Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/258

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��PARADISE LOST

��Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth Triumphant out of this infernal Pit Abominable, accursed, the house of woe, And dungeon of our tyrant ! Now possess, As lords, a spacious World, to our native

Heaven

Little inferior, by my adventure hard With peril great achieved. Long were to

tell

What I have done, what suffered, with what pain 470

Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded Deep Of horrible confusion over which By Sin and Death a broad way now is paved, To expedite your glorious march ; but I Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to

ride The untractable Abyss, plunged in the

womb

Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild, That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely op- posed

My journey strange, with clamorous up- roar

Protesting Fate supreme; thence how T

found 480

The new-created World, which fame in

Heaven

Long had foretold, a fabric wonderful, Of absolute perfection ; therein Man Placed in a paradise, by our exile Made happy. Him by fraud I have se- duced

From his Creator, and, the more to increase Your wonder, with an apple ! He, thereat Offended worth your laughter ! hath

given up

Both his beloved Man and all his World To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us, 490 Without our hazard, labour, or alarm, To range in, and to dwell, and over Man To rule, as over all he should have ruled. True is, me also he hath judged; or rather Me not, but the brute Serpent, in whose

shape

Man I deceived. That which to me be- longs

Is enmity, which he will put between Me and Mankind: I am to bruise his heel; His seed when is not set shall bruise

my head !

A world who would not purchase with a bruise, 500

Or much more grievous pain ? Ye have the account

��Of my performance; what remains, ye

Gods,

But up and enter now into full bliss ? " So having said, a while he stood, expect- ing

Their universal shout and high applause To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears, On all sides, from innumerable tongues A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. He wondered, but not

long

Had leisure, wondering at himself now

more. 510

His visage drawn he felt to sharp and

spare,

His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwin- ing

Each other, till, supplanted, down he fell, A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power Now ruled him, punished in the shape he

sinned, According to his doom. He would have

spoke, But hiss for hiss returned with forked

tongue

To forked tongue; for now were all trans- formed

Alike, to serpents all, as accessories 520 To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarm- ing now

With complicated monsters, head and tail Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbsena dire, Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Ellops drear, And Dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the

soil

Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa) ; but still greatest the midst, Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the

Sun

Ingendered in the Pythian vale on slime, Huge Python; and his power no less he seemed 531

Above the rest still to retain. They all Him followed, issuing forth to the open

field,

Where all yet left of that revolted rout, Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just ar- ray,

Sublime with expectation when to see In triumph issuing forth their glorious

Chief.

They saw, but other sight instead a crowd

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