What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;

These only, with our Law, best form a king.”

So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now

Quite at a loss (for all his darts were spent),

Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, replied:—

“Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts,

Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught

By me proposed in life contemplative

Or active, tended on by glory or fame,

What dost thou in this world? The Wilderness

For thee is fittest place: I found thee there,

And thither will return thee. Yet remember

What I foretell thee; soon thou shalt have cause

To wish thou never hadst rejected, thus

Nicely or cautiously, my offered aid,

Which would have set thee in short time with ease

On David’s throne, or throne of all the world,

Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,

When prophecies of thee are best fulfilled.

Now, contrary—if I read aught in heaven,

Or heaven write aught of fate—by what the stars

Voluminous, or single characters

In their conjunction met, give me to spell,

Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate,

Attends thee; scorns, reproaches, injuries,

Violence and stripes, and, lastly, cruel death.

A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,

Real or allegoric, I discern not;

Nor when: eternal sure—as without end,

Without beginning; for no date prefixed

Directs me in the starry rubric set.”

So saying, he took (for still he knew his power

Not yet expired), and to the Wilderness

Brought back, the Son of God, and left him there,

Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,

As daylight sunk, and brought in louring Night,

Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,

Privation mere of light and absent day.

Our Saviour, meek, and with untroubled mind

After hisaerie jaunt, though hurried sore,

Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest,

Wherever, under some concourse of shades,

Whose branching arms thick intertwined might shield

From dews and damps of night his sheltered head;

But, sheltered, slept in vain; for at his head

The Tempter watched, and soon with ugly dreams

Disturbed his sleep. And either tropic now

‘Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; the clouds

From many a horrid rift abortive poured

Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire,

In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds

Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad

From the four hinges of the world, and fell

On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines,

Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks,

Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,

Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then,

O patient Son of God, yet only stood’st

Unshaken! Nor yet staid the terror there:

Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round

Environed thee; some howled, some yelled, some shrieked,

Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou

Sat’st unappalled in calm and sinless peace.

Thus passed the night so foul, till Morning fair

Came forth with pilgrim steps, in amice grey,