So much the nearer danger. Go, and speed;

Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain.”

He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply,

But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,

With fresh alacrity and force renewed

Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,

Into the wild expanse, and through the shock

Of fighting elements, on all sides round

Environed, wins his way; harder beset

And more endangered than when Argo passed

Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks,

Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned

Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steered.

So he with difficulty and labour hard

Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;

But, he once passed, soon after, when Man fell,

Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain,

Following his track (such was the will of Heaven)

Paved after him a broad and beaten way

Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf

Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,

From Hell continued, reaching th’ utmost orb

Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse

With easy intercourse pass to and fro

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom

God and good Angels guard by special grace.

But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven

Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night

A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins

Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,

As from her outmost works, a broken foe,

With tumult less and with less hostile din;

That Satan with less toil, and now with ease,

Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,

And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds

Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;

Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,

Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold

Far off th’ empyreal Heaven, extended wide

In circuit, undetermined square or round,

With opal towers and battlements adorned

Of living sapphire, once his native seat;

And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain,

This pendent World, in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,

Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

BOOK III

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn,

Or of the Eternal coeternal beam

May I express thee unblam’d? since God is light,

And never but in unapproached light

Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee

Bright effluence of bright essence increate.

Or hear’st thou rather pure ethereal stream,

Whose fountain who shall tell? before the sun,

Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice

Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep,

Won from the void and formless infinite.

Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,

Escap’d the Stygian pool, though long detain’d

In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight

Through utter and through middle darkness borne,

With other notes than to the Orphean lyre

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;

Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down

The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,