Nor skill’d nor studious, higher argument

Remains; sufficient of itself to raise

That name, unless an age too late, or cold

Climate, or years, damp my intended wing

Depress’d; and much they may, if all be mine,

Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear.

The sun was sunk, and after him the star

Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring

Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter

’Twixt day and night, and now from end to end

Night’s hemisphere had veil’d the horizon round:

When satan, who late fled before the threats

Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv’d

In meditated fraud and malice, bent

On Man’s destruction, maugre what might hap

Of heavier on himself, fearless returned

By night he fled, and at midnight returned

From compassing the earth; cautious of day,

Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried

His entrance, and forewarned the Cherubim

That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven,

The space of seven continued nights he rode

With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line

He circled; four times crossed the car of night

From pole to pole, traversing each colure;

On the eighth returned; and, on the coast averse

From entrance or Cherubic watch, by stealth

Found unsuspected way. There was a place,

Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change,

Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,

Into a gulf shot under ground, till part

Rose up a fountain by the tree of life:

In with the river sunk, and with it rose

Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought

Where to lie hid; sea he had searched, and land,

From Eden over Pontus and the pool

Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob;

Downward as far antarctic; and in length,

West from Orontes to the ocean barred

At Darien; thence to the land where flows

Ganges and Indus: Thus the orb he roamed

With narrow search; and with inspection deep

Considered every creature, which of all

Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found

The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Him after long debate, irresolute

Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose

Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom

To enter, and his dark suggestions hide

From sharpest sight: for, in the wily snake

Whatever sleights, none would suspicious mark,

As from his wit and native subtlety

Proceeding; which, in other beasts observed,

Doubt might beget of diabolic power

Active within, beyond the sense of brute.

Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief

His bursting passion into plaints thus poured.

More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as built

With second thoughts, reforming what was old!

“O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred

For what God, after better, worse would build?

Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other Heavens

That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,

Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,

In thee concentring all their precious beams

Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven