Though hard and rare: Thee I revisit safe,

And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou

Revisit’st not these eyes, that roll in vain

To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;

So thick a drop serene hath quench’d their orbs,

Or dim suffusion veil’d. Yet not the more

Cease I to wander, where the Muses haunt,

Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,

Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief

Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,

That wash thy hallow’d feet, and warbling flow,

Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget

So were I equall’d with them in renown,

Thy sovran command, that Man should find grace;

Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,

And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old:

Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move

Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird

Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid

Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year

Seasons return; but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,

Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

But cloud instead, and ever-during dark

Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men

Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair

Presented with a universal blank

Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d,

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

So much the rather thou, celestial Light,

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers

Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence

Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight.

Now had the Almighty Father from above,

From the pure empyrean where he sits

High thron’d above all hight, bent down his eye

His own works and their works at once to view:

About him all the Sanctities of Heaven

Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv’d

Beatitude past utterance; on his right

The radiant image of his glory sat,

His only son; on earth he first beheld

Our two first parents, yet the only two

Of mankind in the happy garden plac’d

Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,

Uninterrupted joy, unrivall’d love,

In blissful solitude; he then survey’d

Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there

Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side Night

In the dun air sublime, and ready now

To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet,

On the bare outside of this world, that seem’d

Firm land imbosom’d, without firmament,

Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.

Him God beholding from his prospect high,

Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,

Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake.

“Only begotten Son, seest thou what rage

Transports our Adversary? whom no bounds

Prescrib’d no bars of Hell, nor all the chains

Heap’d on him there, nor yet the main abyss

Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems

On desperate revenge, that shall redound

Upon his own rebellious head. And now,

Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way