Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/17

Rh Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, That felt unusual weight, till on dry land He lights; if 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 conbustible 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 unblest 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,