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Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

       By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast

       Leviathan, which God of all his works

       Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream.

       Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,

       The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,

       Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

       With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,

       Moors by his side under the lee, while night

       Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

       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, shewn

       On Man by him seduced, but on himself

       Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.

       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 i' th' midst a horrid vale.

       Then with expanded wings he steers his flight

       Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

       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

       Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side

       Of thundering Etna, whose combustible

       And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,

       Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,

       And leave a singed bottom all involved

       With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole

       Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;

       Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood

       As gods, and by their own recovered strength,

       Not by the sufferance 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

       Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid

       What shall be right: farthest from him is best

       Whom reason hath equalled, 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

       Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

       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; th' Almighty hath not built

       Here for his envy, 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,

       Th' associates and co-partners of our loss,

       Lie thus astonished on th' 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 th' 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

       New courage and revive, though now they lie

       Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,

       As we erewhile, astounded and amazed;

       No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height!"

       He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend

       Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,

       Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,

       Behind him cast. The broad circumference

       Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb

       Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views

       At evening, from the top of Fesole,

       Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,

       Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.

       His spear—to equal which the tallest pine

       Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast

       Of some great ammiral, were but a wand—

       He walked with, to support uneasy steps

       Over the burning marl, not like those steps

       On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime

       Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.

       Nathless he so endured, till on the beach

       Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called

       His legions—Angel Forms, who lay entranced

       Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks

       In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades

       High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge

       Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed

       Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew

       Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,

       While with perfidious hatred they pursued

       The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld

       From the safe shore their floating carcases

       And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,

       Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,

       Under amazement of their hideous change.

      

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