2

His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced,
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallambrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arch'd imbower; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd

Hath vex'd the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,

305

301. Intranced.-Cf. confounded, 1. 53, and astonished, 1. 266, now chiefly used of being overpowered with joy.

303. Vallambrosa.—A richly wooded spot some eighteen miles from Florence. Virgil, Æn. vi. 309, has a similar figure, but as usual Milton has improved on the thought, for the fallen angels are not merely as countless as the leaves, but like them lying in confused heaps, driven before the blast. The name is Valle ombrosa, or the shady vale. Cf. also Byron's:

"Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown."

304. Sedge. One of the Hebrew names of the Red Sea is Yam Suph, which Gesenius renders the sea of weeds. Suph throughout the O. T. being applied to rushes and weeds, whether in rivers or seas; the "flags" of the A. V., among which the infant Moses was laid, those of Job viii. 11 and Is. xix. 6, being referred to rivers, and the "weeds" of Jonah ii. 5, as plainly to the ocean. Probably the zostera or sea-wrack, a marine green sedge, not a sea-weed, is here intended.

305. Orion, a Boeotian hunter, was after death placed among the stars. He is associated by the poets with the storms of autumn.

307. Pharaoh being a title of all the Egyptian kings, Milton, following Sir W. Raleigh's History of the World, identifies the oppressor of the Israelites with Busiris, who, according to Greek legends, sacrificed to Zeus all strangers who entered his kingdom. Hercules, whom he had bound and was about to slay, burst his chains and killed the tyrant. Memphis, a city on the west bank of the Nile, about ten miles from the

While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels: so thick bestrewn,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of hell resounded: "Princes, potentates,

Warriors, the flower of heaven, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal spirits: or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose

Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood,
With scatter'd arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from heaven gates discern

310

315

320

325

Pyramids, contained the palace of the Pharaohs and the temples of Apis and Serapis.

307. Chivalry, for cavalry.-The Italian cavalleria bears both meanings. Our words are but divergent forms.

308. Perfidious.-In allusion to Pharaoh's repeated retractations of his promise to let Israel go.

309. The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld, &c.-Ex. xiv. 30, "Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore."

312. Abject. In its literal and Latin sense, thrown down, cast away. 320. Virtue.-(Virtus, as ȧperǹ). Valour, manhood.

325. Anon in an instant, an one. In O. E. anon, by-and-by, and presently, all meant immediately, straightway, not as they do now, after some delay. This should be ever kept in mind in reading the Bible.

The advantage, and descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Awake, arise; or be for ever fallen!"

They heard, and were abash'd, and up they sprung
Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch

330

On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,

Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight

335

In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their general's voice they soon obey'd,
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,

Wav'd round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad angels seen,
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires:

328. Cf. Æn. i. 44, 45 of Ajax Oileus.

335. Nor did they not.-A classic affectation.

340

345

338. Exod. x. 13, "And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts."

341. Warping.-Milton probably means flying in an undulatory course, or simply borne along on the wind. This is incorrect: the A.S. wearpian is to twist, or to hurl with an indirect and rotatory impetus. The idea of obliquity underlies every modern sense of the word, whether in weaving, carpentry or seamanship.

345. Cope.-Dome or vault.

Cop is an old word implying top;

cap and coping are from the same.

Cal

Till, as a signal given, the uplifted, spear

Of their great sultan waving to direct

Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain.
A multitude, like which the populous north
Pour'd never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the south, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith from every squadron and each band
The heads and leaders thither haste, where stood
Their great commander; godlike shapes and forms
Excelling human, princely dignities,

And powers, that erst in heaven sat on thrones;
Though of their names in heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased

By their rebellion from the Book of Life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve

350

355

360

Got them new names; till, wandering o'er the earth, 365

348. Sultan.-Appropriately applied to the leader of an infidel host. 348. Waving.-Agreeing, like L. abl. abs., with spear, not with

sultan.

351. He had compared the evil spirits when scattered to the leaves of autumn; when on the wing to locusts; and now, when rallied on the plains, to the hosts of northern barbarians who overthrew the civilization of Western Christendom.

353. Rhene. The Rhine. Danaw, the Danube, in Ger. Donau. These names are used by Spenser.

354.

"And overflowed all countries far away,

Like Noye's great flood."-F. Q. ii. 10, 15.

355. Beneath.-Southwards from. The Vandals overran Spain, and, crossing the strait, settled in Northern Africa.

361. Ps. ix. 5, "Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever."

Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man,

By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and the invisible

Glory of him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute, adorn'd

370

With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities:

Then were they known to men by various names,

And various idols through the heathen world.

375

Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,

366. Sufferance.-Permission, as now, but in the seventeenth century it was also used in the sense of suffering. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 48, speaks of "the sufferances of Christ." 367. Amos ii. 4, "Their lies caused them to err;" also Jer. xvi. 19. 369, &c. Taken from Rom. i. 22, 23, "Professing themselves to be

wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." 372. Religions, i.e. religious rites, as Cicero uses the word in his De Legibus, i. 15, "religiones et ceremonias."

373. Lev. xvii. 7, "And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations;" see also Deut. xxxii. 17; 2 Chron. xi. 15; Ps. cvi. 37; 1 Cor. x. 20, 21.

374. Were. They became known.

376. Homer for his catalogue of ships, and Virgil of warriors, invoked the Muse afresh; but Warburton remarks that while their poems would have been as complete without such lists, Milton's enumeration of the false gods of the pagan world is an essential part of his scheme, being in fact a history and an explanation of the origin of heathenism and superstition in the influence of evil spirits. It is, too, no mere mythology, but has the sanction of Scripture in the passages referred to in the note on 1. 373.

376. Their names then known. -The names they bore in heaven