spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke

lifted spurns the ground; thence many a league in a cloudy chair ascending rides

dacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets vast vacuity all unawares,

uttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
en thousand fathom deep, and to this hour
own had been falling, had not by ill chance
he strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
stinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
s many miles aloft: that fury stayed,
uenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea

or good dry land, nigh foundered on he fares,
reading the crude consistence, half on foot,
alf flying; behooves him now both oar and sail.
s when a gryphon through the wilderness
With wingèd course o'er hill or moory dale
ursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
ad from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold, so eagerly the Fiend

930

935

940

945

D'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or

rare,

With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. 950 At length a universal hubbub wild

Of stunning sounds and voices all confused,

929. spurns, presses with his oot in springing.

931. Audacious, bold; daring. 933. pennons, wings. -plumb, in a perpendicular direction; like a plumb-line. 935. had See line 723.- had not, if the strong rebuff had not. 937. Instinct, excited; stirred. 938. stayed, being stayed; having ceased.

939. Syrtis, a quicksand 940. nigh, almost.

941. crude consistence, substance not yet firm.

942. behooves him now, and now he needs.

943-947. gryphon, or griffin. This was a fabulous monster, said to have had the head and wings of an eagle with the body of a lion, and to have been found in the mountainous regions north of Scythia, the gold of which it guarded. The one-eyed Arimaspians, a people of Scythia, sometimes purloined this gold.

Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ea
With loudest vehemence: thither he plies
Undaunted, to meet there whatever Power
Or Spirit of the nethermost abyss

Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies
Bordering on light; when straight behold the
Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread
Wide on the wasteful deep! With him enthr
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things,
The consort of his reign; and by them stood
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name
Of Demogorgon; Rumor next and Chance,
And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled,
And Discord with a thousand various mouths.
To whom Satan turning boldly, thus: "Ye
And Spirits of this nethermost abyss,
Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your realm; but by constraint
Wandering this darksome desert, as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to light,
Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek
What readiest path leads where your gloomy b
Confine with Heaven; or if some other place
From your dominion won the ethereal king
Possesses lately, thither to arrive

I travel this profound. Direct my course:

954. plies, bends his way; hastens.

959. straight, straightway; immediately.

964. Orcus and Ades (or Hades). These were names given by the ancients to Pluto, the god of the lower or nether world, and also applied to his dominions. - the dreaded name. The ancients were superstitiously afraid of uttering the word Gorgon or Demogorgon.

See Spenser's Faery Quee
to I. Stanza xxxvii.:
"A bold bad man, that dare
by name.
Great Gorgon, prince of
and dead night,
At which Cocytus quakes,
is put to flight."

977. Confine with, bor on; have limits together

979. Possesses lately, ha taken possession of.

-ected, no mean recompense it brings
your behoof, if I that region lost,
usurpation thence expelled, reduce
her original darkness and your sway
Which is my present journey), and once more
ect the standard there of ancient Night;
ours be the advantage all, mine the revenge!"

985

Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old, ith faltering speech and visage incomposed, nswered: "I know thee, stranger, who thou art,

hat mighty leading angel, who of late

990

ade head against Heaven's king, though over

thrown.

saw and heard; for such a numerous host

led not in silence through the frighted deep,
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

onfusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates
Coured out by millions her victorious bands
ursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve
hat little which is left so to defend,

995

1000

1005

Encroached on still through your intestine broils
Veakening the sceptre of old Night: first Hell,
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath;
Now lately heaven and earth, another world
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain
To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell:
If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger. Go and speed!
Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain."

985. Which is, which is the

purpose of.

989. incomposed,

discomposed.

disturbed;

999. if all I can, to try if all that I can do.

1002. first Hell, first to encroach was Hell.

1007. far, far to go.

1008. the nearer danger, the nearer is danger.

He ceased, and Satan staid not to reply, But, glad that now the sea should find a shor With fresh alacrity and force renewed Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire, Into the wild expanse; and through the shock Of fighting elements, on all sides round Environed, wins his way; harder beset And more endangered than when Argo passed Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered So he with difficulty and labor hard Moved on, with difficulty and labor he; But he once passed, soon after when Man fell Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain Following his track (such was the will of Heav Paved after him a broad and beaten way Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length From Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb Of this frail World; by which the spirits perv 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 Heave Shoots far into the bosom of dim night A glimmering dawn: here Nature first begins

1016-1018. When the ship Argo was on its way to Colchis for the recovery of the golden fleece, which had been carried thither, it passed, at the entrance of the Euxine (or Black) Sea from the Bosphorus, between the rocks called the Symplegades, which then closed behind it.

1019, 1020. The adventures of Ulysses are related by Homer in

the Odyssey. Among t his escape from the da Scylla (see note to line Charybdis, the names of and whirlpool between I Sicily.

1029. utmost, extreme most. See line 1039.

1032. whom, those wh 1037. Nature. See lin

er farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,
s from her outmost works, a broken foe,
ith tumult less and with less hostile din ;
hat Satan, with less toil and now with ease,
afts on the calmer wave by dubious light ;
nd like a weather-beaten vessel holds
ladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn :
r in the emptier waste resembling air
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
ar off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide
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 cursèd hour, he hies.

1040

1045

1050

1055

1046. Weighs, balances; poises. 1848. undetermined, not to be determined whether.