Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (65 page)

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 th’ 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 public scorn; he wondered
⁵⁰⁹
, but not long

Had leisure, wond’ring at himself now more;

His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
⁵¹¹

His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining

Each other, till supplanted
⁵¹³
down he fell

A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,

Reluctant
⁵¹⁵
, but in vain; a greater power

Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,

According to his doom
⁵¹⁷
: he would have spoke,

But hiss for hiss returned with forkèd tongue

To forkèd tongue, for now were all transformed

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 amphisbaena
⁵²⁴
dire,

Cerastes horned
⁵²⁵
, hydrus, and ellops drear,

And dipsas
⁵²⁶
(not so thick swarm’d once the soil

Bedropped with blood of Gorgon, or the Isle

Ophiusa
⁵²⁸
); but still greatest he the midst,

Now dragon
⁵²⁹
grown, larger than whom the sun

Engendered in the Pythian vale
⁵³⁰
on slime,

Huge Python
⁵³¹
, and his power no less he seemed

Above the rest still to retain; they all

Him followed issuing forth to th’ open field,

Where all yet left of that revolted rout

Heav’n-fall’n, in station stood or just array,

Sublime
⁵³⁶
with expectation when to see

ln triumph issuing forth their glorious chief;

They saw, but other sight instead, a crowd

Of ugly serpents; horror 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 renewed, and the dire form

Catched by contagion, like in punishment,

As in their crime. Thus was th’ applause they meant,

Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame

Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood

A 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

Used by the Tempter: on that prospect strange

Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining

For one forbidden tree a multitude

Now ris’n, to work them further woe or shame;

Yet parched
⁵⁵⁶
with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,

Though to delude them sent, could not abstain,

But on they rolled in heaps, and up the trees

Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
⁵⁵⁹

That curled Megaera: greedily they plucked

The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew

Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed;

This more delusive, not the touch, but taste

Deceived; they fondly thinking to allay

Their appetite with gust
⁵⁶⁵
, instead of fruit

Chewed bitter ashes, which th’ offended taste

With spattering noise rejected: oft they assayed,

Hunger and thirst constraining, drugged
⁵⁶⁸
as oft,

With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws

With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell

Into the same illusion, not as man

Whom they triumphed once lapsed. Thus were they plagued

And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss,

Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed,

Yearly enjoined, some say
⁵⁷⁵
, to undergo

This annual humbling certain numbered days,

To dash their pride, and joy for man seduced.

However some
⁵⁷⁸
tradition they dispersed

Among the heathen of their purchase got,

And fabled how the serpent, whom they called

Ophion with Eurynome, the wide-

Encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule

Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driv’n

And Ops, ere yet Dictaean
⁵⁸⁴
Jove was born.

Meanwhile in Paradise the Hellish pair

Too soon arrived, Sin there in power before,
⁵⁸⁶

Once actual, now in body
⁵⁸⁶
, and to dwell

Habitual habitant; behind her Death

Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet

On his pale horse
⁵⁹⁰
: to whom Sin thus began.

   “Second of Satan sprung, all conquering Death,

What think’st thou of our empire now, though earned

With travail difficult, not better far

Than still at Hell’s dark threshold to have sat watch,

Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half starved?”

   Whom thus the Sin-born monster answered soon.

“To me, who with eternal famine pine,

Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven,

There best, where most with ravin I may meet;

Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems

To stuff this maw, this vast unhidebound
⁶⁰¹
corpse.”

   To whom th’ incestuous mother thus replied.

“Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flow’rs

Feed first, on each beast next, and fish, and fowl,

No homely morsels, and whatever thing

The scythe of Time mows down, devour unspared,

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
⁶¹¹
make

All kinds, and for destruction to mature

Sooner or later; which th’ Almighty seeing,

From his transcendent seat the saints among,

To those bright orders uttered thus his voice.

   “See with what heat these dogs of Hell advance

To waste and havoc
⁶¹⁷
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 Heav’nly, and conniving seem

To gratify my scornful enemies,

That laugh, as if transported with some fit

Of passion, I to them had quitted
⁶²⁷
all,

At random yielded up to their misrule;

And know not that I called and drew them thither

My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff
⁶³⁰
and filth

Which man’s polluting sin with taint hath shed

On what was pure, till crammed and gorged, nigh burst

With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling
⁶³³

Of thy victorious arm
⁶³³
, well-pleasing Son,

Both Sin, and Death, and yawning grave at last

Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of Hell

Forever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.

Then heav’n and earth renewed shall be made pure

To sanctity that shall receive no stain:

Till then the curse pronounced on both precedes
⁶⁴⁰
.”

   He ended, and the Heav’nly audience loud

Sung hallelujah, as the sound of seas,

Through multitude that sung: “Just are thy ways,

Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works;

Who can extenuate
⁶⁴⁵
thee? Next, to the Son,

Destined restorer of mankind, by whom

New heav’n and earth shall to the ages rise,

Or down from Heav’n descend.” Such was their song,

While the Creator calling forth by name

His mighty angels gave them several charge,

As sorted best with present things. The sun

Had first his precept so to move, so shine,

As might affect the Earth with cold and heat

Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call

Decrepit winter, from the south to bring

Solstitial summer’s heat. To the blank
⁶⁵⁶
moon

Her office they prescribed, to th’ other five

Their planetary motions and aspects
⁶⁵⁸

In sextile
⁶⁵⁹
, square, and trine, and opposite,

Of noxious efficacy, and when to join

In synod
⁶⁶¹
unbenign, and taught the fixed

Their influence malignant when to show’r,

Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,

Should prove tempestuous: to the winds they set

Their corners, when with bluster to confound

Sea, air, and shore, the thunder when to roll

With terror through the dark aerial hall.

Some say he bid his angels turn askance
⁶⁶⁸

The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more

From the sun’s axle; they with labor pushed

Oblique the centric globe: some say the sun

Was bid
⁶⁷²
turn reins from th’ equinoctial road

Like distant breadth to Taurus with the sev’n

Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins

Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain

By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales,

As deep as Capricorn, to bring in change

Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring

Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant flow’rs,

Equal in days and nights, except to those

Beyond the polar circles; to them day

Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun

To recompense his distance, in their sight

Had rounded still th’ horizon, and not known

Or east or west, which had forbid the snow

From cold Estotiland
⁶⁸⁶
, and south as far

Beneath Magellan
⁶⁸⁷
. At that tasted fruit

The sun, as from Thyestean banquet
⁶⁸⁸
, turned

His course intended; else how had the world

Inhabited, though sinless, more than now,

Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat?

These changes in the heav’ns, though slow, produced

Like change on sea and land, sideral blast
⁶⁹³
,

Vapor, and mist, and exhalation hot,

Corrupt and pestilent: now from the north

Of Norumbega
⁶⁹⁶
, and the Samoed shore

Bursting their brazen dungeon
⁶⁹⁷
, armed with ice

And snow and hail and stormy gust and flaw,

Boreas and
⁶⁹⁹
Caecias and Argestes loud

And Thrascias rend the woods and seas upturn;

With adverse blast upturns them from the south

Notus and Afer black with thund’rous clouds

From Serraliona; thwart of these as fierce

Forth rush the Levant and the ponent winds

Eurus and Zephyr with their lateral noise,

Sirocco, and Libecchio. Thus began

Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first

Daughter of Sin, among th’ irrational,

Death introduced through fierce antipathy:

Beast now with beast gan war, and fowl with fowl,

And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving,

Devoured each other; nor stood much in awe

Of man, but fled him, or with count’nance grim

Glared on him passing: these
⁷¹⁴
were from without

The growing miseries, which Adam saw

Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade,

To sorrow abandoned, but worse felt within,

And in a troubled sea of passion tossed,

Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint.

   “O miserable of happy! Is this the end

Of this new glorious world, and me so late

The glory of that glory? Who now become

Accursed of blessed; hide me from the face

Of God, whom to behold was then my highth

Of happiness: yet well, if here would end

The misery, I deserved it, and would bear

My own deservings; but this will not serve;

All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,

Is propagated curse
⁷²⁹
. O voice once heard

Delightfully, ‘Increase and multiply,’

Now death to hear! For what can I increase

Or multiply, but curses on my head?

Who of all ages to succeed, but feeling

The evil on him brought by me, will curse

My head, ‘Ill fare our ancestor impure,

For this we may thank Adam’? But his thanks

Shall be the execration; so besides

Mine own that bide upon me, all from me

Shall with a fierce reflux on me redound,

On me
⁷⁴⁰
as on their natural center light

Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys

Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!

Did I
⁷⁴³
request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mold me man, did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me, or here place