Paradise Lost. Джон Мильтон

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Paradise Lost - Джон Мильтон


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In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high

       Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate—

       Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

       And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.

       Of good and evil much they argued then,

       Of happiness and final misery,

       Passion and apathy, and glory and shame:

       Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!—

       Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm

       Pain for a while or anguish, and excite

       Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured breast

       With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

       Another part, in squadrons and gross bands,

       On bold adventure to discover wide

       That dismal world, if any clime perhaps

       Might yield them easier habitation, bend

       Four ways their flying march, along the banks

       Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge

       Into the burning lake their baleful streams—

       Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;

       Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;

       Cocytus, named of lamentation loud

       Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton,

       Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

       Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,

       Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls

       Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks

       Forthwith his former state and being forgets—

       Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

       Beyond this flood a frozen continent

       Lies 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,

       Obominable, 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

      


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