                              40

  Pollute with sinfull blame,

  The Saintly Vail of Maiden white to throw,

  Confounded, that her Makers eyes

  Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

 

  III

 

  But he her fears to cease,

  Sent down the meek-eyd Peace,

  She crown'd with Olive green, came softly sliding

  Down through the turning sphear

  His ready Harbinger,

  With Turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing,                        50

  And waving wide her mirtle wand,

  She strikes a universall Peace through Sea and Land.

 

  IV

 

  No War, or Battails sound

  Was heard the World around,

  The idle spear and shield were high up hung;

  The hooked Chariot stood

  Unstain'd with hostile blood,

  The Trumpet spake not to the armed throng,

  And Kings sate still with awfull eye,

  As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.                     60

 

  V

 

  But peacefull was the night

  Wherin the Prince of light

  His raign of peace upon the earth began:

  The Windes with wonder whist,

  Smoothly the waters kist,

  Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,

  Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

  While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

 

  VI

 

  The Stars with deep amaze

  Stand fit in steadfast gaze,                                         70

  Bending one way their pretious influence,

  And will not take their flight,

  For all the morning light,

  Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;

  But in their glimmering Orbs did glow,

  Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

 

  VII

 

  And though the shady gloom

  Had given day her room,

  The Sun himself with-held his wonted speed,

  And hid his head for shame,                                          80

  As his inferior flame,

  The new enlightened world no more should need;

  He saw a greater Sun appear

  Then his bright Throne, or burning Axletree could bear.

 

  VIII

 

  The Shepherds on the Lawn,

  Or ere the point of dawn,

  Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;

  Full little thought they than,

  That the mighty Pan

  Was kindly com to live with them below;                              90

  Perhaps their loves, or els their sheep,

  Was all that did their silly thoughts so busie keep.

 

  IX

 

  When such Musick sweet

  Their hearts and ears did greet,

  As never was by mortal finger strook,

  Divinely-warbled voice

  Answering the stringed noise,

  As all their souls in blisfull rapture took:

  The Air such pleasure loth to lose,

  With  thousand echo's still prolongs each heav'nly close.           100

 

  X

 

  Nature that heard such  sound

  Beneath  the hollow round

  of Cynthia's seat the Airy region thrilling,

  Now was almost won

  To think her part was don

  And that her raign had here its last fulfilling;

  She knew such harmony alone

  Could hold all Heav'n and Earth in happier union.

 

  XI

 

  At last surrounds their sight

  A globe of circular light,                                          110

  That with long beams the shame faced night arrayed

  The helmed Cherubim

  And sworded Seraphim,

  Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid,

  Harping in loud and solemn quire,

  With unexpressive notes to Heav'ns new-born Heir.

 

  XII

 

  Such Musick (as 'tis said)

  Before was never made,

  But when of old the sons of morning sung,

  While the Creator Great

  His constellations set,                                             120

  And the well-ballanc't world on hinges hung,

  And cast the dark foundations deep,

  And bid the weltring waves their oozy channel keep.

 

  XIII

 

  Ring out ye Crystall sphears,

  Once bless our human ears,

  (If ye have power to touch our senses so)

  And let your silver chime

  Move in melodious time;

  And let the Base of Heav'ns deep Organ blow,                        130

  And with your ninefold harmony

  Make up full consort to th'Angelike symphony.

 

  XIV

 

  For if such holy Song

  Enwrap our fancy long,

  Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,

  And speckl'd vanity

  Will sicken soon and die,

  And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould,

  And Hell it self will pass away

  And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.                 140

 

  XV

 

  Yea Truth, and Justice then

  Will down return to men,

  Th'enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,

  And Mercy set between

  Thron'd in Celestiall sheen,

  With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,

  And Heav'n as at som festivall,

  Will open wide the gates of her high Palace Hall.

 

  XVI

 

  But wisest Fate sayes  no,

  This must not yet be so,                                            150

  The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy,

  That on the bitter cross

  Must redeem our loss;

  So both himself and us to glorifie:

  Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep,

  The Wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

 

  XVII

 

  With such a horrid clang

  As on Mount Sinai rang

  While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake:

  The aged Earth agast                                                160

  With terrour of that blast,

  Shall from the surface to the center shake;

  When at the worlds last session,

  The dreadfull Judge in middle Air shall spread his throne.

 

  XVIII

 

  And then at last  our bliss

  Full and perfect is,

  But now begins; for from this happy day

  Th'old Dragon under ground

  In straiter limits bound,

  Not half so far casts his usurped sway,                             170

  And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,

  Swindges the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail.

 

  XIX

 

  The Oracles are dumm,

  No voice or hideous humm

  Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.

  Apollo from his shrine

  Can no more divine,

  With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving.

  No nightly trance, or breathed spell,

  Inspire's the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell.             180

 

  XX

 

  The lonely mountains o're,

  And the resounding shore,

  A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;

  From haunted spring, and dale

  Edg'd with poplar pale

  The parting Genius is with sighing sent,

  With flowre-inwov'n tresses torn

  The Nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

 

  XXI

 

  In consecrated Earth,

  And on the holy Hearth,                                             190

  The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint,

  In Urns, and Altars round,

  A drear, and dying sound

  Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint;

  And the chill Marble seems to sweat,

  While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.

 

  XXII

 

  Peor, and Baalim,

  Forsake their Temples dim,

  With that twise-batter'd god of Palestine,

  And mooned Ashtaroth,                                               200

  Heav'ns Queen and Mother both,

  Now sits not girt with Tapers holy shine,

  The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,

  In vain the Tyrian Maids their wounded Thamuz mourn.

 

  XXIII

 

  And sullen Moloch fled,

  Hath left in shadows dred,

  His burning Idol all of blackest hue,

  In vain with Cymbals ring,

  They call the grisly king,

  In dismall dance about the furnace Blue;                            210

  And Brutish gods of Nile as fast,

  lsis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis hast.

THE PASSION.

 

  I

 

  ERE-while of Musick, and Ethereal mirth,

  Wherwith the stage of Ayr and Earth did ring,

  And joyous news of heav'nly Infants birth,

  My muse with Angels did divide to sing;

  But headlong joy is ever on the wing,

  In Wintry solstice like the shortn'd light

  Soon swallow'd up in dark and long out-living night.

 

  II

 

  For now to sorrow must I tune my song,

  And set my Harpe to notes of saddest wo,

  Which on our dearest Lord did sease er'e long,

  Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse then so,                  10

  Which he for us did freely undergo.

  Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight

  Of labours huge and hard, too hard for human wight.

 

  III

 

  He sov'ran Priest stooping his regall head

  That dropt with odorous oil down his fair eyes,

  Poor fleshly Tabernacle entered,

  His starry front low-rooft beneath the skies;

  O what a Mask was there, what a disguise!

  Yet more; the stroke of death he must abide,                         20

  Then lies him meekly down fast by his Brethrens side.

 

  IV

 

  These latter scenes confine my roving vers,

  To this Horizon is my Phoebus bound,

  His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce,

  And former sufferings other where are found;

  Loud o're the rest Cremona's Trump doth sound;

  Me softer airs befit, and softer strings

  Of Lute, or Viol still, more apt for mournful things.

 

  Note: 22 latter] latest 1673.

 

  V

 

  Befriend me night best Patroness of grief,

  Over the Pole thy thickest mantle throw,                             30

  And work my flatterd fancy to belief,

  That Heav'n and Earth are colour'd with my wo;

  My sorrows are too dark for day to know:

  The leaves should all be black wheron I write,

  And letters where my tears have washt a wannish white.

 

  VI

 

  See see the Chariot, and those rushing wheels,

  That whirl'd the Prophet up at Chebar flood,

  My spirit som transporting Cherub feels,

  To bear me where the Towers of Salem stood,

  Once glorious Towers, now sunk in guiltles blood;                    40

  There doth my soul in holy vision sit

  In pensive trance, and anguish, and ecstatick fit.

 

  VII

 

  Mine eye hath found that sad Sepulchral rock

  That was the Casket of Heav'ns richest store,

  And here though grief my feeble hands up-lock,

  Yet on the softned Quarry would I score

  My plaining vers as lively as before;

  For sure so well instructed are my tears,

  They would fitly fall in order'd Characters.

 

  VIII

 

  I thence hurried on viewles wing,                                    50

  Take up a weeping on the Mountains wilde,

  The gentle neighbourhood of grove and spring

  Would soon unboosom all their Echoes milde,

  And I (for grief is easily beguild)

  Might think th'infection of my sorrows bound,

  Had got a race of mourners on som pregnant cloud.

 

  Note: This subject the Author finding to be above the yeers he had,

  when he wrote it, and nothing satisfi'd with what was begun,

  left it unfinish'd.

ON TIME.

 

  FLY envious Time, till thou run out thy race,

  Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,

  Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;

  And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,

  Which is no more then what is false and vain,

  And meerly mortal dross;

  So little is our loss,

  So little is thy gain.

  For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,

  And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,                           10

  Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss

  With an individual kiss;

  And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,

  When every thing that is sincerely good

  And perfectly divine,

  With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine

  About the supreme Throne

  Of him, t'whose happy-making sight alone,

  When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall clime,

  Then all this Earthy grosnes quit,                                   20

  Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit,

  Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.

 

  Note: See the appendix for the manuscript version.

UPON THE CIRCUMCISION.

 

  YE flaming Powers, and winged Warriours bright,

  That erst with Musick, and triumphant song

  First heard by happy watchful Shepherds ear,

  So sweetly sung your Joy the Clouds along

  Through the soft silence of the list'ning night;

  Now mourn, and if sad share with us to bear

  Your fiery essence can distill no tear,

  Burn in your sighs, and borrow

  Seas wept from our deep sorrow,

  He who with all Heav'ns heraldry whileare                            10

  Enter'd the world, now bleeds to give us ease;

  Alas, how soon our sin

  Sore doth begin

  His Infancy to sease!

 

  O more exceeding love or law more just?

  Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!

  For we by rightfull doom remediles

  Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above

  High thron'd in secret bliss, for us frail dust

  Emptied his glory, ev'n to nakednes;                                 20

  And that great Cov'nant which we still transgress

  Intirely satisfi'd,

  And the full wrath beside

  Of vengeful Justice bore for our excess,

  And seals obedience first with wounding smart

  This day, but O ere long

  Huge pangs and strong

  Will pierce more neer his heart.

AT A SOLEMN MUSICK.

 

  BLEST pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'ns joy,

  Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Vers,

  Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ

  Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce,

  And to our high-rais'd phantasie present,

  That undisturbed Song of pure content,

  Ay sung before the saphire-colour'd throne

  To him that sits theron

  With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily,

  Where the bright Seraphim in burning row                             10

  Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow,

  And the Cherubick host in thousand quires

  Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires,

  With those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms,

  Hymns devout and holy Psalms

  Singing everlastingly;

  That we on Earth with undiscording voice

  May rightly answer that melodious noise;

  As  once we did, till disproportion'd sin

  Jarr'd against natures chime, and with harsh din                     20

  The fair musick that all creatures made

  To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway'd

  In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood

  In first obedience, and their state of good.

  O may we soon again renew that Song,

  And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long

  To his celestial consort us unite,

  To live with him, and sing in endles morn of light.

 

  Note: 6 content]  Manuscript reads concent as does the Second

  Edition; so that content is probably a misprint.

AN EPITAPH ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER.

 

  THIS rich Marble doth enterr

  The honour'd Wife of Winchester,

  A Vicounts daughter, an Earls heir,

  Besides what her vertues fair

  Added to her noble birth,

  More then she could own from Earth.

  Summers three times eight save one

  She had told, alas too soon,

  After so short time of breath,

  To house with darknes, and with death.                               10

  Yet had the number of her days

  Bin as compleat as was her praise,

  Nature and fate had had no strife

  In giving limit to her life.

  Her high birth, and her graces sweet,

  Quickly found a lover meet;

  The Virgin quire for her request

  The God that sits at marriage feast;

  He at their invoking came

  But with a scarce-wel-lighted flame;                                 20

  And in his Garland as he stood,

  Ye might discern a Cipress bud.

  Once had the early Matrons run

  To greet her of a lovely son,

  And now with second hope she goes,

  And calls Lucina to her throws;

  But whether by mischance or blame

  Atropos for Lucina came;

  And with remorsles cruelty,

  Spoil'd at once both fruit and tree:                                 30

  The haples Babe before his birth

  Had burial, yet not laid in earth,

  And the languisht Mothers Womb

  Was not long a living Tomb.

  So have I seen som tender slip

  Sav'd with care from Winters nip,

  The pride of her carnation train,

  Pluck't up by som unheedy swain,

  Who onely thought to crop the flowr

  New shot up from vernall showr;                                      40

  But the fair blossom hangs the head

  Side-ways as on a dying bed,

  And those Pearls of dew she wears,

  Prove to be presaging tears

  Which the sad morn had let fall

  On her hast'ning funerall.

  Gentle Lady may thy grave

  Peace and quiet ever have;

  After this thy travail sore

  Sweet rest sease thee evermore,                                      50

  That to give the world encrease,

  Shortned hast thy own lives lease;

  Here besides the sorrowing

  That thy noble House doth bring,

  Here be tears of perfect moan

  Weept for thee in Helicon,

  And som Flowers, and som Bays,

  For thy Hears to strew the ways,

  Sent thee from the banks of Came,

  Devoted to thy vertuous name;                                        60

  Whilst thou bright Saint high sit'st in glory,

  Next her much like to thee in story,

  That fair Syrian Shepherdess,

  Who after yeers of barrennes,

  The highly favour'd Joseph bore

  To him that serv'd for her before,

  And at her next birth much like thee,

  Through pangs fled to felicity,

  Far within the boosom bright

  of blazing Majesty and Light,                                        70

  There with thee, new welcom Saint,

  Like fortunes may her soul acquaint,

  With thee there clad in radiant sheen,

  No Marchioness, but now a Queen.

SONG ON MAY MORNING.

 

  Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,

  Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her

  The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws

  The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.

  Hail bounteous May that dost inspire

  Mirth and youth, and warm desire,

  Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing,

  Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.

  Thus we salute thee with our early Song,

  And welcom thee, and wish thee long.                                 10

ON SHAKESPEAR (1630).

 

  WHAT needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,

  The labour of an age in piled Stones,

  Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid

  Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?

  Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,

  What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?

  Thou in our wonder and astonishment

  Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.

  For whilst to th'sharne of slow-endeavouring art,

  Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart                          10

  Hath from the Leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,

  Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,

  Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,

  Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;

  And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,

  That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.

 

  Notes: On Shakespear.  Reprinted 1632 in the second folio

  Shakespeare:

  Title] An epitaph on the admirable dramaticke poet W.

  Shakespeare

  1 needs] neede

  6 weak] dull

  8 live-long] lasting

  10 heart] part

  13 it] her

 

ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER WHO SICKN'D IN THE TIME OF HIS

  VACANCY, BEING FORBID TO GO TO LONDON, BY REASON OF THE

  PLAGUE.

 

  HERE lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt,

  And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt,

  Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one,

  He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.

  'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,

  Death was half glad when he had got him down;

  For he had any time this ten yeers full,

  Dodg'd with him, betwixt Cambridge and the Bull.

  And surely, Death could never have prevail'd,

  Had not his weekly cours of carriage fail'd;                         10

  But lately finding him so long at home,

  And thinking now his journeys end was come,

  And that he had tane up his latest Inne,

  In the kind office of a Chamberlin

  Shew'd him his room where he must lodge that night,

  Pull'd off his Boots, and took away the light:

  If any ask for him, it shall be sed,

  Hobson has supt, and 's newly gon to bed.

ANOTHER ON THE SAME.

 

  HERE lieth one who did most truly prove,

  That he could never die while he could move,

  So hung his destiny never to rot

  While he might still jogg on, and keep his trot,

  Made of sphear-metal, never to decay

  Untill his revolution was at stay.

  Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime

  'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time:

  And like an Engin mov'd with wheel and waight,

  His principles being ceast, he ended strait.                         10

  Rest that gives all men life, gave him his death,

  And too much breathing put him out of breath;

  Nor were it contradiction to affirm

  Too long vacation hastned on his term.

  Meerly to drive the time away he sickn'd,

  Fainted, and died, nor would with Ale be quickn'd;

  Nay, quoth he, on his swooning bed out-stretch'd,

  If I may not carry, sure Ile ne're be fetch'd,

  But vow though the cross Doctors all stood hearers,

  For one Carrier put down to make six bearers.                        20

  Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,

  He di'd for heavines that his Cart went light,

  His leasure told him that his time was com,

  And lack of load, made his life burdensom

  That even to his last breath (ther be that say't)

  As he were prest to death, he cry'd more waight;

  But had his doings lasted as they were,

  He had bin an immortall Carrier.

  Obedient to the Moon he spent his date

  In cours reciprocal, and had his fate                                30

  Linkt to the mutual flowing of the Seas,

  Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase:

  His Letters are deliver'd all and gon,

  Onely remains this superscription.

L'ALLEGRO.

 

  HENCE loathed Melancholy

  Of Cerberus, and blackest midnight born,

  In Stygian Cave forlorn

  'Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy,

  Find out som uncouth cell,

  Where brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings,

  And the night-Raven sings;

  There under Ebon shades and low-brow'd Rocks,

  As ragged as thy Locks,

  In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.                                 10

  But com thou Goddes fair and free,

  In Heav'n ycleap'd Euphrosyne,

  And by men, heart-easing Mirth,

  Whom lovely Venus at a birth

  With two sister Graces more

  To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;

  Or whether (as som Sager sing)

  The frolick Wind that breathes the Spring,

  Zephir with Aurora playing,

  As he met her once a Maying,                                         20

  There on Beds of Violets blew,

  And fresh-blown Roses washt in dew,

  Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,

  So bucksom, blith, and debonair.

  Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee

  Jest and youthful Jollity,

  Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,

  Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles,

  Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,

  And love to live in dimple sleek;                                    30

  Sport that wrincled Care derides,

  And Laughter holding both his sides.

  Com, and trip it as ye go

  On the light fantastick toe,

  And in thy right hand lead with thee,

  The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;

  And if I give thee honour due,

  Mirth, admit me of thy crue

  To live with her, and live with thee,

  In unreproved pleasures free;                                        40

  To hear the Lark begin his flight,

  And singing startle the dull night,

  From his watch-towre in the skies,

  Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

  Then to com in spight of sorrow,

  And at my window bid good morrow,

  Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine,

  Or the twisted Eglantine.

  While the Cock with lively din,

  Scatters the rear of darknes thin,                                   50

  And to the stack, or the Barn dore,

  Stoutly struts his Dames before,

  Oft list'ning how the Hounds and horn

  Chearly rouse the slumbring morn,

  From the side of som Hoar Hill,

  Through the high wood echoing shrill.

  Som time walking not unseen

  By Hedge-row Elms, on Hillocks green,

  Right against the Eastern gate,

  Wher the great Sun begins his state,                                 60

  Rob'd in flames, and Amber light,

  The clouds in thousand Liveries dight.

  While the Plowman neer at hand,

  Whistles ore the Furrow'd Land,

  And the Milkmaid singeth blithe,

  And the Mower whets his sithe,

  And every Shepherd tells his tale

  Under the Hawthorn in the dale.

  Streit mine eye hath caught new pleasures

  Whilst the Lantskip round it measures,                               70

  Russet Lawns, and Fallows Gray,

  Where the nibling flocks do stray,

  Mountains on whose barren brest

  The labouring clouds do often rest:

  Meadows trim with Daisies pide,

  Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide.

  Towers, and Battlements it sees

  Boosom'd high in tufted Trees,

  Wher perhaps som beauty lies,

  The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes.                                   80

  Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes,

  From betwixt two aged Okes,

  Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,

  Are at their savory dinner set

  Of Hearbs, and other Country Messes,

  Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;

  And then in haste her Bowre she leaves,

  With Thestylis to bind the Sheaves;

  Or if the earlier season lead

  To the tann'd Haycock in the Mead,                                   90

  Som times with secure delight

  The up-land Hamlets will invite,

  When the merry Bells ring round,

  And the jocond rebecks sound

  To many a youth, and many a maid,

  Dancing in the Chequer'd shade;

  And young and old com forth to play

  On a Sunshine Holyday,

  Till the live-long day-light fail,

  Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale,                                    100

  With stories told of many a feat,

  How Faery Mab the junkets eat,

  She was pincht, and pull'd she sed,

  And he by Friars Lanthorn led

  Tells how the drudging Goblin swet,

  To ern his Cream-bowle duly set,

  When in one night, ere glimps of morn,

  His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn

  That ten day-labourers could not end,

  Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend.                                 110

  And stretch'd out all the Chimney's length,

  Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

  And Crop-full out of dores he flings,

  Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings.

  Thus don the Tales, to bed they creep,

  By whispering Windes soon lull'd asleep.

  Towred Cities please us then,

  And the busie humm of men,

  Where throngs of Knights and Barons bold,

  In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold,                               120

  With store of Ladies, whose bright eies

  Rain influence, and judge the prise

  Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend

  To win her Grace, whom all commend.

  There let Hymen oft appear

  In Saffron robe, with Taper clear,

  And pomp, and feast, and revelry,

  With mask, and antique Pageantry,

  Such sights as youthfull Poets dream

  On Summer eeves by haunted stream.                                  130

  Then to the well-trod stage anon,

  If Jonsons learned Sock be on,

  Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe,

  Warble his native Wood-notes wilde,

  And ever against eating Cares,

  Lap me in soft Lydian Aires,

  Married to immortal verse

  Such as the meeting soul may pierce

  In notes, with many a winding bout

  Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out,                                 140

  With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,

  The melting voice through mazes running;

  Untwisting all the chains that ty

  The hidden soul of harmony.

  That Orpheus self may heave his head

  From golden slumber on a bed

  Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear

  Such streins as would have won the ear

  Of Pluto, to have quite set free

  His half regain'd Eurydice.                                         150

  These delights, if thou canst give,

  Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

 

  Notes:

  33 Ye] You 1673

  104 And he by] And by the 1673

IL PENSEROSO.

 

  Hence vain deluding joyes,

  The brood of folly without father bred,

  How little you bested,

  Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes;

  Dwell in som idle brain

  And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,

  As thick and numberless

  As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams,

  Or likest hovering dreams

  The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train.                             10

  But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy,

  Hail divinest Melancholy

  Whose Saintly visage is too bright

  To hit the Sense of human sight;

  And therefore to our weaker view,

  Ore laid with black staid Wisdoms hue.

  Black, but such as in esteem,

  Prince Memnons sister might beseem,

  Or that Starr'd Ethiope Queen that strove

  To set her beauties praise above                                     20

  The Sea Nymphs, and their powers offended.

  Yet thou art higher far descended,

  Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore,

  To solitary Saturn bore;

  His daughter she (in Saturns raign,

  Such mixture was not held a stain)

  Oft in glimmering Bowres, and glades

  He met her, and in secret shades

  Of woody Ida's inmost grove,

  While yet there was no fear of Jove.                                 30

  Com pensive Nun, devout and pure,

  Sober, stedfast, and demure,

  All in a robe of darkest grain,

  Flowing with majestick train,

  And sable stole of Cipres Lawn,

  Over thy decent shoulders drawn.

  Com, but keep thy wonted state,

  With eev'n step, and musing gate,

  And looks commercing with the skies,

  Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes:                                 40

  There held in holy passion still,

  Forget thy self to Marble, till

  With a sad Leaden downward cast,

  Thou fix them on the earth as fast.

  And joyn with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,

  Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,

  And hears the Muses in a ring,

  Ay round about Joves Altar sing.

  And adde to these retired Leasure,

  That in trim Gardens takes his pleasure;                             50

  But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,

  Him that yon soars on golden wing,

  Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,

  The Cherub Contemplation,

  And the mute Silence hist along,

  'Less Philomel will daign a Song,

  In her sweetest, saddest plight,

  Smoothing the rugged brow of night,

  While Cynthia checks her Dragon yoke,

  Gently o're th'accustom'd Oke;                                       60

  Sweet Bird that shunn'st the noise of folly

  Most musical!, most melancholy!

  Thee Chauntress oft the Woods among

  I woo to hear thy eeven-Song;

  And missing thee, I walk unseen

  On the dry smooth-shaven Green,

  To behold the wandring Moon,

  Riding neer her highest noon,

  Like one that had bin led astray

  Through the Heav'ns wide pathles way;                                70

  And oft, as if her head she bow'd,

  Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

  Oft on a Plat of rising ground,

  I hear the far-off Curfeu sound,

  Over som wide-water'd shoar,

  Swinging slow with sullen roar;

  Or if the Ayr will not permit,

  Som still removed place will fit,

  Where glowing Embers through the room

  Teach light to counterfeit a gloom                                   80

  Far from all resort of mirth,

  Save the Cricket on the hearth,

  Or the Belmans drowsie charm,

  To bless the dores from nightly harm:

  Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,

  Be seen in som high lonely Towr,

  Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,

  With thrice great Hermes, or unsphear

  The spirit of Plato to unfold

  What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold                               90

  The immortal mind that hath forsook

  Her mansion in this fleshly nook:

  And of those Daemons that are found

  In fire, air, flood, or under ground,

  Whose power hath a true consent

  With planet or with Element.

  Som time let Gorgeous Tragedy

  In Scepter'd Pall com sweeping by,

  Presenting Thebs, or Pelops line,

  Or the tale of Troy divine.                                         100

  Or what (though rare) of later age,

  Ennobled hath the Buskind stage.

  But, O sad Virgin, that thy power

  Might raise Musaeus from his bower,

  Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing

  Such notes as warbled to the string,

  Drew Iron tears down Pluto's cheek,

  And made Hell grant what Love did seek.

  Or call up him that left half told

  The story of Cambuscan bold,                                        110

  Of Camball, and of Algarsife,

  And who had Canace to wife,

  That own'd the vertuous Ring and Glass,

  And of the wondrous Hors of Brass,

  On which the Tartar King did ride;

  And if ought els, great Bards beside,

  In sage and solemn tunes have sung,

  Of Turneys and of Trophies hung;

  Of Forests, and inchantments drear,

  Where more is meant then meets the ear.                             120

  Thus night oft see me in thy pale career,

  Till civil-suited Morn appeer,

  Not trickt and frounc't as she was wont,

  With the Attick Boy to hunt,

  But Cherchef't in a comly Cloud,

  While rocking Winds are Piping loud,

  Or usher'd with a shower still,

  When the gust hath blown his fill,

  Ending on the russling Leaves,

  With minute drops from off the Eaves.                               130

  And when the Sun begins to fling

  His flaring beams, me Goddes bring

  To arched walks of twilight groves,

  And shadows brown that Sylvan loves

  Of Pine, or monumental Oake,

  Where the rude Ax with heaved stroke,

  Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt,

  Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt.

  There in close covert by som Brook,

  Where no profaner eye may look,                                     140

  Hide me from Day's garish eie,

  While the Bee with Honied thie,

  That at her flowry work doth sing,

  And the Waters murmuring

  With such consort as they keep,

  Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep;

  And let som strange mysterious dream,

  Wave at his Wings in Airy stream,

  Of lively portrature display'd,

  Softly on my eye-lids laid.                                         150

  And as I wake, sweet musick breath

  Above, about, or underneath,

  Sent by som spirit to mortals good,

  Or th'unseen Genius of the Wood.

  But let my due feet never fail,

  To walk the studious Cloysters pale,

  And love the high embowed Roof

  With antick Pillars massy proof,

  And storied Windows richly dight,

  Casting a dimm religious light.                                     160

  There let the pealing Organ blow,

  To the full voic'd Quire below,

  In Service high, and Anthems cleer,

  As may with sweetnes, through mine ear,

  Dissolve me into extasies,

  And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes.

  And may at last my weary age

  Find out the peacefull hermitage,

  The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell,

  Where I may sit and rightly spell                                   170

  Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew,

  And every Herb that sips the dew;

  Till old  experience do attain

  To somthing like prophetic strain.

  These pleasures Melancholy give,

  And I with thee will choose to live.

SONNETS.

 

  I

 

  O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray

  Warbl'st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,

  Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,

  While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,

  Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,

  First heard before the shallow Cuccoo's bill

  Portend success in love; O if Jove's will

  Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,

  Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate

  Foretell my hopeles doom in som Grove ny:                            10

  As thou from yeer to yeer hast sung too late

  For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,

  Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,

  Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

 

  II

 

  Donna leggiadra il cui bel nome honora

  L'herbosa val di Rheno, e il nobil varco,

  Ben e colui d'ogni valore scarco

  Qual tuo spirto gentil non innamora,

  Che dolcemente mostra si di fuora

  De suoi atti soavi giamai parco,

  E i don', che son d'amor saette ed arco,

  La onde l' alta tua virtu s'infiora.

  Quando tu vaga parli, O lieta canti

  Che mover possa duro alpestre legno,                                 10

  Guardi ciascun a gli occhi ed a gli orecchi

  L'entrata, chi di te si truova indegno;

  Gratia sola di su gli vaglia, inanti

  Che'l disio amoroso al cuor s'invecchi.

 

  III

 

  Qual in colle aspro, al imbrunir di sera

  L'avezza giovinetta pastorella

  Va bagnando l'herbetta strana e bella

  Che mal si spande a disusata spera

  Fuor di sua natia alma primavera,

  Cosi Amor meco insu la lingua snella

  Desta il fior novo di strania favella,

  Mentre io di te, vezzosamente altera,

  Canto, dal mio buon popol non inteso

  E'l bel Tamigi cangio col bel Arno                                   10

  Amor lo volse, ed io a l'altrui peso

  Seppi ch' Amor cosa mai volse indarno.

  Deh!  foss' il mio cuor lento e'l duro seno

  A chi pianta dal ciel si buon terreno.

 

  Canzone.

 

  Ridonsi donne e giovani amorosi

  M' occostandosi attorno, e perche scrivi,

  Perche tu scrivi in lingua ignota e strana

  Verseggiando d'amor, e come t'osi?

  Dinne, se la tua speme sia mai vana

  E de pensieri lo miglior t' arrivi;

  Cosi mi van burlando, altri rivi

  Altri lidi t' aspettan, & altre onde

  Nelle cui verdi sponde

  Spuntati ad hor, ad hor a la tua chioma                              10

  L'immortal guiderdon d 'eterne frondi

  Perche alle spalle tue soverchia soma?

  Canzon dirotti, e tu per me rispondi

  Dice mia Donna, e'l suo dir, e il mio cuore

  Questa e lingua di cui si vanta Amore.

 

  IV

 

  Diodati, e te'l diro con maraviglia,

  Quel ritroso io ch'amor spreggiar solea

  E de suoi lacci spesso mi ridea

  Gia caddi, ov'huom dabben talhor s'impiglia.

  Ne treccie d'oro, ne guancia vermiglia

  M' abbaglian si, ma sotto nova idea

  Pellegrina bellezza che'l cuor bea,

  Portamenti alti honesti, e nelle ciglia

  Quel sereno fulgor d' amabil nero,

  Parole adorne di lingua piu d'una,                                   10

  E'l cantar che di mezzo l'hemispero

  Traviar ben puo la faticosa Luna,

  E degil occhi suoi auventa si gran fuoco

  Che l 'incerar gli oreechi mi fia poco.

 

  V

 

  Per certo i bei vostr'occhi Donna mia

  Esser non puo che non fian lo mio sole

  Si mi percuoton forte, come ci suole

  Per l'arene di Libia chi s'invia,

  Mentre un caldo vapor (ne senti pria)

  Da quel lato si spinge ove mi duole,

  Che forsi amanti nelle lor parole

  Chiaman sospir; io non so che si sia:

  Parte rinchiusa, e turbida si cela

  Scosso mi il petto, e poi n'uscendo poco                             10

  Quivi d' attorno o s'agghiaccia, o s'ingiela;

  Ma quanto a gli occhi giunge a trovar loco

  Tutte le notti a me suol far piovose

  Finche mia Alba rivien colma di rose.

 

  VI

 

  Giovane piano, e semplicetto amante

  Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,

  Madonna a voi del mio cuor l'humil dono

  Faro divoto; io certo a prove tante

  L'hebbi fedele, intrepido, costante,

  De pensieri leggiadro, accorto, e buono;

  Quando rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il tuono,

  S 'arma di se, e d' intero diamante,

  Tanto del forse, e d' invidia sicuro,

  Di timori, e speranze al popol use                                   10

  Quanto d'ingegno, e d' alto valor vago,

  E di cetra sonora, e delle muse:

  Sol troverete in tal parte men duro

  Ove amor mise l 'insanabil ago.

 

  VII

  How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth,

  Stoln on his wing my three and twentith yeer!

  My hasting dayes flie on with full career,

  But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th,

  Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,

  That I to manhood am arriv'd so near,

  And inward ripenes doth much less appear,

  That som more timely-happy spirits indu'th.

  Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow.

  It shall be still in strictest measure eev'n,                        10

  To that same lot, however mean, or high,

  Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n;

  All is, if I have grace to use it so,

  As ever in my great task Masters eye.

  VIII

 

  Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,

  Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease,

  If ever deed of honour did thee please,

  Guard them, and him within protect from harms,

  He can requite thee, for he knows the charms

  That call Fame on such gentle acts as these,

  And he can spred thy Name o're Lands and Seas,

  What ever clime the Suns bright circle warms.

  Lift not thy spear against the Muses Bowre,

  The great Emathian Conqueror bid spare                               10

  The house of Pindarus, when Temple and Towre

  Went to the ground: And the repeated air

  Of sad Electra's Poet had the power

  To save th' Athenian Walls from ruine bare.

 

  Notes:

  Camb. autograph supplies title, When the assault was intended

  to the city.

  3 If deed of honour did thee ever please,  1673.

 

  IX

 

  Lady that in the prime of earliest youth,

  Wisely hath shun'd the broad way and the green,

  And with those few art eminently seen,

  That labour up the Hill of heav'nly Truth,

  The better part with Mary and with Ruth,

  Chosen thou hast, and they that overween,

  And at thy growing vertues fret their spleen,

  No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.

  Thy care is fixt and zealously attends

  To fill thy odorous Lamp with deeds of light,

  And Hope that reaps not shame.  Therefore be sure

  Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastfull friends

  Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night,

  Hast gain'd thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure.

 

  Note: 5 with Ruth] the Ruth  1645.

 

  X

 

  Daughter to that good Earl, once President

  Of Englands Counsel, and her Treasury,

  Who liv'd in both, unstain'd with gold or fee,

  And left them both, more in himself content,

  Till the sad breaking of that Parlament

  Broke him, as that dishonest victory

  At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty

  Kil'd with report that Old man eloquent,

  Though later born, then to have known the dayes

  Wherin your Father flourisht, yet by you                             10

  Madam, me thinks I see him living yet;

  So well your words his noble vertues praise,

  That all both judge you to relate them true,

  And to possess them, Honour'd Margaret.

 

  Note: Camb. autograph supplies title, To the Lady Margaret

  Ley.

ARCADES.

 

  Part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of

  Darby at Harefield, by som Noble persons of her Family, who

  appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat

  of State with this Song.

 

  I. SONG.

 

  LOOK Nymphs, and Shepherds look,

  What sudden blaze of majesty

  Is that which we from hence descry

  Too divine to be mistook:

  This this is she

  To whom our vows and wishes bend,

  Heer our solemn search hath end.

 

  Fame that her high worth to raise,

  Seem'd erst so lavish and profuse,

  We may justly now accuse                                             10

  Of detraction from her praise,

  Less then half we find exprest,

  Envy bid conceal the rest.

 

  Mark what radiant state she spreds,

  In circle round her shining throne,

  Shooting her beams like silver threds,

  This this is she alone,

  Sitting like a Goddes bright,

  In the center of her light.

  Might she the wise Latona be,                                        20

  Or the towred Cybele,

  Mother of a hunderd gods;

  Juno dare's not give her odds;

  Who had thought this clime had held

  A deity so unparalel'd?

 

  As they com forward, the genius of the Wood appears, and

  turning toward them, speaks.

 

  GEN. Stay gentle Swains, for though in this disguise,

  I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes,

  Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung

  Of that renowned flood, so often sung,

  Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluse,                                 30

  Stole under Seas to meet his Arethuse;

  And ye the breathing Roses of the Wood,

  Fair silver-buskind Nymphs as great and good,

  I know this quest of yours, and free intent

  Was all in honour and devotion ment

  To the great Mistres of yon princely shrine,

  Whom with low reverence I adore as mine,

  And with all helpful service will comply

  To further this nights glad solemnity;

  And lead ye where ye may more neer behold                            40

  What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold;

  Which I full oft amidst these shades alone

  Have sate to wonder at, and gaze upon:

  For know by lot from Jove I am the powr

  Of this fair wood, and live in Oak'n bowr,

  To nurse the Saplings tall, and curl the grove

  With Ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.

  And all my Plants I save from nightly ill,

  Of noisom winds, and blasting vapours chill.

  And from the Boughs brush off the evil dew,                          50

  And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blew,

  Or what the cross dire-looking Planet smites,

  Or hurtfull Worm with canker'd venom bites.

  When Eev'ning gray doth rise, I fetch my round

  Over the mount, and all this hallow'd ground,

  And early ere the odorous breath of morn

  Awakes the slumbring leaves, or tasseld horn

  Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,

  Number my ranks, and visit every sprout

  With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless,                      60

  But els in deep of night when drowsines

  Hath lockt up mortal sense, then listen I

  To the celestial Sirens harmony,

  That sit upon the nine enfolded Sphears,

  And sing to those that hold the vital shears,

  And turn the Adamantine spindle round,

  On which the fate of gods and men is wound.

  Such sweet compulsion doth in musick ly,

  To lull the daughters of Necessity,

  And keep unsteddy Nature to her law,                                 70

  And the low world in measur'd motion draw

  After the heavenly tune, which none can hear

  Of human mould with grosse unpurged ear;

  And yet such musick worthiest were to blaze

  The peerles height of her immortal praise,

  Whose lustre leads us, and for her most fit,

  If my inferior hand or voice could hit

  Inimitable sounds, yet as we go,

  What ere the skill of lesser gods can show,

  I will assay, her worth to celebrate,                                80

  And so attend ye toward her glittering state;

  Where ye may all that are of noble stemm

  Approach, and kiss her sacred vestures hemm.

  2. SONG.

 

  O're the smooth enameld green

  Where no print of step hath been,

  Follow me as I sing,

  And touch the warbled string.

  Under the shady roof

  Of branching Elm Star-proof,

  Follow me,                                                           90

  I will bring you where she sits

  Clad in splendor as befits

  Her deity.

  Such a rural Queen

  All Arcadia hath not seen.

  3. SONG.

 

  Nymphs and Shepherds dance no more

  By sandy Ladons Lillied banks.

  On old Lycaeus or Cyllene hoar,

  Trip no more in twilight ranks,

  Though Erynanth your loss deplore,                                  100

  A better soyl shall give ye thanks.

  From the stony Maenalus,

  Bring your Flocks, and live with us,

  Here ye shall have greater grace,

  To serve the Lady of this place.

  Though Syrinx your Pans Mistres were,

  Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.

  Such a rural Queen

  All Arcadia hath not seen.

 

  Note: 22 hunderd]  Milton's own spelling here is hundred.  But in

  the Errata to Paradise Lost (i. 760) he corrects hundred to hunderd.

LYCIDAS.

 

  In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend,

  unfortunatly drown'd in his Passage from Chester on the Irish

  Seas, 1637.  And by occasion foretels the ruine of our

  corrupted Clergy then in their height.

 

  YET once more, O ye Laurels, and once more

  Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,

  I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,

  And with forc'd fingers rude,

  Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

  Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,

  Compels me to disturb your season due:

  For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime

  Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:

  Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew

  Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.                          10

  He must not flote upon his watry bear

  Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,

  Without the meed of som melodious tear.

 

  Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,

  That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,

  Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.

  Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,

  So may som gentle Muse

  With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn,                             20

  And as he passes turn,

  And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd.

  For we were nurst upon the self-same hill,

  Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.

 

  Together both, ere the high Lawns appear'd

  Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,

  We drove a field and both together heard

  What time the Gray-fly winds her sultry horn,

  Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

  Oft till the Star that rose, at Ev'ning, bright                      30

  Toward Heav'ns descent had slop'd his westering wheel.

  Mean while the Rural ditties were not mute,

  Temper'd to th'Oaten Flute;

  Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel,

  From the glad sound would not be absent long,

  And old Damoetas lov'd to hear our song.

 

  But O the heavy change, now thou art gon,

  Now thou art gon, and never must return!

  Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves,

  With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown,                     40

  And all their echoes mourn.

  The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green,

  Shall now no more be seen,

  Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes.

  As killing as the Canker to the Rose,

  Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze,

  Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear,

  When first the White thorn blows;

  Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear.

 

  Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep                       50

  Clos'd o're the head of your lov'd Lycidas?

  For neither were ye playing on the steep,

  Where your old Bards, the famous Druids ly,

  Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,

  Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream:

  Ay me, I fondly dream!

  Had ye bin there—for what could that have don?

  What could the Muse her self that Orpheus bore,

  The Muse her self, for her inchanting son

  Whom Universal nature did lament,                                    60

  When by the rout that made the hideous roar,

  His goary visage down the stream was sent,

  Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.

 

  Alas! What boots it with uncessant care

  To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,

  And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,

  Were it not better don as others use,

  To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

  Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?

  Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise                    70

  (That last infirmity of Noble mind)

  To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes:

  But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find,

  And think to burst out into sudden blaze.

  Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears,

  And slits the thin spun life.  But not the praise,

  Phoebus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;

  Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

  Nor in the glistering foil

  Set off to th'world, nor in broad rumour lies,                       80

  But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes,

  And perfet witnes of all judging Jove;

  As he pronounces lastly on each deed,

  Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.

 

  O Fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd floud,

  Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocall reeds,

  That strain I heard was of a higher mood:

  But now my Oate proceeds,

  And listens to the Herald of the Sea

  That came in Neptune's plea,                                         90

  He ask'd the Waves, and ask'd the Fellon winds,

  What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?

  And question'd every gust of rugged wings

  That blows from off each beaked Promontory,

  They knew not of his story,

  And sage Hippotades their answer brings,

  That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd,

  The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,

  Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.

  It was that fatall and perfidious Bark                              100

  Built in th'eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,

  That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

 

  Next Camus, reverend Sire, went footing slow,

  His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge,

  Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge

  Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.

  Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?

  Last came, and last did go,

  The Pilot of the Galilean lake,

  Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain,                            110

  (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)

  He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake,

  How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain,

  Anow of such as for their bellies sake,

  Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?

  Of other care they little reck'ning make,

  Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,

  And shove away the worthy bidden guest.

  Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold

  A Sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought els the least                   120

  That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!

  What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;

  And when they list, their lean and flashy songs

  Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,

  The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,

  But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

  Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:

  Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw

  Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,

  But that two-handed engine at the door,                             130

  Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

 

  Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,

  That shrunk thy streams; Return Sicilian Muse,

  And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast

  Their Bels, and Flourets of a thousand hues.

  Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use,

  Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,

  On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks,

  Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes,

  That on the green terf suck the honied showres,                     140

  And purple all the ground with vernal flowres.

  Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies.

  The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Gessamine,

  The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat,

  The glowing Violet.

  The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine.

  With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed,

  And every flower that sad embroidery wears:

  Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,

  Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,                            150

  And strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies.

  For so to interpose a little ease,

  Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.

  Ah me! Whilst thee the shores, and sounding Seas

  Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurl'd

  Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides.

  Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide

  Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;

  Or whether thou to our moist vows deny'd,

  Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,                              160

  Where the great vision of the guarded Mount

  Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;

  Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth.

  And, O ye Dolphins, waft the haples youth.

 

  Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,

  For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,

  Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,

  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,                    170

  Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:

  So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

  Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves

  Where other groves, and other streams along,

  With Nectar pure his oozy Lock's he laves,

  And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,

  In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.

  There entertain him all the Saints above,

  In solemn troops, and sweet Societies

  That sing, and singing in their glory move,                         180

  And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.

  Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more;

  Hence forth thou art the Genius of the shore,

  In thy large recompense and shalt be good

  To all that wander in that perilous flood.

 

  Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th'Okes and rills,

  While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,

  He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,

  With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:

  And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,                    190

  And now was dropt into the Western bay;

  At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:

  To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

 

  Notes:

   64  uncessant] Manuscript reads incessant, so that uncessant

  is probably a misprint; though that spelling is retained in the Second

  Edition.

   82  perfet] So in Comus, line 203. In both these places

  the manuscript has perfect, as elsewhere where the word occurs. In

  the Solemn Music, line 23, where the First Edition reads perfect,

  the second reads perfet.

  149 Amaranthus] Amarantus

 

  This Poem, which receiv'd its first occasion of Birth from your

  Self, and others of your Noble Family, and much honour from

  your own Person in the performance, now returns again to

  make a finall Dedication of it self to you.  Although not openly

  acknowledg'd by the Author, yet it is a legitimate off-spring, so

  lovely, and so much desired, that the often Copying of it hath

  tired my Pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought

  me to a necessity of producing it to the publike view; and now

  to offer it up in all rightfull devotion to those fair Hopes, and

  rare endowments of your much-promising Youth, which give a

  full assurance, to all that know you, of a future excellence.  Live

  sweet Lord to be the honour of your Name, and receive this as

  your own, from the hands of him, who hath by many favours

  been long oblig'd to your most honour'd Parents, and as in this

  representation your attendant Thyrsis, so now in all reall

  expression

 

  Your faithfull, and most humble Servant

 

  H. LAWES.

  Note: Dedication to Vicount Bracly: Omitted in 1673.

The Copy of a Letter writt'n by Sir HENRY WOOTTON, to

  the Author, upon the following Poem.

  From the Colledge, this 13. of April, 1638.

 

  SIR,

  It was a special favour, when you lately bestowed upon me

  here, the first taste of your acquaintance, though no longer then

  to make me know that I wanted more time to value it, and  to

  enjoy it rightly; and in truth, if  I could then have imagined your

  farther stay in these parts, which I understood afterwards by

  Mr. H. I would have been bold in our vulgar phrase to mend my

  draught (for you left me with an extreme thirst) and to have

  begged your conversation again, joyntly with your said learned

  Friend, at a poor meal or two, that we might have banded

  together som good Authors of the antient time: Among which, I

  observed you to have been familiar.

 

  Since your going, you have charg'd me with new Obligations,

  both for a very kinde Letter from you dated the sixth of this

  Month, and for a dainty peece of entertainment which came

  therwith.  Wherin I should much commend the Tragical part, if

  the Lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in

  your Songs and Odes, wherunto I must plainly confess to have

  seen yet nothing parallel in our Language: Ipsa mollities.

  But I must not omit to tell you, that I now onely owe you

  thanks for intimating unto me (how modestly soever) the true

  Artificer. For the work it self I had view'd som good while

  before, with singular delight, having receiv'd it from our

  common Friend Mr. R. in the very close of the late R's Poems,

  Printed at Oxford, wherunto it was added (as I now suppose)

  that the Accessory might help out the Principal, according to

  the Art of Stationers, and to leave the Reader Con la bocca

  dolce.

 

  Now Sir, concerning your travels, wherin I may challenge a

  little more priviledge of Discours with you; I suppose you will

  not blanch Paris in your way; therfore I have been bold to

  trouble you with a few lines to Mr. M. B. whom you shall easily

  find attending the young Lord S. as his Governour, and you

  may surely receive from him good directions for the shaping of

  your farther journey into Italy, where he did reside by my choice

  som time for the King, after mine own recess from Venice.

 

  I should think that your best Line will be thorow the whole

  length of France to Marseilles, and thence by Sea to Genoa,

  whence the passage into Tuscany is as Diurnal as a Gravesend

  Barge: I hasten as you do to Florence, or Siena, the rather tell

  you a short story from the interest you have given me in your

  safety.

 

  At Siena I was tabled in the House of one Alberto Scipioni, an

  old Roman Courtier in dangerous times, having bin Steward to

  the Duca di Pagliano, who with all his Family were strangled

  save this onely man that escap'd by foresight of the Tempest:

  With him I  had often much chat of those affairs; Into which he

  took pleasure to look back from his Native Harbour: and at my

  departure toward Rome (which had been the center of    his

  experience) I had wonn confidence enough to beg his advice,

  how I might carry my self securely there, without offence of

  mine own conscience.  Signor Arrigo mio (sayes he) I pensieri

  stretti, & il viso sciolto, will go safely over the whole World: Of

  which Delphian Oracle (for so I have found it) your judgement

  doth need no commentary; and therfore (Sir) I will commit you

  with it to the best of all securities, Gods dear love, remaining

 

  Your Friend as much at command as any of longer date,

 

  Henry Wootton.

 

  Postscript.

 

  SIR, I have expressly sent this my Foot-boy to prevent your

  departure without som acknowledgement from me of the

  receipt of your obliging Letter, having myself through som

  busines, I know not how, neglected the ordinary conveyance.

  In any part where I shall understand you fixed, I shall be glad,

  and diligent to entertain you with Home-Novelties; even for

  som fomentation of our friendship, too soon interrupted in the

  Cradle.

 

  Note: Letter from Sir Henry Wootton: Omitted in 1673

A MASK PRESENTED At LUDLOW-Castle, 1634. &c.

 

  The Persons.

 

  The attendant Spirit afterwards in the habit of Thyrsis.

  Comus with his crew.

  The Lady.

  1. Brother.

  2. Brother.

  Sabrina the Nymph.

 

  The cheif persons which presented, were

  The Lord Bracly.

  Mr. Thomas Egerton his Brother,

  The Lady Alice Egerton.

  The first Scene discovers a wilde Wood.

 

  The attendant Spirit descends or enters.

 

  Spir: Before the starry threshold of Joves Court

  My mansion is, where those immortal shapes

  Of bright aereal Spirits live insphear'd

  In Regions milde of calm and serene Ayr,

  Above the smoak and stirr of this dim spot,

  Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care

  Confin'd, and pester'd in this pin-fold here,

  Strive to keep up a frail, and Feaverish being

  Unmindfull of the crown that Vertue gives

  After this mortal change, to her true Servants                       10

  Amongst the enthron'd gods on Sainted seats.

  Yet som there he that by due steps aspire

  To lay their just hands on that Golden Key

  That ope's the Palace of Eternity:

  To such my errand is, and but for such,

  I would not soil these pure Ambrosial weeds,

  With the rank vapours of this Sin-worn mould.

  But to my task.  Neptune besides the sway

  Of every salt Flood, and each ebbing Stream,

  Took in by lot 'twixt high, and neather Jove,                        20

  Imperial rule of all the Sea-girt Iles

  That like to rich, and various gemms inlay

  The unadorned boosom of the Deep,

  Which he to grace his tributary gods

  By course commits to severall government,

  And gives them leave to wear their Saphire crowns,

  And weild their little tridents, but this Ile

  The greatest, and the best of all the main

  He quarters to his blu-hair'd deities,

  And all this tract that fronts the falling Sun                       30

  A noble Peer of mickle trust, and power

  Has in his charge, with temper'd awe to guide

  An old, and haughty Nation proud in Arms:

  Where his fair off-spring nurs't in Princely lore,

  Are coming to attend their Fathers state,

  And new-entrusted Scepter, but their way

  Lies through the perplex't paths of this drear Wood,

  The nodding horror of whose shady brows

  Threats the forlorn and wandring Passinger.

  And here their tender age might suffer perill,                       40

  But that by quick command from Soveran Jove

  I was dispatcht for their defence, and guard;

  And listen why, for I will tell ye now

  What never yet was heard in Tale or Song

  From old, or modern Bard in Hall, or Bowr.

  Bacchus that first from out the purple Grape,

  Crush't the sweet poyson of mis-used Wine

  After the Tuscan Mariners transform'd

  Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,

  On Circes Hand fell (who knows not Circe                             50

  The daughter of the Sun?  Whose charmed Cup

  Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,

  And downward fell into a groveling Swine)

  This Nymph that gaz'd upon his clustring locks,

  With Ivy berries wreath'd, and his blithe youth,

  Had by him, ere he parted thence, a Son

  Much like his Father, but his Mother more,

  Whom therfore she brought up and Comus named,

  Who ripe, and frolick of his full grown age,

  Roving the Celtic, and Iberian fields,                               60

  At last betakes him to this ominous Wood,

  And in thick shelter of black shades imbowr'd,

  Excells his Mother at her mighty Art,

  Offring to every weary Travailer,

  His orient liquor in a Crystal Glasse,

  To quench the drouth of Phoebus, which as they taste

  (For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst )

  Soon as the Potion works,  their human count'nance,

  Th' express resemblance of the gods, is chang'd

  Into som brutish form of Woolf, or Bear,                             70

  Or Ounce, or Tiger, Hog, or bearded Goat,

  All other parts remaining as they were,

  And they, so perfect is their misery,

  Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,

  But boast themselves more comely then before

  And all their friends, and native home forget

  To roule with pleasure in a sensual stie.

  Therfore when any favour'd of high Jove,

  Chances to pass through this adventrous glade,

  Swift as the Sparkle of a glancing Star,                             80

  I shoot from Heav'n to give him safe convoy,

  As now I do: But first I must put off

  These my skie robes spun out of Iris Wooff,

  And take the Weeds and likenes of a Swain,

  That to the service of this house belongs,

  Who with his soft Pipe, and smooth-dittied Song,

  Well knows to still the wilde winds when they roar,

  And hush the waving Woods, nor of lesse faith,

  And in this office of his Mountain watch,

  Likeliest, and neerest to the present ayd                            90

  Of this occasion.  But I hear the tread

  Of hatefull steps, I must be viewles now.

 

  Comus enters with a Charming Rod in one hand, his Glass in

  the other, with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts

  of wilde Beasts, but otherwise like Men and Women, their

  Apparel glistring, they come in making a riotous and unruly

  noise, with Torches in their hands.

 

  Co: The Star that bids the Shepherd fold,

  Now the top of Heav'n doth hold,

  And the gilded Car of Day,

  His glowing Axle doth allay

  In the steep Atlantick stream,

  And the slope Sun his upward beam

  Shoots against the dusky Pole,

  Pacing toward the other gole                                        100

  Of his Chamber in the East.

  Meanwhile welcom Joy, and Feast,

  Midnight shout, and revelry,

  Tipsie dance, and Jollity.

  Braid your Locks with rosie Twine

  Dropping odours, dropping Wine.

  Rigor now is gon to bed,

  And Advice with scrupulous head,

  Strict Age, and sowre Severity,

  With their grave Saws in slumber ly.                               110

  We that are of purer fire

  Imitate the Starry Quire,

  Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears,

  Lead in swift round the Months and Years.

  The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove

  Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move,

  And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves,

  Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves;

  By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim,

  The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim,                            120

  Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:

  What hath night to do with sleep?

  Night hath better sweets to prove,

  Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love.

  Com let us our rights begin,

  'Tis onely day-light that makes Sin

  Which these dun shades will ne're report.

  Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport

  Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame

  Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame                        130

  That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom

  Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom,

  And makes one blot of all the ayr,

  Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair,

  Wherin thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend

  Us thy vow'd Priests, til utmost end

  Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,

  Ere the blabbing Eastern scout,

  The nice Morn on th' Indian steep

  From her cabin'd loop hole peep,                                    140

  And to the tel-tale Sun discry

  Our conceal'd Solemnity.

  Com, knit hands, and beat the ground,

  In a light fantastick round.

 

  The Measure.

 

  Break off; break off, I feel the different pace,

  Of som chast footing neer about this ground.

  Run to your shrouds, within these Brakes and Trees,

  Our number may affright: Som Virgin sure

  (For so I can distinguish by mine Art)

  Benighted in these Woods.  Now to my charms,                        150

  And to my wily trains, I shall e're long

  Be well stock't with as fair a herd as graz'd

  About my Mother Circe.  Thus I hurl

  My dazling Spells into the spungy ayr,

  Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,

  And give it false presentments, lest the place

  And my quaint habits breed astonishment,

  And put the Damsel to suspicious flight,

  Which must not be, for that's against my course;

  I under fair pretence of friendly ends,                             160

  And well plac't words of glozing courtesie

  Baited with reasons not unplausible

  Wind me into the easie-hearted man,

  And hugg him into snares.  When once her eye

  Hath met the vertue of this Magick dust,

  I shall appear som harmles Villager

  Whom thrift keeps up about his Country gear,

  But here she comes, I fairly step aside,

  And hearken, if I may, her busines here.

 

  The Lady enters.

 

  La: This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,                    170

  My best guide now, me thought it was the sound

  Of Riot, and ill manag'd Merriment,

  Such as the jocond Flute, or gamesom Pipe

  Stirs up among the loose unleter'd Hinds,

  When for their teeming Flocks, and granges full

  In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,

  And thank the gods amiss.  I should be loath

  To meet the rudenesse, and swill'd insolence

  of such late Wassailers; yet O where els

  Shall I inform my unacquainted feet                                 180

  In the blind mazes of this tangl'd Wood?

  My Brothers when they saw me wearied out

  With this long way, resolving here to lodge

  Under the spreading favour of these Pines,

  Stept as they se'd to the next Thicket side

  To bring me Berries, or such cooling fruit

  As the kind hospitable Woods provide.

  They left me then, when the gray-hooded Eev'n

  Like a sad Votarist in Palmers weed

  Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus wain.                      190

  But where they are, and why they came not back,

  Is now the labour of my thoughts, 'tis likeliest

  They had ingag'd their wandring steps too far,

  And envious darknes, e're they could return,

  Had stole them from me, els O theevish Night

  Why shouldst thou, but for som fellonious end,

  In thy dark lantern thus close up the Stars,

  That nature hung in Heav'n, and fill'd their Lamps

  With everlasting oil, to give due light

  To the misled and lonely Travailer?                                 200

  This is the place as well as I may guess,

  Whence eev'n now the tumult of loud Mirth

  Was rife and perfect in my list'ning ear,

  Yet nought but single darknes do I find.

  What might this be? A thousand fantasies

  Begin to throng into my memory

  Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire,

  And airy tongues, that syllable mens names

  On Sands and Shoars and desert Wildernesses.

  These thoughts may startle well, but not astound                    210

  The vertuous mind that ever walks attended

  By a strong siding champion Conscience.—

  O welcom pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope,

  Thou hovering Angel girt with golden wings.

  And thou unblemish't form of Chastity,

  I see ye visibly and now beleeve

  That he, the Supreme good t'whom all things ill

  Are but as slavish  officers of vengeance,

  Would send a glistring Guardian if need were

  To keep my life and honour unassail'd.                              220

  Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud

  Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

  I did not err, there does a sable cloud

  Turn forth her silver lining on the night,

  And casts a gleam over this tufted Grove.

  I cannot hallow to my Brothers, but

  Such noise as I can make to be heard farthest

  Ile venter, for my new enliv'nd spirits

  Prompt me; and they perhaps are not far off.

 

  SONG.

 

  Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv'st unseen                       230

  Within thy airy shell

  By slow Meander's margent green,

  And in the violet imbroider'd vale

  Where the love-lorn Nightingale

  Nightly to thee her sad Song mourneth well.

  Canst thou not tell me of a gentle Pair

  That likest thy Narcissus are?

  O if thou have

  Hid them in som flowry Cave,

  Tell me but where                                                   240

  Sweet Queen of  Parly, Daughter of the Sphear,

  So maist thou be translated to the skies,

  And give resounding grace to all Heav'ns Harmonies.

 

  Co: Can any mortal mixture of Earths mould

  Breath such Divine inchanting ravishment?

  Sure somthing holy lodges in that brest,

  And with these raptures moves the vocal air

  To testifie his hidd'n residence;

  How sweetly did they float upon the wings

  Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night                         250

  At every fall smoothing the Raven doune

  Of darknes till it smil'd: I have oft heard

  My mother Circe with the Sirens three,

  Amid'st the flowry-kirtl'd Naiades

  Culling their Potent hearbs, and balefull 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,                      260

  And in sweet madnes rob'd it of it self,

  But such a sacred, and home-felt delight,

  Such sober certainty of waking bliss

  I never heard till now.  Ile speak to her

  And she shall be my Queen.  Hail forren wonder

  Whom certain these rough shades did never breed

  Unlesse the Goddes that in rurall shrine

  Dwell'st here with Pan, or Silvan, by blest Song

  Forbidding every bleak unkindly Fog

  To touch the prosperous growth of this tall Wood.                   270

 

  La: Nay gentle Shepherd ill is lost that praise

  That is addrest to unattending Ears,

  Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift

  How to regain my sever'd company

  Compell'd me to awake the courteous Echo

  To give me answer from her mossie Couch.

 

  Co: What chance good Lady hath bereft you thus?

 

  La: Dim darknes, and this heavy Labyrinth.

 

  Co: Could that divide you from neer-ushering guides?

 

  La: They left me weary on a grassie terf.                           280

 

  Co: By falshood, or discourtesie, or why?

 

  La: To seek in vally som cool friendly Spring.

 

  Co: And left your fair side all unguarded Lady?

 

  La: They were but twain, and purpos'd quick return.

 

  Co: Perhaps fore-stalling night prevented them.

 

  La: How easie my misfortune is to hit!

 

  Co:  Imports their loss, beside the present need?

 

  La:  No less then if I should my brothers loose.

 

  Co: Were they of manly prime, or youthful bloom?

 

  La:  As smooth as Hebe's their unrazor'd lips.                      290

 

  Co: Two such I saw, what time the labour'd Oxe

  In his loose traces from the furrow came,

  And the swink't hedger at his Supper sate;

  I saw them under a green mantling vine

  That crawls along the side of yon small hill,

  Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots,

  Their port was more then human, as they stood;

  I took it for a faery vision

  Of som gay creatures of the element

  That in the colours of the Rainbow live                             300

  And play i'th plighted clouds.  I was aw-strook,

  And as I past, I worshipt: if those you seek

  It were a journey like the path to Heav'n,

  To help you find them.  La:  Gentle villager

  What readiest way would bring me to that place?

 

  Co:  Due west it rises from this shrubby point.

 

  La: To find out that, good Shepherd, I suppose,

  In such a scant allowance of Star-light,

  Would overtask the best Land-Pilots art,

  Without the sure guess of well-practiz'd feet,                      310

 

  Co: I know each lane, and every alley green

  Dingle, or bushy dell of this wilde Wood,

  And every bosky bourn from side to side

  My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood,

  And if your stray attendance be yet lodg'd,

  Or shroud within these limits, I shall know

  Ere morrow wake, or the low roosted lark

  From her thatch't pallat rowse, if otherwise

  I can conduct you Lady to a low

  But loyal cottage, where you may be safe                            320

  Till further quest.

                      La: Shepherd I take thy word,

  And trust thy honest offer'd courtesie,

  Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds

  With smoaky rafters, then in tapstry Halls

  And Courts of Princes, where it first was nam'd,

  And yet is most pretended: In a place

  Less warranted then this, or less secure

  I cannot be, that I should fear to change it.

  Eie me blest Providence, and square my triall

  To my proportion'd strength.  Shepherd lead on.—                   330

 

  The Two Brothers.

 

  Eld. Bro: Unmuffle ye faint stars, and thou fair Moon

  That wontst to love the travailers benizon,

  Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,

  And disinherit Chaos, that raigns here

  In double night of darknes, and of shades;

  Or if your influence be quite damm'd up

  With black usurping mists, som gentle taper

  Though a rush Candle from the wicker hole

  Of som clay habitation visit us

  With thy long levell'd rule of streaming light.                     340

  And thou shalt be our star of Arcady,

  Or Tyrian Cynosure.

                      2. Bro: Or if our eyes

  Be barr'd that happines, might we but hear

  The folded flocks pen'd in their watled cotes,

  Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops,

  Or whistle from the Lodge, or village cock

  Count the night watches to his feathery Dames,

  'Twould be som solace yet, som little chearing

  In this close dungeon of innumerous bowes.

  But O that haples virgin our lost sister                            350

  Where may she wander now, whether betake her

  From the chill dew, amongst rude burrs and thistles?

  Perhaps som cold bank is her boulster now

  Or 'gainst the rugged bark of som broad Elm

  Leans her unpillow'd head fraught with sad fears.

  What if in wild amazement, and affright,

  Or while we speak within the direfull grasp

  Of Savage hunger, or of Savage heat?

 

  Eld. Bro: Peace brother, be not over-exquisite

  To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;                             360

  For grant they be so, while they rest unknown,

  What need a man forestall his date of grief

  And run to meet what he would most avoid?

  Or if they be but false alarms of Fear,

  How bitter is such self delusion?

  I do not think my sister so to seek,

  Or so unprincipl'd in vertues book,

  And the sweet peace that goodnes boosoms ever,

  As that the single want of light and noise

  (Not being in danger, as I trust she is not)                        370

  Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts,

  And put them into mis-becoming plight.

  Vertue could see to do what vertue would

  By her own radiant light, though Sun and Moon

  Were in the salt sea sunk.  And Wisdoms self

  Oft seeks to sweet retired Solitude,

  Where with her best nurse Contemplation

  She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings

  That in the various bustle of resort

  Were all too ruffled and sometimes impaired.                        380

  He that has light within his own deer brest

  May sit i'th center, and enjoy bright day,

  But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts

  Benighted walks under the mid-day Sun;

  Himself is his own dungeon.

 

  2. Bro: Tis most true

  That musing meditation most affects

  The pensive secrecy of desert cell,

  Far from the cheerfull haunt of men, and herds,

  And sits as safe as in a Senat house,

  For who would rob a Hermit of his Weeds,                            390

  His few Books, or his Beads, or Maple Dish,

  Or do his gray hairs any violence?

  But beauty like the fair Hesperian Tree

  Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard

  Of dragon watch with uninchanted eye,

  To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit

  From the rash hand of bold Incontinence.

  You may as well spred out the unsun'd heaps

  Of Misers treasure by an out-laws den,

  And tell me it is safe, as bid me hope                              400

  Danger will wink on Opportunity,

  And let a single helpless maiden pass

  Uninjur'd in this wilde surrounding wast.

  Of night, or lonelines it recks me not,

  I fear the dred events that dog them both,

  Lest som ill greeting touch attempt the person

  Of our unowned sister.

 

  Eld. Bro: I do not, brother,

  Inferr, as if I thought my sisters state

  Secure without all doubt, or controversie:

  Yet where an equall poise of hope and fear                          410

  Does arbitrate th'event, my nature is

  That I encline to hope, rather then fear,

  And gladly banish squint suspicion.

  My sister is not so defenceless left

  As you imagine, she has a hidden strength

  Which you remember not.

 

  2. Bro: What hidden strength,

  Unless the strength of Heav'n, if you mean that?

 

  ELD Bro: I mean that too, but yet a hidden strength

  Which if Heav'n gave it, may be term'd her own:

  'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity:                               420

  She that has that, is clad in compleat steel,

  And like a quiver'd Nymph with Arrows keen

  May trace huge Forests, and unharbour'd Heaths,

  Infamous Hills, and sandy perilous wildes,

  Where through the sacred rayes of Chastity,

  No savage fierce, Bandite, or mountaneer

  Will dare to soyl her Virgin purity,

  Yea there, where very desolation dwels

  By grots, and caverns shag'd with horrid shades,

  She may pass on with unblench't majesty,                            430

  Be it not don in pride, or in presumption.

  Som say no evil thing that walks by night

  In fog, or fire, by lake, or moorish fen,

  Blew meager Hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost,

  That breaks his magick chains at curfeu time,

  No goblin, or swart faery of the mine,

  Hath hurtfull power o're true virginity.

  Do ye beleeve me yet, or shall I call

  Antiquity from the old Schools of Greece

  To testifie the arms of Chastity?                                   440

  Hence had the huntress Dian her dred bow

  Fair silver-shafted Queen for ever chaste,

  Wherwith she tam'd the brinded lioness

  And spotted mountain pard, but set at nought

  The frivolous bolt of Cupid, gods and men

  Fear'd her stern frown, and she was queen oth' Woods.

  What was that snaky-headed Gorgon sheild

  That wise Minerva wore, unconquer'd Virgin,

  Wherwith she freez'd her foes to congeal'd stone?

  But rigid looks of Chast austerity,                                 450

  And noble grace that dash't brute violence

  With sudden adoration, and blank aw.

  So dear to Heav'n is Saintly chastity,

  That when a soul is found sincerely so,

  A thousand liveried Angels lacky her,

  Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,

  And in cleer dream, and solemn vision

  Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,

  Till oft convers with heav'nly habitants

  Begin to cast a beam on th'outward shape,                           460

  The unpolluted temple of the mind.

  And turns it by degrees to the souls essence,

  Till all be made immortal: but when lust

  By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,

  But most by leud and lavish act of sin,

  Lets in defilement to the inward parts,

  The soul grows clotted by contagion,

  Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite loose

  The divine property of her first being.

  Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp                        470

  Oft seen in Charnell vaults, and Sepulchers

  Lingering, and sitting by a new made grave,

  As loath to leave the body that it lov'd,

  And link't it self by carnal sensualty

  To a degenerate and degraded state.

 

  2. Bro: How charming is divine Philosophy!

  Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose,

  But musical as is Apollo's lute,

  And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,

  Where no crude surfet raigns.

                                Eld. Bro: List, list, I hear          480

  Som far off hallow break the silent Air.

 

  2.  Bro: Me thought so too; what should it be?

 

  Eld. Bro: For certain

  Either som one like us night-founder'd here,

  Or els som neighbour Wood-man, or at worst,

  Som roaving robber calling to his fellows.

 

  2. Bro: Heav'n keep my sister, agen agen and neer,

  Best draw, and stand upon our guard.

 

  Eld. Bro: Ile hallow,

  If he be friendly he comes well, if not,

  Defence is a good cause, and Heav'n be for us.

 

  [Enter] The attendant Spirit habited like a Shepherd.

 

  That hallow I should know, what are you? speak;                     490

  Com not too neer, you fall on iron stakes else.

 

  Spir: What voice is that, my young Lord? speak agen.

 

  2. Bro: O brother, 'tis my father Shepherd sure.

 

  Eld. Bro: Thyrsis? Whose artful strains have oft delaid

  The huddling brook to hear his madrigal,

  And sweeten'd every muskrose of the dale,

  How cam'st thou here good Swain? hath any ram

  Slip't from the fold, or young Kid lost his dam,

  Or straggling weather the pen't flock forsook?

  How couldst thou find this dark sequester'd nook?                   500

 

  Spir: O my lov'd masters heir, and his next joy,

  I came not here on such a trivial toy

  As a stray'd Ewe, or to pursue the stealth

  Of pilfering Woolf, not all the fleecy wealth

  That doth enrich these Downs, is worth a thought

  To this my errand, and the care it brought.

  But O my Virgin Lady, where is she?

  How chance she is not in your company?

 

  Eld. Bro: To tell thee sadly Shepherd, without blame

  Or our neglect, we lost her as we came.                             510

 

  Spir: Ay me unhappy then my fears are true.

 

  Eld. Bro: What fears good Thyrsis? Prethee briefly shew.

 

  Spir: Ile tell ye, 'tis not vain or fabulous,

  (Though so esteem'd by shallow ignorance)

  What the sage Poets taught by th' heav'nly Muse,

  Storied of old in high immortal vers

  Of dire Chimera's and inchanted Iles,

  And rifted Rocks whose entrance leads to hell,

  For such there be, but unbelief is blind.

  Within the navil of this hideous Wood,                              520

  Immur'd in cypress shades a Sorcerer dwels

  Of Bacchus, and of Circe born, great Comus,

  Deep skill'd in all his mothers witcheries,

  And here to every thirsty wanderer,

  By sly enticement gives his banefull cup,

  With many murmurs mixt, whose pleasing poison

  The visage quite transforms of him that drinks,

  And the inglorious likenes of a beast

  Fixes instead, unmoulding reasons mintage

  Character'd in the Face; this have I learn't                        530

  Tending my flocks hard by i'th hilly crofts,

  That brow this bottom glade, whence night by night

  He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl

  Like stabl'd wolves, or tigers at their prey,

  Doing abhorred rites to Hecate

  In their obscured haunts of inmost bowres.

  Yet have they many baits, and guilefull spells

  To inveigle and invite th' unwary sense

  Of them that pass unweeting by the way.

  This evening late by then the chewing flocks                        540

  Had ta'n their supper on the savoury Herb

  Of Knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold,

  I sate me down to watch upon a bank

  With Ivy canopied, and interwove

  With flaunting Hony-suckle, and began

  Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy

  To meditate my rural minstrelsie,

  Till fancy had her fill, but ere a close

  The wonted roar was up amidst the Woods,

  And fill'd the Air with barbarous dissonance,                       550

  At which I ceas' t, and listen'd them a while,

  Till an unusuall stop of sudden silence

  Gave respit to the drowsie frighted steeds

  That draw the litter of close-curtain'd sleep.

  At last a soft and solemn breathing sound

  Rose like a steam of rich distill'd Perfumes,

  And stole upon the Air, that even Silence

  Was took e're she was ware, and wish't she might

  Deny her nature, and be never more

  Still to be so displac't.  I was all eare,                          560

  And took in strains that might create a soul

  Under the ribs of Death, but O ere long

  Too well I did perceive it was the voice

  Of my most honour'd Lady, your dear sister.

  Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear,

  And O poor hapless Nightingale thought I,

  How sweet thou sing'st, how neer the deadly snare!

  Then down the Lawns I ran with headlong hast

  Through paths, and turnings oft'n trod by day,

  Till guided by mine ear I found the place                           570

  Where that damn'd wisard hid in sly disguise

  (For so by certain signes I knew) had met

  Already, ere my best speed could praevent,

  The aidless innocent Lady his wish't prey,

  Who gently ask't if he had seen such two,

  Supposing him som neighbour villager;

  Longer I durst not stay, but soon I guess't

  Ye were the two she mean't, with that I sprung

  Into swift flight, till I had found you here,

  But furder know I not.

                        2. Bro: O night and shades,                   580

  How are ye joyn'd with hell in triple knot

  Against th'unarmed weakness of one Virgin

  Alone, and helpless!  Is this the confidence

  You gave me Brother?

                       Eld. Bro: Yes, and keep it still,

  Lean on it safely, not a period

  Shall be unsaid for me: against the threats

  Of malice or of sorcery, or that power

  Which erring men call Chance, this I hold firm,

  Vertue may be assail'd, but never hurt,

  Surpriz'd by unjust force, but not enthrall'd,                      590

  Yea even that which mischief meant most harm,

  Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.

  But evil on it self shall back recoyl,

  And mix no more with goodness, when at last

  Gather'd like scum, and setl'd to it self

  It shall be in eternal restless change

  Self-fed, and self-consum'd, if this fail,

  The pillar'd firmament is rott'nness,

  And earths base built on stubble.  But corn let's on.

  Against th' opposing will and arm of Heav'n                         600

  May never this just sword be lifted up,

  But for that damn'd magician, let him be girt

  With all the greisly legions that troop

  Under the sooty flag of Acheron,

  Harpyies and Hydra's, or all the monstrous forms

  'Twixt Africa and Inde, Ile find him out,

  And force him to restore his purchase back,

  Or drag him by the curls, to a foul death,

  Curs'd as his life.

 

  Spir: Alas good ventrous youth,

  I love thy courage yet, and bold Emprise,                           610

  But here thy sword can do thee little stead,

  Farr other arms, and other weapons must

  Be those that quell the might of hellish charms,

  He with his bare wand can unthred thy joynts,

  And crumble all thy sinews.

 

  Eld. Bro: Why prethee Shepherd

  How durst thou then thy self approach so neer

  As to make this relation?

 

  Spir: Care and utmost shifts

  How to secure the lady from surprisal,

  Brought to my mind a certain Shepherd Lad

  Of small regard to see to, yet well skill'd                         620

  In every vertuous plant and healing herb

  That spreds her verdant leaf to th'morning ray,

  He lov'd me well, and oft would beg me sing,

  Which when I did, he on the tender grass

  Would sit, and hearken even to extasie,

  And in requitall ope his leather'n scrip,

  And shew me simples of a thousand names

  Telling their strange and vigorous faculties;

  Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,

  But of divine effect, he cull'd me out;                             630

  The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,

  But in another Countrey, as he said,

  Bore a bright golden flowre, but not in this soyl:

  Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swayn

  Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon,

  And yet more med'cinal is it then that Moly

  That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;

  He call'd it Haemony, and gave it me,

  And bad me keep it as of sov'ran use

  'Gainst all inchantments, mildew blast, or damp                     640

  Or gastly furies apparition;

  I purs't it up, but little reck'ning made,

  Till now that this extremity compell'd,

  But now I find it true; for by this means

  I knew the foul inchanter though disguis'd,

  Enter'd the very lime-twigs of his spells,

  And yet came off: if you have this about you

  (As I will give you when we go) you may

  Boldly assault the necromancers hall;

  Where if he be, with dauntless hardihood,                           650

  And brandish't blade rush on him, break his glass,

  And shed the lushious liquor on the ground,

  But sease his wand, though he and his curst crew

  Feirce signe of battail make, and menace high,

  Or like the sons of Vulcan vomit smoak,

  Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink.

 

  Eld. Bro: Thyrsis lead on apace, Ile follow thee,

  And som good angel bear a sheild before us.

 

  The scene changes to a stately Palace, set out with all manner of

  deliciousness; Soft Musick, Tables spred with all dainties.

  Comus appears with his rabble, and the Lady set in an inchanted

  Chair, to whom he offers his Glass, which she puts by, and goes

  about to rise.

 

  COMUS: Nay Lady sit; if I but wave this wand

  Your nerves are all chain'd up in Alablaster,                       660

  And you a statue; or as Daphne was

  Root-bound, that fled Apollo.

 

  La:  Fool do not boast,

  Thou canst not touch the freedom of my minde

  With all thy charms, although this corporal rinde

  Thou haste immanacl'd, while Heav'n sees good.

 

  Co: Why are you vext Lady? why do you frown

  Here dwell no frowns, nor anger, from these gates

  Sorrow flies farr: See here be all the pleasures

  That fancy can beget on youthfull thoughts,

  When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns                      670

  Brisk as the April buds in Primrose-season.

  And first behold this cordial Julep here

  That flames, and dances in his crystal bounds

  With spirits of balm, and fragrant Syrops mixt.

  Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone,

  In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena

  Is of such power to stir up joy as this,

  To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.

  Why should you be so cruel to your self,

  And to those dainty limms which nature lent                         680

  For gentle usage, and soft delicacy?

  But you invert the cov'nants of her trust,

  And harshly deal like an ill borrower

  With that which you receiv'd on other terms,

  Scorning the unexempt condition

  By which all mortal frailty must subsist,

  Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,

  That have been tir'd all day without repast,

  And timely rest have wanted, but fair Virgin

  This will restore all soon.

 

  La: 'Twill not false traitor,                                       690

  'Twill not restore the truth and honesty

  That thou hast banish't from thy tongue with lies

  Was this the cottage, and the safe abode

  Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these

  These oughly-headed Monsters? Mercy guard me!

  Hence with thy brew'd inchantments, foul deceit

  Hast thou betrai'd my credulous innocence

  With visor'd falshood, and base forgery,

  And wouldst thou seek again to trap me here

  With lickerish baits fit to ensnare a brute?                        700

  Were it a draft for Juno when she banquets,

  I would not taste thy treasonous offer; none

  But such as are good men can give good things,

  And that which is not good, is not delicious

  To a well-govern'd and wise appetite.

 

  Co: O foolishnes of men! that lend their ears

  To those budge doctors of the Stoick Furr,

  And fetch their precepts from the Cynick Tub,

  Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence.

  Wherefore did Nature powre her bounties forth,                      710

  With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,

  Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,

  Thronging the Seas with spawn innumerable,

  But all to please, and sate the curious taste?

  And set to work millions of spinning Worms,

  That in their green shops weave the smooth-hair'd silk

  To deck her Sons, and that no corner might

  Be vacant of her plenty, in her own loyns

  She hutch't th'all-worshipt ore, and precious gems

  To store her children with; if all the world                       720

  Should in a pet of temperance feed on Pulse,

  Drink the clear stream, and nothing wear but Freize,

  Th'all-giver would be unthank't, would be unprais'd,

  Not half his riches known, and yet despis'd,

  And we should serve him as a grudging master,

  As a penurious niggard of his wealth,

  And live like Natures bastards, not her sons,

  Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,

  And strangl'd with her waste fertility;

  Th'earth cumber'd, and the wing'd air dark't with plumes.           730

  The herds would over-multitude their Lords,

  The Sea o'refraught would swell, and th'unsought diamonds

  Would so emblaze the forhead of the Deep,

  And so bested with Stars, that they below

  Would grow inur'd to light, and com at last

  To gaze upon the Sun with shameless brows.

  List Lady be not coy, and be not cosen'd

  With that same vaunted name Virginity,

  Beauty is natures coyn, must not be hoorded,

  But must be currant, and the good thereof                           740

  Consists in mutual and partak'n bliss,

  Unsavoury in th'injoyment of it self

  If you let slip time, like a neglected rose

  It withers on the stalk with languish't head.

  Beauty is natures brag, and must be shown

  In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities

  Where most may wonder at the workmanship;

  It is for homely features to keep home,

  They had their name thence; course complexions

  And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply                         750

  The sampler, and to teize the huswifes wooll.

  What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that

  Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the Morn?

  There was another meaning in these gifts,

  Think what, and be adviz'd, you are but young yet.

 

  La: I had not thought to have unlockt my lips

  In this unhallow'd air, but that this Jugler

  Would think to charm my judgement, as mine eyes,

  Obtruding false rules pranckt in reasons garb.

  I hate when vice can bolt her arguments,                            760

  And vertue has no tongue to check her pride:

  Impostor do not charge most innocent nature,

  As if she would her children should be riotous

  With her abundance, she good cateress

  Means her provision onely to the good

  That live according to her sober laws,

  And holy dictate of spare Temperance:

  If every just man that now pines with want

  Had but a moderate and heseeming share

  Of that which lewdly-pamper'd Luxury                                770

  Now heaps upon som few with vast excess,

  Natures full blessings would be well dispenc't

  In unsuperfluous eeven proportion,

  And she no whit encomber'd with her store,

  And then the giver would be better thank't,

  His praise due paid, for swinish gluttony

  Ne're looks to Heav'n amidst his gorgeous feast,

  But with besotted base ingratitude

  Cramms, and blasphemes his feeder. Shall I go on?

  Or have I said anough? To him that dares                            780

  Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words

  Against the Sun-clad power of Chastity,

  Fain would I somthing say, yet to what end?

  Thou hast nor Eare, nor Soul to apprehend

  The sublime notion, and high mystery

  That must be utter'd to unfold the sage

  And serious doctrine of Virginity,

  And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know

  More happiness then this thy present lot.

  Enjoy your deer Wit, and gay Rhetorick                              790

  That hath so well been taught her dazling fence,

  Thou art not fit to hear thy self convinc't;

  Yet should I try, the uncontrouled worth

  Of this pure cause would kindle my rap't spirits

  To such a flame of sacred vehemence

  That dumb things would be mov'd to sympathize,

  And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and shake,

  Till all thy magick structures rear'd so high,

  Were shatter'd into heaps o're thy false head.

 

  Co:  She fables not, I feel that I do fear                          800

  Her words set off by som superior power;

  And though not mortal, yet a cold shuddring dew

  Dips me all o're, as when the wrath of Jove

  Speaks thunder, and the chains of Erebus

  To som of Saturns crew.  I must dissemble,

  And try her yet more strongly.  Com, no more,

  This is meer moral babble, and direct

  Against the canon laws of our foundation;

  I must not suffer this, yet 'tis but the lees

  And setlings of a melancholy blood;                                 810

  But this will cure all streight, one sip of this

  Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight

  Beyond the bliss of dreams.  Be wise, and taste.—

 

  The brothers rush in with Swords drawn, wrest his Glass out of

  his hand, and break it against the ground; his rout make signe of

  resistance, but are all driven in; The attendant Spirit comes in.

 

  Spir: What, have you let the false enchanter scape?

  O ye mistook, ye should have snatcht his wand

  And bound him fast; without his rod revers't,

  And backward mutters of dissevering power,

  We cannot free the Lady that sits here

  In stony fetters fixt, and motionless;

  Yet stay, be not disturb'd, now I bethink me                        820

  Som other means I have which may he us'd

  Which once of Meliboeus old I learnt

  The soothest Shepherd that ere pip't on plains.

  There is a gentle Nymph not farr from hence,

  That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream,

  Sabrina is her name, a Virgin pure,

  Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,

  That had the Scepter from his father Brute.

  The guiltless damsel flying the mad pursuit

  Of her enraged stepdam Guendolen,                                   830

  Commended her fair innocence to the flood

  That stay'd her flight with his cross-flowing course,

  The water Nymphs that in the bottom plaid,

  Held up their pearled wrists and took her in,

  Bearing her straight to aged Nereus Hall,

  Who piteous of her woes, rear'd her lank head,

  And gave her to his daughters to imbathe

  In nectar'd lavers strew'd with Asphodil,

  And through the porch and inlet of each sense

  Dropt in Ambrosial Oils till she reviv'd,                           840

  And underwent a quick immortal change

  Made Goddess of the River; still she retains

  Her maid'n gentlenes, and oft at Eeve

  Visits the herds along the twilight meadows,

  Helping all urchin blasts, and ill luck signes

  That the shrewd medling Elfe delights to make,

  Which she with pretious viold liquors heals.

  For which the Shepherds at their festivals

  Carrol her goodnes lowd in rustick layes,

  And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream                     850

  Of pancies, pinks, and gaudy Daffadils.

  And, as the old Swain said, she can unlock

  The clasping charms, and thaw the numming spell,

  If she be right invok't in warbled Song,

  For maid'nhood she loves, and will be swift

  To aid a Virgin, such as was her self

  In hard besetting need, this will I try

  And adde the power of som adjuring verse.

 

  SONG.

 

  Sabrina fair

  Listen when thou art sitting                                        860

  Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,

  In twisted braids of Lillies knitting

  The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,

  Listen for dear honour's sake,

  Goddess of the silver lake,

  Listen and save.

 

  Listen and appear to us

  In name of great Oceanus,

  By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,

  And Tethys grave majestick pace,                                    870

  By hoary Nereus wrincled look,

  And the Carpathian wisards hook,

  By scaly Tritons winding shell,

  And old sooth-saying Glaucus spell,

  By Leucothea's lovely hands,

  And her son that rules the strands,

  By Thetis tinsel-slipper'd feet,

  And the Songs of Sirens sweet,

  By dead Parthenope's dear tomb,

  And fair Ligea's golden comb,                                       880

  Wherwith she sits on diamond rocks

  Sleeking her soft alluring locks,

  By all the Nymphs that nightly dance

  Upon thy streams with wily glance,

  Rise, rise, and heave thy rosie head

  From thy coral-pav'n bed,

  And bridle in thy headlong wave,

  Till thou our summons answered have.

  Listen and save.

 

  Sabrina rises, attended by water-Nymphes, and sings.

 

  Sab: By the rushy-fringed bank,                                     890

  Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank,

  My sliding Chariot stayes,

  Thick set with Agat, and the azurn sheen

  Of Turkis blew, and Emrauld green

  That in the channell strayes,

  Whilst from off the waters fleet

  Thus I set my printless feet

  O're the Cowslips Velvet head,

  That bends not as I tread,

  Gentle swain at thy request                                         900

  I am here.

 

  Spir: Goddess dear

  We implore thy powerful hand

  To undo the charmed band

  Of true Virgin here distrest,

  Through the force, and through the wile

  Of unblest inchanter vile.

 

  Sab: Shepherd 'tis my office best

  To help insnared chastity;

  Brightest Lady look on me,                                          910

  Thus I sprinkle on thy brest

  Drops that from my fountain pure,

  I have kept of pretious cure,

  Thrice upon thy fingers tip,

  Thrice upon thy rubied lip,

  Next this marble venom'd seat

  Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat

  I touch with chaste palms moist and cold,

  Now the spell hath lost his hold;

  And I must haste ere morning hour                                   920

  To wait in Amphitrite's bowr.

 

  Sabrina descends, and the Lady rises out of her seat.

 

  Spir: Virgin, daughter of Locrine

  Sprung of old Anchises line,

  May thy brimmed waves for this

  Their full tribute never miss

  From a thousand petty rills,

  That tumble down the snowy hills:

  Summer drouth, or singed air

  Never scorch thy tresses fair,

  Nor wet Octobers torrent flood                                      930

  Thy molten crystal fill with mudd,

  May thy billows rowl ashoar

  The beryl, and the golden ore,

  May thy lofty head be crown'd

  With many a tower and terrass round,

  And here and there thy banks upon

  With Groves of myrrhe, and cinnamon.

 

  Com Lady while Heaven lends us grace,

  Let us fly this cursed place,

  Lest the Sorcerer us intice                                         940

  With som other new device.

  Not a waste, or needless sound

  Till we com to holier ground,

  I shall be your faithfull guide

  Through this gloomy covert wide,

  And not many furlongs thence

  Is your Fathers residence,

  Where this night are met in state

  Many a friend to gratulate

  His wish't presence, and beside                                     950

  All the Swains that there abide,

  With Jiggs, and rural dance resort,

  We shall catch them at their sport,

  And our sudden coming there

  Will double all their mirth and chere;

  Com let us haste, the Stars grow high,

  But night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.

 

  The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow Town and the President

  Castle, then com in Countrey-Dancers, after them the attendant

  Spirit, with the two Brothers and the Lady.

 

  SONG.

 

  Spir: Back Shepherds, back, anough your play,

  Till next Sun-shine holiday,

  Here be without duck or nod                                         960

  Other trippings to be trod

  Of lighter toes, and such Court guise

  As Mercury did first devise

  With the mincing Dryades

  On the Lawns, and on the Leas.

 

  This second Song presents them to their father and mother.

 

  Noble Lord, and Lady bright,

  I have brought ye new delight,

  Here behold so goodly grown

  Three fair branches of your own,

  Heav'n hath timely tri'd their youth.                               970

  Their faith, their patience, and their truth

  And sent them here through hard assays

  With a crown of deathless Praise,

  To triumph in victorious dance

  O're sensual folly, and Intemperance.

 

  The dances ended, the Spirit Epiloguizes.

 

  Spir: To the Ocean now I fly,

  And those happy climes that ly

  Where day never shuts his eye,

  Up in the broad fields of the sky:

  There I suck the liquid ayr                                         980

  All amidst the Gardens fair

  Of Hesperus, and his daughters three

  That sing about the golden tree:

  Along the crisped shades and bowres

  Revels the spruce and jocond Spring,

  The Graces, and the rosie-boosom'd Howres,

  Thither all their bounties bring,

  That there eternal Summer dwels,

  And West winds, with musky wing

  About the cedar'n alleys fling                                      990

  Nard, and Cassia's balmy smels.

  Iris there with humid bow,

  Waters the odorous banks that blow

  Flowers of more mingled hew

  Then her purfl'd scarf can shew,

  And drenches with Elysian dew

  (List mortals, if your ears be true)

  Beds of Hyacinth, and roses

  Where young Adonis oft reposes,

  Waxing well of his deep wound                                      1000

  In slumber soft, and on the ground

  Sadly sits th' Assyrian Queen;

  But far above in spangled sheen

  Celestial Cupid her fam'd son advanc't,

  Holds his dear Psyche sweet intranc't

  After her wandring labours long,

  Till free consent the gods among

  Make her his eternal Bride,

  And from her fair unspotted side

  Two blissful twins are to be born,

  Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.                                 1010

  But now my task is smoothly don,

  I can fly, or I can run

  Quickly to the green earths end,

  Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend,

  And from thence can soar as soon

  To the corners of the Moon.

  Mortals that would follow me,

  Love vertue, she alone is free,

  She can teach ye how to clime                                      1020

  Higher then the Spheary chime;

  Or if Vertue feeble were,

  Heav'n it self would stoop to her.

 

  Notes:

  43 ye] you  1673

  167 omitted 1673

  168, 9 Thus 1637. Manuscript reads—

  but heere she comes I fairly step aside

  & hearken, if I may, her buisnesse heere.

  1673 reads—

  And hearken, if I may her business hear.

  But here she comes, I fairly step aside.

  474 sensualty] sensuality 1673. Manuscript also reads sensualtie,

  as the metre requires.

  493 father] So also 1673. Manuscript reads father's

  547 meditate] meditate upon 1673

  553 drowsie frighted] Manuscript reads drowsie flighted.

  556 steam] stream 1673

  580 furder] further 1673

  743 In the manuscript, which reads—

  If you let slip time like an neglected rose

  a circle has been drawn round the an, but probably not by Milton.

  780 anough] anow 1673

ANNO AETATIS 17. ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR INFANT DYING OF A COUGH.

 

  I

 

  O FAIREST flower no sooner blown but blasted,

  Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,

  Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted

  Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;

  For he being amorous on that lovely die

  That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss

  But kill'd alas, and then bewayl'd his fatal bliss.

 

  II

 

  For since grim Aquilo his charioter

  By boistrous rape th' Athenian damsel got,

  He thought it toucht his Deitie full neer,                           10

  If likewise he some fair one wedded not,

  Thereby to wipe away th' infamous blot,

  Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld,

  Which 'mongst the wanton gods a foul reproach was held.

 

  III

 

  So mounting up in ycie-pearled carr,

  Through middle empire of the freezing aire

  He wanderd long, till thee he spy'd from farr,

  There ended was his quest, there ceast his care

  Down he descended from his Snow-soft chaire,

  But all unwares with his cold-kind embrace                           20

  Unhous'd thy Virgin Soul from her fair hiding place.

 

  IV

 

  Yet art thou not inglorious in thy fate;

  For so Apollo, with unweeting hand

  Whilome did slay his dearly-loved mate

  Young Hyacinth born on Eurotas' strand,

  Young Hyacinth the pride of Spartan land;

  But then transform'd him to a purple flower

  Alack that so to change thee winter had no power.

 

  V

 

  Yet can I not perswade me thou art dead

  Or that thy coarse corrupts in earths dark wombe,                    30

  Or that thy beauties lie in wormie bed,

  Hid from the world in a low delved tombe;

  Could Heav'n for pittie thee so strictly doom?

  O no! for something in thy face did shine

  Above mortalitie that shew'd thou wast divine.

 

  VI

 

  Resolve me then oh Soul most surely blest

  (If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear)

  Tell me bright Spirit where e're thou hoverest

  Whether above that high first-moving Spheare

  Or in the Elisian fields (if such there were.)                       40

  Oh say me true if thou wert mortal wight

  And why from us so quickly thou didst take thy flight.

 

  VII

 

  Wert thou some Starr which from the ruin'd roofe

  Of shak't Olympus by mischance didst fall;

  Which carefull Jove in natures true behoofe

  Took up, and in fit place did reinstall?

  Or did of late earths Sonnes besiege the wall

  Of sheenie Heav'n, and thou some goddess fled

  Amongst us here below to hide thy nectar'd head

 

  VIII

 

  Or wert thou that just Maid who once before                          50

  Forsook the hated earth, O tell me sooth

  And cam'st again to visit us once more?

  Or wert thou that sweet smiling Youth!

  Or that c[r]own'd Matron sage white-robed Truth?

  Or any other of that heav'nly brood

  Let down in clowdie throne to do the world some good.

 

  Note: 53 Or wert thou] Or wert thou Mercy—conjectured by

  John Heskin Ch. Ch. Oxon. from Ode on Nativity, st. 15.

 

  IX

 

  Or wert thou of the golden-winged boast,

  Who having clad thy self in humane weed,

  To earth from thy praefixed seat didst poast,

  And after short abode flie back with speed,                          60

  As if to shew what creatures Heav'n doth breed,

  Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire

  To scorn the sordid world, and unto Heav'n aspire.

 

  X

 

  But oh why didst thou not stay here below

  To bless us with thy heav'n-lov'd innocence,

  To slake his wrath whom sin hath made our foe

  To turn Swift-rushing black perdition hence,

  Or drive away the slaughtering  pestilence,

  To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart

  But thou canst best perform that office where thou art.              70

 

  XI

 

  Then thou the mother of so sweet a child

  Her false imagin'd loss cease to lament,

  And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild;

  Think what a present thou to God hast sent,

  And render him with patience what he lent;

  This if thou do he will an off-spring give,

  That till the worlds last-end shall make thy name to live.

Anno Aetatis 19.  At a Vacation Exercise in the Colledge, part

  Latin, part English. The Latin  speeches ended, the English thus

  began.

  HAIL native Language, that by sinews weak

  Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,

  And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,

  Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,

  Driving dum silence from the portal dore,

  Where he had mutely sate two years before:

  Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,

  That now I use thee in my latter task:

  Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee,

  I know my tongue but little Grace can do thee:                       10

  Thou needst not be ambitious to be first,

  Believe me I have thither packt the worst:

  And, if it happen as I did forecast,

  The daintest dishes shall be serv'd up last.

  I pray thee then deny me not thy aide

  For this same small neglect that I have made:

  But haste thee strait to do me once a Pleasure,

  And from thy wardrope bring thy chiefest treasure;

  Not those new fangled toys, and triming slight

  Which takes our late fantasticks with delight,                       20

  But cull those richest Robes, and gay'st attire

  Which deepest Spirits, and choicest Wits desire:

  I have some naked thoughts that rove about

  And loudly knock to have their passage out;

  And wearie of their place do only stay

  Till thou hast deck't them in thy best aray;

  That so they may without suspect or fears

  Fly swiftly to this fair Assembly's ears;

  Yet I had rather if I were to chuse,

  Thy service in some graver subject use,                              30

  Such as may make thee search thy coffers round

  Before thou cloath my fancy in fit sound:

  Such where the deep transported mind may scare

  Above the wheeling poles, and at Heav'ns dore

  Look in, and see each blissful Deitie

  How he before the thunderous throne doth lie,

  Listening to what unshorn Apollo sings

  To th'touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings

  Immortal Nectar to her Kingly Sire:

  Then passing through the Spherse of watchful fire,                   40

  And mistie Regions of wide air next under,

  And hills of Snow and lofts of piled Thunder,

  May tell at length how green-ey'd Neptune raves,

  In Heav'ns defiance mustering all his waves;

  Then sing of secret things that came to pass

  When Beldam Nature in her cradle was;

  And last of Kings and Queens and Hero's old,

  Such as the wise Demodocus once told

  In solemn Songs at King Alcinous feast,

  While sad Ulisses soul and all the rest                              50

  Are held with his melodious harmonie

  In willing chains and sweet captivitie.

  But fie my wandring Muse how thou dost stray!

  Expectance calls thee now another way,

  Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent

  To keep in compass of thy Predicament:

  Then quick about thy purpos'd business come,

  That to the next I may resign my Roome

 

  Then Ens is represented as Father of the Predicaments his ten

  Sons, whereof the Eldest stood for Substance with his Canons,

  which Ens thus speaking, explains.

 

  Good luck befriend thee Son; for at thy birth

  The Faiery Ladies daunc't upon the hearth;                           60

  Thy drowsie Nurse hath sworn she did them spie

  Come tripping to the Room where thou didst lie;

  And sweetly singing round about thy Bed

  Strew all their blessings on thy sleeping Head.

  She heard them give thee this, that thou should'st still

  From eyes of mortals walk invisible,

  Yet there is something that doth force my fear,

  For once it was my dismal hap to hear

  A Sybil old, bow-bent with crooked age,

  That far events full wisely could presage,

  And in Times long and dark Prospective Glass

  Fore-saw what future dayes should bring to pass,

  Your Son, said she, (nor can you it prevent)

  Shall subject be to many an Accident.

  O're all his Brethren he shall Reign as King,

  Yet every one shall make him underling,

  And those that cannot live from him asunder

  Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under,

  In worth and excellence he shall out-go them,

  Yet being above them, he shall be below them;                        80

  From others he shall stand in need of nothing,

  Yet on his Brothers shall depend for Cloathing.

  To find a Foe it shall not be his hap,

  And peace shall lull him in her flowry lap;

  Yet shall he live in strife, and at his dore

  Devouring war shall never cease to roare;

  Yea it shall be his natural property

  To harbour those that are at enmity.

  What power, what force, what mighty spell, if not

  Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?                     90

 

  The next Quantity and Quality, spake in Prose, then Relation

  was call'd by his Name.

 

  Rivers arise; whether thou be the Son,

  Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulphie Dun,

  Or Trent, who like some earth-born Giant spreads

  His thirty Armes along the indented Meads,

  Or sullen Mole that runneth underneath,

  Or Severn swift, guilty of Maidens death,

  Or Rockie Avon, or of Sedgie Lee,

  Or Coaly Tine, or antient hallowed Dee,

  Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythians Name,

  Or Medway smooth, or Royal Towred Thame.                           100

 

  The rest was Prose.

THE FIFTH ODE OF HORACE. LIB. I.

 

  Quis multa gracilis te puer in Rosa

  Rendred almost word for word without Rhyme according to the

  Latin Measure, as near as the Language permit.

 

  WHAT slender Youth bedew'd with liquid odours

  Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave,

  Pyrrha for whom bind'st thou

  In wreaths thy golden Hair,

  Plain in thy neatness; O how oft shall he

  On Faith and changed Gods complain: and Seas

  Rough with black winds and storms

  Unwonted shall admire:

  Who now enjoyes thee credulous, all Gold,

  Who alwayes vacant, alwayes amiable                                  10

  Hopes thee; of flattering gales

  Unmindfull.  Hapless they

  To whom thou untry'd seem'st fair.  Me in my vow'd

  Picture the sacred wall declares t' have hung

  My dank and dropping weeds

  To the stern God of Sea.

  [The Latin text follows.]

SONNETS.

 

  XI

 

  A Book was writ of late call'd Tetrachordon;

  And wov'n close, both matter, form and stile;

  The Subject new: it walk'd the Town a while,

  Numbring good intellects; now seldom por'd on.

  Cries the stall-reader, bless us! what a word on

  A title page is this! and some in file

  Stand spelling fals, while one might walk to Mile-

  End Green.  Why is it harder Sirs then Gordon,

  Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp?

  Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek                     10

  That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.

  Thy age, like ours, O Soul of Sir John Cheek,

  Hated not Learning wors then Toad or Asp;

  When thou taught'st Cambridge, and King Edward Greek.

 

  Note: Camb. Autograph supplies title, On the Detraction which

  followed my writing certain Treatises.

  XII. On the same.

 

  I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs

  By the known rules of antient libertie,

  When strait a barbarous noise environs me

  Of Owles and Cuckoes, Asses, Apes and Doggs.

  As when those Hinds that were transform'd to Froggs

  Raild at Latona's twin-born progenie

  Which after held the Sun and Moon in fee.

  But this is got by casting Pearl to Hoggs;

  That bawle for freedom in their senceless mood,

  And still revolt when truth would set them free.                     10

  Licence they mean when they cry libertie;

  For who loves that, must first be wise and good;

  But from that mark how far they roave we see

  For all this wast of wealth, and loss of blood.

  XIII

 

  To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Aires.

 

  Harry whose tuneful and well measur'd Song

  First taught our English Musick how to span

  Words with just note and accent, not to scan

  With Midas Ears, committing short and long;

  Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,

  With praise enough for Envy to look wan;

  To after age thou shalt be writ the man,

  That with smooth aire couldst humor best our tongue

  Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must send her wing

  To honour thee, the Priest of Phoebus Quire                          10

  That tun'st their happiest lines in Hymn or Story

  Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher

  Then his Casella, whom he woo'd to sing

  Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.

 

  Note: 9 send] lend  Cambridge Autograph MS.

  XIV

 

  When Faith and Love which parted from thee never,

  Had ripen'd thy just soul to dwell with God,

  Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load

  Of Death, call'd Life; which us from Life doth sever

  Thy Works and Alms and all thy good Endeavour

  Staid not behind, nor in the grave were trod;

  But as Faith pointed with her golden rod,

  Follow'd thee up to joy and bliss for ever.

  Love led them on, and Faith who knew them best

  Thy hand-maids, clad them o're with purple beams                     10

  And azure wings, that up they flew so drest,

  And speak the truth of thee on glorious Theams

  Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest

  And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.

 

  Note: Camb. Autograph supplies title, On the Religious

  Memory of Catherine Thomson, my Christian Friend, deceased

  16 Decemb., 1646.

  XV

 

  ON THE LATE MASSACHER IN PIEMONT.

 

  Avenge O lord thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones

  Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,

  Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old

  When all our Fathers worship't Stocks and Stones,

  Forget not: in thy book record their groanes

  Who were thy Sheep and in their antient Fold

  Slayn by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd

  Mother with Infant down the Rocks.  Their moans

  The Vales redoubl'd to the Hills, and they

  To Heav'n.  Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow                       10

  O're all th'Italian fields where still doth sway

  The triple Tyrant: that from these may grow

  A hunder'd-fold, who having learnt thy way

  Early may fly the Babylonian wo.

  XVI

  When I consider how my light is spent,

  E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

  And that one Talent which is death to hide,

  Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

  To serve therewith my Maker, and present

  My true account, least he returning chide,

  Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,

  I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

  That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

  Either man's work or his own gifts, who best                         10

  Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State

  Is Kingly.  Thousands at his bidding speed

  And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:

  They also serve who only stand and waite.

  XVII

  Lawrence of vertuous Father vertuous Son,

  Now that the Fields are dank, and ways are mire,

  Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire

  Help wast a sullen day; what may be Won

  From the hard Season gaining: time will run

  On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire

  The frozen earth; and cloth in fresh attire

  The Lillie and Rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.

  What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,

  Of Attick tast, with Wine, whence we may rise                        10

  To hear the Lute well toucht, or artfull voice

  Warble immortal Notes and Tuskan Ayre?

  He who of those delights can judge, and spare

  To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

  XVIII

  Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench

  Of Brittish Themis, with no mean applause

  Pronounc't and in his volumes taught our Lawes,

  Which others at their Barr so often wrench:

  To day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench

  In mirth, that after no repenting drawes;

  Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause,

  And what the Swede intend, and what the French.

  To measure life, learn thou betimes, and know

  Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;                        10

  For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,

  And disapproves that care, though wise in show,

  That with superfluous burden loads the day,

  And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

  XIX

  Methought I saw my late espoused Saint

  Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,

  Whom Joves great Son to her glad Husband gave,

  Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.

  Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,

  Purification in the old Law did save,

  And such, as yet once more I trust to have

  Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

  Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:

  Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight,                        10

  Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd

  So clear, as in no face with more delight.

  But O as to embrace me she enclin'd

  I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

ON THE NEW FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT.

 

  Because you have thrown of your Prelate Lord,

  And with stiff Vowes renounc'd his Liturgie

  To seise the widdow'd whore Pluralitie

  From them whose sin ye envi'd, not abhor'd,

  Dare ye for this adjure the Civill Sword

  To force our Consciences that Christ set free,

  And ride us with a classic Hierarchy

  Taught ye by meer A. S. and Rotherford?

  Men whose Life, Learning, Faith and pure intent

  Would have been held in high esteem with Paul                        10

  Must now he nam'd and printed Hereticks

  By shallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call:

  But we do hope to find out all your tricks,

  Your plots and packing wors then those of Trent,

  That so the Parliament

  May with their wholsom and preventive Shears

  Clip your Phylacteries, though bauk your Ears,

  And succour our just Fears

  When they shall read this clearly in your charge

  New Presbyter is but Old Priest Writ Large.                          20

  The four following sonnets were not published until 1694, and

  then in a mangled form by Phillips, in his Life of Milton; they

  are here printed from the Cambridge MS., where that to Fairfax

  is in Milton's autograph.

ON THE LORD GEN. FAIRFAX AT THE SEIGE OF COLCHESTER.

 

  Fairfax, whose name in armes through Europe rings

  Filling each mouth with envy, or with praise,

  And all her jealous monarchs with amaze,

  And rumors loud, that daunt remotest kings,

  Thy firm unshak'n vertue ever brings

  Victory home, though new rebellions raise

  Their Hydra heads, & the fals North displaies

  Her brok'n league, to impe their serpent wings,

  O yet a nobler task awaites thy hand;

  Yet what can Warr, but endless warr still breed,                     10

  Till Truth, & Right from Violence be freed,

  And Public Faith cleard from the shamefull brand

  Of Public Fraud.  In vain doth Valour bleed

  While Avarice, & Rapine share the land.

TO THE LORD GENERALL CROMWELL MAY 1652.

 

  ON THE PROPOSALLS OF CERTAINE MINISTERS AT THE COMMITTEE FOR

  PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPELL.

  Cromwell, our cheif of men, who through a cloud

  Not of warr onely, but detractions rude,

  Guided by faith & matchless Fortitude

  To peace & truth thy glorious way hast plough'd,

  And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud

  Hast reard Gods Trophies, & his work pursu'd,

  While Darwen stream with blood of Scotts imbru'd,

  And Dunbarr field resounds thy praises loud,

  And Worsters laureat wreath; yet much remaines

  To conquer still; peace hath her victories                           10

  No less renownd then warr, new foes aries

  Threatning to bind our soules with secular chaines:

  Helpe us to save free Conscience from the paw

  Of hireling wolves whose Gospell is their maw.

TO SR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER.

 

  Vane, young in yeares, but in sage counsell old,

  Then whome a better Senatour nere held

  The helme of Rome, when gownes not armes repelld

  The feirce Epeirot & the African bold,

  Whether to settle peace, or to unfold

  The drift of hollow states, hard to be spelld,

  Then to advise how warr may best, upheld,

  Move by her two maine nerves, Iron & Gold

  In all her equipage: besides to know

  Both spirituall powre & civill, what each meanes                     10

  What severs each thou hast learnt, which few have don

  The bounds of either sword to thee wee ow.

  Therfore on thy firme hand religion leanes

  In peace, & reck'ns thee her eldest son.

TO MR. CYRIACK SKINNER UPON HIS BLINDNESS.

 

  Cyriack, this three years day these eys, though clear

  To outward view, of blemish or of spot;

  Bereft of light thir seeing have forgot,

  Nor to thir idle orbs doth sight appear

  Of Sun or Moon or Starre throughout the year,

  Or man or woman.  Yet I argue not

  Against heavns hand or will, nor hate a jot

  Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

  Right onward.  What supports me, dost thou ask?

  The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd                  10

  In libertyes defence, my noble task,

  Of which all Europe talks from side to side.

  This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask

  Content though blind, had I no better guide.

PSAL. I. Done into Verse, 1653.

 

  BLESS'D is the man who hath not walk'd astray

  In counsel of the wicked, and ith'way

  Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat

  Of scorners hath not sate.  But in the great

  Jehovahs Law is ever his delight,

  And in his law he studies day and night.

  He shall be as a tree which planted grows

  By watry streams, and in his season knows

  To yield his fruit, and his leaf shall not fall.

  And what he takes in hand shall prosper all.                         10

  Not so the wicked, but as chaff which fann'd

  The wind drives, so the wicked shall not stand

  In judgment, or abide their tryal then

  Nor sinners in th'assembly of just men.

  For the Lord knows th'upright way of the just

  And the way of bad men to ruine must.

PSAL. II Done Aug. 8. 1653. Terzetti.

 

  WHY do the Gentiles tumult, and the Nations

  Muse a vain thing, the Kings of th'earth upstand

  With power, and Princes in their Congregations

  Lay deep their plots together through each Land,

  Against the Lord and his Messiah dear.

  Let us break off; say they, by strength of hand

  Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,

  Their twisted cords: he who in Heaven doth dwell

  Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe

  Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell                          10

  And fierce ire trouble them; but I saith hee

  Anointed have my King (though ye rebell)

  On Sion my holi' hill.  A firm decree

  I will declare; the Lord to me hath say'd

  Thou art my Son I have begotten thee

  This day, ask of me, and the grant is made;

  As thy possession I on thee bestow

  Th'Heathen, and as thy conquest to be sway'd

  Earths utmost bounds: them shalt thou bring full low

  With Iron Sceptir bruis'd, and them disperse                         20

  Like to a potters vessel shiver'd so.

  And now be wise at length ye Kings averse

  Be taught ye Judges of the earth; with fear

  Jehovah serve and let your joy converse

  With trembling;  Kiss the Son least he appear

  In anger and ye perish in the way

  If once his wrath take fire like fuel sere.

  Happy all those who have in him their stay.

PSAL. III. Aug. 9. 1653

 

  WHEN HE FLED FROM ABSALOM.

  LORD how many are my foes

  How many those

  That in arms against me rise

  Many are they

  That of my life distrustfully thus say,

  No help for him in God there lies.

  But thou Lord art my shield my glory,

  Thee through my story

  Th' exalter of my head I count

  Aloud I cry'd                                                        10

  Unto Jehovah, he full soon reply'd

  And heard me from his holy mount.

  I lay and slept, I wak'd again,

  For my sustain

  Was the Lord.  Of many millions

  The populous rout

  I fear not though incamping round about

  They pitch against me their Pavillions.

  Rise Lord, save me my God for thou

  Hast smote ere now                                                   20

  On the cheek-bone all my foes,

  Of men abhor'd

  Hast broke the teeth.  This help was from the Lord;

  Thy blessing on thy people flows.

PSAL. IV. Aug. 10.1653.

 

  ANSWER me when I call

  God of my righteousness;

  In straights and in distress

  Thou didst me disinthrall

  And set at large; now spare,

  Now pity me, and hear my earnest prai'r.

 

  Great ones how long will ye

  My glory have in scorn

  How long be thus forlorn

  Still to love vanity,                                                10

  To love, to seek, to prize

  Things false and vain and nothing else but lies?

 

  Yet know the Lord hath chose

  Chose to himself a part

  The good and meek of heart

  (For whom to chuse he knows)

  Jehovah from on high

  Will hear my voyce what time to him I crie.

 

  Be aw'd, and do not sin,

  Speak to your hearts alone,                                          20

  Upon your beds, each one,

  And be at peace within.

  Offer the offerings just

  Of righteousness and in Jehovah trust.

 

  Many there be that say

  Who yet will shew us good?

  Talking like this worlds brood;

  But Lord, thus let me pray,

  On us lift up the light

  Lift up the favour of thy count'nance bright.                        30

 

  Into my heart more joy

  And gladness thou hast put

  Then when a year of glut

  Their stores doth over-cloy

  And from their plenteous grounds

  With vast increase their corn and wine abounds.

 

  In peace at once will I

  Both lay me down and sleep

  For thou alone dost keep

  Me safe where ere I lie                                              40

  As in a rocky Cell

  Thou Lord alone in safety mak'st me dwell.

PSAL. V. Aug. 12.1653.

 

  JEHOVAH to my words give ear

  My meditation waigh

  The voyce of my complaining hear

  My King and God for unto thee I pray.

  Jehovah thou my early voyce

  Shalt in the morning hear

  Ith'morning I to thee with choyce

  Will rank my Prayers, and watch till thou appear.

  For thou art not a God that takes

  In wickedness delight                                                10

  Evil with thee no biding makes

  Fools or mad men stand not within thy sight.

  All workers of iniquity

  Thou wilt destroy that speak a ly

  The bloodi' and guileful man God doth detest.

  But I will in thy mercies dear

  Thy numerous mercies go

  Into thy house; I in thy fear

  Will towards thy holy temple worship low.                            20

  Lord lead me in thy righteousness

  Lead me because of those

  That do observe if I transgress,

  Set thy wayes right before, where my step goes.

  For in his faltring mouth unstable

  No word is firm or sooth

  Their inside, troubles miserable;

  An open grave their throat, their tongue they smooth.

  God, find them guilty, let them fall

  By their own counsels quell'd;                                       30

  Push them in their rebellions all

  Still on; for against thee they have rebell'd;

  Then all who trust in thee shall bring

  Their joy, while thou from blame

  Defend'st them, they shall ever sing

  And shall triumph in thee, who love thy name.

  For thou Jehovah wilt be found

  To bless the just man still,

  As with a shield thou wilt surround

  Him with thy lasting favour and good will.                           40

PSAL. VI Aug. 13. 1653.

 

  LORD in thine anger do not reprehend me

  Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;

  Pity me Lord for I am much deject

  Am very weak and faint; heal and amend me,

  For all my bones, that even with anguish ake,

  Are troubled, yea my soul is troubled sore

  And thou O Lord how long? turn Lord, restore

  My soul, O save me for thy goodness sake

  For in death no remembrance is of thee;

  Who in the grave can celebrate thy praise?                           10

  Wearied I am with sighing out my dayes.

  Nightly my Couch I make a kind of Sea;

  My Bed I water with my tears; mine Eie

  Through grief consumes, is waxen old and dark

  Ith' mid'st of all mine enemies that mark.

  Depart all ye that work iniquitie.

  Depart from me, for the voice of my weeping

  The Lord hath heard, the Lord hath heard my prai'r

  My supplication with acceptance fair

  The Lord will own, and have me in his keeping.                       20

  Mine enemies shall all be blank and dash't

  With much confusion; then grow red with shame,

  They shall return in hast the way they came

  And in a moment shall be quite abash't.

PSAL. VII. Aug. 14. 1653.

 

  UPON THE WORDS OF CHUSH THE BENJAMITE AGAINST HIM.

  Lord my God to thee I flie

  Save me and secure me under

  Thy protection while I crie

  Least as a Lion (and no wonder)

  He hast to tear my Soul asunder

  Tearing and no rescue nigh.

 

  Lord my God if I have thought

  Or done this, if wickedness

  Be in my hands, if I have wrought

  Ill to him that meant me peace,                                      10

  Or to him have render'd less,

  And fre'd my foe for naught;

 

  Let th'enemy pursue my soul

  And overtake it, let him tread

  My life down to the earth and roul

  In the dust my glory dead,

  In the dust and there out spread

  Lodge it with dishonour foul.

 

  Rise Jehovah in thine ire

  Rouze thy self amidst the rage                                       20

  Of my foes that urge like fire;

  And wake for me, their furi' asswage;

  Judgment here thou didst ingage

  And command which I desire.

 

  So th' assemblies of each Nation

  Will surround thee, seeking right,

  Thence to thy glorious habitation

  Return on high and in their sight.

  Jehovah judgeth most upright

  All people from the worlds foundation.                               30

 

  Judge me Lord, be judge in this

  According to my righteousness

  And the innocence which is

  Upon me: cause at length to cease

  Of evil men the wickedness

  And their power that do amiss.

 

  But the just establish fast,

  Since thou art the just God that tries

  Hearts and reins.  On God is cast

  My defence, and in him lies                                          40

  In him who both just and wise

  Saves th' upright of Heart at last.

 

  God is a just Judge and severe,

  And God is every day offended;

  If th' unjust will not forbear,

  His Sword he whets, his Bow hath bended

  Already, and for him intended

  The tools of death, that waits him near.

 

  (His arrows purposely made he

  For them that persecute.)  Behold                                    50

  He travels big with vanitie,

  Trouble he hath conceav'd of old

  As in a womb, and from that mould

  Hath at length brought forth a Lie.

 

  He dig'd a pit, and delv'd it deep,

  And fell into the pit he made,

  His mischief that due course doth keep,

  Turns on his head, and his ill trade

  Of violence will undelay'd

  Fall on his crown with ruine steep.                                  60

 

  Then will I Jehovah's praise

  According to his justice raise

  And sing the Name and Deitie

  Of Jehovah the most high.

PSAL. VIII. Aug. 14. 1653.

 

  O JEHOVAH our Lord how wondrous great

  And glorious is thy name through all the earth?

  So as above the Heavens thy praise to set

  Out of the tender mouths of latest bearth,

 

  Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou

  Hast founded strength because of all thy foes

  To stint th'enemy, and slack th'avengers brow

  That bends his rage thy providence to oppose.

 

  When I behold thy Heavens, thy Fingers art,

  The Moon and Starrs which thou so bright hast set,                   10

  In the pure firmament, then saith my heart,

  O What is man that thou remembrest yet,

 

  And think'st upon him; or of man begot

  That him thou visit'st and of him art found;

  Scarce to be less then Gods, thou mad'st his lot,

  With honour and with state thou hast him crown'd.

 

  O're the works of thy hand thou mad'st him Lord,

  Thou hast put all under his lordly feet,

  All Flocks, and Herds, by thy commanding word,

  All beasts that in the field or forrest meet.                        20

 

  Fowl of the Heavens, and Fish that through the wet

  Sea-paths in shoals do slide. And know no dearth.

  O Jehovah our Lord how wondrous great

  And glorious is thy name through all the earth.

PSAL. LXXX.

 

  1   THOU Shepherd that dost Israel keep

      Give ear in time of need,

      Who leadest like a flock of sheep

      Thy loved Josephs seed,

      That sitt'st between the Cherubs bright

      Between their wings out-spread

      Shine forth, and from thy cloud give light,

      And on our foes thy dread.

  2   In Ephraims view and Benjamins,

      And in Manasse's sight                                           10

      Awake* thy strength, come, and be seen                    *Gnorera.

      To save us by thy might.

  3   Turn us again, thy grace divine

      To us O God vouchsafe;

      Cause thou thy face on us to shine

      And then we shall be safe.

  4   Lord God of Hosts, how long wilt thou,

      How long wilt thou declare

      Thy *smoaking wrath, and angry brow                     *Gnashanta.

      Against thy peoples praire.                                      20

  5   Thou feed'st them with the bread of tears,

      Their bread with tears they eat,

      And mak'st them* largely drink the tears                  *Shalish.

      Wherewith their cheeks are wet.

  6   A strife thou mak'st us and a prey

      To every neighbour foe,

      Among themselves they *laugh, they *play,                *Jilgnagu.

      And *flouts at us they throw.

  7   Return us, and thy grace divine,

      O God of Hosts vouchsafe                                         30

      Cause thou thy face on us to shine,

      And then we shall be safe.

  8   A Vine from Aegypt thou hast brought,

      Thy free love made it thine,

      And drov'st out Nations proud and haut

      To plant this lovely Vine.

  9   Thou did'st prepare for it a place

      And root it deep and fast

      That it began to grow apace,

      And fill'd the land at last.                                     40

  10  With her green shade that cover'd all,

      The Hills were over-spread

      Her Bows as high as Cedars tall

      Advanc'd their lofty head.

  11  Her branches on the western side

      Down to the Sea she sent,

      And upward to that river wide

      Her other branches went.

  12  Why hast thou laid her Hedges low

      And brok'n down her Fence,                                       50

      That all may pluck her, as they go,

      With rudest violence?

  13  The tusked Boar out of the wood

      Up turns it by the roots,

      Wild Beasts there brouze, and make their food

      Her Grapes and tender Shoots.

  14  Return now, God of Hosts, look down

      From Heav'n, thy Seat divine,

      Behold us, but without a frown,

      And visit this thy Vine.                                         60

  15  Visit this Vine, which thy right hand

      Hath set, and planted long,

      And the young branch, that for thy self

      Thou hast made firm and strong.

  16  But now it is consum'd with fire,

      And cut with Axes down,

      They perish at thy dreadfull ire,

      At thy rebuke and frown.

  17  Upon the man of thy right hand

      Let thy good hand be laid,                                       70

      Upon the Son of Man, whom thou

      Strong for thyself hast made.

  18  So shall we not go back from thee

      To wayes of sin and shame,

      Quick'n us thou, then gladly wee

      Shall call upon thy Name.

      Return us, and thy grace divine

      Lord God of Hosts voutsafe,

      Cause thou thy face on us to shine,

      And then we shall be safe.                                       80

PSAL. LXXXI.

 

  1   To God our strength sing loud, and clear,

      Sing loud to God our King,

      To Jacobs God, that all may hear

      Loud acclamations ring.

  2   Prepare a Hymn, prepare a Song

      The Timbrel hither bring

      The cheerfull Psaltry bring along

      And Harp with pleasant string.

  3   Blow, as is wont, in the new Moon

      With Trumpets lofty sound,                                       10

      Th'appointed time, the day wheron

      Our solemn Feast comes round.

  4   This was a Statute giv'n of old

      For Israel to observe

      A Law of Jacobs God, to hold

      From whence they might not swerve.

  5   This he a Testimony ordain'd

      In Joseph, not to change,

      When as he pass'd through Aegypt land;

      The Tongue I heard, was strange.                                 20

  6   From burden, and from slavish toyle

      I set his shoulder free;

      His hands from pots, and mirie soyle

      Deliver'd were by me.

  7   When trouble did thee sore assaile,

      On me then didst thou call,

      And I to free thee did not faile,

      And led thee out of thrall.

      I answer'd thee in *thunder deep                 *Be Sether ragnam.

      With clouds encompass'd round;                                   30

      I tri'd thee at the water steep

      Of Meriba renown'd.

  8   Hear O my people, heark'n well,

      I testifie to thee

      Thou antient flock of Israel,

      If thou wilt list to mee,

  9   Through out the land of thy abode

      No alien God shall be

      Nor shalt thou to a forein God

      In honour bend thy knee.                                         40

  10  I am the Lord thy God which brought

      Thee out of Aegypt land

      Ask large enough, and I, besought,

      Will grant thy full demand.

  11  And yet my people would not hear,

      Nor hearken to my voice;

      And Israel whom I lov'd so dear

      Mislik'd me for his choice.

  12  Then did I leave them to their will

      And to their wandring mind;                                      50

      Their own conceits they follow'd still

      Their own devises blind

  13  O that my people would be wise

      To serve me all their daies,

      And O that Israel would advise

      To walk my righteous waies.

  14  Then would I soon bring down their foes

      That now so proudly rise,

      And turn my hand against all those

      That are their enemies.                                          60

  15  Who hate the Lord should then be fain

      To bow to him and bend,

      But they, His should remain,

      Their time should have no end.

  16  And he would free them from the shock

      With flower of finest wheat,

      And satisfie them from the rock

      With Honey for their Meat.

PSAL. LXXXII.

 

  1   GOD in the *great *assembly stands                    *Bagnadath-el

      Of Kings and lordly States,

      Among the gods* on both his hands.                        *Bekerev.

      He judges and debates.

  2   How long will ye *pervert the right                      *Tishphetu

      With *judgment false and wrong                              gnavel.

      Favouring the wicked by your might,

      Who thence grow bold and strong?

  3  *Regard the *weak and fatherless                       *Shiphtu-dal.

     *Dispatch the *poor mans cause,                                   10

      And **raise the man in deep distress

      By **just and equal Lawes.                              **Hatzdiku.

  4   Defend the poor and desolate,

      And rescue from the hands

      Of wicked men the low estate

      Of him that help demands.

  5   They know not nor will understand,

      In darkness they walk on,

      The Earths foundations all are *mov'd                     *Jimmotu.

      And *out of order gon.                                           20

  6   I said that ye were Gods, yea all

      The Sons of God most high

  7   But ye shall die like men, and fall

      As other Princes die.

  8   Rise God, *judge thou the earth in might,

      This wicked earth *redress,                               *Shiphta.

      For thou art he who shalt by right

      The Nations all possess.

 

 

  PSAL. LXXXIII.

 

  1   BE not thou silent now at length

      O God hold not thy peace,

      Sit not thou still O God of strength

      We cry and do not cease.

  2   For lo thy furious foes now *swell

      And *storm outrageously,                                *Jehemajun.

      And they that hate thee proud and fill

      Exalt their heads full hie.

  3   Against thy people they *contrive                       *Jagnarimu.

     *Their Plots and Counsels deep,                             *Sod. 10

     *Them to ensnare they chiefly strive             *Jithjagnatsu gnal.

     *Whom thou dost hide and keep.                          *Tsephuneca.

  4   Come let us cut them off say they,

      Till they no Nation be

      That Israels name for ever may

      Be lost in memory.

  5   For they consult *with all their might,               *Lev jachdau.

      And all as one in mind

      Themselves against thee they unite

      And in firm union bind.                                          20

  6   The tents of Edom, and the brood

      Of scornful Ishmael,

      Moab, with them of Hagars blood

      That in the Desart dwell,

  7   Gebal and Ammon there conspire,

      And hateful Amalec,

      The Philistims, and they of Tyre

      Whose bounds the sea doth check.

  8   With them great Asshur also bands

      And doth confirm the knot,                                       30

      All these have lent their armed hands

      To aid the Sons of Lot.

  9   Do to them as to Midian bold

      That wasted all the Coast.

      To Sisera, and as is told

      Thou didst to Jabins hoast,

      When at the brook of Kishon old

      They were repulst and slain,

  10  At Endor quite cut off, and rowl'd

      As dung upon the plain.                                          40

  11  As Zeb and Oreb evil sped

      So let their Princes speed

      As Zeba, and Zalmunna bled

      So let their Princes bleed.

  12  For they amidst their pride have said

      By right now shall we seize

      Gods houses, and will now invade

     *Their stately Palaces.                    *Neoth Elohim bears both.

  13  My God, oh make them as a wheel

      No quiet let them find,                                          50

      Giddy and restless let them reel

      Like stubble from the wind.

  14  As when an aged wood takes fire

      Which on a sudden straies,

      The greedy flame runs hier and hier

      Till all the mountains blaze,

  15  So with thy whirlwind them pursue,

      And with thy tempest chase;

  16 *And till they *yield thee honour due,                *They seek thy

      Lord fill with shame their face.                         Name. Heb.

  17  Asham'd and troubl'd let them be,                                60

      Troubl'd and sham'd for ever,

      Ever confounded, and so die

      With shame, and scape it never.

  18  Then shall they know that thou whose name

      Jehova is alone,

      Art the most high, and thou the same

      O're all the earth art one.

PSAL. LXXXIV.

 

  1   How lovely are thy dwellings fair!

      O Lord of Hoasts, how dear

      The pleasant Tabernacles are!

      Where thou do'st dwell so near.

  2   My Soul doth long and almost die

      Thy Courts O Lord to see,

      My heart and flesh aloud do crie,

      O living God, for thee.

  3   There ev'n the Sparrow freed from wrong

      Hath found a house of rest,                                      10

      The Swallow there, to lay her young

      Hath built her brooding nest,

      Ev'n by thy Altars Lord of Hoasts

      They find their safe abode,

      And home they fly from round the Coasts

      Toward thee, My King, my God

  4   Happy, who in thy house reside

      Where thee they ever praise,

  5   Happy, whose strength in thee doth bide,

      And in their hearts thy waies.                                   20

  6   They pass through Baca's thirstie Vale,

      That dry and barren ground

      As through a fruitfull watry Dale

      Where Springs and Showrs abound.

  7   They journey on from strength to strength

      With joy and gladsom cheer

      Till all before our God at length

      In Sion do appear.

  8   Lord God of Hoasts hear now my praier

      O Jacobs God give ear,                                           30

  9   Thou God our shield look on the face

      Of thy anointed dear.

  10  For one day in thy Courts to be

      Is better, and mere blest

      Then in the joyes of Vanity,

      A thousand daies at best.

      I in the temple of my God

      Had rather keep a dore,

      Then dwell in Tents, and rich abode

      With Sin for evermore                                            40

  11  For God the Lord both Sun and Shield

      Gives grace and glory bright,

      No good from him shall be with-held

      Whose waies are just and right.

  12  Lord God of Hoasts that raign 'st on high,

      That man is truly blest

      Who only on thee doth relie.

      And in thee only rest.

PSAL LXXXV.

 

  1   THY Land to favour graciously

      Thou hast not Lord been slack,

      Thou hast from hard Captivity

      Returned Jacob back.

  2   Th' iniquity thou didst forgive

      That wrought thy people woe,

      And all their Sin, that did thee grieve

      Hast hid where none shall know.

  3   Thine anger all thou hadst remov'd,

      And calmly didst return                                          10

      From thy *fierce wrath which we had prov'd        *Heb. The burning

      Far worse then fire to burn.                            heat of thy

  4   God of our saving health and peace,                          wrath.

      Turn us, and us restore,

      Thine indignation cause to cease

      Toward us, and chide no more.

  5   Wilt thou be angry without end,

      For ever angry thus

      Wilt thou thy frowning ire extend

      From age to age on us?                                           20

  6   Wilt thou not * turn, and hear our voice             * Heb. Turn to

      And us again * revive,                                 quicken us.

      That so thy people may rejoyce

      By thee preserv'd alive.

  7   Cause us to see thy goodness Lord,

      To us thy mercy shew

      Thy saving health to us afford

      And lift in us renew.

  8   And now what God the Lord will speak

      I will go strait and hear,                                       30

      For to his people he speaks peace

      And to his Saints full dear,

      To his dear Saints he will speak peace,

      But let them never more

      Return to folly, but surcease

      To trespass as before.

  9   Surely to such as do him fear

      Salvation is at hand

      And glory shall ere long appear

      To dwell within our Land.                                        40

  10  Mercy and Truth that long were miss'd

      Now joyfully are met

      Sweet Peace and Righteousness have kiss'd

      And hand in hand are set.

  11  Truth from the earth like to a flowr

      Shall bud and blossom then,

      And Justice from her heavenly bowr

      Look down on mortal men.

  12  The Lord will also then bestow

      Whatever thing is good                                           50

      Our Land shall forth in plenty throw

      Her fruits to be our food.

  13  Before him Righteousness shall go

      His Royal Harbinger,

      Then * will he come, and not be slow          *Heb. He will set his

      His footsteps cannot err.                         steps to the way.

PSAL. LXXXVI.

 

  1   THY gracious ear, O Lord, encline,

      O hear me I thee pray,

      For I am poor, and almost pine

      With need, and sad decay.

  2   Preserve my soul, for *I have trod           Heb. I am good, loving,

      Thy waies, and love the just,                    a doer of good and

      Save thou thy servant O my God                          holy things

      Who still in thee doth trust.

  3   Pity me Lord for daily thee

      I call; 4 O make rejoyce                                         10

      Thy Servants Soul; for Lord to thee

      I lift my soul and voice,

  5   For thou art good, thou Lord art prone

      To pardon, thou to all

      Art full of mercy, thou alone

      To them that on thee call.

  6   Unto my supplication Lord

      Give ear, and to the crie

      Of my incessant praiers afford

      Thy hearing graciously.                                          20

  7   I in the day of my distress

      Will call on thee for aid;

      For thou wilt grant me free access

      And answer, what I pray'd.

  8   Like thee among the gods is none

      O Lord, nor any works

      Of all that other Gods have done

      Like to thy glorious works.

  9   The Nations all whom thou hast made

      Shall come, and all shall frame                                  30

      To bow them low before thee Lord,

      And glorifie thy name.

  10  For great thou art, and wonders great

      By thy strong hand are done,

      Thou in thy everlasting Seat

      Remainest God alone.

  11  Teach me O Lord thy way most right,

      I in thy truth will hide,

      To fear thy name my heart unite

      So shall it never slide.                                         40

  12  Thee will I praise O Lord my God

      Thee honour, and adore

      With my whole heart, and blaze abroad

      Thy name for ever more.

  13  For great thy mercy is toward me,

      And thou hast free'd my Soul

      Eev'n from the lowest Hell set free

      From deepest darkness foul.

  14  O God the proud against me rise

      And violent men are met                                          50

      To seek my life, and in their eyes

      No fear of thee have set.

  15  But thou Lord art the God most mild

      Readiest thy grace to shew,

      Slow to be angry, and art stil'd

      Most mercifull, most true.

  16  O turn to me thy face at length,

      And me have mercy on,

      Unto thy servant give thy strength,

      And save thy hand-maids Son.                                     60

  17  Some sign of good to me afford,

      And let my foes then see

      And be asham'd, because thou Lord

      Do'st help and comfort me.

PSAL. LXXXVII

 

  1   AMONG the holy Mountains high

      Is his foundation fast,

      There Seated in his Sanctuary,

      His Temple there is plac't.

  2   Sions fair Gates the Lord loves more

      Then all the dwellings faire

      Of Jacobs Land, though there be store,

      And all within his care.

  3   City of God, most glorious things

      Of thee abroad are spoke;                                        10

  4   I mention Egypt, where proud Kings

      Did our forefathers yoke,

      I mention Babel to my friends,

      Philistia full of scorn,

      And Tyre with Ethiops utmost ends,

      Lo this man there was born:

  5   But twise that praise shall in our ear

      Be said of Sion last

      This and this man was born in her,

      High God shall fix her fast.                                     20

  6   The Lord shall write it in a Scrowle

      That ne're shall be out-worn

      When he the Nations doth enrowle

      That this man there was born.

  7   Both they who sing, and they who dance

      With sacred Songs are there,

      In thee fresh brooks, and soft streams glance

      And all my fountains clear.

PSAL. LXXXVIII

 

  1   LORD God that dost me save and keep,

      All day to thee I cry;

      And all night long, before thee weep

      Before thee prostrate lie.

  2   Into thy presence let my praier

      With sighs devout ascend

      And to my cries, that ceaseless are,

      Thine ear with favour bend.

  3   For cloy'd with woes and trouble store

      Surcharg'd my Soul doth lie,                                     10

      My life at death's uncherful dore

      Unto the grave draws nigh.

  4   Reck'n'd I am with them that pass

      Down to the dismal pit

      I am a *man, but weak alas               * Heb. A man without manly

      And for that name unfit.                                  strength.

  5   From life discharg'd and parted quite

      Among the dead to sleep

      And like the slain in bloody fight

      That in the grave lie deep.                                      20

      Whom thou rememberest no more,

      Dost never more regard,

      Them from thy hand deliver'd o're

      Deaths hideous house hath barr'd.

  6   Thou in the lowest pit profound'

      Hast set me all forlorn,

      Where thickest darkness hovers round,

      In horrid deeps to mourn.

  7   Thy wrath from which no shelter saves

      Full sore doth press on me;                                      30

     *Thou break'st upon me all thy waves,                      *The Heb.

     *And all thy waves break me                              bears both.

  8   Thou dost my friends from me estrange,

      And mak'st me odious,

      Me to them odious, for they change,

      And I here pent up thus.

  9   Through sorrow, and affliction great

      Mine eye grows dim and dead,

      Lord all the day I thee entreat,

      My hands to thee I spread.                                       40

  10  Wilt thou do wonders on the dead,

      Shall the deceas'd arise

      And praise thee from their loathsom bed

      With pale and hollow eyes?

  11  Shall they thy loving kindness tell

      On whom the grave hath hold,

      Or they who in perdition dwell

      Thy faithfulness unfold?

  12  In darkness can thy mighty hand

      Or wondrous acts be known,                                       50

      Thy justice in the gloomy land

      Of dark oblivion?

  13  But I to thee O Lord do cry

      E're yet my life be spent,

      And up to thee my praier doth hie

      Each morn, and thee prevent.

  14  Why wilt thou Lord my soul forsake,

      And hide thy face from me,

  15  That am already bruis'd, and *shake          *Heb. Prae Concussione.

      With terror sent from thee;                                      60

      Bruz'd, and afflicted and so low

      As ready to expire,

      While I thy terrors undergo

      Astonish'd with thine ire.

  16  Thy fierce wrath over me doth flow

      Thy threatnings cut me through.

  17  All day they round about me go,

      Like waves they me persue.

  18  Lover and friend thou hast remov'd

      And sever'd from me far.                                         70

      They fly me now whom I have lov'd,

      And as in darkness are.

  Finis.

COLLECTION OF PASSAGES TRANSLATED IN THE PROSE WRITINGS.

[From Of Reformation in England, 1641.]

 

  Ah Constantine, of how much ill was cause

  Not thy Conversion, but those rich demains

  That the first wealthy Pope receiv'd of thee.

  DANTE, Inf. xix. 115.

 

  Founded in chast and humble Poverty,

  'Gainst them that rais'd thee dost thou lift thy horn,

  Impudent whoore, where hast thou plac'd thy hope?

  In thy Adulterers, or thy ill got wealth?

  Another Constantine comes not in hast.

  PETRARCA, Son. 108.

 

  And to be short, at last his guid him brings

  Into a goodly valley, where he sees

  A mighty mass of things strangely confus'd

  Things that on earth were lost or were abus'd.

  .   .   .   .   .

  Then past he to a flowry Mountain green,

  Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously;

  This was that gift (if you the truth will have)

  That Constantine to good Sylvestro gave.

  ARIOSTO, Orl. Fur. xxxiv. 80.

[From Reason of Church Government, 1641.]

 

  When I die, let the Earth be roul'd in flames.

[From Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642.]

 

  Laughing to teach the truth

  What hinders? as some teachers give to Boys

  Junkets and knacks, that they may learne apace.

  HORACE, Sat. 1. 24.

 

  Jesting decides great things

  Stronglier, and better oft than earnest can.

  IBID. i. 10. 14.

 

  'Tis you that say it, not I: you do the deeds

  And your ungodly deeds find me the words.

  SOPHOCLES, Elec. 624.

[From Areopagitica, 1644.]

 

  This is true Liberty, when free-born Men,

  Having to advise the Public, may speak free,

  Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise;

  Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace,

  What can be juster in a state then this?

  EURIPIDES, Supp. 438

[From Tetrachordon, 1645.]

 

  Whom do we count a good man, whom but he

  Who keeps the laws and statutes of the Senate,

  Who judges in great suits and controversies,

  Whose witness and opinion wins the cause?

  But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood

  See his foul inside through his whited skin.

  HORACE, Ep. i. 16. 40.

[From The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649.]

 

                         There can be slaine

  No sacrifice to God more acceptable

  Than an unjust and wicked king.

  SENECA, Herc. Fur. 922.

[From History of Britain, 1670.]

 

  Brutus thus addresses Diana in the country of Leogecia.

 

  Goddess of Shades, and Huntress, who at will

  Walk'st on the rowling Sphear, and through the deep,

  On thy third Reign the Earth look now, and tell

  What Land, what Seat of rest thou bidst me seek,

  What certain Seat, where I may worship thee

  For aye, with Temples vow'd, and Virgin quires.

 

  To whom sleeping before the altar, Diana in a Vision that night

  thus answer'd.

 

  Brutus far to the West, in th' Ocean wide

  Beyond the Realm of Gaul, a Land there lies,

  Sea-girt it lies, where Giants dwelt of old,

  Now void, it fits thy People; thether bend

  Thy course, there shalt thou find a lasting seat,

  There to thy Sons another Troy shall rise,

  And Kings be born of thee, whose dredded might

  Shall aw the World, and conquer Nations bold.

PARADISE LOST.

ON Paradise Lost.

 

  WHEN I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,

  In slender Book his vast Design unfold,

  Messiah Crown'd, Gods Reconcil'd Decree,

  Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,

  Heav'n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All; the Argument

  Held me a while misdoubting his Intent,

  That he would ruine (for I saw him strong)

  The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song

  (So Sampson groap'd the Temples Posts in spight)

  The World o'rewhelming to revenge his sight.

 

  Yet as I read soon growing less severe,

  I lik'd his Project, the success did fear;

  Through that wide Field how he his way should find

  O're which lame Faith leads Understanding blind;

  Lest he perplex'd the things he would explain,

  And what was easie he should render vain.

 

  Or if a Work so infinite he spann'd,

  Jealous I was that some less skilful hand

  (Such as disquiet always what is well,

  And by ill imitating would excell)

  Might hence presume the whole Creations day

  To change in Scenes, and show it in a Play.

 

  Pardon me, Mighty Poet, nor despise

  My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.

  But I am now convinc'd, and none will dare

  Within thy Labours to pretend a share,

  Thou hast not miss'd one thought that could be fit,

  And all that was improper dost omit:

  So that no room is here for Writers left,

  But to detect their Ignorance or Theft.

 

  That Majesty which through thy Work doth Reign

  Draws the Devout, deterring the Profane,

  And things divine thou treatst of in such state

  As them preserves, and thee, inviolate.

  At once delight and horrour on us seise,

  Thou singst with so much gravity and ease;

  And above humane flight dost soar aloft

  With Plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.

  The Bird nam'd from that Paradise you sing

  So never flaggs, but always keeps on Wing.

 

  Where couldst thou words of such a compass find?

  Whence furnish such a vast expence of mind?

  Just Heav'n thee like Tiresias to requite

  Rewards with Prophesie thy loss of sight.

 

  Well mightst thou scorn thy Readers to allure

  With tinkling Rhime, of thy own sense secure;

  While the Town-Bayes writes all the while and spells,

  And like a Pack-horse tires without his Bells:

  Their Fancies like our Bushy-points appear,

  The Poets tag them, we for fashion wear.

  I too transported by the Mode offend,

  And while I meant to Praise thee must Commend.

  Thy Verse created like thy Theme sublime,

  In Number, Weight, and Measure, needs not Rhime.

 

                                         A.M.

 

  Note: On Paradise Lost] Added in the second edition 1674.

THE VERSE.

 

THE measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious eares, triveal and of no true musical delight: which consists only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory This neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken for a defect though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing.

 

Note: The Verse] Added in 1668 to the copies then remaining of the first edition; together with the Argument. In the second edition (1674) the Argument, with the necessary adjustment to the division made in Books vii and x, was distributed through the several books of the poem, as it is here printed.

BOOK I.

 

THE ARGUMENT.

THIS first Book proposes first in brief the whole Subject, Mans disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac't: Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many Legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his Crew into the great Deep. Which action past over, the Poem hasts into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell describ'd here, not in the Center (for Heaven and Earth may be suppos'd as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of utter darknesse, fitliest call'd Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying on the burning Lake, thunder-struck and astonisht, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in Order and Dignity lay by him; they confer of thir miserable fall. Satan awakens all his Legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded; They rise, thir Numbers, array of Battel, thir chief Leaders nam'd according to the Idols known afterwards in Canaan and the Countries adjoyning. To these Satan directs his Speech, comforts them with hope yet of gaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new World and new kind of Creature to be created, according to an ancient Prophesie or report in Heaven; for that Angels were long before this visible Creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this Prophesie, and what to determin thereon he refers to a full councell. What his Associates thence attempt. Pandemonium the palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: The infernal Peers there sit in Counsel.

 

  Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

  Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast

  Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

  With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

  Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

  Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top

  Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

  That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,

  In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth

  Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill                                   10

  Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd

  Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence

  Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,

  That with no middle flight intends to soar

  Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues

  Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

  And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer

  Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,

  Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first

  Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread                        20

  Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss

  And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark

  Illumine, what is low raise and support;

  That to the highth of this great Argument

  I may assert th' Eternal Providence,

  And justifie the wayes of God to men.

  Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view

  Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause

  Mov'd our Grand Parents in that happy State,

  Favour'd of Heav'n so highly, to fall off                            30

  From their Creator, and transgress his Will

  For one restraint, Lords of the World besides?

  Who first seduc'd them to that fowl revolt?

  Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile

  Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv'd

  The Mother of Mankinde, what time his Pride

  Had cast him out from Heav'n, with all his Host

  Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring

  To set himself in Glory above his Peers,

  He trusted to have equal'd the most High,                            40

  If he oppos'd; and with ambitious aim

  Against the Throne and Monarchy of God

  Rais'd impious War in Heav'n and Battel proud

  With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power

  Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie

  With hideous ruine and combustion down

  To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

  In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,

  Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms.

  Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night                     50

  To mortal men, he with his horrid crew

  Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe

  Confounded though immortal: But his doom

  Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought

  Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

  Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes

  That witness'd huge affliction and dismay

  Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:

  At once as far as Angels kenn he views

  The dismal Situation waste and wilde,                                60

  A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round

  As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames

  No light, but rather darkness visible

  Serv'd only to discover sights of woe,

  Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

  And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

  That comes to all; but torture without end

  Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed

  With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum'd:

  Such place Eternal Justice had prepar'd                              70

  For those rebellious, here their Prison ordain'd

  In utter darkness, and their portion set

  As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n

  As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.

  O how unlike the place from whence they fell!

  There the companions of his fall, o'rewhelm'd

  With Floods and Whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,

  He soon discerns, and weltring by his side

  One next himself in power, and next in crime,

  Long after known in Palestine, and nam'd                             80

  Beelzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy,

  And thence in Heav'n call'd Satan, with bold words

  Breaking the horrid silence thus began.

  If thou beest he; But O how fall'n! how chang'd

  From him, who in the happy Realms of Light

  Cloth'd with transcendent brightnes didst outshine

  Myriads though bright: If he whom mutual league,

  United thoughts and counsels, equal hope,

  And hazard in the Glorious Enterprize,

  Joynd with me once, now misery hath joynd                            90

  In equal ruin: into what Pit thou seest

  From what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd

  He with his Thunder: and till then who knew

  The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those

  Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage

  Can else inflict do I repent or change,

  Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind

  And high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit,

  That with the mightiest rais'd me to contend,

  And to the fierce contention brought along                          100

  Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd

  That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,

  His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd

  In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n,

  And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?

  All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,

  And study of revenge, immortal hate,

  And courage never to submit or yield:

  And what is else not to be overcome?

  That Glory never shall his wrath or might                           110

  Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace

  With suppliant knee, and deifie his power

  Who from the terrour of this Arm so late

  Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed,

  That were an ignominy and shame beneath

  This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods

  And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,

  Since through experience of this great event

  In Arms not worse, in foresight much advanc't,

  We may with more successful hope resolve                            120

  To wage by force or guile eternal Warr

  Irreconcileable, to our grand Foe,

  Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy

  Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav'n.

  So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain,

  Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:

  And him thus answer'd soon his bold Compeer.

  O Prince, O Chief of many Throned Powers,

  That led th' imbattelld Seraphim to Warr

  Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds                            130

  Fearless, endanger'd Heav'ns perpetual King;

  And put to proof his high Supremacy,

  Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate,

  Too well I see and rue the dire event,

  That with sad overthrow and foul defeat

  Hath lost us Heav'n, and all this mighty Host

  In horrible destruction laid thus low,

  As far as Gods and Heav'nly Essences

  Can Perish: for the mind and spirit remains

  Invincible, and vigour soon returns,                                140

  Though all our Glory extinct, and happy state

  Here swallow'd up in endless misery.

  But what if he our Conquerour, (whom I now

  Of force believe Almighty, since no less

  Then such could hav orepow'rd such force as ours)

  Have left us this our spirit and strength intire

  Strongly to suffer and support our pains,

  That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,

  Or do him mightier service as his thralls

  By right of Warr, what e're his business be                         150

  Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire,

  Or do his Errands in the gloomy Deep;

  What can it then avail though yet we feel

  Strength undiminisht, or eternal being

  To undergo eternal punishment?

  Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-fiend reply'd.

  Fall'n Cherube, to be weak is miserable

  Doing or Suffering: but of this be sure,

  To do ought good never will be our task,

  But ever to do ill our sole delight,                                160

  As being the contrary to his high will

  Whom we resist. If then his Providence

  Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,

  Our labour must be to pervert that end,

  And out of good still to find means of evil;

  Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps

  Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb

  His inmost counsels from their destind aim.

  But see the angry Victor hath recall'd

  His Ministers of vengeance and pursuit                              170

  Back to the Gates of Heav'n: The Sulphurous Hail

  Shot after us in storm, oreblown hath laid

  The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice

  Of Heav'n receiv'd us falling, and the Thunder,

  Wing'd with red Lightning and impetuous rage,

  Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now

  To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.

  Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn,

  Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.

  Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde,                     180

  The seat of desolation, voyd 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 rest 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,                           190

  If not what resolution from despare.

  Thus Satan talking to his neerest Mate

  With Head up-lift above the wave, and Eyes

  That sparkling blaz'd, 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 warr'd on Jove,

  Briarios or Typhon, whom the Den

  By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast                           200

  Leviathan, which God of all his works

  Created hugest that swim th' Ocean stream:

  Him haply slumbring on the Norway foam

  The Pilot of some small night-founder'd Skiff,

  Deeming some Island, oft, as Sea-men tell,

  With fixed Anchor in his skaly rind

  Moors by his side under the Lee, while Night

  Invests the Sea, and wished Morn delayes:

  So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay

  Chain'd on the burning Lake, nor ever thence                        210

  Had ris'n or heav'd 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 enrag'd might see

  How all his malice serv'd but to bring forth

  Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shewn

  On Man by him seduc't, 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

  Drivn backward slope their pointing spires, & rowld

  In billows, leave i'th' midst a horrid Vale.

  Then with expanded wings he stears his flight

  Aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air

  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                         230

  Of subterranean wind transports a Hill

  Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side

  Of thundring Aetna, whose combustible

  And fewel'd entrals thence conceiving Fire,

  Sublim'd with Mineral fury, aid the Winds,

  And leave a singed bottom all involv'd

  With stench and smoak: Such resting found the sole

  Of unblest feet. Him followed his next Mate,

  Both glorying to have scap't the Stygian flood

  As Gods, and by their own recover'd strength,                       240

  Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.

  Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,

  Said then the lost Arch Angel, this the seat

  That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom

  For that celestial light? Be it so, since hee

  Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid

  What shall be right: fardest from him is best

  Whom reason hath equald, force hath made supream

  Above his equals. Farewel happy Fields

  Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail                      250

  Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

  Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

  A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.

  The mind is its own place, and in it self

  Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

  What matter where, if I be still the same,

  And what I should be, all but less then hee

  Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least

  We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built

  Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:                         260

  Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce

  To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:

  Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.

  But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,

  Th' associates and copartners of our loss

  Lye thus astonisht on th' 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

  Regaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell?                       270

  So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub

  Thus answer'd. Leader of those Armies bright,

  Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foyld,

  If once they hear that voyce, their liveliest pledge

  Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft

  In worst extreams, and on the perilous edge

  Of battel when it rag'd, in all assaults

  Their surest signal, they will soon resume

  New courage and revive, though now they lye

  Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire,                        280

  As we erewhile, astounded and amaz'd,

  No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious highth.

  He scarce had ceas't when the superiour 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 Ev'ning from the top of Fesole,

  Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands,                                290

  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 walkt with to support uneasie steps

  Over the burning Marle, not like those steps

  On Heavens Azure, and the torrid Clime

  Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with Fire;

  Knotholes he so endur'd, till on the Beach

  Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call'd                           300

  His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't

  Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks

  In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades

  High overarch't imbowr; or scatterd sedge

  Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd

  Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew

  Busiris and his Memphian Chivalrie,

  While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd

  The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld

  From the safe shore their floating Carkases                         310

  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,

  Warriers, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now lost,

  If such astonishment as this can sieze

  Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place

  After the toyl of Battel to repose

  Your wearied vertue, for the ease you find                          320

  To slumber here, as in the Vales of Heav'n?

  Or in this abject posture have ye sworn

  To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds

  Cherube and Seraph rowling in the Flood

  With scatter'd Arms and Ensigns, till anon

  His swift pursuers from Heav'n Gates discern

  Th' advantage, and descending tread us down

  Thus drooping, or with linked Thunderbolts

  Transfix us to the bottom of this Gulfe.

  Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n.                                330

  They heard, and were abasht, 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 perceave the evil plight

  In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;

  Yet to their Generals Voyce they soon obeyd

  Innumerable. As when the potent Rod

  Of Amrams Son in Egypts evill day

  Wav'd round the Coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud                     340

  Of Locusts, warping on the Eastern Wind,

  That ore the Realm of impious Pharoah 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 giv'n, th' uplifted Spear

  Of their great Sultan waving to direct

  Thir course, in even ballance down they light

  On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain;                      350

  A multitude, like which the populous North

  Pour'd never from her frozen loyns, to pass

  Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous Sons

  Came like a Deluge on the South, and spread

  Beneath Gibraltar to the Lybian sands.

  Forthwith from every Squadron and each Band

  The Heads and Leaders thither hast where stood

  Their great Commander; Godlike shapes and forms

  Excelling human, Princely Dignities,

  And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones;                     360

  Though of their Names in heav'nly Records now

  Be no memorial, blotted out and ras'd

  By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life.

  Nor had they yet among the Sons of Eve

  Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth,

  Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,

  By falsities and lyes the greatest part

  Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake

  God their Creator, and th' invisible

  Glory of him, that made them, to transform                          370

  Oft to the Image of a Brute, adorn'd

  With gay Religions full of Pomp and Gold,

  And Devils to adore for Deities:

  Then were they known to men by various Names,

  And various Idols through the Heathen World.

  Say, Muse, their Names then known, who first, who last,

  Rous'd from the slumber, on that fiery Couch,

  At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth

  Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,

  While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof?                        380

  The chief were those who from the Pit of Hell

  Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix

  Their Seats long after next the Seat of God,

  Their Altars by his Altar, Gods ador'd

  Among the Nations round, and durst abide

  Jehovah thundring out of Sion, thron'd

  Between the Cherubim; yea, often plac'd

  Within his Sanctuary it self their Shrines,

  Abominations; and with cursed things

  His holy Rites, and solemn Feasts profan'd,                         390

  And with their darkness durst affront his light.

  First Moloch, horrid King besmear'd with blood

  Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,

  Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud

  Their childrens cries unheard, that past through fire

  To his grim Idol. Him the Ammonite

  Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain,

  In Argob and in Basan, to the stream

  Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such

  Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart                           400

  Of Solomon he led by fraud to build

  His Temple right against the Temple of God

  On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove

  The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence

  And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell.

  Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moabs Sons,

  From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild

  Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon

  And Heronaim, Seons Realm, beyond

  The flowry Dale of Sibma clad with Vines,                           410

  And Eleale to th' Asphaltick Pool.

  Peor his other Name, when he entic'd

  Israel in Sittim on their march from Nile

  To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.

  Yet thence his lustful Orgies he enlarg'd

  Even to that Hill of scandal, by the Grove

  Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate;

  Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell.

  With these came they, who from the bordring flood

  Of old Euphrates to the Brook that parts                            420

  Egypt from Syrian ground, had general Names

  Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male,

  These Feminine. For Spirits when they please

  Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft

  And uncompounded is their Essence pure,

  Not ti'd or manacl'd with joynt or limb,

  Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,

  Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose

  Dilated or condens't, bright or obscure,

  Can execute their aerie purposes,                                   430

  And works of love or enmity fulfill.

  For those the Race of Israel oft forsook

  Their living strength, and unfrequented left

  His righteous Altar, bowing lowly down

  To bestial Gods; for which their heads as low

  Bow'd down in Battel, sunk before the Spear

  Of despicable foes. With these in troop

  Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians call'd

  Astarte, Queen of Heav'n, with crescent Horns;

  To whose bright Image nightly by the Moon                           440

  Sidonian Virgins paid their Vows and Songs,

  In Sion also not unsung, where stood

  Her Temple on th' offensive Mountain, built

  By that uxorious King, whose heart though large,

  Beguil'd by fair Idolatresses, fell

  To Idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,

  Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd

  The Syrian Damsels to lament his fate

  In amorous dittyes all a Summers day,

  While smooth Adonis from his native Rock                            450

  Ran purple to the Sea, suppos'd with blood

  Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the Love-tale

  Infected Sions daughters with like heat,

  Whose wanton passions in the sacred Porch

  Ezekiel saw, when by the Vision led

  His eye survay'd the dark Idolatries

  Of alienated Judah. Next came one

  Who mourn'd in earnest, when the Captive Ark

  Maim'd his brute Image, head and hands lopt off

  In his own Temple, on the grunsel edge,                             460

  Where he fell flat, and sham'd his Worshipers:

  Dagon his Name, Sea Monster, upward Man

  And downward Fish: yet had his Temple high

  Rear'd in Azotus, dreaded through the Coast

  Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,

  And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.

  Him follow'd Rimmon, whose delightful Seat

  Was fair Damascus, on the fertil Banks

  Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.

  He also against the house of God was bold:                          470

  A Leper once he lost and gain'd a King,

  Ahaz his sottish Conquerour, whom he drew

  Gods Altar to disparage and displace

  For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn

  His odious offrings, and adore the Gods

  Whom he had vanquisht. After these appear'd

  A crew who under Names of old Renown,

  Osiris, Isis, Orus and their Train

  With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd

  Fanatic Egypt and her Priests, to seek                              480

  Thir wandring Gods disguis'd in brutish forms

  Rather then human. Nor did Israel scape

  Th' infection when their borrow'd Gold compos'd

  The Calf in Oreb: and the Rebel King

  Doubl'd that sin in Bethel and in Dan,

  Lik'ning his Maker to the Grazed Ox,

  Jehovah, who in one Night when he pass'd

  From Egypt marching, equal'd with one stroke

  Both her first born and all her bleating Gods.

  Belial came last, then whom a Spirit more lewd                      490

  Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love

  Vice for it self: To him no Temple stood

  Or Altar smoak'd; yet who more oft then hee

  In Temples and at Altars, when the Priest

  Turns Atheist, as did Ely's Sons, who fill'd

  With lust and violence the house of God.

  In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns

  And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse

  Of riot ascends above thir loftiest Towrs,

  And injury and outrage: And when Night                              500

  Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons

  Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

  Witness the Streets of Sodom, and that night

  In Gibeah, when hospitable Dores

  Yielded thir Matrons to prevent worse rape.

  These were the prime in order and in might;

  The rest were long to tell, though far renown'd,

  Th' Ionian Gods, of Javans Issue held

  Gods, yet confest later then Heav'n and Earth

  Thir boasted Parents; Titan Heav'ns first born                      510

  With his enormous brood, and birthright seis'd

  By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove

  His own and Rhea's Son like measure found;

  So Jove usurping reign'd: these first in Creet

  And Ida known, thence on the Snowy top

  Of cold Olympus rul'd the middle Air

  Thir highest Heav'n; or on the Delphian Cliff,

  Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds

  Of Doric Land; or who with Saturn old

  Fled over Adria to th' Hesperian Fields,                            520

  And ore the Celtic roam'd the utmost Isles.

  All these and more came flocking; but with looks

  Down cast and damp, yet such wherein appear'd

  Obscure som glimps of joy, to have found thir chief

  Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost

  In loss it self; which on his count'nance cast

  Like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride

  Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore

  Semblance of worth not substance, gently rais'd

  Their fainted courage, and dispel'd their fears.                    530

  Then strait commands that at the warlike sound

  Of Trumpets loud and Clarions be upreard

  His mighty Standard; that proud honour claim'd

  Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall:

  Who forthwith from the glittering Staff unfurld

  Th' Imperial Ensign, which full high advanc't

  Shon like a Meteor streaming to the Wind

  With Gemms and Golden lustre rich imblaz'd,

  Seraphic arms and Trophies: all the while

  Sonorous mettal blowing Martial sounds:                             540

  At which the universal Host upsent

  A shout that tore Hells Concave, and beyond

  Frighted the Reign of Chaos and old Night.

  All in a moment through the gloom were seen

  Ten thousand Banners rise into the Air

  With Orient Colours waving: with them rose

  A Forrest huge of Spears: and thronging Helms

  Appear'd, and serried Shields in thick array

  Of depth immeasurable: Anon they move

  In perfect Phalanx to the Dorian mood                               550

  Of Flutes and soft Recorders; such as rais'd

  To highth of noblest temper Hero's old

  Arming to Battel, and in stead of rage

  Deliberate valour breath'd, firm and unmov'd

  With dread of death to flight or foul retreat,

  Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage

  With solemn touches, troubl'd thoughts, and chase

  Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain

  From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they

  Breathing united force with fixed thought                           560

  Mov'd on in silence to soft Pipes that charm'd

  Thir painful steps o're the burnt soyle; and now

  Advanc't in view they stand, a horrid Front

  Of dreadful length and dazling Arms, in guise

  Of Warriers old with order'd Spear and Shield,

  Awaiting what command thir mighty Chief

  Had to impose: He through the armed Files

  Darts his experienc't eye, and soon traverse

  The whole Battalion views, thir order due,

  Thir visages and stature as of Gods,                                570

  Thir number last he summs. And now his heart

  Distends with pride, and hardning in his strength

  Glories: For never since created man,

  Met such imbodied force, as nam'd with these

  Could merit more then that small infantry

  Warr'd on by Cranes: though all the Giant brood

  Of Phlegra with th' Heroic Race were joyn'd

  That fought at Theb's and Ilium, on each side

  Mixt with auxiliar Gods; and what resounds

  In Fable or Romance of Uthers Son                                   580

  Begirt with British and Armoric Knights;

  And all who since, Baptiz'd or Infidel

  Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,

  Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,

  Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore

  When Charlemain with all his Peerage fell

  By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond

  Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ'd

  Thir dread Commander: he above the rest

  In shape and gesture proudly eminent                                590

  Stood like a Towr; his form had yet not lost

  All her Original brightness, nor appear'd

  Less then Arch Angel ruind, and th' excess

  Of Glory obscur'd: As when the Sun new ris'n

  Looks through the Horizontal misty Air

  Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon

  In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds

  On half the Nations, and with fear of change

  Perplexes Monarchs. Dark'n'd so, yet shon

  Above them all th' Arch Angel: but his face                         600

  Deep scars of Thunder had intrencht, and care

  Sat on his faded cheek, but under Browes

  Of dauntless courage, and considerate Pride

  Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast

  Signs of remorse and passion to behold

  The fellows of his crime, the followers rather

  (Far other once beheld in bliss) condemn'd

  For ever now to have their lot in pain,

  Millions of Spirits for his fault amerc't

  Of Heav'n, and from Eternal Splendors flung                         610

  For his revolt, yet faithfull how they stood,

  Thir Glory witherd. As when Heavens Fire

  Hath scath'd the Forrest Oaks, or Mountain Pines,

  With singed top their stately growth though bare

  Stands on the blasted Heath. He now prepar'd

  To speak; whereat their doubl'd Ranks they bend

  From Wing to Wing, and half enclose him round

  With all his Peers: attention held them mute.

  Thrice he assayd, and thrice in spite of scorn,

  Tears such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last                     620

  Words interwove with sighs found out their way.

  O Myriads of immortal Spirits, O Powers

  Matchless, but with th' Almighty, and that strife

  Was not inglorious, though th' event was dire,

  As this place testifies, and this dire change

  Hateful to utter: but what power of mind

  Foreseeing or presaging, from the Depth

  Of knowledge past or present, could have fear'd,

  How such united force of Gods, how such

  As stood like these, could ever know repulse?                       630

  For who can yet beleeve, though after loss,

  That all these puissant Legions, whose exile

  Hath emptied Heav'n, shall faile to re-ascend

  Self-rais'd, and repossess their native seat.

  For me, be witness all the Host of Heav'n,

  If counsels different, or danger shun'd

  By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns

  Monarch in Heav'n, till then as one secure

  Sat on his Throne, upheld by old repute,

  Consent or custome, and his Regal State                             640

  Put forth at full, but still his strength conceal'd,

  Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.

  Henceforth his might we know, and know our own

  So as not either to provoke, or dread

  New warr, provok't; our better part remains

  To work in close design, by fraud or guile

  What force effected not: that he no less

  At length from us may find, who overcomes

  By force, hath overcome but half his foe.

  Space may produce new Worlds; whereof so rife                       650

  There went a fame in Heav'n that he ere long

  Intended to create, and therein plant

  A generation, whom his choice regard

  Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven:

  Thither, if but to prie, shall be perhaps

  Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere:

  For this Infernal Pit shall never hold

  Caelestial Spirits in Bondage, nor th' Abysse

  Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts

  Full Counsel must mature: Peace is despaird,                        660

  For who can think Submission? Warr then, Warr

  Open or understood must be resolv'd.

  He spake: and to confirm his words, out-flew

  Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs

  Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze

  Far round illumin'd hell: highly they rag'd

  Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arm's

  Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war,

  Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heav'n.

  There stood a Hill not far whose griesly top                        670

  Belch'd fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire

  Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign

  That in his womb was hid metallic Ore,

  The work of Sulphur. Thither wing'd with speed

  A numerous Brigad hasten'd. As when bands

  Of Pioners with Spade and Pickaxe arm'd

  Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field,

  Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on,

  Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell

  From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts              680

  Were always downward bent, admiring more

  The riches of Heav'ns pavement, trod'n Gold,

  Then aught divine or holy else enjoy'd

  In vision beatific: by him first

  Men also, and by his suggestion taught,

  Ransack'd the Center, and with impious hands

  Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth

  For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew

  Op'nd into the Hill a spacious wound

  And dig'd out ribs of Gold. Let none admire                         690

  That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best

  Deserve the pretious bane. And here let those

  Who boast in mortal things, and wondring tell

  Of Babel, and the works of Memphian Kings,

  Learn how thir greatest Monuments of Fame,

  And Strength and Art are easily outdone

  By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour

  What in an age they with incessant toyle

  And hands innumerable scarce perform

  Nigh on the Plain in many cells prepar'd,                           700

  That underneath had veins of liquid fire

  Sluc'd from the Lake, a second multitude

  With wondrous Art founded the massie Ore,

  Severing each kinde, and scum'd the Bullion dross:

  A third as soon had form'd within the ground

  A various mould, and from the boyling cells

  By strange conveyance fill'd each hollow nook,

  As in an Organ from one blast of wind

  To many a row of Pipes the sound-board breaths.

  Anon out of the earth a Fabrick huge                                710

  Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound

  Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet,

  Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round

  Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid

  With Golden Architrave; nor did there want

  Cornice or Freeze, with bossy Sculptures grav'n,

  The Roof was fretted Gold. Not Babilon,

  Nor great Alcairo such magnificence

  Equal'd in all thir glories, to inshrine

  Belus or Serapis thir Gods, or seat                                 720

  Thir Kings, when Aegypt with Assyria strove

  In wealth and luxurie. Th' ascending pile

  Stood fixt her stately highth, and strait the dores

  Op'ning thir brazen foulds discover wide

  Within, her ample spaces, o're the smooth

  And level pavement: from the arched roof

  Pendant by suttle Magic many a row

  Of Starry Lamps and blazing Cressets fed

  With Naphtha and Asphaltus yeilded light

  As from a sky. The hasty multitude                                  730

  Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise

  And some the Architect: his hand was known

  In Heav'n by many a Towred structure high,

  Where Scepter'd Angels held thir residence,

  And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King

  Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,

  Each in his Herarchie, the Orders bright.

  Nor was his name unheard or unador'd

  In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land

  Men call'd him Mulciber; and how he fell                            740

  From Heav'n, they fabl'd, thrown by angry Jove

  Sheer o're the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn

  To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,

  A Summers day; and with the setting Sun

  Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star,

  On Lemnos th' Aegaean Ile: thus they relate,

  Erring; for he with this rebellious rout

  Fell long before; nor aught avail'd him now

  To have built in Heav'n high Towrs; nor did he scape

  By all his Engins, but was headlong sent                            750

  With his industrious crew to build in hell.

  Mean while the winged Haralds by command

  Of Sovran power, with awful Ceremony

  And Trumpets sound throughout the Host proclaim

  A solemn Councel forthwith to be held

  At Pandaemonium, the high Capital

  Of Satan and his Peers: thir summons call'd

  From every and Band squared Regiment

  By place or choice the worthiest; they anon

  With hundreds and with thousands trooping came                      760

  Attended: all access was throng'd, the Gates

  And Porches wide, but chief the spacious Hall

  (Though like a cover'd field, where Champions bold

  Wont ride in arm'd, and at the Soldans chair

  Defi'd the best of Panim chivalry

  To mortal combat or carreer with Lance)

  Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air,

  Brusht with the hiss of russling wings. As Bees

  In spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,

  Poure forth thir populous youth about the Hive                      770

  In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers

  Flie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank,

  The suburb of thir Straw-built Cittadel,

  New rub'd with Baume, expatiate and confer

  Thir State affairs. So thick the aerie crowd

  Swarm'd and were straitn'd; till the Signal giv'n,

  Behold a wonder! they but now who seemd

  In bigness to surpass Earths Giant Sons

  Now less then smallest Dwarfs, in narrow room

  Throng numberless, like that Pigmean Race                           780

  Beyond the Indian Mount, or Faerie Elves,

  Whose midnight Revels, by a Forrest side

  Or Fountain fome belated Peasant sees,

  Or dreams he sees, while over head the Moon

  Sits Arbitress, and neerer to the Earth

  Wheels her pale course, they on thir mirth & dance

  Intent, with jocond Music charm his ear;

  At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.

  Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms

  Reduc'd thir shapes immense, and were at large,                     790

  Though without number still amidst the Hall

  Of that infernal Court. But far within

  And in thir own dimensions like themselves

  The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim

  In close recess and secret conclave sat

  A thousand Demy-Gods on golden seat's,

  Frequent and full. After short silence then

  And summons read, the great consult began.

 

  Notes:

  504, 505 hospitable Dores Yielded thir Matrons] the hospitable

  door Expos'd a Matron 1674.

  530 fainted] fa(i)nting 1674.

  703 founded] found out 1674.

  737 Herarchie] Hierarchie 1674.

 

  The End Of The First Book.

BOOK II.

 

THE ARGUMENT.

 

The Consultation begun, Satan debates whether another Battel be to be hazarded for the recovery of Heaven: some advise it, others dissuade: A third proposal is prefer'd, mention'd before by Satan, to search the truth of that Prophesie or Tradition in Heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature equal or much inferiour to themselves, about this time to be created: Thir doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan thir cheif undertakes alone the voyage, is honourd and applauded. The Councel thus ended, the rest betake them several wayes and to several imployments, as thir inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his Journey to Hell Gates, finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them, by whom at length they are op'nd, and discover to him the great Gulf between Hell and Heaven; with what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos the Power of that place, to the sight of this new World which he sought.

Note: who shall be sent] who should be sent 1669.

 

  High on a Throne of Royal State, which far

  Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

  Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

  Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl & Gold,

  Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd

  To that bad eminence; and from despair

  Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires

  Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue

  Vain Warr with Heav'n, and by success untaught

  His proud imaginations thus displaid.                                10

  Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heav'n,

  For since no deep within her gulf can hold

  Immortal vigor, though opprest and fall'n,

  I give not Heav'n for lost. From this descent

  Celestial vertues rising, will appear

  More glorious and more dread then from no fall,

  And trust themselves to fear no second fate:

  Mee though just right, and the fixt Laws of Heav'n

  Did first create your Leader, next, free choice,

  With what besides, in Counsel or in Fight,                           20

  Hath bin achievd of merit, yet this loss

  Thus farr at least recover'd, hath much more

  Establisht in a safe unenvied Throne

  Yielded with full consent. The happier state

  In Heav'n, which follows dignity, might draw

  Envy from each inferior; but who here

  Will envy whom the highest place exposes

  Formost to stand against the Thunderers aime

  Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share

  Of endless pain? where there is then no good                         30

  For which to strive, no strife can grow up there

  From Faction; for none sure will claim in hell

  Precedence, none, whose portion is so small

  Of present pain, that with ambitious mind

  Will covet more. With this advantage then

  To union, and firm Faith, and firm accord,

  More then can be in Heav'n, we now return

  To claim our just inheritance of old,

  Surer to prosper then prosperity

  Could have assur'd us; and by what best way,                         40

  Whether of open Warr or covert guile,

  We now debate; who can advise, may speak.

  He ceas'd, and next him Moloc, Scepter'd King

  Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest Spirit

  That fought in Heav'n; now fiercer by despair:

  His trust was with th' Eternal to be deem'd

  Equal in strength, and rather then be less

  Car'd not to be at all; with that care lost

  Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse

  He reckd not, and these words thereafter spake.                      50

  My sentence is for open Warr: Of Wiles,

  More unexpert, I boast not: them let those

  Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.

  For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,

  Millions that stand in Arms, and longing wait

  The Signal to ascend, sit lingring here

  Heav'ns fugitives, and for thir dwelling place

  Accept this dark opprobrious Den of shame,

  The Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns

  By our delay? no, let us rather choose                               60

  Arm'd with Hell flames and fury all at once

  O're Heav'ns high Towrs to force resistless way,

  Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms

  Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise

  Of his Almighty Engin he shall hear

  Infernal Thunder, and for Lightning see

  Black fire and horror shot with equal rage

  Among his Angels; and his Throne it self

  Mixt with Tartarean Sulphur, and strange fire,

  His own invented Torments. But perhaps                               70

  The way seems difficult and steep to scale

  With upright wing against a higher foe.

  Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench

  Of that forgetful Lake benumme not still,

  That in our proper motion we ascend

  Up to our native seat: descent and fall

  To us is adverse. Who but felt of late

  When the fierce Foe hung on our brok'n Rear

  Insulting, and pursu'd us through the Deep,

  With what compulsion and laborious flight                            80

  We sunk thus low? Th' ascent is easie then;

  Th' event is fear'd; should we again provoke

  Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find

  To our destruction: if there be in Hell

  Fear to be worse destroy'd: what can be worse

  Then to dwell here, driv'n out from bliss, condemn'd

  In this abhorred deep to utter woe;

  Where pain of unextinguishable fire

  Must exercise us without hope of end

  The Vassals of his anger, when the Scourge                           90

  Inexorably, and the torturing houre

  Calls us to Penance? More destroy'd then thus

  We should be quite abolisht and expire.

  What fear we then? what doubt we to incense

  His utmost ire? which to the highth enrag'd,

  Will either quite consume us, and reduce

  To nothing this essential, happier farr

  Then miserable to have eternal being:

  Or if our substance be indeed Divine,

  And cannot cease to be, we are at worst                             100

  On this side nothing; and by proof we feel

  Our power sufficient to disturb his Heav'n,

  And with perpetual inrodes to Allarme,

  Though inaccessible, his fatal Throne:

  Which if not Victory is yet Revenge.

  He ended frowning, and his look denounc'd

  Desperate revenge, and Battel dangerous

  To less then Gods. On th' other side up rose

  Belial, in act more graceful and humane;

  A fairer person lost not Heav'n; he seemd                           110

  For dignity compos'd and high exploit:

  But all was false and hollow; though his Tongue

  Dropt Manna, and could make the worse appear

  The better reason, to perplex and dash

  Maturest Counsels: for his thoughts were low;

  To vice industrious, but to Nobler deeds

  Timorous and slothful: yet he pleas'd the eare,

  And with perswasive accent thus began.

  I should be much for open Warr, O Peers,

  As not behind in hate; if what was urg'd                            120

  Main reason to perswade immediate Warr,

  Did not disswade me most, and seem to cast

  Ominous conjecture on the whole success:

  When he who most excels in fact of Arms,

  In what he counsels and in what excels

  Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair

  And utter dissolution, as the scope

  Of all his aim, after some dire revenge.

  First, what Revenge? the Towrs of Heav'n are fill'd

  With Armed watch, that render all access                            130

  Impregnable; oft on the bordering Deep

  Encamp thir Legions, or with obscure wing

  Scout farr and wide into the Realm of night,

  Scorning surprize. Or could we break our way

  By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise

  With blackest Insurrection, to confound

  Heav'ns purest Light, yet our great Enemie

  All incorruptible would on his Throne

  Sit unpolluted, and th' Ethereal mould

  Incapable of stain would soon expel                                 140

  Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire

  Victorious. Thus repuls'd, our final hope

  Is flat despair: we must exasperate

  Th' Almighty Victor to spend all his rage,

  And that must end us, that must be our cure,

  To be no more; sad cure; for who would loose,

  Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

  Those thoughts that wander through Eternity,

  To perish rather, swallowd up and lost

  In the wide womb of uncreated night,                                150

  Devoid of sense and motion? and who knows,

  Let this be good, whether our angry Foe

  Can give it, or will ever? how he can

  Is doubtful; that he never will is sure.

  Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire,

  Belike through impotence, or unaware,

  To give his Enemies thir wish, and end

  Them in his anger, whom his anger saves

  To punish endless? wherefore cease we then?

  Say they who counsel Warr, we are decreed,                          160

  Reserv'd and destin'd to Eternal woe;

  Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,

  What can we suffer worse? is this then worst,

  Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in Arms?

  What when we fled amain, pursu'd and strook

  With Heav'ns afflicting Thunder, and besought

  The Deep to shelter us? this Hell then seem'd

  A refuge from those wounds: or when we lay

  Chain'd on the burning Lake? that sure was worse.

  What if the breath that kindl'd those grim fires                    170

  Awak'd should blow them into sevenfold rage

  And plunge us in the Flames? or from above

  Should intermitted vengeance Arme again

  His red right hand to plague us? what if all

  Her stores were op'n'd, and this Firmament

  Of Hell should spout her Cataracts of Fire,

  Impendent horrors, threatning hideous fall

  One day upon our heads; while we perhaps

  Designing or exhorting glorious Warr,

  Caught in a fierie Tempest shall be hurl'd                          180

  Each on his rock transfixt, the sport and prey

  Of racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk

  Under yon boyling Ocean, wrapt in Chains;

  There to converse with everlasting groans,

  Unrespited, unpitied, unrepreevd,

  Ages of hopeless end; this would be worse.

  Warr therefore, open or conceal'd, alike

  My voice disswades; for what can force or guile

  With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye

  Views all things at one view? he from heav'ns highth                190

  All these our motions vain, sees and derides;

  Not more Almighty to resist our might

  Then wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.

  Shall we then live thus vile, the race of Heav'n

  Thus trampl'd, thus expell'd to suffer here

  Chains and these Torments? better these then worse

  By my advice; since fate inevitable

  Subdues us, and Omnipotent Decree,

  The Victors will. To suffer, as to doe,

  Our strength is equal, nor the Law unjust                           200

  That so ordains: this was at first resolv'd,

  If we were wise, against so great a foe

  Contending, and so doubtful what might fall.

  I laugh, when those who at the Spear are bold

  And vent'rous, if that fail them, shrink and fear

  What yet they know must follow, to endure

  Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain,

  The sentence of thir Conquerour: This is now

  Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,

  Our Supream Foe in time may much remit                              210

  His anger, and perhaps thus farr remov'd

  Not mind us not offending, satisfi'd

  With what is punish't; whence these raging fires

  Will slack'n, if his breath stir not thir flames.

  Our purer essence then will overcome

  Thir noxious vapour, or enur'd not feel,

  Or chang'd at length, and to the place conformd

  In temper and in nature, will receive

  Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;

  This horror will grow milde, this darkness light,                   220

  Besides what hope the never-ending flight

  Of future days may bring, what chance, what change

  Worth waiting, since our present lot appeers

  For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,

  If we procure not to our selves more woe.

  Thus Belial with words cloath'd in reasons garb

  Counsel'd ignoble ease, and peaceful sloath,

  Not peace: and after him thus Mammon spake.

  Either to disinthrone the King of Heav'n

  We warr, if warr be best, or to regain                              230

  Our own right lost: him to unthrone we then

  May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yeild

  To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife:

  The former vain to hope argues as vain

  The latter: for what place can be for us

  Within Heav'ns bound, unless Heav'ns Lord supream

  We overpower? Suppose he should relent

  And publish Grace to all, on promise made

  Of new Subjection; with what eyes could we

  Stand in his presence humble, and receive                           240

  Strict Laws impos'd, to celebrate his Throne

  With warbl'd Hymns, and to his Godhead sing

  Forc't Halleluiah's; while he Lordly sits

  Our envied Sovran, and his Altar breathes

  Ambrosial Odours and Ambrosial Flowers,

  Our servile offerings. This must be our task

  In Heav'n, this our delight; how wearisom

  Eternity so spent in worship paid

  To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue

  By force impossible, by leave obtain'd                              250

  Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state

  Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek

  Our own good from our selves, and from our own

  Live to our selves, though in this vast recess,

  Free, and to none accountable, preferring

  Hard liberty before the easie yoke

  Of servile Pomp. Our greatness will appear

  Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,

  Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse

  We can create, and in what place so e're                            260

  Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain

  Through labour and endurance. This deep world

  Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst

  Thick clouds and dark doth Heav'ns all-ruling Sire

  Choose to reside, his Glory unobscur'd,

  And with the Majesty of darkness round

  Covers his Throne; from whence deep thunders roar

  Must'ring thir rage, and Heav'n resembles Hell?

  As he our Darkness, cannot we his Light

  Imitate when we please? This Desart soile                           270

  Wants not her hidden lustre, Gemms and Gold;

  Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise

  Magnificence; and what can Heav'n shew more?

  Our torments also may in length of time

  Become our Elements, these piercing Fires

  As soft as now severe, our temper chang'd

  Into their temper; which must needs remove

  The sensible of pain. All things invite

  To peaceful Counsels, and the settl'd State

  Of order, how in safety best we may                                 280

  Compose our present evils, with regard

  Of what we are and where, dismissing quite

  All thoughts of Warr: ye have what I advise.

  He scarce had finisht, when such murmur filld

  Th' Assembly, as when hollow Rocks retain

  The sound of blustring winds, which all night long

  Had rous'd the Sea, now with hoarse cadence lull

  Sea-faring men orewatcht, whose Bark by chance

  Or Pinnace anchors in a craggy Bay

  After the Tempest: Such applause was heard                          290

  As Mammon ended, and his Sentence pleas'd,

  Advising peace: for such another Field

  They dreaded worse then Hell: so much the fear

  Of Thunder and the Sword of Michael

  Wrought still within them; and no less desire

  To found this nether Empire, which might rise

  By pollicy, and long process of time,

  In emulation opposite to Heav'n.

  Which when Beelzebub perceiv'd, then whom,

  Satan except, none higher sat, with grave                           300

  Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd

  A Pillar of State; deep on his Front engraven

  Deliberation sat and publick care;

  And Princely counsel in his face yet shon,

  Majestick though in ruin: sage he stood

  With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear

  The weight of mightiest Monarchies; his look

  Drew audience and attention still as Night

  Or Summers Noon-tide air, while thus he spake.

  Thrones and imperial Powers, off-spring of heav'n,                  310

  Ethereal Vertues; or these Titles now

  Must we renounce, and changing stile be call'd

  Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote

  Inclines, here to continue, and build up here

  A growing Empire; doubtless; while we dream,

  And know not that the King of Heav'n hath doom'd

  This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat

  Beyond his Potent arm, to live exempt

  From Heav'ns high jurisdiction, in new League

  Banded against his Throne, but to remaine                           320

  In strictest bondage, though thus far remov'd,

  Under th' inevitable curb, reserv'd

  His captive multitude: For he, be sure,

  In highth or depth, still first and last will Reign

  Sole King, and of his Kingdom loose no part

  By our revolt, but over Hell extend

  His Empire, and with Iron Scepter rule

  Us here, as with his Golden those in Heav'n.

  What sit we then projecting Peace and Warr?

  Warr hath determin'd us, and foild with loss                        330

  Irreparable; tearms of peace yet none

  Voutsaf't or sought; for what peace will be giv'n

  To us enslav'd, but custody severe,

  And stripes, and arbitrary punishment

  Inflicted? and what peace can we return,

  But to our power hostility and hate,

  Untam'd reluctance, and revenge though slow,

  Yet ever plotting how the Conquerour least

  May reap his conquest, and may least rejoyce

  In doing what we most in suffering feel?                            340

  Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need

  With dangerous expedition to invade

  Heav'n, whose high walls fear no assault or Siege,

  Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find

  Some easier enterprize? There is a place

  (If ancient and prophetic fame in Heav'n

  Err not) another World, the happy seat

  Of som new Race call'd Man, about this time

  To be created like to us, though less

  In power and excellence, but favour'd more                          350

  Of him who rules above; so was his will

  Pronounc'd among the Gods, and by an Oath,

  That shook Heav'ns whol circumference, confirm'd.

  Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn

  What creatures there inhabit, of what mould,

  Or substance, how endu'd, and what thir Power,

  And where thir weakness, how attempted best,

  By force or suttlety: Though Heav'n be shut,

  And Heav'ns high Arbitrator sit secure

  In his own strength, this place may lye expos'd                     360

  The utmost border of his Kingdom, left

  To their defence who hold it: here perhaps

  Som advantagious act may be achiev'd

  By sudden onset, either with Hell fire

  To waste his whole Creation, or possess

  All as our own, and drive as we were driven,

  The punie habitants, or if not drive,

  Seduce them to our Party, that thir God

  May prove thir foe, and with repenting hand

  Abolish his own works. This would surpass                           370

  Common revenge, and interrupt his joy

  In our Confusion, and our Joy upraise

  In his disturbance; when his darling Sons

  Hurl'd headlong to partake with us, shall curse

  Thir frail Originals, and faded bliss,

  Faded so soon. Advise if this be worth

  Attempting, or to sit in darkness here

  Hatching vain Empires. Thus Beelzebub

  Pleaded his devilish Counsel, first devis'd

  By Satan, and in part propos'd: for whence,                         380

  But from the Author of all ill could Spring

  So deep a malice, to confound the race

  Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell

  To mingle and involve, done all to spite

  The great Creatour? But thir spite still serves

  His glory to augment. The bold design

  Pleas'd highly those infernal States, and joy

  Sparkl'd in all thir eyes; with full assent

  They vote: whereat his speech he thus renews.

  Well have ye judg'd, well ended long debate,                        390

  Synod of Gods, and like to what ye are,

  Great things resolv'd; which from the lowest deep

  Will once more lift us up, in spight of Fate,

  Neerer our ancient Seat; perhaps in view

  Of those bright confines, whence with neighbouring Arms

  And opportune excursion we may chance

  Re-enter Heav'n; or else in some milde Zone

  Dwell not unvisited of Heav'ns fair Light

  Secure, and at the brightning Orient beam

  Purge off this gloom; the soft delicious Air,                       400

  To heal the scarr of these corrosive Fires

  Shall breath her balme. But first whom shall we send

  In search of this new world, whom shall we find

  Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandring feet

  The dark unbottom'd infinite Abyss

  And through the palpable obscure find out

  His uncouth way, or spread his aerie flight

  Upborn with indefatigable wings

  Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive

  The happy Ile; what strength, what art can then                     410

  Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe

  Through the strict Senteries and Stations thick

  Of Angels watching round? Here he had need

  All circumspection, and we now no less

  Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we send,

  The weight of all and our last hope relies.

  This said, he sat; and expectation held

  His look suspence, awaiting who appeer'd

  To second, or oppose, or undertake

  The perilous attempt: but all sat mute,                             420

  Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; and each

  In others count'nance red his own dismay

  Astonisht: none among the choice and prime

  Of those Heav'n-warring Champions could be found

  So hardie as to proffer or accept

  Alone the dreadful voyage; till at last

  Satan, whom now transcendent glory rais'd

  Above his fellows, with Monarchal pride

  Conscious of highest worth, unmov'd thus spake.

  O Progeny of Heav'n, Empyreal Thrones,                              430

  With reason hath deep silence and demurr

  Seis'd us, though undismaid: long is the way

  And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light;

  Our prison strong, this huge convex of Fire,

  Outrageous to devour, immures us round

  Ninefold, and gates of burning Adamant

  Barr'd over us prohibit all egress.

  These past, if any pass, the void profound

  Of unessential Night receives him next

  Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being                           440

  Threatens him, plung'd in that abortive gulf.

  If thence he scape into what ever world,

  Or unknown Region, what remains him less

  Then unknown dangers and as hard escape.

  But I should ill become this Throne, O Peers,

  And this Imperial Sov'ranty, adorn'd

  With splendor, arm'd with power, if aught propos'd

  And judg'd of public moment, in the shape

  Of difficulty or danger could deterre

  Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume                           450

  These Royalties, and not refuse to Reign,

  Refusing to accept as great a share

  Of hazard as of honour, due alike

  To him who Reigns, and so much to him due

  Of hazard more, as he above the rest

  High honourd sits? Go therfore mighty powers,

  Terror of Heav'n, though fall'n; intend at home,

  While here shall be our home, what best may ease

  The present misery, and render Hell

  More tollerable; if there be cure or charm                          460

  To respite or deceive, or slack the pain

  Of this ill Mansion: intermit no watch

  Against a wakeful Foe, while I abroad

  Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek

  Deliverance for us all: this enterprize

  None shall partake with me. Thus saying rose

  The Monarch, and prevented all reply,

  Prudent, least from his resolution rais'd

  Others among the chief might offer now

  (Certain to be refus'd) what erst they feard;                       470

  And so refus'd might in opinion stand

  His rivals, winning cheap the high repute

  Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they

  Dreaded not more th' adventure then his voice

  Forbidding; and at once with him they rose;

  Thir rising all at once was as the sound

  Of Thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend

  With awful reverence prone; and as a God

  Extoll him equal to the highest in Heav'n:

  Nor fail'd they to express how much they prais'd,                   480

  That for the general safety he despis'd

  His own: for neither do the Spirits damn'd

  Loose all thir vertue; least bad men should boast

  Thir specious deeds on earth, which glory excites,

  Or close ambition varnisht o're with zeal.

  Thus they thir doubtful consultations dark

  Ended rejoycing in thir matchless Chief:

  As when from mountain tops the dusky clouds

  Ascending, while the North wind sleeps, o'respread

  Heav'ns chearful face, the lowring Element                          490

  Scowls ore the dark'nd lantskip Snow, or showre;

  If chance the radiant Sun with farewell sweet

  Extend his ev'ning beam, the fields revive,

  The birds thir notes renew, and bleating herds

  Attest thir joy, that hill and valley rings.

  O shame to men! Devil with Devil damn'd

  Firm concord holds, men onely disagree

  Of Creatures rational, though under hope

  Of heavenly Grace: and God proclaiming peace,

  Yet live in hatred, enmitie, and strife                             500

  Among themselves, and levie cruel warres,

  Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy:

  As if (which might induce us to accord)

  Man had not hellish foes anow besides,

  That day and night for his destruction waite.

  The Stygian Councel thus dissolv'd; and forth

  In order came the grand infernal Peers,

  Midst came thir mighty Paramount, and seemd

  Alone th' Antagonist of Heav'n, nor less

  Then Hells dread Emperour with pomp Supream,                        510

  And God-like imitated State; him round

  A Globe of fierie Seraphim inclos'd

  With bright imblazonrie, and horrent Arms.

  Then of thir Session ended they bid cry

  With Trumpets regal sound the great result:

  Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim

  Put to thir mouths the sounding Alchymie

  By Haralds voice explain'd: the hollow Abyss

  Heard farr and wide, and all the host of Hell

  With deafning shout, return'd them loud acclaim.                    520

  Thence more at ease thir minds and somwhat rais'd

  By false presumptuous hope, the ranged powers

  Disband, and wandring, each his several way

  Pursues, as inclination or sad choice

  Leads him perplext, 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;                         530

  Part curb thir fierie Steeds, or shun the Goal

  With rapid wheels, or fronted Brigads form.

  As when to warn proud Cities warr appears

  Wag'd in the troubl'd Skie, and Armies rush

  To Battel in the Clouds, before each Van

  Pric forth the Aerie Knights, and couch thir spears

  Till thickest Legions close; with feats of Arms

  From either end of Heav'n the welkin burns.

  Others with vast Typhoean rage more fell

  Rend up both Rocks and Hills, and ride the Air                      540

  In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wilde uproar.

  As when Alcides from Oealia Crown'd

  With conquest, felt th' envenom'd 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 milde,

  Retreated in a silent valley, sing

  With notes Angelical to many a Harp

  Thir own Heroic deeds and hapless fall

  By doom of Battel; and complain that Fate                           550

  Free Vertue should enthrall to Force or Chance.

  Thir 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 retir'd,

  In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high

  Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,

  Fixt Fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,                       560

  And found no end, in wandring mazes lost.

  Of good and evil much they argu'd then,

  Of happiness and final misery,

  Passion and Apathie, and glory and shame,

  Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie:

  Yet with a pleasing sorcerie could charm

  Pain for a while or anguish, and excite

  Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured brest

  With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

  Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands,                          570

  On bold adventure to discover wide

  That dismal world, if any Clime perhaps

  Might yeild them easier habitation, bend

  Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks

  Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge

  Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;

  Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,

  Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;

  Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud

  Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton                         580

  Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

  Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,

  Lethe the River of Oblivion roules

  Her watrie 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 wilde, beat with perpetual storms

  Of Whirlwind and dire Hail, which on firm land

  Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems                         590

  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 hail'd,

  At certain revolutions all the damn'd

  Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change

  Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce,

  From Beds of raging Fire to starve in Ice                           600

  Thir soft Ethereal warmth, and there to pine

  Immovable, infixt, and frozen round,

  Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.

  They ferry over this Lethean Sound

  Both to and fro, thir sorrow to augment,

  And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach

  The tempting stream, with one small drop to loose

  In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,

  All in one moment, and so neer the brink;

  But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt                      610

  Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards

  The Ford, and of it self the water flies

  All taste of living wight, as once it fled

  The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on

  In confus'd march forlorn, th' adventrous Bands

  With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast

  View'd first thir lamentable lot, and found

  No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile

  They pass'd, and many a Region dolorous,

  O're many a Frozen, many a Fierie Alpe,                             620

  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,

  Abominable, inutterable, and worse

  Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,

  Gorgons and Hydra's, and Chimera's dire.

  Mean while the Adversary of God and Man,

  Satan with thoughts inflam'd of highest design,                     630

  Puts on swift wings, and toward the Gates of Hell

  Explores his solitary flight; som times

  He scours the right hand coast, som times the left,

  Now shaves with level wing the Deep, then soares

  Up to the fiery concave touring high.

  As when farr off at Sea a Fleet descri'd

  Hangs in the Clouds, by Aequinoctial Winds

  Close sailing from Bengala, or the Iles

  Of Ternate and Tidore, whence Merchants bring

  Thir spicie Drugs: they on the trading Flood                        640

  Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape

  Ply stemming nightly toward the Pole. So seem'd

  Farr off the flying Fiend: at last appeer

  Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid Roof,

  And thrice threefold the Gates; three folds were Brass

  Three Iron, three of Adamantine Rock,

  Impenitrable, impal'd with circling fire,

  Yet unconsum'd. Before the Gates there sat

  On either side a formidable shape;

  The one seem'd Woman to the waste, and fair,                        650

  But ended foul in many a scaly fould

  Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm'd

  With mortal sting: about her middle round

  A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd

  With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung

  A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,

  If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb,

  And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd

  Within unseen. Farr less abhorrd then these

  Vex'd Scylla bathing in the Sea that parts                          660

  Calabria from the hoarce Trinacrian shore:

  Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd

  In secret, riding through the Air she comes

  Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance

  With Lapland Witches, while the labouring Moon

  Eclipses at thir charms. The other shape,

  If shape it might be call'd that shape had none

  Distinguishable in member, joynt, or limb,

  Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,

  For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,                    670

  Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

  And shook a dreadful Dart; what seem'd 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 admir'd,

  Admir'd, not fear'd; God and his Son except,

  Created thing naught vallu'd he nor shun'd;

  And with disdainful look thus first began.                          680

  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 assur'd, without leave askt of thee:

  Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,

  Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heav'n.

  To whom the Goblin full of wrauth reply'd,

  Art thou that Traitor Angel, art thou hee,

  Who first broke peace in Heav'n and Faith, till then                690

  Unbrok'n, and in proud rebellious Arms

  Drew after him the third part of Heav'ns Sons

  Conjur'd against the highest, for which both Thou

  And they outcast from God, are here condemn'd

  To waste Eternal daies in woe and pain?

  And reck'n'st thou thy self with Spirits of Heav'n,

  Hell-doomd, 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,                         700

  Least with a whip of Scorpions I pursue

  Thy lingring, or with one stroke of this Dart

  Strange horror seise thee, and pangs unfelt before.

  So spake the grieslie terrour, and in shape,

  So speaking and so threatning, grew ten fold

  More dreadful and deform: on th' other side

  Incenc't with indignation Satan stood

  Unterrifi'd, and like a Comet burn'd,

  That fires the length of Ophiucus huge

  In th' Artick Sky, and from his horrid hair                         710

  Shakes Pestilence and Warr. Each at the Head

  Level'd his deadly aime; thir fatall hands

  No second stroke intend, and such a frown

  Each cast at th' other, as when two black Clouds

  With Heav'ns Artillery fraught, come rattling on

  Over the Caspian, then stand front to front

  Hov'ring a space, till Winds the signal blow

  To joyn thir dark Encounter in mid air:

  So frownd the mighty Combatants, that Hell

  Grew darker at thir frown, so matcht they stood;                    720

  For never but once more was either like

  To meet so great a foe: and now great deeds

  Had been achiev'd, whereof all Hell had rung,

  Had not the Snakie Sorceress that sat

  Fast by Hell Gate, and kept the fatal Key,

  Ris'n, and with hideous outcry rush'd between.

  O Father, what intends thy hand, she cry'd,

  Against thy only Son? What fury O Son,

  Possesses thee to bend that mortal Dart

  Against thy Fathers head? and know'st for whom;                     730

  For him who sits above and laughs the while

  At thee ordain'd his drudge, to execute

  What e're 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 return'd:

  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,                         740

  What thing thou art, thus double-form'd, and why

  In this infernal Vaile first met thou call'st

  Me Father, and that Fantasm call'st my Son?

  I know thee not, nor ever saw till now

  Sight more detestable then him and thee.

  T' whom thus the Portress of Hell Gate reply'd;

  Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem

  Now in thine eye so foul, once deemd so fair

  In Heav'n, when at th' Assembly, and in sight

  Of all the Seraphim with thee combin'd                              750

  In bold conspiracy against Heav'ns King,

  All on a sudden miserable pain

  Surpris'd thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzie swumm

  In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast

  Threw forth, till on the left side op'ning wide,

  Likest to thee in shape and count'nance bright,

  Then shining heav'nly fair, a Goddess arm'd

  Out of thy head I sprung: amazement seis'd

  All th' Host of Heav'n; back they recoild affraid

  At first, and call'd me Sin, and for a Sign                         760

  Portentous held me; but familiar grown,

  I pleas'd, and with attractive graces won

  The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft

  Thy self in me thy perfect image viewing

  Becam'st enamour'd, and such joy thou took'st

  With me in secret, that my womb conceiv'd

  A growing burden. Mean while Warr arose,

  And fields were fought in Heav'n; wherein remaind

  (For what could else) to our Almighty Foe

  Cleer Victory, to our part loss and rout                            770

  Through all the Empyrean: down they fell

  Driv'n headlong from the Pitch of Heaven, down

  Into this Deep, and in the general fall

  I also; at which time this powerful Key

  Into my hand was giv'n, with charge to keep

  These Gates for ever shut, which none can pass

  Without my op'ning. Pensive here I sat

  Alone, but long I sat not, till my womb

  Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown

  Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes.                           780

  At last this odious offspring whom thou seest

  Thine own begotten, breaking violent way

  Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain

  Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew

  Transform'd: but he my inbred enemie

  Forth issu'd, brandishing his fatal Dart

  Made to destroy: I fled, and cry'd out Death;

  Hell trembl'd at the hideous Name, and sigh'd

  From all her Caves, and back resounded Death.

  I fled, but he pursu'd (though more, it seems,                      790

  Inflam'd with lust then rage) and swifter far,

  Me overtook his mother all dismaid,

  And in embraces forcible and foule

  Ingendring with me, of that rape begot

  These yelling Monsters that with ceasless cry

  Surround me, as thou sawst, hourly conceiv'd

  And hourly born, with sorrow infinite

  To me, for when they list into the womb

  That bred them they return, and howle and gnaw

  My Bowels, their repast; then bursting forth                        800

  Afresh with conscious terrours vex me round,

  That rest or intermission none I find.

  Before mine eyes in opposition sits

  Grim Death my Son and foe, who sets them on,

  And me his Parent would full soon devour

  For want of other prey, but that he knows

  His end with mine involvd; and knows that I

  Should prove a bitter Morsel, and his bane,

  When ever that shall be; so Fate pronounc'd.

  But thou O Father, I forewarn thee, shun                            810

  His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope

  To be invulnerable in those bright Arms,

  Though temper'd heav'nly, for that mortal dint,

  Save he who reigns above, none can resist.

  She finish'd, and the suttle Fiend his lore

  Soon learnd, now milder, and thus answerd smooth.

  Dear Daughter, since thou claim'st me for thy Sire,

  And my fair Son here showst me, the dear pledge

  Of dalliance had with thee in Heav'n, and joys

  Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire change                 820

  Befalln us unforeseen, unthought of, know

  I come no enemie, but to set free

  From out this dark and dismal house of pain,

  Both him and thee, and all the heav'nly Host

  Of Spirits that in our just pretenses arm'd

  Fell with us from on high: from them I go

  This uncouth errand sole, and one for all

  My self expose, with lonely steps to tread

  Th' unfounded deep, & through the void immense

  To search with wandring quest a place foretold                      830

  Should be, and, by concurring signs, ere now

  Created vast and round, a place of bliss

  In the Pourlieues of Heav'n, and therein plac't

  A race of upstart Creatures, to supply

  Perhaps our vacant room, though more remov'd,

  Least Heav'n surcharg'd with potent multitude

  Might hap to move new broiles: Be this or aught

  Then this more secret now design'd, I haste

  To know, and this once known, shall soon return,

  And bring ye to the place where Thou and Death                      840

  Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen

  Wing silently the buxom Air, imbalm'd

  With odours; there ye shall be fed and fill'd

  Immeasurably, all things shall be your prey.

  He ceas'd, for both seemd highly pleasd, and Death

  Grinnd horrible a gastly smile, to hear

  His famine should be fill'd, and blest his mawe

  Destin'd to that good hour: no less rejoyc'd

  His mother bad, and thus bespake her Sire.

  The key of this infernal Pit by due,                                850

  And by command of Heav'ns all-powerful King

  I keep, by him forbidden to unlock

  These Adamantine Gates; against all force

  Death ready stands to interpose his dart,

  Fearless to be o'rematcht by living might.

  But what ow I to his commands above

  Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down

  Into this gloom of Tartarus profound,

  To sit in hateful Office here confin'd,

  Inhabitant of Heav'n, and heav'nlie-born,                           860

  Here in perpetual agonie and pain,

  With terrors and with clamors compasst round

  Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed:

  Thou art my Father, thou my Author, thou

  My being gav'st me; whom should I obey

  But thee, whom follow? thou wilt bring me soon

  To that new world of light and bliss, among

  The Gods who live at ease, where I shall Reign

  At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems

  Thy daughter and thy darling, without end.                          870

  Thus saying, from her side the fatal Key,

  Sad instrument of all our woe, she took;

  And towards the Gate rouling her bestial train,

  Forthwith the huge Portcullis high up drew,

  Which but her self not all the Stygian powers

  Could once have mov'd; then in the key-hole turns

  Th' intricate wards, and every Bolt and Bar

  Of massie Iron or sollid Rock with ease

  Unfast'ns: on a sudden op'n flie

  With impetuous recoile and jarring sound                            880

  Th' infernal dores, and on thir hinges great

  Harsh Thunder, that the lowest bottom shook

  Of Erebus. She op'nd, but to shut

  Excel'd her power; the Gates wide op'n stood,

  That with extended wings a Bannerd Host

  Under spread Ensigns marching might pass through

  With Horse and Chariots rankt in loose array;

  So wide they stood, and like a Furnace mouth

  Cast forth redounding smoak and ruddy flame.

  Before thir eyes in sudden view appear                              890

  The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark

  Illimitable Ocean without bound,

  Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth,

  And time and place are lost; where eldest Night

  And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold

  Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise

  Of endless warrs and by confusion stand.

  For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce

  Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring

  Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag                            900

  Of each his faction, in thir several Clanns,

  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

  Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,

  Hee rules a moment; Chaos Umpire sits,

  And by decision more imbroiles the fray

  By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter

  Chance governs all. Into this wilde Abyss,                          910

  The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,

  Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,

  But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt

  Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,

  Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain

  His dark materials to create more Worlds,

  Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend

  Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,

  Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith

  He had to cross. Nor was his eare less peal'd                       920

  With noises loud and ruinous (to compare

  Great things with small) then when Bellona storms,

  With all her battering Engines bent to rase

  Som Capital City, or less then if this frame

  Of Heav'n were falling, and these Elements

  In mutinie had from her Axle torn

  The stedfast Earth. At last his Sail-broad Vannes

  He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoak

  Uplifted spurns the ground, thence many a League

  As in a cloudy Chair ascending rides                                930

  Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets

  A vast vacuitie: all unawares

  Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops

  Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour

  Down had been falling, had not by ill chance

  The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud

  Instinct with Fire and Nitre hurried him

  As many miles aloft: that furie stay'd,

  Quencht in a Boggie Syrtis, neither Sea,

  Nor good dry Land: nigh founderd on he fares,                       940

  Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,

  Half flying; behoves him now both Oare and Saile.

  As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness

  With winged course ore Hill or moarie Dale,

  Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stelth

  Had from his wakeful custody purloind

  The guarded Gold: So eagerly the fiend

  Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,

  With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,

  And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes:                  950

  At length a universal hubbub wilde

  Of stunning sounds and voices all confus'd

  Born through the hollow dark assaults his eare

  With loudest vehemence: thither he plyes,

  Undaunted to meet there what ever power

  Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss

  Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask

  Which way the neerest coast of darkness lyes

  Bordering on light; when strait behold the Throne

  Of Chaos, and his dark Pavilion spread                              960

  Wide on the wasteful Deep; with him Enthron'd

  Sat Sable-vested Night, eldest of things,

  The consort of his Reign; and by them stood

  Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name

  Of Demogorgon; Rumor next and Chance,

  And Tumult and Confusion all imbroild,

  And Discord with a thousand various mouths.

  T' whom Satan turning boldly, thus. Ye Powers

  And Spirits of this nethermost Abyss,

  Chaos and Ancient Night, I come no Spie,                            970

  With purpose to explore or to disturb

  The secrets of your Realm, but by constraint

  Wandring this darksome desart, as my way

  Lies through your spacious Empire up to light,

  Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek

  What readiest path leads where your gloomie bounds

  Confine with Heav'n; or if som other place

  From your Dominion won, th' Ethereal King

  Possesses lately, thither to arrive

  I travel this profound, direct my course;                           980

  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 Standerd there of Ancient Night;

  Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge.

  Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old

  With faultring speech and visage incompos'd

  Answer'd. I know thee, stranger, who thou art,                      990

  That mighty leading Angel, who of late

  Made head against Heav'ns 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

  Pourd out by millions her victorious Bands

  Pursuing. I upon my Frontieres here

  Keep residence; if all I can will serve,

  That little which is left so to defend                             1000

  Encroacht on still through our intestine broiles

  Weakning the Scepter of old Night: first Hell

  Your dungeon stretching far and wide beneath;

  Now lately Heaven and Earth, another World

  Hung ore my Realm, link'd in a golden Chain

  To that side Heav'n from whence your Legions fell:

  If that way be your walk, you have not farr;

  So much the neerer danger; goe and speed;

  Havock and spoil and ruin are my gain.

  He ceas'd; and Satan staid not to reply,                           1010

  But glad that now his Sea should find a shore,

  With fresh alacritie and force renew'd

  Springs upward like a Pyramid of fire

  Into the wilde expanse, and through the shock

  Of fighting Elements, on all sides round

  Environ'd wins his way; harder beset

  And more endanger'd, then when Argo pass'd

  Through Bosporus betwixt the justling Rocks:

  Or when Ulysses on the Larbord shunnd

  Charybdis, and by th' other whirlpool steard.                      1020

  So he with difficulty and labour hard

  Mov'd on, with difficulty and labour hee;

  But hee once past, soon after when man fell,

  Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain

  Following his track, such was the will of Heav'n,

  Pav'd after him a broad and beat'n way

  Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling Gulf

  Tamely endur'd a Bridge of wondrous length

  From Hell continu'd reaching th' utmost Orbe

  Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse                 1030

  With easie 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 walls of Heav'n

  Shoots farr into the bosom of dim Night

  A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins

  Her fardest verge, and Chaos to retire

  As from her outmost works a brok'n foe

  With tumult less and with less hostile din,                        1040

  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;

  Or in the emptier waste, resembling Air,

  Weighs his spread wings, at leasure to behold

  Farr off th' Empyreal Heav'n, extended wide

  In circuit, undetermind square or round,

  With Opal Towrs and Battlements adorn'd

  Of living Saphire, once his native Seat;                           1050

  And fast by hanging in a golden Chain

  This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr

  Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.

  Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge,

  Accurst, and in a cursed hour he hies.

 

  Notes:

  282 where] were 1674.

  402 breath] misprint for breathe.

  483 thir] her 1674.

  527 his] this 1674.

  542 Oealia] Oechalia 1674.

  631 toward] towards 1674.

 

  The End Of The Second Book.

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; foretells 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 seduc't. The Son of God renders praises to his father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards Man; 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 dye, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergoe his Punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a Ransome for Man: the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all in Heaven and Earth, commands all the Angels to adore him; they obey, amid hymning to their Harps in full Quire, celebrate the Father and the Son.. Mean while Satan alights upon the bare convex of this Worlds outermost Orb; where wandring he first finds a place since call'd The Lymbo of Vanity, what persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the Gate of Heaven, describ'd 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 plac't here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on Mount Niphates.

 

  Hail holy light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born,

  Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam

  May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,

  And never but in unapproached light

  Dwelt from Eternitie, 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 Heavens thou wert, and at the voice

  Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest                                10

  The rising world of waters dark and deep,

  Won from the void and formless infinite.

  Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,

  Escap't the Stygian Pool, though long detain'd

  In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight

  Through utter and through middle darkness borne

  With other notes then 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 reascend,                                20

  Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,

  And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou

  Revisit'st not these eyes, that rowle in vain

  To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;

  So thick a drop serene hath quencht thir Orbs,

  Or dim suffusion veild. Yet not the more

  Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt

  Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill,

  Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief

  Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath                             30

  That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow,

  Nightly I visit: nor somtimes forget

  Those other two equal'd with me in Fate,

  So were I equal'd with them in renown,

  Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides,

  And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.

  Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move

  Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird

  Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid

  Tunes her nocturnal Note. Thus with the Year                         40

  Seasons return, but not to me returns

  Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn,

  Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose,

  Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

  But cloud in stead, and ever-during dark

  Surrounds me, from the chearful waies of men

  Cut off, and for the book of knowledg fair

  Presented with a Universal blanc

  Of Natures works to mee expung'd and ras'd,

  And wisdome at one entrance quite shut out.                          50

  So much the rather thou Celestial light

  Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers

  Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence

  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 Empyrean where he sits

  High Thron'd above all highth, bent down his eye,

  His own works and their works at once to view:

  About him all the Sanctities of Heaven                               60

  Stood thick as Starrs, and from his sight receiv'd

  Beatitude past utterance; on his right

  The radiant image of his Glory sat,

  His onely Son; On Earth he first beheld

  Our two first Parents, yet the onely two

  Of mankind, in the happie Garden plac't,

  Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,

  Uninterrupted joy, unrivald love

  In blissful solitude; he then survey'd

  Hell and the Gulf between, and Satan there                           70

  Coasting the wall of Heav'n on this side Night

  In the dun Air sublime, and ready now

  To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet

  On the bare outside of this World, that seem'd

  Firm land imbosom'd without Firmament,

  Uncertain which, in Ocean or in Air.

  Him God beholding from his prospect high,

  Wherein past, present, future he beholds,

  Thus to his onely Son foreseeing spake.

  Onely begotten Son, seest thou what rage                             80

  Transports our adversarie, whom no bounds

  Prescrib'd, no barrs of Hell, nor all the chains

  Heapt on him there, nor yet the main Abyss

  Wide interrupt can hold; so bent he seems

  On desperat revenge, that shall redound

  Upon his own rebellious head. And now

  Through all restraint broke loose he wings his way

  Not farr off Heav'n, in the Precincts of light,

  Directly towards the new created World,

  And Man there plac't, with purpose to assay                          90

  If him by force he can destroy, or worse,

  By som false guile pervert; and shall pervert;

  For man will heark'n to his glozing lyes,

  And easily transgress the sole Command,

  Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall

  Hee and his faithless Progenie: whose fault?

  Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee

  All he could have; I made him just and right,

  Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

  Such I created all th' Ethereal Powers                              100

  And Spirits, both them who stood & them who faild;

  Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.

  Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere

  Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,

  Where onely what they needs must do, appeard,

  Not what they would? what praise could they receive?

  What pleasure I from such obedience paid,

  When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice)

  Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild,

  Made passive both, had servd necessitie,                            110

  Not mee. They therefore as to right belongd,

  So were created, nor can justly accuse

  Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate;

  As if Predestination over-rul'd

  Thir will, dispos'd by absolute Decree

  Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed

  Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,

  Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,

  Which had no less prov'd certain unforeknown.

  So without least impulse or shadow of Fate,                         120

  Or aught by me immutablie foreseen,

  They trespass, Authors to themselves in all

  Both what they judge and what they choose; for so

  I formd them free, and free they must remain,

  Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change

  Thir nature, and revoke the high Decree

  Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain'd

  Thir freedom, they themselves ordain'd thir fall.

  The first sort by thir own suggestion fell,

  Self-tempted, self-deprav'd: Man falls deceiv'd                     130

  By the other first: Man therefore shall find grace,

  The other none: in Mercy and Justice both,

  Through Heav'n and Earth, so shall my glorie excel,

  But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine.

  Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill'd

  All Heav'n, and in the blessed Spirits elect

  Sense of new joy ineffable diffus'd:

  Beyond compare the Son of God was seen

  Most glorious, in him all his Father shon

  Substantially express'd, and in his face                            140

  Divine compassion visibly appeerd,

  Love without end, and without measure Grace,

  Which uttering thus he to his Father spake.

  O Father, gracious was that word which clos'd

  Thy sovran sentence, that Man should find grace;

  For which both Heav'n and Earth shall high extoll

  Thy praises, with th' innumerable sound

  Of Hymns and sacred Songs, wherewith thy Throne

  Encompass'd shall resound thee ever blest.

  For should Man finally be lost, should Man                          150

  Thy creature late so lov'd, thy youngest Son

  Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joynd

  With his own folly? that be from thee farr,

  That farr be from thee, Father, who art Judge

  Of all things made, and judgest onely right.

  Or shall the Adversarie thus obtain

  His end, and frustrate thine, shall he fulfill

  His malice, and thy goodness bring to naught,

  Or proud return though to his heavier doom,

  Yet with revenge accomplish't and to Hell                           160

  Draw after him the whole Race of mankind,

  By him corrupted? or wilt thou thy self

  Abolish thy Creation, and unmake,

  For him, what for thy glorie thou hast made?

  So should thy goodness and thy greatness both

  Be questiond and blaspheam'd without defence.

  To whom the great Creatour thus reply'd.

  O Son, in whom my Soul hath chief delight,

  Son of my bosom, Son who art alone

  My word, my wisdom, and effectual might,                            170

  All hast thou spok'n as my thoughts are, all

  As my Eternal purpose hath decreed:

  Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will,

  Yet not of will in him, but grace in me

  Freely voutsaft; once more I will renew

  His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthrall'd

  By sin to foul exorbitant desires;

  Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand

  On even ground against his mortal foe,

  By me upheld, that he may know how frail                            180

  His fall'n condition is, and to me ow

  All his deliv'rance, and to none but me.

  Some I have chosen of peculiar grace

  Elect above the rest; so is my will:

  The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warnd

  Thir sinful state, and to appease betimes

  Th' incensed Deitie, while offerd grace

  Invites; for I will cleer thir senses dark,

  What may suffice, and soft'n stonie hearts

  To pray, repent, and bring obedience due.                           190

  To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,

  Though but endevord with sincere intent,

  Mine eare shall not be slow, mine eye not shut.

  And I will place within them as a guide

  My Umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear,

  Light after light well us'd they shall attain,

  And to the end persisting, safe arrive.

  This my long sufferance and my day of grace

  They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste;

  But hard be hard'nd, blind be blinded more,                         200

  That they may stumble on, and deeper fall;

  And none but such from mercy I exclude.

  But yet all is not don; Man disobeying,

  Disloyal breaks his fealtie, and sinns

  Against the high Supremacie of Heav'n,

  Affecting God-head, and so loosing all,

  To expiate his Treason hath naught left,

  But to destruction sacred and devote,

  He with his whole posteritie must die,

  Die hee or Justice must; unless for him                             210

  Som other able, and as willing, pay

  The rigid satisfaction, death for death.

  Say Heav'nly Powers, where shall we find such love,

  Which of ye will be mortal to redeem

  Mans mortal crime, and just th' unjust to save,

  Dwels in all Heaven charitie so deare?

  He ask'd, but all the Heav'nly Quire stood mute,

  And silence was in Heav'n: on mans behalf

  Patron or Intercessor none appeerd,

  Much less that durst upon his own head draw                         220

  The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.

  And now without redemption all mankind

  Must have bin lost, adjudg'd to Death and Hell

  By doom severe, had not the Son of God,

  In whom the fulness dwels of love divine,

  His dearest mediation thus renewd.

  Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace;

  And shall grace not find means, that finds her way,

  The speediest of thy winged messengers,

  To visit all thy creatures, and to all                              230

  Comes unprevented, unimplor'd, unsought,

  Happie for man, so coming; be her aide

  Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost;

  Attonement for himself or offering meet,

  Indebted and undon, hath none to bring:

  Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life

  I offer, on mee let thine anger fall;

  Account mee man; I for his sake will leave

  Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee

  Freely put off, and for him lastly die                              240

  Well pleas'd, on me let Death wreck all his rage;

  Under his gloomie power I shall not long

  Lie vanquisht; thou hast givn me to possess

  Life in my self for ever, by thee I live,

  Though now to Death I yeild, and am his due

  All that of me can die, yet that debt paid,

  Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsom grave

  His prey, nor suffer my unspotted Soule

  For ever with corruption there to dwell;

  But I shall rise Victorious, and subdue                             250

  My Vanquisher, spoild of his vanted spoile;

  Death his deaths wound shall then receive, & stoop

  Inglorious, of his mortall sting disarm'd.

  I through the ample Air in Triumph high

  Shall lead Hell Captive maugre Hell, and show

  The powers of darkness bound. Thou at the sight

  Pleas'd, out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,

  While by thee rais'd I ruin all my Foes,

  Death last, and with his Carcass glut the Grave:

  Then with the multitude of my redeemd                               260

  Shall enter Heaven long absent, and returne,

  Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud

  Of anger shall remain, but peace assur'd,

  And reconcilement; wrauth shall be no more

  Thenceforth, but in thy presence Joy entire.

  His words here ended, but his meek aspect

  Silent yet spake, and breath'd immortal love

  To mortal men, above which only shon

  Filial obedience: as a sacrifice

  Glad to be offer'd, he attends the will                             270

  Of his great Father. Admiration seis'd

  All Heav'n, what this might mean, & whither tend

  Wondring; but soon th' Almighty thus reply'd:

  O thou in Heav'n and Earth the only peace

  Found out for mankind under wrauth, O thou

  My sole complacence! well thou know'st how dear,

  To me are all my works, nor Man the least

  Though last created, that for him I spare

  Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,

  By loosing thee a while, the whole Race lost.                       280

  Thou therefore whom thou only canst redeeme,

  Thir Nature also to thy Nature joyne;

  And be thy self Man among men on Earth,

  Made flesh, when time shall be, of Virgin seed,

  By wondrous birth: Be thou in Adams room

  The Head of all mankind, though Adams Son.

  As in him perish all men, so in thee

  As from a second root shall be restor'd,

  As many as are restor'd, without thee none.

  His crime makes guiltie all his Sons, thy merit                     290

  Imputed shall absolve them who renounce

  Thir own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,

  And live in thee transplanted, and from thee

  Receive new life. So Man, as is most just,

  Shall satisfie for Man, be judg'd and die,

  And dying rise, and rising with him raise

  His Brethren, ransomd with his own dear life.

  So Heav'nly love shal outdoo Hellish hate,

  Giving to death, and dying to redeeme,

  So dearly to redeem what Hellish hate                               300

  So easily destroy'd, and still destroyes

  In those who, when they may, accept not grace.

  Nor shalt thou by descending to assume

  Mans Nature, less'n or degrade thine owne.

  Because thou hast, though Thron'd in highest bliss

  Equal to God, and equally enjoying

  God-like fruition, quitted all to save

  A World from utter loss, and hast been found

  By Merit more then Birthright Son of God,

  Found worthiest to be so by being Good,                             310

  Farr more then Great or High; because in thee

  Love hath abounded more then Glory abounds,

  Therefore thy Humiliation shall exalt

  With thee thy Manhood also to this Throne;

  Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt Reigne

  Both God and Man, Son both of God and Man,

  Anointed universal King; all Power

  I give thee, reign for ever, and assume

  Thy Merits; under thee as Head Supream

  Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions I reduce:                    320

  All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide

  In Heaven, or Earth, or under Earth in Hell;

  When thou attended gloriously from Heav'n

  Shalt in the Skie appeer, and from thee send

  The summoning Arch-Angels to proclaime

  Thy dread Tribunal: forthwith from all Windes

  The living, and forthwith the cited dead

  Of all past Ages to the general Doom

  Shall hast'n, such a peal shall rouse thir sleep.

  Then all thy Saints assembl'd, thou shalt judge                     330

  Bad men and Angels, they arraignd shall sink

  Beneath thy Sentence; Hell, her numbers full,

  Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Mean while

  The World shall burn, and from her ashes spring

  New Heav'n and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell

  And after all thir tribulations long

  See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,

  With Joy and Love triumphing, and fair Truth.

  Then thou thy regal Scepter shalt lay by,

  For regal Scepter then no more shall need,                          340

  God shall be All in All. But all ye Gods,

  Adore him, who to compass all this dies,

  Adore the Son, and honour him as mee.

  No sooner had th' Almighty ceas't, but all

  The multitude of Angels with a shout

  Loud as from numbers without number, sweet

  As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heav'n rung

  With Jubilee, and loud Hosanna's fill'd

  Th' eternal Regions: lowly reverent

  Towards either Throne they bow, & to the ground                     350

  With solemn adoration down they cast

  Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold,

  Immortal Amarant, a Flour which once

  In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life

  Began to bloom, but soon for mans offence

  To Heav'n remov'd where first it grew, there grows,

  And flours aloft shading the Fount of Life,

  And where the river of Bliss through midst of Heavn

  Rowls o're Elisian Flours her Amber stream;

  With these that never fade the Spirits Elect                        360

  Bind thir resplendent locks inwreath'd with beams,

  Now in loose Garlands thick thrown off, the bright

  Pavement that like a Sea of Jasper shon

  Impurpl'd with Celestial Roses smil'd.

  Then Crown'd again thir gold'n Harps they took,

  Harps ever tun'd, that glittering by their side

  Like Quivers hung, and with Praeamble sweet

  Of charming symphonie they introduce

  Thir sacred Song, and waken raptures high;

  No voice exempt, no voice but well could joine                      370

  Melodious part, such concord is in Heav'n.

  Thee Father first they sung Omnipotent,

  Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,

  Eternal King; thee Author of all being,

  Fountain of Light, thy self invisible

  Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sit'st

  Thron'd inaccessible, but when thou shad'st

  The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud

  Drawn round about thee like a radiant Shrine,

  Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appeer,                       380

  Yet dazle Heav'n, that brightest Seraphim

  Approach not, but with both wings veil thir eyes.

  Thee next they sang of all Creation first,

  Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,

  In whose conspicuous count'nance, without cloud

  Made visible, th' Almighty Father shines,

  Whom else no Creature can behold; on thee

  Impresst the effulgence of his Glorie abides,

  Transfus'd on thee his ample Spirit rests.

  Hee Heav'n of Heavens and all the Powers therein                    390

  By thee created, and by thee threw down

  Th' aspiring Dominations: thou that day

  Thy Fathers dreadful Thunder didst not spare,

  Nor stop thy flaming Chariot wheels, that shook

  Heav'ns everlasting Frame, while o're the necks

  Thou drov'st of warring Angels disarraid.

  Back from pursuit thy Powers with loud acclaime

  Thee only extold, Son of thy Fathers might,

  To execute fierce vengeance on his foes,

  Not so on Man; him through their malice fall'n,                     400

  Father of Mercie and Grace, thou didst not doome

  So strictly, but much more to pitie encline:

  No sooner did thy dear and onely Son

  Perceive thee purpos'd not to doom frail Man

  So strictly, but much more to pitie enclin'd,

  He to appease thy wrauth, and end the strife

  Of Mercy and Justice in thy face discern'd,

  Regardless of the Bliss wherein hee sat

  Second to thee, offerd himself to die

  For mans offence. O unexampl'd love,                                410

  Love no where to be found less then Divine!

  Hail Son of God, Saviour of Men, thy Name

  Shall be the copious matter of my Song

  Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise

  Forget, nor from thy Fathers praise disjoine.

  Thus they in Heav'n, above the starry Sphear,

  Thir happie hours in joy and hymning spent.

  Mean while upon the firm opacous Globe

  Of this round World, whose first convex divides

  The luminous inferior Orbs, enclos'd                                420

  From Chaos and th' inroad of Darkness old,

  Satan alighted walks: a Globe farr off

  It seem'd, now seems a boundless Continent

  Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night

  Starless expos'd, and ever-threatning storms

  Of Chaos blustring round, inclement skie;

  Save on that side which from the wall of Heav'n

  Though distant farr som small reflection gaines

  Of glimmering air less vext with tempest loud:

  Here walk'd the Fiend at large in spacious field.                   430

  As when a Vultur on Imaus bred,

  Whose snowie ridge the roving Tartar bounds,

  Dislodging from a Region scarce of prey

  To gorge the flesh of Lambs or yeanling Kids

  On Hills where Flocks are fed, flies toward the Springs

  Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;

  But in his way lights on the barren plaines

  Of Sericana, where Chineses drive

  With Sails and Wind thir canie Waggons light:

  So on this windie Sea of Land, the Fiend                            440

  Walk'd up and down alone bent on his prey,

  Alone, for other Creature in this place

  Living or liveless to be found was none,

  None yet, but store hereafter from the earth

  Up hither like Aereal vapours flew

  Of all things transitorie and vain, when Sin

  With vanity had filld the works of men:

  Both all things vain, and all who in vain things

  Built thir fond hopes of Glorie or lasting fame,

  Or happiness in this or th' other life;                             450

  All who have thir reward on Earth, the fruits

  Of painful Superstition and blind Zeal,

  Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find

  Fit retribution, emptie as thir deeds;

  All th' unaccomplisht works of Natures hand,

  Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt,

  Dissolvd on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,

  Till final dissolution, wander here,

  Not in the neighbouring Moon, as some have dreamd;

  Those argent Fields more likely habitants,                          460

  Translated Saints, or middle Spirits hold

  Betwixt th' Angelical and Human kinde:

  Hither of ill-joynd Sons and Daughters born

  First from the ancient World those Giants came

  With many a vain exploit, though then renownd:

  The builders next of Babel on the Plain

  Of Sennaar, and still with vain designe

  New Babels, had they wherewithall, would build:

  Others came single; hee who to be deemd

  A God, leap'd fondly into Aetna flames,                             470

  Empedocles, and hee who to enjoy

  Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the Sea,

  Cleombrotus, and many more too long,

  Embryo's and Idiots, Eremits and Friers

  White, Black and Grey, with all thir trumperie.

  Here Pilgrims roam, that stray'd so farr to seek

  In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heav'n;

  And they who to be sure of Paradise

  Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,

  Or in Franciscan think to pass disguis'd;                           480

  They pass the Planets seven, and pass the fixt,

  And that Crystalline Sphear whose ballance weighs

  The Trepidation talkt, and that first mov'd;

  And now Saint Peter at Heav'ns Wicket seems

  To wait them with his Keys, and now at foot

  Of Heav'ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe

  A violent cross wind from either Coast

  Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry

  Into the devious Air; then might ye see

  Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost                     490

  And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads,

  Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls,

  The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft

  Fly o're the backside of the World farr off

  Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld

  The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown

  Long after, now unpeopl'd, and untrod;

  All this dark Globe the Fiend found as he pass'd,

  And long he wanderd, till at last a gleame

  Of dawning light turnd thither-ward in haste                        500

  His travell'd steps; farr distant hee descries

  Ascending by degrees magnificent

  Up to the wall of Heaven a Structure high,

  At top whereof, but farr more rich appeerd

  The work as of a Kingly Palace Gate

  With Frontispice of Diamond and Gold

  Imbellisht, thick with sparkling orient Gemmes

  The Portal shon, inimitable on Earth

  By Model, or by shading Pencil drawn.

  The Stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw                           510

  Angels ascending and descending, bands

  Of Guardians bright, when he from Esau fled

  To Padan-aram in the field of Luz,

  Dreaming by night under the open Skie,

  And waking cri'd, This is the Gate of Heav'n.

  Each Stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood

  There alwaies, but drawn up to Heav'n somtimes

  Viewless, and underneath a bright Sea flow'd

  Of Jasper, or of liquid Pearle, whereon

  Who after came from Earth, sayling arriv'd,                         520

  Wafted by Angels, or flew o're the Lake

  Rapt in a Chariot drawn by fiery Steeds.

  The Stairs were then let down, whether to dare

  The Fiend by easie ascent, or aggravate

  His sad exclusion from the dores of Bliss.

  Direct against which op'nd from beneath,

  Just o're the blissful seat of Paradise,

  A passage down to th' Earth, a passage wide,

  Wider by farr then that of after-times

  Over Mount Sion, and, though that were large,                       530

  Over the Promis'd Land to God so dear,

  By which, to visit oft those happy Tribes,

  On high behests his Angels to and fro

  Pass'd frequent, and his eye with choice regard

  From Paneas the fount of Jordans flood

  To Beersaba, where the Holy Land

  Borders on Aegypt and the Arabian shoare;

  So wide the op'ning seemd, where bounds were set

  To darkness, such as bound the Ocean wave.

  Satan from hence now on the lower stair                             540

  That scal'd by steps of Gold to Heav'n Gate

  Looks down with wonder at the sudden view

  Of all this World at once. As when a Scout

  Through dark and desart wayes with peril gone

  All night; at last by break of chearful dawne

  Obtains the brow of some high-climbing Hill,

  Which to his eye discovers unaware

  The goodly prospect of some forein land

  First-seen, or some renownd Metropolis

  With glistering Spires and Pinnacles adornd,                        550

  Which now the Rising Sun guilds with his beams.

  Such wonder seis'd, though after Heaven seen,

  The Spirit maligne, but much more envy seis'd

  At sight of all this World beheld so faire.

  Round he surveys, and well might, where he stood

  So high above the circling Canopie

  Of Nights extended shade; from Eastern Point

  Of Libra to the fleecie Starr that bears

  Andromeda farr off Atlantick Seas

  Beyond th' Horizon; then from Pole to Pole                          560

  He views in bredth, and without longer pause

  Down right into the Worlds first Region throws

  His flight precipitant, and windes with ease

  Through the pure marble Air his oblique way

  Amongst innumerable Starrs, that shon

  Stars distant, but nigh hand seemd other Worlds,

  Or other Worlds they seemd, or happy Iles,

  Like those Hesperian Gardens fam'd of old,

  Fortunate Fields, and Groves and flourie Vales,

  Thrice happy Iles, but who dwelt happy there                        570

  He stayd not to enquire: above them all

  The golden Sun in splendor likest Heaven

  Allur'd his eye: Thither his course he bends

  Through the calm Firmament; but up or downe

  By center, or eccentric, hard to tell,

  Or Longitude, where the great Luminarie

  Alooff the vulgar Constellations thick,

  That from his Lordly eye keep distance due,

  Dispenses Light from farr; they as they move

  Thir Starry dance in numbers that compute                           580

  Days, months, and years, towards his all-chearing Lamp

  Turn swift their various motions, or are turnd

  By his Magnetic beam, that gently warms

  The Univers, and to each inward part

  With gentle penetration, though unseen,

  Shoots invisible vertue even to the deep:

  So wondrously was set his Station bright.

  There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps

  Astronomer in the Sun's lucent Orbe

  Through his glaz'd Optic Tube yet never saw.                        590

  The place he found beyond expression bright,

  Compar'd with aught on Earth, Medal or Stone;

  Not all parts like, but all alike informd

  Which radiant light, as glowing Iron with fire;

  If mettal, part seemd Gold, part Silver cleer;

  If stone, Carbuncle most or Chrysolite,

  Rubie or Topaz, to the Twelve that shon

  In Aarons Brest-plate, and a stone besides

  Imagind rather oft then elsewhere seen,

  That stone, or like to that which here below                        600

  Philosophers in vain so long have sought,

  In vain, though by thir powerful Art they binde

  Volatil Hermes, and call up unbound

  In various shapes old Proteus from the Sea,

  Draind through a Limbec to his Native forme.

  What wonder then if fields and regions here

  Breathe forth Elixir pure, and Rivers run

  Potable Gold, when with one vertuous touch

  Th' Arch-chimic Sun so farr from us remote

  Produces with Terrestrial Humor mixt                                610

  Here in the dark so many precious things

  Of colour glorious and effect so rare?

  Here matter new to gaze the Devil met

  Undazl'd, farr and wide his eye commands,

  For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade,

  But all Sun-shine, as when his Beams at Noon

  Culminate from th' Aequator, as they now

  Shot upward still direct, whence no way round

  Shadow from body opaque can fall, and the Aire,

  No where so cleer, sharp'nd his visual ray                          620

  To objects distant farr, whereby he soon

  Saw within kenn a glorious Angel stand,

  The same whom John saw also in the Sun:

  His back was turnd, but not his brightness hid;

  Of beaming sunnie Raies, a golden tiar

  Circl'd his Head, nor less his Locks behind

  Illustrious on his Shoulders fledge with wings

  Lay waving round; on som great charge imploy'd

  Hee seemd, or fixt in cogitation deep.

  Glad was the Spirit impure as now in hope                           630

  To find who might direct his wandring flight

  To Paradise the happie seat of Man,

  His journies end and our beginning woe.

  But first he casts to change his proper shape,

  Which else might work him danger or delay:

  And now a stripling Cherube he appeers,

  Not of the prime, yet such as in his face

  Youth smil'd Celestial, and to every Limb

  Sutable grace diffus'd, so well he feignd;

  Under a Coronet his flowing haire                                   640

  In curles on either cheek plaid, wings he wore

  Of many a colourd plume sprinkl'd with Gold,

  His habit fit for speed succinct, and held

  Before his decent steps a Silver wand.

  He drew not nigh unheard, the Angel bright,

  Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turnd,

  Admonisht by his eare, and strait was known

  Th' Arch-Angel Uriel, one of the seav'n

  Who in Gods presence, neerest to his Throne

  Stand ready at command, and are his Eyes                            650

  That run through all the Heav'ns, or down to th' Earth

  Bear his swift errands over moist and dry,

  O're Sea and Land: him Satan thus accostes;

  Uriel, for thou of those seav'n Spirits that stand

  In sight of God's high Throne, gloriously bright,

  The first art wont his great authentic will

  Interpreter through highest Heav'n to bring,

  Where all his Sons thy Embassie attend;

  And here art likeliest by supream decree

  Like honour to obtain, and as his Eye                               660

  To visit oft this new Creation round;

  Unspeakable desire to see, and know

  All these his wondrous works, but chiefly Man,

  His chief delight and favour, him for whom

  All these his works so wondrous he ordaind,

  Hath brought me from the Quires of Cherubim

  Alone thus wandring. Brightest Seraph tell

  In which of all these shining Orbes hath Man

  His fixed seat, or fixed seat hath none,

  But all these shining Orbes his choice to dwell;                    670

  That I may find him, and with secret gaze,

  Or open admiration him behold

  On whom the great Creator hath bestowd

  Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces powrd;

  That both in him and all things, as is meet,

  The Universal Maker we may praise;

  Who justly hath drivn out his Rebell Foes

  To deepest Hell, and to repair that loss

  Created this new happie Race of Men

  To serve him better: wise are all his wayes.                        680

  So spake the false dissembler unperceivd;

  For neither Man nor Angel can discern

  Hypocrisie, the only evil that walks

  Invisible, except to God alone,

  By his permissive will, through Heav'n and Earth:

  And oft though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps

  At wisdoms Gate, and to simplicitie

  Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill

  Where no ill seems: Which now for once beguil'd

  Uriel, though Regent of the Sun, and held                           690

  The sharpest sighted Spirit of all in Heav'n;

  Who to the fraudulent Impostor foule

  In his uprightness answer thus returnd.

  Faire Angel, thy desire which tends to know

  The works of God, thereby to glorifie

  The great Work-Maister, leads to no excess

  That reaches blame, but rather merits praise

  The more it seems excess, that led thee hither

  From thy Empyreal Mansion thus alone,

  To witness with thine eyes what some perhaps                        700

  Contented with report heare onely in heav'n:

  For wonderful indeed are all his works,

  Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all

  Had in remembrance alwayes with delight;

  But what created mind can comprehend

  Thir number, or the wisdom infinite

  That brought them forth, but hid thir causes deep.

  I saw when at his Word the formless Mass,

  This worlds material mould, came to a heap:

  Confusion heard his voice, and wilde uproar                         710

  Stood rul'd, stood vast infinitude confin'd;

  Till at his second bidding darkness fled,

  Light shon, and order from disorder sprung:

  Swift to thir several Quarters hasted then

  The cumbrous Elements, Earth, Flood, Aire, Fire,

  And this Ethereal quintessence of Heav'n

  Flew upward, spirited with various forms,

  That rowld orbicular, and turnd to Starrs

  Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;

  Each had his place appointed, each his course,                      720

  The rest in circuit walles this Universe.

  Look downward on that Globe whose hither side

  With light from hence, though but reflected, shines;

  That place is Earth the seat of Man, that light

  His day, which else as th' other Hemisphere

  Night would invade, but there the neighbouring Moon

  (So call that opposite fair Starr) her aide

  Timely interposes, and her monthly round

  Still ending, still renewing, through mid Heav'n;

  With borrowd light her countenance triform                          730

  Hence fills and empties to enlighten th' Earth,

  And in her pale dominion checks the night.

  That spot to which I point is Paradise,

  Adams abode, those loftie shades his Bowre.

  Thy way thou canst not miss, me mine requires.

  Thus said, he turnd, and Satan bowing low,

  As to superior Spirits is wont in Heaven,

  Where honour due and reverence none neglects,

  Took leave, and toward the coast of Earth beneath,

  Down from th' Ecliptic, sped with hop'd success,                    740

  Throws his steep flight with many an Aerie wheele,

  Nor staid, till on Niphates top he lights.

 

  The End Of The Third Book.

BOOK IV.

 

THE ARGUMENT.

 

Satan now in prospect of Eden, and nigh the place where he must now attempt the bold enterprize which he undertook alone against God and Man, falls into many doubts with himself, and many passions, fear, envy, and despare; but at length confirms himself in evil, journeys on to Paradise, whose outward prospect and scituation is described, overleaps the bounds, sits in the shape of a Cormorant on the tree of life, as highest in the Garden to look about him. The Garden describ'd; Satans first sight of Adam and Eve; his wonder at thir excellent form and happy state but with resolution to work thir fall; overhears thir discourse, thence gathers that the Tree of knowledge was forbidden them to eat of, under penalty of death; and thereon intends to found his temptation, by seducing them to transgress: then leaves them a while to know further of thir state by some other means. Mean while Uriel descending on a Sunbeam warns Gabriel, who had in charge the Gate of Paradise, that some evil spirit had escap'd the Deep, and past at Noon by his Sphere in the shape of a good Angel down to Paradise, discovered after by his furious gestures in the Mount. Gabriel promises to find him out ere morning. Night coming on, Adam and Eve discourse of going to thir rest: thir Bower describ'd; thir Evening worship. Gabriel drawing forth his Bands of Night-watch to walk the round of Paradise, appoints two strong Angels to Adams Bower, least the evill spirit should be there doing some harm to Adam or Eve sleeping; there they find him at the ear of Eve, tempting her in a dream, and bring him, though unwilling, to Gabriel; by whom question'd he scornfully answers, prepares resistance, but hinder'd by a Sign from Heaven, flies out of Paradise.

 

  O For that warning voice, which he who saw

  Th' Apocalyps, heard cry in Heaven aloud,

  Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,

  Came furious down to be reveng'd on men,

  Wo To The Inhabitants On Earth! that now,

  While time was, our first Parents had bin warnd

  The coming of thir secret foe, and scap'd

  Haply so scap'd his mortal snare; for now

  Satan, now first inflam'd with rage, came down,

  The Tempter ere th' Accuser of man-kind,                             10

  To wreck on innocent frail man his loss

  Of that first Battel, and his flight to Hell:

  Yet not rejoycing in his speed, though bold,

  Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,

  Begins his dire attempt, which nigh the birth

  Now rowling, boiles in his tumultuous brest,

  And like a devillish Engine back recoiles

  Upon himself; horror and doubt distract

  His troubl'd thoughts, and from the bottom stirr

  The Hell within him, for within him Hell                             20

  He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell

  One step no more then from himself can fly

  By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair

  That slumberd, wakes the bitter memorie

  Of what he was, what is, and what must be

  Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.

  Sometimes towards Eden which now in his view

  Lay pleasant, his grievd look he fixes sad,

  Sometimes towards Heav'n and the full-blazing Sun,

  Which now sat high in his Meridian Towre:                            30

  Then much revolving, thus in sighs began.

  O thou that with surpassing Glory crownd,

  Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God

  Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs

  Hide thir diminisht 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 Spheare;

  Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down                          40

  Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King:

  Ah wherefore! he deservd 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 then to afford him praise,

  The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,

  How due! yet all his good prov'd ill in me,

  And wrought but malice; lifted up so high

  I sdeind subjection, and thought one step higher                     50

  Would set me highest, and in a moment quit

  The debt immense of endless gratitude,

  So burthensome, still paying, still to ow;

  Forgetful what from him I still receivd,

  And understood not that a grateful mind

  By owing owes not, but still pays, at once

  Indebted and dischargd; what burden then?

  O had his powerful Destiny ordaind

  Me some inferiour Angel, I had stood

  Then happie; no unbounded hope had rais'd                            60

  Ambition. Yet why not? som other Power

  As great might have aspir'd, and me though mean

  Drawn to his part; but other Powers as great

  Fell not, but stand unshak'n, 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 Heav'ns free Love dealt equally to all?

  Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate,

  To me alike, it deals eternal woe.                                   70

  Nay curs'd be thou; since against his thy will

  Chose freely what it now so justly rues.

  Me miserable! which way shall I flie

  Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?

  Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;

  And in the lowest deep a lower deep

  Still threatning to devour me opens wide,

  To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.

  O then at last relent: is there no place

  Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?                           80

  None left but by submission; and that word

  Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame

  Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduc'd

  With other promises and other vaunts

  Then to submit, boasting I could subdue

  Th' Omnipotent. Ay me, they little know

  How dearly I abide that boast so vaine,

  Under what torments inwardly I groane;

  While they adore me on the Throne of Hell,

  With Diadem and Scepter high advanc'd                                90

  The lower still I fall, onely Supream

  In miserie; such joy Ambition findes.

  But say I could repent and could obtaine

  By Act of Grace my former state; how soon

  Would highth recal high thoughts, how soon unsay

  What feign'd submission swore: ease would recant

  Vows made in pain, as violent and void.

  For never can true reconcilement grow

  Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep:

  Which would but lead me to a worse relapse                          100

  And heavier fall: so should I purchase deare

  Short intermission bought with double smart.

  This knows my punisher; therefore as farr

  From granting hee, as I from begging peace:

  All hope excluded thus, behold in stead

  Of us out-cast, exil'd, his new delight,

  Mankind created, and for him this World.

  So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear,

  Farwel Remorse: all Good to me is lost;

  Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least                              110

  Divided Empire with Heav'ns King I hold

  By thee, and more then half perhaps will reigne;

  As Man ere long, and this new World shall know.

  Thus while he spake, each passion dimm'd his face

  Thrice chang'd with pale, ire, envie and despair,

  Which marrd his borrow'd visage, and betraid

  Him counterfet, if any eye beheld.

  For heav'nly mindes from such distempers foule

  Are ever cleer. Whereof hee soon aware,

  Each perturbation smooth'd with outward calme,                      120

  Artificer of fraud; and was the first

  That practisd falshood under saintly shew,

  Deep malice to conceale, couch't with revenge:

  Yet not anough had practisd to deceive

  Uriel once warnd; whose eye pursu'd him down

  The way he went, and on th' Assyrian mount

  Saw him disfigur'd, more then could befall

  Spirit of happie sort: his gestures fierce

  He markd and mad demeanour, then alone,

  As he suppos'd, all unobserv'd, unseen.                             130

  So on he fares, and to the border comes

  Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,

  Now nearer, Crowns with her enclosure green,

  As with a rural mound the champain head

  Of a steep wilderness, whose hairie sides

  With thicket overgrown, grottesque and wilde,

  Access deni'd; and over head up grew

  Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,

  Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm,

  A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend                             140

  Shade above shade, a woodie Theatre

  Of stateliest view. Yet higher then thir tops

  The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung:

  Which to our general Sire gave prospect large

  Into his neather Empire neighbouring round.

  And higher then that Wall a circling row

  Of goodliest Trees loaden with fairest Fruit,

  Blossoms and Fruits at once of golden hue

  Appeerd, with gay enameld colours mixt:

  On which the Sun more glad impress'd his beams                      150

  Then in fair Evening Cloud, or humid Bow,

  When God hath showrd the earth; so lovely seemd

  That Lantskip: And of pure now purer aire

  Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires

  Vernal delight and joy, able to drive

  All sadness but despair: now gentle gales

  Fanning thir odoriferous wings dispense

  Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole

  Those balmie spoiles. As when to them who saile

  Beyond the Cape Of Hope, and now are past                           160

  Mozambic, off at Sea North-East windes blow

  Sabean Odours from the spicie shoare

  Of Arabie the blest, with such delay

  Well pleas'd they slack thir course, and many a League

  Cheard with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.

  So entertaind those odorous sweets the Fiend

  Who came thir bane, though with them better pleas'd

  Then Asmodeus with the fishie fume,

  That drove him, though enamourd, from the Spouse

  Of Tobits Son, and with a vengeance sent                            170

  From Media post to Aegypt, there fast bound.

  Now to th' ascent of that steep savage Hill

  Satan had journied on, pensive and slow;

  But further way found none, so thick entwin'd,

  As one continu'd brake, the undergrowth

  Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplext

  All path of Man or Beast that past that way:

  One Gate there onely was, and that look'd East

  On th' other side: which when th' arch-fellon saw

  Due entrance he disdaind, and in contempt,                          180

  At one slight bound high overleap'd all bound

  Of Hill or highest Wall, and sheer within

  Lights on his feet. As when a prowling Wolfe,

  Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,

  Watching where Shepherds pen thir Flocks at eeve

  In hurdl'd Cotes amid the field secure,

  Leaps o're the fence with ease into the Fould:

  Or as a Thief bent to unhoord the cash

  Of some rich Burgher, whose substantial dores,

  Cross-barrd and bolted fast, fear no assault,                       190

  In at the window climbes, or o're the tiles;

  So clomb this first grand Thief into Gods Fould:

  So since into his Church lewd Hirelings climbe.

  Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,

  The middle Tree and highest there that grew,

  Sat like a Cormorant; yet not true Life

  Thereby regaind, but sat devising Death

  To them who liv'd; nor on the vertue thought

  Of that life-giving Plant, but only us'd

  For prospect, what well us'd had bin the pledge                     200

  Of immortalitie. So little knows

  Any, but God alone, to value right

  The good before him, but perverts best things

  To worst abuse, or to thir meanest use.

  Beneath him with new wonder now he views

  To all delight of human sense expos'd

  In narrow room Natures whole wealth, yea more,

  A Heaven on Earth, for blissful Paradise

  Of God the Garden was, by him in the East

  Of Eden planted; Eden stretchd her Line                             210

  From Auran Eastward to the Royal Towrs

  Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian Kings,

  Or where the Sons of Eden long before

  Dwelt in Telassar: in this pleasant soile

  His farr more pleasant Garden God ordaind;

  Out of the fertil ground he caus'd to grow

  All Trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;

  And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,

  High eminent, blooming Ambrosial Fruit

  Of vegetable Gold; and next to Life                                 220

  Our Death the Tree of Knowledge grew fast by,

  Knowledge of Good bought dear by knowing ill.

  Southward through Eden went a River large,

  Nor chang'd his course, but through the shaggie hill

  Pass'd underneath ingulft, for God had thrown

  That Mountain as his Garden mould high rais'd

  Upon the rapid current, which through veins

  Of porous Earth with kindly thirst up drawn,

  Rose a fresh Fountain, and with many a rill

  Waterd the Garden; thence united fell                               230

  Down the steep glade, and met the neather Flood,

  Which from his darksom passage now appeers,

  And now divided into four main Streams,

  Runs divers, wandring many a famous Realme

  And Country whereof here needs no account,

  But rather to tell how, if Art could tell,

  How from that Saphire Fount the crisped Brooks,

  Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold,

  With mazie error under pendant shades

  Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed                            240

  Flours worthy of Paradise which not nice Art

  In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon

  Powrd forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plaine,

  Both where the morning Sun first warmly smote

  The open field, and where the unpierc't shade

  Imbround the noontide Bowrs: Thus was this place,

  A happy rural seat of various view;

  Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms and Balme,

  Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde

  Hung amiable, Hesperian Fables true,                                250

  If true, here onely, and of delicious taste:

  Betwixt them Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks

  Grasing the tender herb, were interpos'd,

  Or palmie hilloc, or the flourie lap

  Of som irriguous Valley spread her store,

  Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose:

  Another side, umbrageous Grots and Caves

  Of coole recess, o're which the mantling Vine

  Layes forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps

  Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall                         260

  Down the slope hills, disperst, or in a Lake,

  That to the fringed Bank with Myrtle crownd,

  Her chrystall mirror holds, unite thir streams.

  The Birds thir quire apply; aires, vernal aires,

  Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune

  The trembling leaves, while Universal Pan

  Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance

  Led on th' Eternal Spring. Not that faire field

  Of Enna, where Proserpin gathring flours

  Her self a fairer Floure by gloomie Dis                             270

  Was gatherd, which cost Ceres all that pain

  To seek her through the world; nor that sweet Grove

  Of Daphne by Orontes, and th' inspir'd

  Castalian Spring might with this Paradise

  Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian Ile

  Girt with the River Triton, where old Cham,

  Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,

  Hid Amalthea and her Florid Son

  Young Bacchus from his Stepdame Rhea's eye;

  Nor where Abassin Kings thir issue Guard,                           280

  Mount Amara, though this by som suppos'd

  True Paradise under the Ethiop Line

  By Nilus head, enclos'd with shining Rock,

  A whole dayes journey high, but wide remote

  From this Assyrian Garden, where the Fiend

  Saw undelighted all delight, all kind

  Of living Creatures new to sight and strange:

  Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

  Godlike erect, with native Honour clad

  In naked Majestie seemd Lords of all,                               290

  And worthie seemd, for in thir looks Divine

  The image of thir glorious Maker shon,

  Truth, Wisdome, Sanctitude severe and pure,

  Severe, but in true filial freedom plac't;

  Whence true autoritie in men; though both

  Not equal, as thir sex not equal seemd;

  For contemplation hee and valour formd,

  For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,

  Hee for God only, shee for God in him:

  His fair large Front and Eye sublime declar'd                       300

  Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin Locks

  Round from his parted forelock manly hung

  Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad:

  Shee as a vail down to the slender waste

  Her unadorned golden tresses wore

  Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav'd

  As the Vine curles her tendrils, which impli'd

  Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway,

  And by her yeilded, by him best receivd,

  Yeilded with coy submission, modest pride,                          310

  And sweet reluctant amorous delay.

  Nor those mysterious parts were then conceald,

  Then was not guiltie shame, dishonest shame

  Of natures works, honor dishonorable,

  Sin-bred, how have ye troubl'd all mankind

  With shews instead, meer shews of seeming pure,

  And banisht from mans life his happiest life,

  Simplicitie and spotless innocence.

  So passd they naked on, nor shund the sight

  Of God or Angel, for they thought no ill:                           320

  So hand in hand they passd, the lovliest pair

  That ever since in loves imbraces met,

  Adam the goodliest man of men since borne

  His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters Eve.

  Under a tuft of shade that on a green

  Stood whispering soft, by a fresh Fountain side

  They sat them down, and after no more toil

  Of thir sweet Gardning labour then suffic'd

  To recommend coole Zephyr, and made ease

  More easie, wholsom thirst and appetite                             330

  More grateful, to thir Supper Fruits they fell,

  Nectarine Fruits which the compliant boughes

  Yeilded them, side-long as they sat recline

  On the soft downie Bank damaskt with flours:

  The savourie pulp they chew, and in the rinde

  Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream;

  Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles

  Wanted, nor youthful dalliance as beseems

  Fair couple, linkt in happie nuptial League,

  Alone as they. About them frisking playd                            340

  All Beasts of th' Earth, since wilde, and of all chase

  In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den;

  Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw

  Dandl'd the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards

  Gambold before them, th' unwieldy Elephant

  To make them mirth us'd all his might, and wreathd

  His Lithe Proboscis; close the Serpent sly

  Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine

  His breaded train, and of his fatal guile

  Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass                            350

  Coucht, and now fild with pasture gazing sat,

  Or Bedward ruminating: for the Sun

  Declin'd was hasting now with prone carreer

  To th' Ocean Iles, and in th' ascending Scale

  Of Heav'n the Starrs that usher Evening rose:

  When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood,

  Scarce thus at length faild speech recoverd sad.

  O Hell! what doe mine eyes with grief behold,

  Into our room of bliss thus high advanc't

  Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps,                       360

  Not Spirits, yet to heav'nly Spirits bright

  Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue

  With wonder, and could love, so lively shines

  In them Divine resemblance, and such grace

  The hand that formd them on thir shape hath pourd.

  Ah gentle pair, yee little think how nigh

  Your change approaches, when all these delights

  Will vanish and deliver ye to woe,

  More woe, the more your taste is now of joy;

  Happie, but for so happie ill secur'd                               370

  Long to continue, and this high seat your Heav'n

  Ill fenc't for Heav'n to keep out such a foe

  As now is enterd; yet no purpos'd foe

  To you whom I could pittie thus forlorne

  Though I unpittied: League with you I seek,

  And mutual amitie so streight, so close,

  That I with you must dwell, or you with me

  Henceforth; my dwelling haply may not please

  Like this fair Paradise, your sense, yet such

  Accept your Makers work; he gave it me,                             380

  Which I as freely give; Hell shall unfould,

  To entertain you two, her widest Gates,

  And send forth all her Kings; there will be room,

  Not like these narrow limits, to receive

  Your numerous ofspring; if no better place,

  Thank him who puts me loath to this revenge

  On you who wrong me not for him who wrongd.

  And should I at your harmless innocence

  Melt, as I doe, yet public reason just,

  Honour and Empire with revenge enlarg'd,                            390

  By conquering this new World, compels me now

  To do what else though damnd I should abhorre.

  So spake the Fiend, and with necessitie,

  The Tyrants plea, excus'd his devilish deeds.

  Then from his loftie stand on that high Tree

  Down he alights among the sportful Herd

  Of those fourfooted kindes, himself now one,

  Now other, as thir shape servd best his end

  Neerer to view his prey, and unespi'd

  To mark what of thir state he more might learn                      400

  By word or action markt: about them round

  A Lion now he stalkes with fierie glare,

  Then as a Tiger, who by chance hath spi'd

  In some Purlieu two gentle Fawnes at play,

  Strait couches close, then rising changes oft

  His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground

  Whence rushing he might surest seise them both

  Grip't in each paw: when Adam first of men

  To first of women Eve thus moving speech,

  Turnd him all eare to heare new utterance flow.                     410

  Sole partner and sole part of all these joyes,

  Dearer thy self then all; needs must the Power

  That made us, and for us this ample World

  Be infinitly good, and of his good

  As liberal and free as infinite,

  That rais'd us from the dust and plac't us here

  In all this happiness, who at his hand

  Have nothing merited, nor can performe

  Aught whereof hee hath need, hee who requires

  From us no other service then to keep                               420

  This one, this easie charge, of all the Trees

  In Paradise that beare delicious fruit

  So various, not to taste that onely Tree

  Of knowledge, planted by the Tree of Life,

  So neer grows Death to Life, what ere Death is,

  Som dreadful thing no doubt; for well thou knowst

  God hath pronounc't it death to taste that Tree,

  The only sign of our obedience left

  Among so many signes of power and rule

  Conferrd upon us, and Dominion giv'n                                430

  Over all other Creatures that possesse

  Earth, Aire, and Sea. Then let us not think hard

  One easie prohibition, who enjoy

  Free leave so large to all things else, and choice

  Unlimited of manifold delights:

  But let us ever praise him, and extoll

  His bountie, following our delightful task

  To prune these growing Plants, & tend these Flours,

  Which were it toilsom, yet with thee were sweet.

  To whom thus Eve repli'd. O thou for whom                           440

  And from whom I was formd flesh of thy flesh,

  And without whom am to no end, my Guide

  And Head, what thou hast said is just and right.

  For wee to him indeed all praises owe,

  And daily thanks, I chiefly who enjoy

  So farr the happier Lot, enjoying thee

  Preeminent by so much odds, while thou

  Like consort to thy self canst no where find.

  That day I oft remember, when from sleep

  I first awak't, and found my self repos'd                           450

  Under a shade on flours, much wondring where

  And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.

  Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound

  Of waters issu'd from a Cave and spread

  Into a liquid Plain, then stood unmov'd

  Pure as th' expanse of Heav'n; I thither went

  With unexperienc't thought, and laid me downe

  On the green bank, to look into the cleer

  Smooth Lake, that to me seemd another Skie.

  As I bent down to look, just opposite,                              460

  A Shape within the watry gleam appeerd

  Bending to look on me, I started back,

  It started back, but pleasd I soon returnd,

  Pleas'd it returnd as soon with answering looks

  Of sympathie and love, there I had fixt

  Mine eyes till now, and pin'd with vain desire,

  Had not a voice thus warnd me, What thou seest,

  What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self,

  With thee it came and goes: but follow me,

  And I will bring thee where no shadow staies                        470

  Thy coming, and thy soft imbraces, hee

  Whose image thou art, him thou shall enjoy

  Inseparablie thine, to him shalt beare

  Multitudes like thy self, and thence be call'd

  Mother of human Race: what could I doe,

  But follow strait, invisibly thus led?

  Till I espi'd thee, fair indeed and tall,

  Under a Platan, yet methought less faire,

  Less winning soft, less amiablie milde,

  Then that smooth watry image; back I turnd,                         480

  Thou following cryd'st aloud, Return fair Eve,

  Whom fli'st thou? whom thou fli'st, of him thou art,

  His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent

  Out of my side to thee, neerest my heart

  Substantial Life, to have thee by my side

  Henceforth an individual solace dear;

  Part of my Soul I seek thee, and thee claim

  My other half: with that thy gentle hand

  Seisd mine, I yeilded, and from that time see

  How beauty is excelld by manly grace                                490

  And wisdom, which alone is truly fair.

  So spake our general Mother, and with eyes

  Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd,

  And meek surrender, half imbracing leand

  On our first Father, half her swelling Breast

  Naked met his under the flowing Gold

  Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight

  Both of her Beauty and submissive Charms

  Smil'd with superior Love, as Jupiter

  On Juno smiles, when he impregns the Clouds                         500

  That shed May Flowers; and press'd her Matron lip

  With kisses pure: aside the Devil turnd

  For envie, yet with jealous leer maligne

  Ey'd them askance, and to himself thus plaind.

  Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two

  Imparadis't in one anothers arms

  The happier Eden, shall enjoy thir fill

  Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust,

  Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,

  Among our other torments not the least,                             510

  Still unfulfill'd with pain of longing pines;

  Yet let me not forget what I have gain'd

  From thir own mouths; all is not theirs it seems:

  One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge call'd,

  Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidd'n?

  Suspicious, reasonless. Why should thir Lord

  Envie them that? can it be sin to know,

  Can it be death? and do they onely stand

  By Ignorance, is that thir happie state,

  The proof of thir obedience and thir faith?                         520

  O fair foundation laid whereon to build

  Thir ruine! Hence I will excite thir minds

  With more desire to know, and to reject

  Envious commands, invented with designe

  To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt

  Equal with Gods; aspiring to be such,

  They taste and die: what likelier can ensue?

  But first with narrow search I must walk round

  This Garden, and no corner leave unspi'd;

  A chance but chance may lead where I may meet                       530

  Some wandring Spirit of Heav'n, by Fountain side,

  Or in thick shade retir'd, from him to draw

  What further would be learnt. Live while ye may,

  Yet happie pair; enjoy, till I return,

  Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed.

  So saying, his proud step he scornful turn'd,

  But with sly circumspection, and began

  Through wood, through waste, o're hil, o're dale his roam.

  Mean while in utmost Longitude, where Heav'n

  With Earth and Ocean meets, the setting Sun                         540

  Slowly descended, and with right aspect

  Against the eastern Gate of Paradise

  Leveld his eevning Rayes: it was a Rock

  Of Alablaster, pil'd up to the Clouds,

  Conspicuous farr, winding with one ascent

  Accessible from Earth, one entrance high;

  The rest was craggie cliff, that overhung

  Still as it rose, impossible to climbe.

  Betwixt these rockie Pillars Gabriel sat

  Chief of th' Angelic Guards, awaiting night;                        550

  About him exercis'd Heroic Games

  Th' unarmed Youth of Heav'n, but nigh at hand

  Celestial Armourie, Shields, Helmes, and Speares

  Hung high with Diamond flaming, and with Gold.

  Thither came Uriel, gliding through the Eeven

  On a Sun beam, swift as a shooting Starr

  In Autumn thwarts the night, when vapors fir'd

  Impress the Air, and shews the Mariner

  From what point of his Compass to beware

  Impetuous winds: he thus began in haste.                            560

  Gabriel, to thee thy cours by Lot hath giv'n

  Charge and strict watch that to this happie place

  No evil thing approach or enter in;

  This day at highth of Noon came to my Spheare

  A Spirit, zealous, as he seem'd, to know

  More of th' Almighties works, and chiefly Man

  Gods latest Image: I describ'd his way

  Bent all on speed, and markt his Aerie Gate;

  But in the Mount that lies from Eden North,

  Where he first lighted, soon discernd his looks                     570

  Alien from Heav'n, with passions foul obscur'd:

  Mine eye pursu'd him still, but under shade

  Lost sight of him; one of the banisht crew

  I fear, hath ventur'd from the deep, to raise

  New troubles; him thy care must be to find.

  To whom the winged Warriour thus returnd:

  Uriel, no wonder if thy perfet sight,

  Amid the Suns bright circle where thou sitst,

  See farr and wide: in at this Gate none pass

  The vigilance here plac't, but such as come                         580

  Well known from Heav'n; and since Meridian hour

  No Creature thence: if Spirit of other sort,

  So minded, have oreleapt these earthie bounds

  On purpose, hard thou knowst it to exclude

  Spiritual substance with corporeal barr.

  But if within the circuit of these walks

  In whatsoever shape he lurk, of whom

  Thou telst, by morrow dawning I shall know.

  So promis'd hee, and Uriel to his charge

  Returnd on that bright beam, whose point now raisd                  590

  Bore him slope downward to the Sun now fall'n

  Beneath th' Azores; whither the prime Orb,

  Incredible how swift, had thither rowl'd

  Diurnal, or this less volubil Earth

  By shorter flight to th' East, had left him there

  Arraying with reflected Purple and Gold

  The Clouds that on his Western Throne attend:

  Now came still Eevning on, and Twilight gray

  Had in her sober Liverie all things clad;

  Silence accompanied, for Beast and Bird,                            600

  They to thir grassie Couch, these to thir Nests

  Were slunk, all but the wakeful Nightingale;

  She all night long her amorous descant sung;

  Silence was pleas'd: now glow'd the Firmament

  With living Saphirs: Hesperus that led

  The starrie Host, rode brightest, till the Moon

  Rising in clouded Majestie, at length

  Apparent Queen unvaild her peerless light,

  And o're the dark her Silver Mantle threw.

  When Adam thus to Eve: Fair Consort, th' hour                       610

  Of night, and all things now retir'd to rest

  Mind us of like repose, since God hath set

  Labour and rest, as day and night to men

  Successive, and the timely dew of sleep

  Now falling with soft slumbrous weight inclines

  Our eye-lids; other Creatures all day long

  Rove idle unimploid, and less need rest;

  Man hath his daily work of body or mind

  Appointed, which declares his Dignitie,

  And the regard of Heav'n on all his waies;                          620

  While other Animals unactive range,

  And of thir doings God takes no account.

  Tomorrow ere fresh Morning streak the East

  With first approach of light, we must be ris'n,

  And at our pleasant labour, to reform

  Yon flourie Arbors, yonder Allies green,

  Our walks at noon, with branches overgrown,

  That mock our scant manuring, and require

  More hands then ours to lop thir wanton growth:

  Those Blossoms also, and those dropping Gumms,                      630

  That lie bestrowne unsightly and unsmooth,

  Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease;

  Mean while, as Nature wills, Night bids us rest.

  To whom thus Eve with perfet beauty adornd.

  My Author and Disposer, what thou bidst

  Unargu'd I obey; so God ordains,

  God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more

  Is womans happiest knowledge and her praise.

  With thee conversing I forget all time,

  All seasons and thir change, all please alike.                      640

  Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

  With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun

  When first on this delightful Land he spreads

  His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour,

  Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth

  After soft showers; and sweet the coming on

  Of grateful Eevning milde, then silent Night

  With this her solemn Bird and this fair Moon,

  And these the Gemms of Heav'n, her starrie train:

  But neither breath of Morn when she ascends                         650

  With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun

  On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure,

  Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,

  Nor grateful Evening mild, nor silent Night

  With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon,

  Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet.

  But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom

  This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?

  To whom our general Ancestor repli'd.

  Daughter of God and Man, accomplisht Eve,                           660

  Those have thir course to finish, round the Earth,

  By morrow Eevning, and from Land to Land

  In order, though to Nations yet unborn,

  Ministring light prepar'd, they set and rise;

  Least total darkness should by Night regaine

  Her old possession, and extinguish life

  In Nature and all things, which these soft fires

  Not only enlighten, but with kindly heate

  Of various influence foment and warme,

  Temper or nourish, or in part shed down                             670

  Thir stellar vertue on all kinds that grow

  On Earth, made hereby apter to receive

  Perfection from the Suns more potent Ray.

  These then, though unbeheld in deep of night,

  Shine not in vain, nor think, though men were none,

  That heav'n would want spectators, God want praise;

  Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth

  Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep:

  All these with ceasless praise his works behold

  Both day and night: how often from the steep                        680

  Of echoing Hill or Thicket have we heard

  Celestial voices to the midnight air,

  Sole, or responsive each to others note

  Singing thir great Creator: oft in bands

  While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk

  With Heav'nly touch of instrumental sounds

  In full harmonic number joind, thir songs

  Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven.

  Thus talking hand in hand alone they pass'd

  On to thir blissful Bower; it was a place                           690

  Chos'n by the sovran Planter, when he fram'd

  All things to mans delightful use; the roofe

  Of thickest covert was inwoven shade

  Laurel and Mirtle, and what higher grew

  Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side

  Acanthus, and each odorous bushie shrub

  Fenc'd up the verdant wall; each beauteous flour,

  Iris all hues, Roses, and Gessamin

  Rear'd high thir flourisht heads between, and wrought

  Mosaic; underfoot the Violet,                                       700

  Crocus, and Hyacinth with rich inlay

  Broiderd the ground, more colour'd then with stone

  Of costliest Emblem: other Creature here

  Beast, Bird, Insect, or Worm durst enter none;

  Such was thir awe of man. In shadier Bower

  More sacred and sequesterd, though but feignd,

  Pan or Silvanus never slept, nor Nymph,

  Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess

  With Flowers, Garlands, and sweet-smelling Herbs

  Espoused Eve deckt first her Nuptial Bed,                           710

  And heav'nly Quires the Hymenaean sung,

  What day the genial Angel to our Sire

  Brought her in naked beauty more adorn'd,

  More lovely then Pandora, whom the Gods

  Endowd with all thir gifts, and O too like

  In sad event, when to the unwiser Son

  Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd

  Mankind with her faire looks, to be aveng'd

  On him who had stole Joves authentic fire.

  Thus at thir shadie Lodge arriv'd, both stood,                      720

  Both turnd, and under op'n Skie ador'd

  The God that made both Skie, Air, Earth & Heav'n

  Which they beheld, the Moons resplendent Globe

  And starrie Pole: Thou also mad'st the Night,

  Maker Omnipotent, and thou the Day,

  Which we in our appointed work imployd

  Have finisht happie in our mutual help

  And mutual love, the Crown of all our bliss

  Ordain'd by thee, and this delicious place

  For us too large, where thy abundance wants                         730

  Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground.

  But thou hast promis'd from us two a Race

  To fill the Earth, who shall with us extoll

  Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake,

  And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep.

  This said unanimous, and other Rites

  Observing none, but adoration pure

  Which God likes best, into thir inmost bower

  Handed they went; and eas'd the putting off

  These troublesom disguises which wee wear,                          740

  Strait side by side were laid, nor turnd I weene

  Adam from his fair Spouse, nor Eve the Rites

  Mysterious of connubial Love refus'd:

  Whatever Hypocrites austerely talk

  Of puritie and place and innocence,

  Defaming as impure what God declares

  Pure, and commands to som, leaves free to all.

  Our Maker bids increase, who bids abstain

  But our Destroyer, foe to God and Man?

  Haile wedded Love, mysterious Law, true source                      750

  Of human ofspring, sole proprietie,

  In Paradise of all things common else.

  By thee adulterous lust was driv'n from men

  Among the bestial herds to raunge, by thee

  Founded in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure,

  Relations dear, and all the Charities

  Of Father, Son, and Brother first were known.

  Farr be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,

  Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,

  Perpetual Fountain of Domestic sweets,                              760

  Whose Bed is undefil'd and chast pronounc't,

  Present, or past, as Saints and Patriarchs us'd.

  Here Love his golden shafts imploies, here lights

  His constant Lamp, and waves his purple wings,

  Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile

  Of Harlots, loveless, joyless, unindeard,

  Casual fruition, nor in Court Amours

  Mixt Dance, or wanton Mask, or Midnight Bal,

  Or Serenate, which the starv'd Lover sings

  To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.                       770

  These lulld by Nightingales imbraceing slept,

  And on thir naked limbs the flourie roof

  Showrd Roses, which the Morn repair'd. Sleep on,

  Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek

  No happier state, and know to know no more.

  Now had night measur'd with her shaddowie Cone

  Half way up Hill this vast Sublunar Vault,

  And from thir Ivorie Port the Cherubim

  Forth issuing at th' accustomd hour stood armd

  To thir night watches in warlike Parade,                            780

  When Gabriel to his next in power thus spake.

  Uzziel, half these draw off, and coast the South

  With strictest watch; these other wheel the North,

  Our circuit meets full West. As flame they part

  Half wheeling to the Shield, half to the Spear.

  From these, two strong and suttle Spirits he calld

  That neer him stood, and gave them thus in charge.

  Ithuriel and Zephon, with wingd speed

  Search through this Garden, leav unsearcht no nook,

  But chiefly where those two fair Creatures Lodge,                   790

  Now laid perhaps asleep secure of harme.

  This Eevning from the Sun's decline arriv'd

  Who tells of som infernal Spirit seen

  Hitherward bent (who could have thought?) escap'd

  The barrs of Hell, on errand bad no doubt:

  Such where ye find, seise fast, and hither bring.

  So saying, on he led his radiant Files,

  Daz'ling the Moon; these to the Bower direct

  In search of whom they sought: him there they found

  Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve;                        800

  Assaying by his Devilish art to reach

  The Organs of her Fancie, and with them forge

  Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams,

  Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint

  Th' animal Spirits that from pure blood arise

  Like gentle breaths from Rivers pure, thence raise

  At least distemperd, discontented thoughts,

  Vain hopes, vain aimes, inordinate desires

  Blown up with high conceits ingendring pride.

  Him thus intent Ithuriel with his Spear                             810

  Touch'd lightly; for no falshood can endure

  Touch of Celestial temper, but returns

  Of force to its own likeness: up he starts

  Discoverd and surpriz'd. As when a spark

  Lights on a heap of nitrous Powder, laid

  Fit for the Tun som Magazin to store

  Against a rumord Warr, the Smuttie graine

  With sudden blaze diffus'd, inflames the Aire:

  So started up in his own shape the Fiend.

  Back stept those two fair Angels half amaz'd                        820

  So sudden to behold the grieslie King;

  Yet thus, unmovd with fear, accost him soon.

  Which of those rebell Spirits adjudg'd to Hell

  Com'st thou, escap'd thy prison, and transform'd,

  Why satst thou like an enemie in waite

  Here watching at the head of these that sleep?

  Know ye not then said Satan, filld with scorn,

  Know ye not me? ye knew me once no mate

  For you, there sitting where ye durst not soare;

  Not to know mee argues your selves unknown,                         830

  The lowest of your throng; or if ye know,

  Why ask ye, and superfluous begin

  Your message, like to end as much in vain?

  To whom thus Zephon, answering scorn with scorn.

  Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same,

  Or undiminisht brightness, to be known

  As when thou stoodst in Heav'n upright and pure;

  That Glorie then, when thou no more wast good,

  Departed from thee, and thou resembl'st now

  Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foule.                        840

  But come, for thou, be sure, shalt give account

  To him who sent us, whose charge is to keep

  This place inviolable, and these from harm.

  So spake the Cherube, and his grave rebuke

  Severe in youthful beautie, added grace

  Invincible: abasht the Devil stood,

  And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

  Vertue in her shape how lovly, saw, and pin'd

  His loss; but chiefly to find here observd

  His lustre visibly impar'd; yet seemd                               850

  Undaunted. If I must contend, said he,

  Best with the best, the Sender not the sent,

  Or all at once; more glorie will be wonn,

  Or less be lost. Thy fear, said Zephon bold,

  Will save us trial what the least can doe

  Single against thee wicked, and thence weak.

  The Fiend repli'd not, overcome with rage;

  But like a proud Steed reind, went hautie on,

  Chaumping his iron curb: to strive or flie

  He held it vain; awe from above had quelld                          860

  His heart, not else dismai'd. Now drew they nigh

  The western point, where those half-rounding guards

  Just met, & closing stood in squadron joind

  Awaiting next command. To whom thir Chief

  Gabriel from the Front thus calld aloud.

  O friends, I hear the tread of nimble feet

  Hasting this way, and now by glimps discerne

  Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade,

  And with them comes a third of Regal port,

  But faded splendor wan; who by his gate                             870

  And fierce demeanour seems the Prince of Hell,

  Not likely to part hence without contest;

  Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours.

  He scarce had ended, when those two approachd

  And brief related whom they brought, wher found,

  How busied, in what form and posture coucht.

  To whom with stern regard thus Gabriel spake.

  Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescrib'd

  To thy transgressions, and disturbd the charge

  Of others, who approve not to transgress                            880

  By thy example, but have power and right

  To question thy bold entrance on this place;

  Imploi'd it seems to violate sleep, and those

  Whose dwelling God hath planted here in bliss?

  To whom thus Satan with contemptuous brow.

  Gabriel, thou hadst in Heav'n th' esteem of wise,

  And such I held thee; but this question askt

  Puts me in doubt. Lives ther who loves his pain?

  Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell,

  Though thither doomd? Thou wouldst thy self, no doubt,              890

  And boldly venture to whatever place

  Farthest from pain, where thou mightst hope to change

  Torment with ease, & soonest recompence

  Dole with delight, which in this place I sought;

  To thee no reason; who knowst only good,

  But evil hast not tri'd: and wilt object

  His will who bound us? let him surer barr

  His Iron Gates, if he intends our stay

  In that dark durance: thus much what was askt.

  The rest is true, they found me where they say;                     900

  But that implies not violence or harme.

  Thus hee in scorn. The warlike Angel mov'd,

  Disdainfully half smiling thus repli'd.

  O loss of one in Heav'n to judge of wise,

  Since Satan fell, whom follie overthrew,

  And now returns him from his prison scap't,

  Gravely in doubt whether to hold them wise

  Or not, who ask what boldness brought him hither

  Unlicenc't from his bounds in Hell prescrib'd;

  So wise he judges it to fly from pain                               910

  However, and to scape his punishment.

  So judge thou still, presumptuous, till the wrauth,

  Which thou incurr'st by flying, meet thy flight

  Seavenfold, and scourge that wisdom back to Hell,

  Which taught thee yet no better, that no pain

  Can equal anger infinite provok't.

  But wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee

  Came not all Hell broke loose? is pain to them

  Less pain, less to be fled, or thou then they

  Less hardie to endure? courageous Chief,                            920

  The first in flight from pain, had'st thou alleg'd

  To thy deserted host this cause of flight,

  Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive.

  To which the Fiend thus answerd frowning stern.

  Not that I less endure, or shrink from pain,

  Insulting Angel, well thou knowst I stood

  Thy fiercest, when in Battel to thy aide

  The blasting volied Thunder made all speed

  And seconded thy else not dreaded Spear.

  But still thy words at random, as before,                           930

  Argue thy inexperience what behooves

  From hard assaies and ill successes past

  A faithful Leader, not to hazard all

  Through wayes of danger by himself untri'd.

  I therefore, I alone first undertook

  To wing the desolate Abyss, and spie

  This new created World, whereof in Hell

  Fame is not silent, here in hope to find

  Better abode, and my afflicted Powers

  To settle here on Earth, or in mid Aire;                            940

  Though for possession put to try once more

  What thou and thy gay Legions dare against;

  Whose easier business were to serve thir Lord

  High up in Heav'n, with songs to hymne his Throne,

  And practis'd distances to cringe, not fight.

  To whom the warriour Angel soon repli'd.

  To say and strait unsay, pretending first

  Wise to flie pain, professing next the Spie,

  Argues no Leader, but a lyar trac't,

  Satan, and couldst thou faithful add? O name,                       950

  O sacred name of faithfulness profan'd!

  Faithful to whom? to thy rebellious crew?

  Armie of Fiends, fit body to fit head;

  Was this your discipline and faith ingag'd,

  Your military obedience, to dissolve

  Allegeance to th' acknowledg'd Power supream?

  And thou sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem

  Patron of liberty, who more then thou

  Once fawn'd, and cring'd, and servilly ador'd

  Heav'ns awful Monarch? wherefore but in hope                        960

  To dispossess him, and thy self to reigne?

  But mark what I arreede thee now, avant;

  Flie thither whence thou fledst: if from this houre

  Within these hallowd limits thou appeer,

  Back to th' infernal pit I drag thee chaind,

  And Seale thee so, as henceforth not to scorne

  The facil gates of hell too slightly barrd.

  So threatn'd hee, but Satan to no threats

  Gave heed, but waxing more in rage repli'd.

  Then when I am thy captive talk of chaines,                         970

  Proud limitarie Cherube, but ere then

  Farr heavier load thy self expect to feel

  From my prevailing arme, though Heavens King

  Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy Compeers,

  Us'd to the yoak, draw'st his triumphant wheels

  In progress through the rode of Heav'n Star-pav'd.

  While thus he spake, th' Angelic Squadron bright

  Turnd fierie red, sharpning in mooned hornes

  Thir Phalanx, and began to hemm him round

  With ported Spears, as thick as when a field                        980

  Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends

  Her bearded Grove of ears, which way the wind

  Swayes them; the careful Plowman doubting stands

  Least on the threshing floore his hopeful sheaves

  Prove chaff. On th' other side Satan allarm'd

  Collecting all his might dilated stood,

  Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd:

  His stature reacht the Skie, and on his Crest

  Sat horror Plum'd; nor wanted in his graspe

  What seemd both Spear and Shield: now dreadful deeds                990

  Might have ensu'd, nor onely Paradise

  In this commotion, but the Starrie Cope

  Of Heav'n perhaps, or all the Elements

  At least had gon to rack, disturbd and torne

  With violence of this conflict, had not soon

  Th' Eternal to prevent such horrid fray

  Hung forth in Heav'n his golden Scales, yet seen

  Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion signe,

  Wherein all things created first he weighd,

  The pendulous round Earth with ballanc't Aire                      1000

  In counterpoise, now ponders all events,

  Battels and Realms: in these he put two weights

  The sequel each of parting and of fight;

  The latter quick up flew, and kickt the beam;

  Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the Fiend.

  Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowst mine,

  Neither our own but giv'n; what follie then

  To boast what Arms can doe, since thine no more

  Then Heav'n permits, nor mine, though doubld now

  To trample thee as mire: for proof look up,                        1010

  And read thy Lot in yon celestial Sign

  Where thou art weigh'd, & shown how light, how weak,

  If thou resist. The Fiend lookt up and knew

  His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled

  Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.

 

  Notes:

  Argument: promises to find him out]  promises to find him 1674

  627 walks] walk 1674.

  928 The] Thy 1674.

 

  The End Of The Fourth Book.