Page:Milton - Milton's Paradise Lost, tra il 1882 e il 1891.djvu/20

8 Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown On man by him seduced; but on himself Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance, poured. Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature. On each hand the flames, Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, rolled In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, That felt unusual weight, till on dry land He lightsif it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid, fire: And such appeared in hue as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Ætna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds And leave a singed bottom, all involved With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole Of unblessed feet. Him followed his next mate: Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian flood As gods, and by their own recovered strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal Power. Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost archangel, this the seat That we must change for Heaven; this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so! Since He, Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid What shall be right: furthest from Him is best, Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme Above His equals. Farewell, happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, Infernal world! And thou, profoundest Hell,