Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim With deafening shout return'd them loud acclain. 520 530 Leads him perplex'd, where he may likeliest find 525 535 Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms 540 Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines; 546 What could it less when spirits inmortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. In discourse more swert In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high 500 56 570 Might yield them easier habitation, bend Four ways their flying march, along the banks 575 Into the burning lake their baleful streams; Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, 580 Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 585 690 A gulf profound, as that Serbonian bog Where armies whole have sunk The parching air At certain revolutions, all the damn'd 594 Aro 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 600 Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, 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 l'he 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 610 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, the adventurous bands, 615 No rest through many a dark and dreary vale 620 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, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Ihan fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceived, 625 Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, 63 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 634 Hangs on the clouds, by equinoctial winds Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring 640 Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape, Ply stemming nightly toward the pole so seem'd Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock 616 impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat, On either side a formidable shape: The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair; 650 But ended fou m many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm'd With mortal sting: About her middle round With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung $55 A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep, 660 If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb, If shape it might be call'd that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, And shook a dreadful dat; what seem'd his head 675 680 685 691 Whence and what art thou, execrable shape! That darest, 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: 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 Conjured 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 breathest 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 Etrange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before. So spake the grisly Terror, and in shape, 695 700 So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold 706 |