Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/77

Rh Levied to side with warring winds, and poise Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere He rules a moment; Chaos umpire sits, And by decision more embroils the fray, By which he reigns; next him high arbiter Chance govern all. Into this wild Abyss —The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds— Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend Stood on the brink of Hell and looked awhile, Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed With noises loud and ruinous—to compare Great things with small—than when Bellona storms With all her battering engines, bent to rase Some capital city; or less than if this frame Of heaven were falling, and these elements In mutiny had from her axle torn The steadfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke Up-lifted spurns the ground; thence many a league,