Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/103

Rh Dying put on the weeds of Dominic, Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised. They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed, And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs The trepidation talked, and that first moved; And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket seems To wait them with his keys, and now at foot Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when lo! A violent cross-wind from either coast Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry, Into the divious air. Then might ye see Cowls, hoods, and habits with their wearers, toss And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads, Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, The sport of winds; all these, upwhirled aloft, Fly o'er the backside of the World far off Into a Limbo large and broad, since called The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown Long after, now unpeopled and untrod.
 * All this dark globe the Fiend found as he passed,

And long he wandered, till at last a gleam Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste His traveled steps. Far distant he descries,