Page:Milton - Milton's Paradise Lost, tra il 1882 e il 1891.djvu/19

184–217]. From off the tossing of these fiery waves, There restif any rest can harbour there And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our Enemy, our own loss how repair, How overcome this dire calamity, What reinforcement we may gain from hope, If not, what resolution from despair. Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove; Briareus, or Typhon, whom the den By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all His works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream: Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, Moors by his side under the lea, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays: So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others: and, enraged, might see How all his malice served but to bring forth