Part on the plain, or in the air sublime, Upon the wing, or in swift race contend, As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields; Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal With rapid wheels, or fronted brigads form. As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds, before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears Till thickest legions close: with feats of arms From either end of heaven the welkin burns. Others, with vast Typhoan rage more fell, Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air In whirlwind; hell scarce holds the wild uproar. As when Alcides, from Oechalia crowned With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines, And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw Into the Euboic sea. Others more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall By doom of battle; and complain that fate Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance. Their song was partial; but the harmony (What could it less when spirits immortal sing?) Suspended hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet, (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense,) Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate; Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute; And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands, With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast, Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found No rest through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, A universe of death; which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire.
AT last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides
Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity: all unawares
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep; and to this hour Down had been falling, had not by ill chance The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft; that fury staid, Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea Nor good dry land: nigh foundered on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. As when a gryphon through the wilderness With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth Had from his wakeful custody purloined The guarded gold; so eagerly the fiend
O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
HAIL, holy Light, offspring of heaven first born, Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblamed! 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 revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained 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 reascend, 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 quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. 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 hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides, 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 expunged and rased, 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.
IN bower and field he sought, where any tuft Of grove or garden-plot more pleasant lay, Their tendance, or plantation for delight; By fountain or by shady rivulet
He sought them both, but wished his hap might find Eve separate; he wished, but not with hope Of what so seldom chanced; when to his wish, Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies, Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round About her glowed, oft stooping to support Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold, Hung drooping unsustained; them she upstays Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while Herself, though fairest unsupported flower, From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm; Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen, Among thick woven arborets, and flowers Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve: Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned Or of revived Adonis, or renowned
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son;
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. Much he the place admired, the person more. As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms
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