Ruin must needs ensue; for what avails

Valour or strength, though matchless, quelled with pain

Which all subdues, and makes remiss the hands

Of mightiest? Sense of pleasure we may well

Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine,

But live content, which is the calmest life:

But pain is perfect misery, the worst

Of evils, and, excessive, overturns

All patience. He, who therefore can invent

With what more forcible we may offend

Our yet unwounded enemies, or arm

Ourselves with like defence, to me deserves

No less than for deliverance what we owe.’

Whereto with look composed Satan replied.

‘Not uninvented that, which thou aright

Believest so main to our success, I bring.

Which of us who beholds the bright surface

Of this ethereous mould whereon we stand,

This continent of spacious Heaven, adorned

With plant, fruit, flower ambrosial, gems, and gold;

Whose eye so superficially surveys

These things, as not to mind from whence they grow

Deep under ground, materials dark and crude,

Of spiritous and fiery spume, till touched

With Heaven’s ray, and tempered, they shoot forth

So beauteous, opening to the ambient light?

These in their dark nativity the deep

Shall yield us, pregnant with infernal flame;

Which, into hollow engines, long and round,

Thick rammed, at the other bore with touch of fire

Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth

From far, with thundering noise, among our foes

Such implements of mischief, as shall dash

To pieces, and o’erwhelm whatever stands

Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmed

The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt.

Nor long shall be our labour; yet ere dawn,

Effect shall end our wish. Meanwhile revive;

Abandon fear; to strength and counsel joined

Think nothing hard, much less to be despaired.’

He ended, and his words their drooping cheer

Enlightened, and their languished hope revived.

The invention all admired, and each, how he

To be the inventor missed; so easy it seemed

Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought

Impossible: Yet, haply, of thy race

In future days, if malice should abound,

Some one intent on mischief, or inspired

With devilish machination, might devise

Like instrument to plague the sons of men

For sin, on war and mutual slaughter bent.

Forthwith from council to the work they flew;

None arguing stood; innumerable hands

Were ready; in a moment up they turned

Wide the celestial soil, and saw beneath

The originals of nature in their crude

Conception; sulphurous and nitrous foam

They found, they mingled, and, with subtle art,

Concocted and adusted they reduced

To blackest grain, and into store conveyed:

Part hidden veins digged up (nor hath this earth

Entrails unlike) of mineral and stone,

Whereof to found their engines and their balls

Of missive ruin; part incentive reed

Provide, pernicious with one touch to fire.

So all ere day-spring, under conscious night,

Secret they finished, and in order set,

With silent circumspection, unespied.

Now when fair morn orient in Heaven appeared,