A violent cross wind from either coast

Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry

Into the devious air: Then might ye see

Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost

And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads,

Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,

The sport of winds: All these, upwhirled aloft,

Fly o’er the backside of the world far off

Into a Limbo large and broad, since called

The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown

Long after; now unpeopled, and untrod.

All this dark globe the Fiend found as he passed,

And long he wandered, till at last a gleam

Of dawning light turned thither-ward in haste

His travelled steps: far distant he descries

Ascending by degrees magnificent

Up to the wall of Heaven a structure high;

At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared

The work as of a kingly palace-gate,

With frontispiece of diamond and gold

Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems

The portal shone, inimitable on earth

By model, or by shading pencil, drawn.

These stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw

Angels ascending and descending, bands

Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled

To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz

Dreaming by night under the open sky

And waking cried, “This is the gate of Heaven.”

Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood

There always, but drawn up to Heaven sometimes

Viewless; and underneath a bright sea flowed

Of jasper, or of liquid pearl, whereon

Who after came from earth, failing arrived

Wafted by Angels, or flew o’er the lake

Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds.

The stairs were then let down, whether to dare

The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate

His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss:

Direct against which opened from beneath,

Just o’er the blissful seat of Paradise,

A passage down to the Earth, a passage wide,

Wider by far than that of after-times

Over mount Sion, and, though that were large,

Over the Promised Land to God so dear;

By which, to visit oft those happy tribes,

On high behests his angels to and fro

Passed frequent, and his eye with choice regard

From Paneas, the fount of Jordan’s flood,

To Beersaba, where the Holy Land

Borders on Egypt and the Arabian shore;

So wide the opening seemed, where bounds were set

To darkness, such as bound the ocean wave.

Satan from hence, now on the lower stair,

That scaled by steps of gold to Heaven-gate,

Looks down with wonder at the sudden view

Of all this world at once. As when a scout,

Through dark and desert ways with peril gone

All night; at last by break of cheerful dawn

Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill,

Which to his eye discovers unaware

The goodly prospect of some foreign land

First seen, or some renowned metropolis

With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,

Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams:

Such wonder seized, though after Heaven seen,

The Spirit malign, but much more envy seized,

At sight of all this world beheld so fair.