Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/144

 PARADISE LOST

��THE VERSE

The measure is English heroic verse -without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre ; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight ; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming.

��BOOK I

THE ARGUMENT

This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed : then touches the prime cause of his fall the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent ; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by the com- mand of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great Deep. Which action passed over, the Poem hastes into the midst of things ; presenting Sa- tan, with his Angels', now fallen into Hell described here not in the Centre (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed), but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. Here Satan, with his Angels lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space re- covers, as from confusion; calls up him who, next in order and dignity, lay by him : they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded. They rise : their numbers ; array of battle ; their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Ca- naan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan di- rects his speech ; comforts them with hope yet of re- gaining Heaven ; but tells them, lastly, of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy, or report, in Heaven for that Angels were long before this visible creation was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: the infernal Peers there sit in council.

OF Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our

woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret

top Of Dreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

��That Shepherd who first taught the chosen

seed

In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill 10

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that

flowed

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost pre- fer Before all temples the upright heart and

pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from

the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings out- spread, 20 Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss, And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is

dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support; That, to the highth of this great argument, I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.

Say first for Heaven hides nothing

from thy view, Nor the deep tract of Hell say first what

cause Moved our grand Parents, in that happy

state,

Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off 30 From their Creator, and transgress his will For one restraint, lords of the World be- sides. Who first seduced them to that foul revolt ?

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