By Sin and Death, a broad way now is pav'd
To expedite your glorious march; but I
Toil'd out my uncouth passage, forc'd to ride
The untractable abyss, plung'd in the womb
Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild;
That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely oppos'd
My journey strange, with clamorous uproar
Protesting Fate supreme; thence how I found
The new-created world, which fame in Heaven
Long had foretold, a fabrick wonderful
Of absolute perfection! therein man,
Plac'd in a Paradise, by our exíle
Made happy: Him by fraud I have seduc'd
From his Creator; and, the more to encrease
Your wonder, with an apple; he, thereat
Offended, worth your laughter! hath given up
Both his beloved Man, and all his world,
To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us,
Without our hazard, labour, or alarm;
To range in, and to dwell, and over Man
To rule, as over all he should have rul'd.
True is, me also hath he judg'd, or rather
Me not, but the brute serpent in whose shape
Man I deceiv'd: that which to me belongs,
Is enmity which he will put between
Me and mankind; I am to bruise his heel;
His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:
A world who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain?-Ye have the account
Of my performance: What remains, ye gods,
But up, and enter now into full bliss?
So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Their universal shout, and high applause,
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of publick scorn; he wonder'd, but not long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more;
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare;
His arms clung to his ribs; his legs entwining
Each other, till supplanted down he fell
A monstrous serpent, on his belly prone
Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power
Now rul'd him, punish'd in the shape he sinn'd.
According to his doom: he would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss return'd with forked tongue
To forked tongue; for now were all transform'd
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories
To his bold riot: Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion and Asp, and Amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes1 horn'd, Hydrus,2 and Elops drear,
And Dipsas; (not so thick swarm'd once the soil
Bedropp'd with blood of Gorgon, or the isle
Ophiusa), but still greatest he the midst,
Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
Engender'd in the Pythian vale or slime,
Huge Python,5 and his power no less he seem'd
Above the rest still to retain: they all
Him follow'd, issuing forth to the open field,
Where all yet left of that revolted rout,
Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just array;
Sublime with expectation when to see
1 Cerastes:' a horned snake.- 2 Hydrus:' the water-snake.- 'Dipsas:* called so, because those stung by it were tormented with incurable thirst.*'Ophiusa:' a small island in the Mediterranean, infested with serpents.— Python :' see Ovid.
In triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief;
They saw, but other sight instead! a crowd
Of ugly serpents: horrour on them fell,
And horrid sympathy; for, what they saw,
They felt themselves, now changing: down their arms,
Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast;
And the dire hiss renew'd, and the dire form
Catch'd by contagion; like in punishment,
As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant Turn'd to exploding hiss, triumph to shame
Cast on themselves from their own mouths.
grove hard by, sprung up with this their change, His will who reigns above, to aggravate
Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
Us'd by the Tempter: on that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fix'd, imagining
For one forbidden tree a multitude
Now risen, to work them farther woe or shame;
Yet, parch'd with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain;
But on they roll'd in heaps, and, up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curl'd Megæra:1 greedily they pluck'd
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flam'd;
This more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceiv'd: they, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chew'd bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected: oft they assay'd,
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugg'd as oft,
With hatefullest disrelish writh'd their jaws,
'Megæra:' one of the Furies.
With soot and cinders fill'd; so oft they fell
Into the same illusion, not as Man
Whom they triumph'd once laps'd. Thus were they
And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss,
Till their lost shape, permitted, they resum'd;
Yearly enjoin'd, some say, to undergo
This annual humbling certain number'd days,
To dash their pride and joy for Man seduc'd.
However, some tradition they dispers'd
Among the heathen, of their purchase got,
And fabled how the Serpent, whom they call'd
Ophion,1 with Eurynome, the wide-
Encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule
Of high Olympus; thence by Saturn driven
And Ops, ere yet Dictaan Jove was born.
Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair
Too soon arriv'd; Sin, there in power before,
Once actual; now in body, and to dwell
Habitual habitant; behind her Death,
Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet
On his pale horse: To whom Sin thus began.
Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death!
What think'st thou of our empire now, though earn'd
With travel difficult, not better far
Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have sat watch,
Unnam'd, undreaded, and thyself half-starv'd?
Whom thus the Sin-born monster answer'd soon.
To me, who with eternal famine pine,
Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven;
There best, where most with ravine I may meet;
Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems
To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corps.
1 'Ophion and Eurynome' were said to have inhabited Olympus, till expelled by Saturn and Ops. Milton sees in this story a tradition of the fall.
To whom the incestuous mother thus replied.
Thou, therefore, on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers, Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl;
No homely morsels! and whatever thing
The sithe of Time mows down, devour unspar'd;
Till I, in Man residing, through the race,
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect;
And season him thy last and sweetest prey.
This said, they both betook them several ways,
Both to destroy, or unimmortal make
All kinds, and for destruction to mature
Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing,
From his transcendent seat the Saints among,
To those bright Orders utter'd thus his voice.
See, with what heat these dogs of Hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created; and had still
Kept in that state, had not the folly of Man
Let in these wasteful furies, who impute
Folly to me: so doth the prince of Hell
And his adherents, that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess
A place so heavenly; and, conniving, seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,
That laugh, as if, transported with some fit
Of passion, I to them had quitted all,
At random yielded up to their misrule;
And know not that I call'd, and drew them thither,
My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which Man's polluting sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure; till, cramm'd and gorg'd, nigh burst With suck'd and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,
Both Sin and Death, and yawning Grave, at last
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