(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense,) Others apart sat on a hill retir'd,

In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate;
Fix'd 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 the 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, nam'd of lamentation loud

Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
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; or else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog 1
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: The parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.
Thither, by harpy-footed Furies hal❜d,

At certain revolutions, all the damn'd

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
Immoveable, infix'd, 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 the attempt,
Medusa with Gorgonian terrour 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 confus'd march forlorn, the adventurous bands,
With shuddering horrour pale, and eyes aghast,
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found

No rest Through many a dark and dreary vale

:

They pass'd, and many a region dolorous,

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,

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

1 'Serbonian bog:' the Lake Serbonis in Egypt, surrounded by hills of loose sand, which fall into it-in compass one thousand furlongs.

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 feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

Meanwhile, the Adversary of God and man,
Satan, with thoughts inflam'd of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards 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,1 whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they, on the trading flood2
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,

Ply stemming nightly towards the pole: So seem'd
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, impal'd with circling fire,

Yet unconsum'd. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm'd

With mortal sting: About her middle round

เ

1 Ternate and Tidore :' two of the Molucca islands in the East Indian Sea

• 'Trading flood:' flood propelled by the trade winds.

A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing bark'd,
With wide Cerberean mouths, full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet when they list would creep,
If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd, and howl'd
Within unseen. Far less abhorr'd than these
Vex'd Scylla,1 bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian2 shore:
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd
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 call'd that shape, had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be called that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

And shook a dreadful dart: what seem'd 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.
The undaunted Fiend what this might be admir'd,
Admir'd, not fear'd; God and his Son except,
Created thing not valued he, nor shunn'd ;
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 ask'd of thee:

''Scylla:' See Ovid's Metamorphoses, 14th Book-Trinacrian:' Sicilian.

E

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
Conjur'd against the Highest; for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemn'd
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
And reckon'st thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven,
Hell-doom'd! and breath'st defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart
Strange horrour seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.
So spake the grizly Terrour, and in shape,
So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform. On the other side,
Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burn'd,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus1 huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levell❜d his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds,
With Heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front,
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow

To join their dark encounter in mid-air :

1 Ophiuchus :' or Serpentarius, a constellation extending over forty degrees.