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dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

      Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land

      Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems

      Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,

      A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog

      Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,

      Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air

      Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of fire.

      Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled,

      At certain revolutions all the damned

      Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change

      Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,

      From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

      Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

      Immovable, infixed, and frozen round

      Periods of time,—thence hurried back to fire.

      They ferry over this Lethean sound

      Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,

      And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach

      The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose

      In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,

      All in one moment, and so near the brink;

      But Fate withstands, and, to oppose th’ attempt,

      Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards

      The ford, and of itself the water flies

      All taste of living wight, as once it fled

      The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on

      In confused march forlorn, th’ adventurous bands,

      With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast,

      Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found

      No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale

      They passed, and many a region dolorous,

      O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp,

      Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death—

      A universe of death, which God by curse

      Created evil, for evil only good;

      Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,

      Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,

      Abominable, inutterable, and worse

      Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived,

      Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

      Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man,

      Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,

      Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell

      Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

      He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left;

      Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars

      Up to the fiery concave towering high.

      As when far off at sea a fleet descried

      Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds

      Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

      Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

      Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood,

      Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,

      Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed

      Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear

      Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,

      And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,

      Three iron, three of adamantine rock,

      Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

      Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat

      On either side a formidable Shape.

      The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,

      But ended foul in many a scaly fold,

      Voluminous and vast—a serpent armed

      With mortal sting. About her middle round

      A cry of Hell-hounds never ceasing barked

      With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung

      A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,

      If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,

      And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled

      Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these

      Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts

      Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore;

      Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called

      In secret, riding through the air she comes,

      Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance

      With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon

      Eclipses at their charms. The other Shape—

      If shape it might be called that shape had none

      Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

      Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,

      For each seemed either—black it stood as Night,

      Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

      And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head

      The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

      Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

      The monster moving onward came as fast

      With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

      Th’ undaunted Fiend what this might be admired—

      Admired, not feared (God and his Son except,

      Created thing naught valued he nor shunned),

      And with disdainful look thus first began:—

      “Whence and what art thou, execrable Shape,

      That dar’st, though grim and terrible, advance

      Thy miscreated front athwart my way

      To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,

      That be assured, without leave asked of thee.

      Retire; or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,

      Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heaven.”

      To whom the Goblin, full of wrath, replied:—

      “Art thou that traitor Angel? art thou he,

      Who first broke peace in Heaven and faith, till then

      Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms

      Drew after him the third part of Heaven’s sons,

      Conjured against the Highest—for which both thou

      And they, outcast from God, are here condemned

      To waste eternal days in woe and pain?

      And reckon’st thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven

      Hell-doomed,

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