Page:Milton - Milton's Paradise Lost, tra il 1882 e il 1891.djvu/23

320–353.] Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conqueror?who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood, With scattered arms and ensigns; till anon His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern The advantage, and descending, tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen! They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung Upon the wingas when men, wont to watch On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel. Yet to their general's voice they soon obeyed Innumerable. As when the potent rod Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day, Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile: So numberless were those bad Angels seen, Hovering on wing, under the cope of Hell, 'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires, Till, at a signal given, the uplifted spear Of their great sultan waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain, A multitude, like which the populous North Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons