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the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf

      Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,

      From Hell continued, reaching th’ utmost orb

      Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse

      With easy intercourse pass to and fro

      To tempt or 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;

      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 th’ 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 pendent World, in bigness as a star

      Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

      Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,

      Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

BOOK III

      Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn,

      Or of the Eternal coeternal beam

      May I express thee unblam’d? since God is light,

      And never but in unapproached 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 re-visit now with bolder wing,

      Escap’d the Stygian pool, though long detain’d

      In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight

      Through utter and through middle darkness borne,

      With other notes than to the Orphean lyre

      I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;

      Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down

      The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,

      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 quench’d their orbs,

      Or dim suffusion veil’d. 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 hallow’d feet, and warbling flow,

      Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget

      So were I equall’d with them in renown,

      Thy sovran command, that Man should find grace;

      Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,

      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

      Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men

      Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair

      Presented with a universal blank

      Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d,

      And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

      So much the rather thou, celestial Light,

      Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers

      Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence

      Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell

      Of things invisible to mortal sight.

      Now had the Almighty Father from above,

      From the pure empyrean where he sits

      High thron’d above all hight, bent down his eye

      His own works and their works at once to view:

      About him all the Sanctities of Heaven

      Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv’d

      Beatitude past utterance; on his right

      The radiant image of his glory sat,

      His only son; on earth he first beheld

      Our two first parents, yet the only two

      Of mankind in the happy garden plac’d

      Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,

      Uninterrupted joy, unrivall’d love,

      In blissful solitude; he then survey’d

      Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there

      Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side Night

      In the dun air sublime, and ready now

      To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet,

      On the bare outside of this world, that seem’d

      Firm land imbosom’d, without firmament,

      Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.

      Him God beholding from his prospect high,

      Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,

      Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake.

      “Only begotten Son,

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