Is center, yet extends to all; so thou,

Centring, receivest from all those orbs: in thee,

Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears

Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth

Of creatures animate with gradual life

Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man.

With what delight could I have walked thee round,

If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange

Of hill, and valley, rivers, woods, and plains,

Now land, now sea and shores with forest crowned,

Rocks, dens, and caves! But I in none of these

Find place or refuge; and the more I see

Pleasures about me, so much more I feel

Torment within me, as from the hateful siege

Of contraries: all good to me becomes

Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my state.

But neither here seek I, no nor in Heaven

To dwell, unless by mastering Heaven’s Supreme;

Nor hope to be myself less miserable

By what I seek, but others to make such

As I, though thereby worse to me redound:

For only in destroying I find ease

To my relentless thoughts; and, him destroyed,

Or won to what may work his utter loss,

For whom all this was made, all this will soon

Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe;

In woe then; that destruction wide may range:

To me shall be the glory sole among

The infernal Powers, in one day to have marred

What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days

Continued making; and who knows how long

Before had been contriving? though perhaps

Not longer than since I, in one night, freed

From servitude inglorious well nigh half

The angelic name, and thinner left the throng

Of his adorers: He, to be avenged,

And to repair his numbers thus impaired,

Whether such virtue spent of old now failed

More Angels to create, if they at least

Are his created, or, to spite us more,

Determined to advance into our room

A creature formed of earth, and him endow,

Exalted from so base original,

With heavenly spoils, our spoils: What he decreed,

He effected; Man he made, and for him built

Magnificent this world, and earth his seat,

Him lord pronounced; and, O indignity!

Subjected to his service angel-wings,

And flaming ministers to watch and tend

Their earthly charge: Of these the vigilance

I dread; and, to elude, thus wrapt in mist

Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry

In every bush and brake, where hap may find

The serpent sleeping; in whose mazy folds

To hide me, and the dark intent I bring.

O foul descent! that I, who erst contended

With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained

Into a beast; and, mixed with bestial slime,

This essence to incarnate and imbrute,

That to the hight of Deity aspired!

But what will not ambition and revenge

Descend to? Who aspires, must down as low

As high he soared; obnoxious, first or last,

To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet,