Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (36 page)

Far heavier load thy self expect to feel

From my prevailing arm, though Heaven’s King

Ride on thy wings
⁹⁷⁴
, and thou with thy compeers,

Used to the
⁹⁷⁵
yoke, draw’st his triumphant wheels

In progress
⁹⁷⁶
through the road of Heav’n star-paved.”

   While thus he spake, th’ angelic squadron bright

Turned fiery red, sharp’ning in moonèd horns
⁹⁷⁸

Their phalanx, and began to hem him round
⁹⁷⁸

With
⁹⁸⁰
ported spears, as thick as when a field

Of Ceres
⁹⁸¹
ripe for harvest waving bends

Her bearded grove of ears, which way the wind

Sways them; the careful plowman
⁹⁸³
doubting stands

Lest on the threshing floor his hopeful sheaves

Prove chaff. On th’ other side Satan alarmed

Collecting all his might dilated
⁹⁸⁶
stood,

Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved
⁹⁸⁷
:

His stature reached the sky
⁹⁸⁸
, and on his crest

Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp

What seemed both spear and shield: now dreadful deeds

Might have ensued, nor only Paradise

In this commotion, but the starry cope
⁹⁹²

Of Heav’n perhaps, or all the elements

At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn

With violence of this conflict, had not soon

Th’ Eternal to prevent such horrid fray

Hung forth in Heav’n his golden scales
⁹⁹⁷
, yet seen

Betwixt Astrea
⁹⁹⁸
and the Scorpion sign,

Wherein
⁹⁹⁹
all things created first he weighed,

The pendulous round Earth with balanced air

In counterpoise, now ponders
¹⁰⁰¹
all events,

Battles and realms: in these he put two weights

The sequel each of parting and of fight;

The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam;

Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the fiend.

   “Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know’st mine,

Neither our own but giv’n; what folly then

To boast what arms can do, since thine no more

Than Heav’n permits, nor mine, though doubled now

To trample thee as mire: for proof look up,

And read thy lot in yon celestial sign

Where thou
¹⁰¹²
art weigh’d, and shown how light, how weak,

If thou resist. The fiend looked up and knew

His mounted scale aloft: nor more
¹⁰¹⁴
; but fled

Murmuring, and
¹⁰¹⁵
with him fled the shades of night.

1–12.
The most dramatic book of the epic opens like Shakespeare’s
Henry V
, with a wistful exclamation. Milton echoes Rev. 12.3–12, which prophesies an apocalyptic war in Heaven, defeat of Satan’s forces, and a retaliatory attack on Earth. The juxtaposition of the Apocalypse (future), the War in Heaven (past), Satan’s arrival in Paradise (the narrative present), and Milton’s own present as creator of the poem generates a dizzying temporal displacement, registered in shifting verb tenses around the repeated
now
of lines 5–9.

3.
Then when
: Cp. line 970.

10.
Accuser
: St. John identifies Satan not as the devil (
diabolos
) but as the tempter of Adam and Eve and accuser (
kategoros
) of Christians seeking salvation (Rev. 12.10).

11.
wreck
: avenge (wreak); cp. 3.241.

16.
rolling
: heaving, surging.

17.
engine
: cannon (see 6.470–91). Satan is repeatedly associated with gunpowder and artillery (cp. ll. 814–18), which he invents in Book 6. Both
engine
and
invention
(or even
plot
) can translate the Latin
ingenium
.

20–23.
The Hell … place:
Cp. 1.253–55. The narrator’s comment recalls
Doctor Faustus
1.3.76; 2.1.121–22.

25.
Cp.
SA
22.

27–28.
Eden … pleasant:
Milton appears to have thought that
Eden
(now deemed Sumerian in origin) derived from the Hebrew for “delight.”

30.
meridian
: noon or zenith. Richardson traces to Vergil the image of the midday sun as in a tower (
Culex
41).

31.
revolving
: deliberating. Milton’s word choice continues the characterization of Satan’s mental processes as circular, often viciously so (
rolling, recoil
).

32–41.
Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew and biographer, claims that he was shown these lines “several years before the poem was begun” and that they were “designed for the very beginning” of a tragedy on the same subject (Darbishire 72). In the Trinity College manuscript, Milton outlines such a tragedy under the title “Adam Unparadised.” Satan’s soliloquy draws on Prometheus’ first speech in Aeschylus’
Prometheus Bound
.

45.
Upbraided
: reproached; cp. James 1.5.

50.
‘
sdained:
disdained, in a form reminiscent of the Italian
sdegnare
(to disdain). An attitude of romantic as well as religious import, “disdain” in Satan’s usage at line 82 is given allegorical agency antagonistic to “submission”; cp. line 770.

51.
quit
: usually glossed as “repay,” but the sense here more nearly approximates “to cease to be engaged in or occupied with” (
OED
I.5.a).

53–56.
still:
always.

56.
By owing owes not
: Acknowledgment of an obligation (“owning up”) satisfies it. Cp. Cicero,
De Officiis
2.20;
Pro Plancio
28.68.

61.
power
: a rank in the angelic hierarchy, here and in line 63 used loosely to mean any angel.

66–72.
Satan interrogates himself (
thou
), and his replies corroborate God’s earlier self-justification (3.100–101).

75.
myself am Hell
: In the early 1660s, Louis XIV of France reportedly identified himself with the state—
“L’Etat c’est moi”
—a sentence long regarded as the epitome of royal absolutism. Satan dwells on the ramifications of his identification with Hell. See 20–23n.

79–80.
no place/Left for repentance:
Hebrews 12.17 is widely cited as the source for Satan’s phrasing. The quasi-allegorical expression of a psychological condition as a physical locality is general in this poem, however. Satan is irreversibly consigned to Hell, and his former place of bliss has been irreversibly estranged from him (5.615, 7.144).

87.
abide
: endure or persevere in; but the sense “remain in a place” is also present. See the preceding note.

90.
advanced
: exalted (referring to Satan on his throne).

94.
act of grace
: suspension of a legal penalty. While the reference to divine mercy is clear, Satan’s legalese recalls Charles’s phrasing in
Eikon Basilike:
“Is this the reward and thanks I am to receive for those many Acts of Grace I have lately passed?” (9.53).

97.
violent and void
: forced and therefore invalid.

110.
Evil be thou my good
: Satan later recognizes that the reverse also holds true (9.122–23).

115.
pale
: darkness, gloom (cp. 10.1009). The light drains from Satan’s disguised face three times (cp. 1.594–98). (Note that the Argument identifies
fear
, not ire, as the first of the three passions affecting him.) His
disfiguration
(l. 127) reverses scriptural accounts of Christ’s transfiguration, in which the mountaintop illumination of Jesus—his “face shone like the sun”—manifests his heavenly nature (Matt. 17.2).

123.
couched
: lying in ambush, lurking; cp. 405–6.

126.
Assyrian mount
: Niphates (3.742).

132–45.
Eden … round:
Milton describes Paradise as a walled garden situated on the level summit (
champaign head
) of a hill (
steep wilderness
) on the eastern border of Eden. The trees on the densely wooded hillside resemble ascending rows of seats in a theater.

136.
grotesque
: according to the
OED
, which cites this as the first such usage in English, “of a landscape: Romantic, picturesquely irregular” (B 2.b). The implied Miltonic innovation is dubious. The word had only recently entered English from the Italian
grotesca
. It referred to the style of painting and sculpture found in excavated Roman grottoes, which featured partial human and animal forms and interwoven foliage. It was an aesthetic term applied to antic, rugged, extravagant, or fanciful productions. The suggestiveness of Milton’s description of the “hairy” hillside wildly overgrown with tangled thicket, its imaginative amalgamations of human and vegetable, qualify this usage as an instance of the original meaning (cp. 5.294–97).

140.
sylvan scene
: forest backdrop; translates Vergil’s
sylvis scaena
(
Aen
. 1.164).

149.
enameled
: glossy, brilliant, as in coloring fixed by fire (cp. 9.525).

151.
humid bow
: rainbow (cp.
Masque
992).

153.
lantskip
: landscape.

156.
gales
: breezes.

160–65.
Cape of Hope … smiles:
After rounding the southern tip of Africa (
Cape of Hope
), European trade ships bore
northeast
from
Mozambique
. Diodorus Siculus (3.46), on whom Milton appears to draw here and at lines 275–79, notes that the prevailing winds of spring carry fragrance from Saba (Sheba), a region in Arabia Felix (
Araby the Blest;
modern Yemen) renowned for the
grateful
(pleasing) smell of myrrh and frankincense. The phenomenon of the aromatic Arabian breeze scenting the ocean was by Milton’s time a commonplace expressive of remote knowledge: “So we the Arabian coast do know, / At distance, when the spices blow” (Waller,
Night-piece
39–40; cp. Herbert,
Prayer
13–14). A related olfactory phenomenon occurs in Heaven (3.135–37).

168–71.
Asmodeus … bound:
In
Media
(now northwestern Iran), according to the apocryphal Book of Tobit, the demon
Asmodeus
(cp. Asmadai, 6.365 and
PR
2.151) kills seven husbands of Sarah. Tobias, son of the blind
Tobit
, becomes her eighth husband. On the advice of the angel Raphael, Tobias repels the jealous demon by burning the heart and liver of a fish (whence the
fishy fume
). Fleeing hastily (
post
) to Egypt to escape the smell, Asmodeus is captured by the angel and bound (cp. 5.221–23).

172.
savage
: wooded, wild.

176.
had perplexed
: would have perplexed.

181.
bound … bound
: another instance of paronomasia, jingling wordplay common in late Latin and Italian writers and characteristic of Hebrew Scripture. Cp. 1.642n.

183–87.
wolf … fold:
Cp. John 10.1–10, where Christ identifies himself as the proper entrance to the flock and calls those who circumvent him thieves and robbers. See 193n.

186.
hurdled cotes
: fenced shelters made of poles and intertwined branches.

188.
unhoard the cash
: undo a hidden reserve of money by removing its contents, in this case
cash
with a play on
cache
.

192.
clomb
: archaic past tense of
climb
.

193.
lewd
: base (with an ironic glance at the original meaning, “not of the clergy, lay”). In the Geneva Bible and
AV, lewd
can translate
poneron
, Greek for evil in general (e.g., Acts 17.5; cp. 1.490, 6.182). Christ scorns the “hireling,” who when a wolf attacks, “fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep” (John 10.13). Milton’s frequent criticisms of corrupt clergy allude to this parable and tend to merge the hireling and the wolf. Cp. 12.507–11,
Lyc
114–29,
Sonnet 16
14.

194.
Tree of Life
: Gen. 2.9; Rev. 2.7.

196.
cormorant
: large, voracious seabird; figuratively, someone insatiably greedy, rapacious.

200.
pledge
: “anything … put in the possession of another … as a guarantee of good faith” (
OED
2.a). The tree of prohibition is a corresponding pledge—of humanity’s obedience and faith (8.325; cp.
CD
in Yale 6:352). Satan though immortal has lost “true life” (l. 196) and now subsists in Hell, where death lives (2.624).

207.
In … wealth
: Cp. Barabas’s delight at “infinite riches in a little room” in Marlowe’s
Jew of Malta
(1.1.37).

211.
Auran
: or Hauran; region south of Damascus, on Israel’s eastern border (Ezek. 47.16, 18).

212.
Seleucia
: city on the Tigris River near Baghdad, built by Seleucus, c. 300 B.C.E., one of Alexander’s successors and founder of a dynasty.

214.
Telassar
: ancient city within the boundaries set forth in lines 211–12, inhabited by “the children of Eden” but conquered by the Assyrians in the eighth century B.C.E. (2 Kings 19.12; Isa. 37.12). See line 285.

222.
“That doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil—that is to say, of knowing good by evil” (
Areop
in
MLM
939); “since it was tasted, not only do we know evil, but also we do not even know good except through evil” (CD 1.10 in
MLM
1220).

223.
a river large
: the Tigris, named at 9.71.

228.
kindly
: natural.

237.
crispèd
: wavy.

239.
error
: used in the primary sense of the Latin noun
error
, “a wandering.”

241.
nice
: fastidious, precise.

242.
curious knots
: flower beds of painstakingly intricate design;
boon:
bounteous.

246.
Embrowned
: darkened, per French and Italian usage (
embrunir; imbrunire
).

247.
seat
: local habitation, residence.

250.
amiable
: lovely (cp. Ps. 84.1 in the
AV
versus Milton’s translation,
MLM
117);
Hesperian fables:
See 3.568n.

254.
lap
: a hollow among hills (
OED
5.b; Milton antedates by nearly a century the
OED
’s earliest quotation of this usage).

255.
irriguous
: well watered (cp. Horace,
Satires
2.4.16).

256.
without thorn the rose
: Thorns were commonly deemed a postlapsarian phenomenon (Gen. 3.18). “Before man’s fall the Rose was born/St. Ambrose says, without the thorn” (Herrick,
The Rose
).

257.
umbrageous
: shady.

258.
mantling
: covering, like a cloak; cp. 5.279;
mantling vine:
cp.
Masque
294.

262–63.
myrtle … mirror:
Fowler notes that myrtle and mirror are iconographical attributes of Venus, goddess of love and gardens, often associated with Eve. See lines 454–65.

264.
airs
: melodies; breezes.

266.
Pan
: nature god. In Greek,
pan
means “all.”

267.
Graces and the Hours
: Sister goddesses (Euphrosyne, Aglaia, Thalia), the
Graces
dance in attending Aphrodite (cp. FQ 6.10.5–17). The
Hours
represent the seasons and in Hesiod crown Pandora with spring flowers (
Works and Days
74–75).