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النشر الإلكتروني

Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance,
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft: that fury stayed,
Quenched in a boggy syrtis,-neither sea,
Nor good dry land-nigh foundered on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail.
As when a gryphon, through the wilderness
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth,
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold; so eagerly the fiend

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way;
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
At length a universal hubbub wild •

Of stunning sounds, and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear
With loudest vehemence: thither he plies,
Undaunted, to meet there whatever power
Or spirit of the nethermost abyss

Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies,

Bordering on light; when, straight, behold the throne

Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread

Wide on the wasteful deep: with him enthroned

Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things,

The consort of his reign; and by them stood
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name

Of Demogorgon; Rumour next, and Chance,
And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled;

And Discord, with a thousand various mouths.

To whom Satan, turning boldly, thus: "Ye Powers, "And Spirits of this nethermost abyss,

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"Chaos and ancient Night! I come no spy,

"With purpose to explore, or to disturb

"The secrets of your realm; but, by constraint

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Wandering this darksome desert, -as my way

"Lies through your spacious empire up to light,— "Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek

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"What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds

"Confine with Heaven; or if some other place,

"From your dominion won, the ethereal King "Possesses lately, thither to arrive

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"I travel this profound: direct my course;
"Directed, no mean recompense it brings
"To your behoof, if I that region lost,
"All usurpation thence expelled, reduce
"To her original darkness and your sway,
"Which is my present journey, and once more
"Erect the standard there of ancient Night:
"Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge!"
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With faltering speech, and visage incomposed,
Answered: "I know thee, stranger, who thou art ;-
"That mighty leading angel, who of late

"Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown.,
"I saw and heard; for such a numerous host
"Fled not in silence through the frighted deep,
"With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

"Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates
"Poured out by millions her victorious bands
“Pursuing.
upon my frontiers here

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Keep residence; if all I can will serve
"That little which is left so to defend,
"Encroached on still through your intestine broils
"Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first Hell,
"Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath;
"Now lately Heaven and Earth, another World,
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain-
"To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell.
"If that way be your walk, you have not far;
"So much the nearer danger: go, and speed!
"Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain.”

He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply;
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity, and force renewed,
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,
Into the wild expanse; and through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environed, wins his way; harder beset,

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And more endangered, than when Argo passed
Through Bosphorus betwixt the justling rocks:
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
But he once past, soon after, when man fell,—
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, (such was the will of Heaven,)
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,
From Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb
Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse,
With easy intercourse, pass to and fro
To tempt and punish mortals, except whom
God and good angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn: here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works, a broken foe,
With tumult less, and with less hostile din ;

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That Satan, with less toil, and now with ease,
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds

Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,—
With opal towers and battlements adorned
Of living sapphire, once his native seat!
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendant World, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursèd hour, he hies.

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GOD, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free, and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards man; but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of divine justice; man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and therefore, with all his progeny, devoted to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man: the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in heaven and earth; commands all the angels to adore him. They obey, and, hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where, wandering, he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity; what persons and things fly up thither: thence comes to the gate of Heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: his passage thence to the orb of the Sun; he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb; but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and, pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on Mount Niphates.

HAIL, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachèd light

Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,

Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,

Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun,-
Before the Heavens thou wert; and at the voice

Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn; while, in my flight,
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphéan lyre,

I sung

of Chaos and eternal Night;

Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop-serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion! and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark

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