Whom they triumph'd once laps'd.

plagued,

Thus were they

And worn with famine long, and ceaseless hiss,
Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed;
Yearly enjoin'd, some say, to undergo
This annual humbling certain number'd days,
To dash their pride and joy for man seduced.
However, some tradition they dispersed
Among the heathen of their purchase got;
And fabled how the serpent, whom they call'd
Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide-
Encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule
Of high Olympus; thence by Saturn driven
And Ops, ere yet Dictaan Jove was born.

Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair
Too soon arrived; Sin, there in power before,
Once actual; now in body, and to dwell
Habitual habitant; behind her Death,
Close following, pace for pace, not mounted yet
On his pale horse; to whom Sin thus began:

Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death!
What think'st thou of our empire now, though earn'd
With travail difficult? not better far,

Than still at hell's dark threshold to have sat watch,
Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved?

Whom thus the sin-born monster answer'd soon:

To me, who with eternal famine pine,
Alike is hell, or Paradise, or heaven;
There best, where most with ravine I may meet:
Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems
To stuff this maw, this vast un-hidebound corpse.
To whom the incestuous mother thus replied:
Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl;
No homely morsels: and whatever thing
The scythe of Time mows down, devour unspared;
Till I, in man residing, through the race,

His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect;
And season him thy last and sweetest prey.

This said, they both betook them several ways,
Both to destroy, or unimmortal make
All kinds, and for destruction to mature

573. Worn: That is, worn out. It is better to have the comma after long.

579. Among the heathen. Milton here is showing the tradition among the heathen, of the great power Satan had obtained over mankind. Ophion: The Greek for "serpent." Eurynome: "Wideruling," but, perhaps, might be called wide-encroaching, as extending her rule and dominion further than she shou'd: wanting to be superior to her husband, to be a goddess, &c.--NEWTON.

575

580

585

590

595

600

C05

610

584. Dictaan: From Dicte, a mountain in Crete, where Jupiter was educstl.

586. Sin, there, &c. The sense is, that before the fall, Sin was in power, or potentially in Paradise; that once, namely, upon the fall, it was actually there, though not bodily, but that now it was there in body, and dwelt as a constant inhabitant.-PEARCE.

593. Not better: Is it not better?

601. Un-hidebound: Not tight-bound, as when creatures are swollen and full.

Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing,
From his transcendent seat the saints among,
To those bright orders utter'd thus his voice:

See, with what heat these dogs of hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created; and had still
Kept in that state, had not the folly of man
Let in these wasteful furies, who impute
Folly to me; so doth the prince of hell
And his adherents, that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess
A place so heavenly; and, conniving, seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,

615

620

625

That laugh, as if, transported with some fit
Of passion, I to them had quitted all,
At random yielded up to their misrule;

And know not that I call'd, and drew them thither,

My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which man's polluting sin with taint hath shed

On what was pure; till, cramm'd and gorged, nigh burst
With suck'd and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,

630

Both Sin, and Death, and yawning grave, at last,

695

Through Chaos hurl'd, obstruct the mouth of hell
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.

Then heaven and earth renew'd shall be made pure
To sanctity, that shall receive no stain:

Till then, the curse pronounced on both precedes.
He ended, and the heavenly audience loud

640

Sung halleluiah, as the sound of seas,

Through multitude that sung: Just are thy ways,
Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works:

Who can extenuate thee? Next, to the Son,

Destined Restorer of mankind, by whom

New heaven and earth shall to the ages rise,

615

Or down from heaven descend. Such was their song;

While the Creator, calling forth by name
His mighty angels, gave them several charge,
As sorted best with present things. The sun
Had first his precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call

616. Dogs of hell, &c. Newton thinks some of the expressions in this description too coarse; but it may be said, in vindication of them, that many of the expressions which characterize the ebullition of human passion are, by the OldTestament writers, put into the mouth of the Deity. But, as Sir E. Brydges remarks, the difficulty of assigning to the divine displeasure terms of language according with his purity as well as anger, is hardly surmountable.

650

638. Heaven and earth is the Jewish phrase to express our world.

640. Precedes: That is, the curse pronounced shall go before those ravagers Sin and Death, and shall direct and lead them on. But Dr. Bentley would read proceed, meaning that the curse shall go on and continue, till the consummation of all things, and heaven and earth shall be restored.

643. See Rev. xv. 3, and xvi. 7.
647. See Rev. xxi. 2.

Decrepit winter; from the south to bring
Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc moon
Her office they prescribed: to the other five
Their planetary motions, and aspécts,
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite,
Of noxious efficacy, and when to join
In synod unbenign; and taught the fix'd
Their influence malignant when to shower,
Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous: to the winds they set
Their corners, when with bluster to confound
Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll
With terrour through the dark aëreal hall.
Some say, he bid his angels turn askance
The poles of earth, twice ten degrees and more,
From the sun's axle; they with labour push'd
Oblique the centric globe: some say, the sun
Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road
Like-distant breadth to Taurus with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,
Up to the tropic Crab: thence down amain
By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers,
Equal in days and nights, except to those
Beyond the polar circles; to them day
Had unbenighted shone; while the low sun,
To recompense his distance, in their sight
Had rounded still the horizon, and not known
Or east or west; which had forbid the snow
From cold Estotiland, and south as far
Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit,

655

660

665

670

675

680

685

658. Aspects: Their appearance each, the sons of Tyndarus, king of Sparta. from the other. When a planet is distant from another by one-sixth of the Zodiac, or 60°, its aspect is called sextile; if by a fourth, or 90°, square; if by a third, or 12, triune; if by one-half, or 180°, opposite, which is said to be of noxious efficacy, because when so opposed they are thought to strive to overcome each other.

660. To join in synod: That is, to be in conjunction. Fized, that is, fixed

stars.

668. He bid his angels. It was eternal Spring before the Fall. (iv. 268) and he is now accounting for the change of seasons after the Fall, and mentions the wo famous hypotheses.-NEWTON.

671. Centric globe, being in the centre of the universe according to the system of Ptolemy. Taurus, the constellation so called with the seven stars in his neck. Crab, the tropic of Cancer, the sun's farthest range northward: the Spartan tarins, so called from Castor and Pollux,

674. Atlantic Sisters, the Pleiades. 686. Estoliland. In the old Geographi cal Dictionary of Edmund Bohun, of 1695, I find the following: "Estotilandia, a great Tract of Land in the North of America, towards the Arctic circle and Hudson's Bay, having new France on the South and James's Bay on the West, the first of American shores discovered, being found by some Friesland Fishers that were driven hither by a Tempest almost two hundred years before Columbus.”

687. Magellan: The straits so called from the distinguished Portuguese navigator who discovered them in 1520.

687. At that tasted fruit. Milton means to say that the sun turned away from the tasting of the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve, as he is fabled wo have done when Atreus served up to his brother Thyestes his own children, for a feast. See Thyestes and Atreus, in Smith's or Anthon's classical dictionary.

The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turn'd
His course intended; else, how had the world
Inhabited, though sinless, more than now,
Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat?

These changes in the heavens, though slow, produced
Like change on sea and land; sideral blast,
Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot,

Corrupt and pestilent: now, from the north
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,
Bursting their brazen dungeon, arm'd with ice,
And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw,
Boreas, and Cæcias, and Argestes loud,
And Thracias, rend the woods, and seas upturn;
With adverse blast upturns them from the south
Notus, and Afer black with thunderous clouds
From Serraliona: thwart of these, as fierce,
Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
Eurus and Zephyr, with their lateral noise,
Sirocco and Libecchio. Thus began

Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first,
Daughter of Sin, among the irrational
Death introduced, through fierce antipathy:

Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl,
And fish with fish: to graze the herb all leaving,
Devour'd each other; nor stood much in awe

Of man, but fled him; or, with countenance grim,
Glared on him passing. These were from without
The growing miseries, which Adam saw
Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade,
To sorrow abandon'd, but worse felt within ;
And, in a troubled sea of passion tost,
Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint:
O miserable of happy! is this the end
Of this new glorious world, and me so late
The glory of that glory, who now become
Accursed, of blessed? hide me from the face
Of God, whom to behold was then my highth
Of happiness! Yet well, if here would end
The misery; I deserved it, and would bear
My own deservings; but this will not serve:
All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,
Is propagated curse. O voice, once heard
Delightfully, Increase and multiply;
Now death to hear! for what can I increase

690

605

700

705

710

715

720

725

730

696. Norumbega. There is no place | cias, blowing from Thrace, northward now known by this name: in Milton's time the science of Geography was in its infancy. Hume merely says, without any authority, that it was "a province of northern America." Samad, the Samoides, a people in the north of Russia.

699. Boreas, the north wind; Cacias, north-west; Argestes, north-east; Thra

of Greece; Notus, south wind; Afer, south-west from Africa. Serraliona, or Lion Mountains, south-west of Africa, in the vicinity of Cape Verd. The Le vant and the Ponent (the Eurus and Zephyr) are the east and west winds. Their lateral noise, Sirocco and Iabecchio, are the south-east and south-west winds.

-

Or multiply, but curses on my head?
Who of all ages to succeed, but, feeling
The evil on him brought by me, will curse
My head? Ill fare our ancestor impure!

For this we may thank Adam! but his thanks
Shall be the execration: so, besides
Mine own that bide upon me, all from me
Shall with a fierce reflux on me rebound;
On me, as on their natural centre, light
Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear-bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious garden? As my will
Concurr'd not to my being, it were but right
And equal to reduce me to my dust;
Desirous to resign and render back
All I received; unable to perform
Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that,
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes? Inexplicable
Thy justice seems: yet, to say truth, too late
I thus contest; then should have been refused
Those terms, whatever, when they were proposed:

735

740

745

750

755

Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good,
Then cavil the conditions? and, though God
Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son
Prove disobedient, and, reproved, retort,

760

Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not:
Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee
That proud excuse? yet him not thy election,
But natural necessity begot.

765

God made thee of choice his own, and of his own

To serve him; thy reward was of his grace;

Thy punishment then justly is at his will.

Be it so, for I submit; his doom is fair,

That dust I am, and shall to dust return:

O welcome hour whenever! Why delays

His hand to execute what his decree
Fix'd on this day? Why do I overlive?

Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out
To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet
Mortality my sentence, and be earth

741. Though in their place. It was a common notion among the Peripatetics that elementary bodies did not have any gravity, or in other words, weighed nothing in their natural places: thus that air weighed nothing in air, water in water, &c.; so Adam exclaims, "That contrary to the course of nature, his

770

775

afflictions will weigh heavy on him. though they are in their proper place."

758. Thou didst. The change of persons, sometimes speaking of himself in the first, and sometimes to himself in the second, is very remarkable in this place. 762. See Isaiah xlv. 10.