Latest / Sacred Texts Archive / 09 - Paradise Lost - John Milton
Transcript
- Book one, Section one of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 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 heavenly muse, that on the secret top of aureb or of SINAI didst inspire that shepherd who first taught the Chosen seed in the beginning, how the heavens and earth rose out of chaos? Or if sion Hill delight thee more and silly as brook that flowed fast by the oracle of God, I thence invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, that, with no middle flight, intends to soar above the Ionian mount while it pursues things tempted. Yet in prose or rhyme, and chiefly thou, o Spirit, that dost prefer for all temples, the upright heart and pure instruct me. For thou knowest thou from the first wast present and with mighty wings outspread dove like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss and maid'st it pregnant. What in me is dark, illumine, what is low raise and support that to the height of this great argument, I may assert the eternal providence and justify the ways of God. To men, say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view nor the deep tract of hell. Say first, what cause moved our grand parents, in that happy state favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off from their creator and transgress his will? For one restraint? Lords of the world? Besides who first seduced them to that foul revolt? The infernal serpent? He it was, whose guile, stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived the mother of mankind. What time his pride had cast him out from heaven with all his host of rebel angels, by whose aid, aspiring to set himself in glory above his peers, he trusted to have equaled the most high. If he opposed, and, with ambitious aim against the throne and monarchy of God, raised impious war in heaven and battle proud with vain attempt him, the almighty power hurled headlong, flaming from the ethereal sky with hideous ruin and combustion, down to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire, who durst defy the omnipotent to arms nine times the space that measures day and night to mortal men, He with his horrid crew lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, confounded though immortal, but his doom reserved him to more wrath. For now the thought both of lost happiness and lasting pain torments him. Round. He throws his baleful eyes that witnessed huge affliction and dismay, mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. At once far as angels can. He views the dismal situation, waste and wild, a dungeon horrible on all sides, round as one great furnace flamed, Yet from those flames no light, but rather darkness visible, served 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 the ever burning sulfur, unconsumed such place eternal justice had prepared for those rebellious. Here, their prison ordained in utter darkness, and their portion set as far removed from God and light of heaven as from the center thrice to the utmost pole. Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell There the companions of his fall, overwhelmed with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, he soon discerns, and weltering by his side, won next himself in power and next in crime, long after known in Palestine and named bial Zebub, to whom the arch enemy, and thence in heaven called Satan, with bold words, breaking the horrid silence thus began, if thou beest he, But oh how fallen, how changed from him who, in the happier realms of light, clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine myriads? Though bright, If he whom virtual league united thoughts and counsels, equal hope and hazard in the glorious enterprise, joined with me once now misery hath joined in equal ruin into what pit thou seest from what height? Fallen so much the stronger proved he with his thunder Until 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 changed in outward luster, that fixed mind and high disdain from sense of injured merit, that with the mind mightiest raised me to contend, and to the fierce contention brought along innumerable force of spirits, armed that durst dislike his reign, and me, preferring his utmost power with adverse power opposed in dubious battle on the plains of heaven, 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 extort from me to bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee and defy his power. Who, from the terror 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 God's and this ephemeral substance cannot fail. Since through experience of this great event in arms, not worse in foresight, much advanced, we may, with more successful hope, resolve to wage by force or guile, eternal war, irreconcilable to our grand foe, who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy soul reigning, holds the tyranny of Heaven. So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair. And him thus answered soon his bold compare o prince o, chief of many throne at powers that led the embattled Serapham to warnder thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds fearless endangered Heaven's perpetual king, and put to proof his high supremacy, whether upheld by strength or chance of fate. Too well, I see and rule the diy event that, with sad overthrow and foul defeat, hath lost us Heaven and all this mighty host in horrible destruction, laid thus low as far as God's and Heavenly essences can perish. For the mind and spirit remains invincible, and vigor soon returns, though all our glory extinct and happy state here swallowed up in endless misery. But what of he, our conqueror, whom I now aforce believe almighty? Since no less than such kind of all power and such force as ours have left us this our spirit and strength entire 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 war. Whate'er his business be here in the heart of hell, to work in fire, or do his errands in the gloomy deep. What can it then evail? Though yet we feel strength undiminished or eternal being to undergo eternal punishment. Where to with speedy words, the arch fiend replied fallen Cherub. To be weak is miserable doing or suffering. But of this be sure to do aught good never will be our task, but ever to do ill our soul delight, 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 labor 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 destined name. But see the angry victor hath recalled his ministers of vengeance and pursuit back to the gates of heaven. The sulfurous hail shot after us in storm o'er blown. Hath laid the fiery surge that from the precipice of heaven received us falling, and the thunder wingered 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 the occasion, whether scorn or satiet fury yielded from our foe seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild de seat of desolation, void of light. Save what the glimmering of these livid flames casts, pale and dreadful thither? Let us tend from off the tossing of these fiery waves their rest, if any rest can harbor there, and reassembling our afflicted powers. Consult how we may henceforth most offend our enemy, our own loss, How repair, how overcome this dire calamity. What reinforcement we may gain from hope? If not, what resolution from despair? Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, with head uplift above the wave, and eyes that sparkling blazed. His other parts, besides prone on the floor, extended long and large, lay floating many a rude in bulk as huge as whom the fable's name of monstrous size, Titanian or earthborn, that warred on Jove Bryros or typhon whom the den by ancient tarsis held, or that sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works created hugest, that swim in the ocean stream him hapily slumbering on the Norway foam, the pilot of some small night foundered skiff, deeming some island oft as seamen tell with fixed anchor in his scaly rind, Moor's by his side under the lee, while night invests the sea, and wished morn delays so stretched out huge in length, the arch fiend lay chained on the burning lake. Nor ever, thence had risen or heaved his head, but that the will and high permission of all ruling heaven left him at large to his own dark designs, that with reiterated crimes he might heap on himself damnation, while he sought evil to others, and in ray might see how all his malice served but to bring forth infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shone on man by him seduced but on himself treble, confusion, wrath and vengeance poured forthwith upright he rears from off the pool, his mighty stature on each hand. The flames, driven backwards slope, their pointing spires and rolled in billows, leave in the midst the horrid veil. Then, with expanded wings, he steers his flight aloft, incumbent on the dusky air that felt unusual weight, till on dry land he lights if it were land that ever burned with solid as the lake with liquid fire, and such appeared in hue, as when the force of subterranean wind wind transports a hill torn from Pelarus, or the shattered side of thundering Etna, whose compustible and fueled entrails thence conceiving fire sublimed with mineral fury aid the winds, and leave a singed bottom, all involved with stench and smoke, such resting round the soul of unblest feet him followed his next mate, both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood as gods and by their own recovered strength, not by the sufferance of supernal power. Is this the region? This the soil? The climb said? Then the lost Archangel. This the seat that we must change for heaven, This morn gloom, for that celestial light. Be it so, since he who now is sovereign, can dispose and bid what shall be right. Farthest from him is best whom reason hath equalled force hath made supreme above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, where joy forever dwells. Hail horrors, Hail infernal world, And thou profoundest Hell, receive thy new possessor, one who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven. What matter where? If I be still the same, and what I should be, all but less than he whom thunder hath made greater. Here, at least we shall be free. The Almighty hath not built here, for his envy will not drive us. Hence here we may reign secure, And in my choice to reign is worth ambition, though in hell, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. But wherefore let we, then, now, faithful friends, the associates and co partners of our loss, lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, and call them not to share with us their heart in this unhappy mansion, or once more with rallied arms, to try what may be yet regained in heaven, or what more lost in hell. So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub, thus answered, leader of those armies bright which put the omnipotent. None could have foiled. If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft in worse extremes, and on the perilous edge of battle, when it raged in all assaults, their surest signal, they will soon resume new courage and revive. Though now they lie groveling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, as we while astounded and amazed, nor wonder fallen such a pernicious height he scarce had ceased. When the superior fiend was moving toward the shore, his ponderous shield ethereal, temper massy, large and round behind him, cast the broad circumference hung on his shoulders, like the moon whose orb through optic glass. The Tuscan artist views at evening from the top of Fezole or in Voldano, to decry new lands, rivers or mountains in her spotty globe, his spear to equal which the tallest pine hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast of some great admiral, were but a wand he walked with to support uneasy steps over the burning marle, not like those steps on heavens asure. But the torrid class smote on him sore, besides vaulted with fire. Nathlus he so endured till on the beach of that inflamed sea he stood and called his legions angel forms, who lay in transit, thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades high overarched in bower or scattered sedge afloat, when with fierce winds orion armed hath vexed the red sea coast, whose waves o'er through Berseus and his Memphian chivalry. While with perfidious hatred they pursued the sojournals of Goshen, who beheld from the safe shore their floating carcasses and broken chariot wheels. So thick prestrwon abject and lost lay these covering the flood. Under amazement of their hideous change, he called so loud that all the hollow deep of hell resounded. Princes, potentates, warriors. The Flower of Heaven wants yours now lost, if such astonishment as this can seize eternal spirits, Or have ye chosen this place, after the toil of battle, to repose your wearied virtue for the ease you find to slumber here as in the veales of heaven, Or in this abject posture, have ye sworn to adore the conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and Serah rolling in the flood with scattered arms and ensigns till Anon his swift pursuers from Heaven's gates discern the advantage, and descending tread us down. Thus, drooping or with linked thunderbolts, transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. Awake, arise, or be forever fallen. End of Book one, Section one