Back to the gates of heaven; the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice

Of heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip the occasion,2 whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our foe.

Seest thou yon dreary plain,3 forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbor there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted 5 powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy our own loss how repair-
How overcome this dire calamity

What reinforcement we may gain from hope —
If not, what resolution from despair."

8

Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed: his other parts besides,

1 his shafts. For the use of "his" for "its," see p. 37, note 3. 2 slip the occasion. Express in other words.

8 yon dreary plain, etc. Compare with line seventeen of this extract.

4 if... there: that is, if any res can be found there.

5 afflicted, beaten down.

6

powers, forces.

if not: that is, if no reinforce ment is to be gained from hope. 8 uplift, for uplifted.

Prone on the flood, extended 2 long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or Earth-born,5 that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

4

11

By ancient Tarsus 8 held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest 10 that swim the ocean-stream,1
Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered 12 skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,13
With fixéd anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wishéd morn delays, -

13

1 prone (Lat. pronus), lying front | ing to the Greek poets, lived in a downward. cave in Cilicia, in Asia Minor.

2 extended: this is not the past participle, but the past tense, adjunct to "parts."

3 as whom. Supply the ellipsis beween "as" and "whom."

8 Tarsus, the chief city of Cilicia, 9 Leviathan. See Job xli. and Ps. civ. 26. Generally any large sea animal, the whale, etc.

10 hugest. Pronounce as a mono

4 Titanian. The Titans in Greek | syllable. mythology were sons of Heaven (Uranus) and Earth (Gæa).

5 Earth-born, the Giants (meaning literally the earth-born ones), the sons of Gæa (Earth) by Uranus (Heaven), were a savage race of men whom the gods destroyed for their insolence.

6 Briareos, an enormous monster with fifty heads and a hundred hands.

11 the ocean-stream, a Homeric expression. Homer regarded the ocean as a great stream running round the flat disk of the earth.

12 night-foundered (not wrecked, but) brought to a stand by the coming-on of night.

13 as seamen tell. Milton doubtless had in mind the curious tales of "anchors fastened on whales' backs," etc., told in a book of

1 Typhon, a fire-breathing hun- Northern Antiquities by a Swedish dred-headed monster, who, accord-author named Olaus Magnus.

So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay, Chained on the burning lake: nor ever thence Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others; and, enraged, might see How all his malice served but to bring forth Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown On man by him seduced; but on himself Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.

2

Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature. On each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and,
rolled

In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air

5

That felt unusual weight, till on dry land
He lights; if it were land that ever burned
With solid as the lake with liquid fire,

And such appeared in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill

8

1 chained; meaning, as if kept there by a chain.

4 horrid. See Glossary.

5 incumbent, leaning, reclining.

2 infinite. Accent on the second See Glossary. syllable.

3 rears... stature. Rhetorical expression: what is the plain statement?

ject?

appeared. What is the sub.

7 hue. Give a synonym.

8 subterranean. See Glossary.

Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fueled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singéd bottom all involved

With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate; 3
Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian flood,
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance 5 of supernal power.

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat That we must change for heaven? this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since He

7

Who now is Sovran can dispose, and bid

What shall be right; farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields

Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor!-one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself

1 Pelo'rus (modern Cape Faro), the north-east point of Sicily, not far from Mount Etna.

2 Sublimed, literally uplifted, raised to an extraordinary heat. For the meaning of the verb to "sublime," in its chemical sense, see Webster.

3 next mate. To whom is the reference?

4 Stygian. See note, p. 81.

5 sufferance. Meaning?

6 He. To whom is the reference?

7 Sovran. See Glossary.

8 Hail, etc.

tence?

What kind of sen

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.1 What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be,—all but less than He Whom thunder hath made greater. Here at least We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy,2-will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, The associates and copartners of our loss,

3

4

Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion, or once more,
With rallied arms, to try what may be yet
Regained in heaven, or what more lost in hell?"

So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub

Thus answered: "Leader of those armies bright,
Which but the Omnipotent none could have foiled!
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so. oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal, they will soon resume

1 The mind. heaven. Analyze this sentence.

2 Here for his envy. Satan

3 astonished, in the literal sense of thunderstruck.

4 oblivious pool, the pool causspeaks ironically. "The Almighty ing oblivion. What was this

has certainly not made hell so attractive that he envies us the possession of it."

pool?

5 they.

Who are meant?

6 perilous. Give a synonym.