Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of (Eta threw
Into the uboic sea. Others, more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes Angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battle; and complain that fate
Free virtue should enthrall to force or chanee.
Their song was partial; but the harmony
(What could it less when spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense,) Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd tate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame;
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy;
Yet with a pleasing sorcery, could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm the obdurate breast
With stubborn patience, as with triple steel,
Another part, in squadrons and gross bands,
On bold adventure to discover wide
That dismal world, if any clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks
Of four infernal rivers that disgorge
Into the burning lake their baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron, of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; or else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound, as that Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and mount Cassius old
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.
Thither by harpy-footed furies haled,
At certain revolutions, all the damn,d
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immoveable, infix'd, and frozen round,
Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean sound
Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose In sweet forgetfulness all pain and wo,
All in one moment, and so near the brink;
But fate withstands, and to oppose the attempt
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The ford, and of itself the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands,
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast,
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest; though many a dark and dreary vale
They pass'd, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death: which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good;
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.
Meanwhile the adversary of God and Man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of H ||
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.
As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hongs on the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they, on the trading flood,
Through the wide Ethiopian to the cape,
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seem'd
Far off the flying fiend. At last appear
H&H bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates, three folds were brass
Three iron, three of Adamantine rock
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat,
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hellhounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and run g
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd their noise into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen.
Far less abhorr'd than these
Vex'd Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Triancrian shore,
Nor uglier follow the night hag, when call'd
In secret riding through the air she comes,
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches while the laboring moon
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape,
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as night,
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 trembling as he strode.
The undaunted Fiend what this might be admir'd
Admired, not f ar'd; God and his Son except,
Created thing nought valued he, nor shunn'd;
And with disdainful look thus first began:
"Whence and what art thou, execrable shape!
That darest, though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated front athwart my way
To yonder gates? through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave ask'd of thee.
Retire or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born! not to contend with Spirits of Heaven.”
To whom the Goblin full of wrath replied:
"Art thou that Traitor-Angel, art thou he Who first broke peace in Heaven, and faith, till then Unbroken; and in proud rebellious arms
No rest; though many a dark and dreary vale
They pass'd, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death: which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good;
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.
Meanwhile the adversary of God and Man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of Hill
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.
As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs on the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they, on the trading flood,
Through the wide Ethiopian to the cape,
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seem'd
Far off the flying fiend. At last appear
H&H bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates, three folds were brass
Three iron, three of Adamantine rock
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat,
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hellhounds never ceasing bark'd
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