Then suffered. The other way Satan went down
The causey to Hell-gate. On either side
Disparted Chaos overbuilt exclaimed,

And with rebounding surge the bars assailed,
That scorned his indignation. Through the gate,
Wide open and unguarded, Satan passed,
And all about found desolate; for those,
Appointed to sit there, had left their charge,
Flown to the upper world; the rest were all
Far to the inland retired about the walls
Of Pandemonium, city and proud seat
Of Lucifer, so by allusion called

Of that bright star to Satan paragoned:

There kept their watch the legions, while the grand
In council sat, solicitous what chance

Might intercept their emperor sent; so he,
Departing, gave command, and they observed.
As when the Tartar, from his Russian foe,
By Astracan, over the snowy plains
Retires; or Bactrian Sophi, from the horns
Of Turkish crescent, leaves all waste beyond
The realm of Aladule, in his retreat

To Tauris or Casbeen so these, the late
Heaven-banished host, left desert utmost Hell
Many a dark league, reduced in careful watch
Round their metropolis, and now expecting
Each hour their great adventurer, from the search
Of foreign worlds. He through the midst, unmarked,
In show plebeian angel militant

Of lowest order, passed; and from the door
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible

Ascended his high throne, which, under state
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end
Was placed in regal lustre. Down a while
He sat, and round about him saw, unseen.
At last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head

And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter, clad
With what permissive glory since his fall
Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed
At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng
Bent their aspect, and whom they wished beheld,
Their mighty chief returned. Loud was the acclaim;
Forth rushed in haste the great consulting peers,
Raised from their dark divan, and with like joy
Congratulant approached him, who with hand
Silence, and with these words, attention won:

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers!
For in possession such, not only of right,
I call ye, and declare ye now, returned
Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth
Triumphant out of this infernal pit,

Abominable, accursed, the house of woe,
And dungeon of our tyrant-now possess,

As lords, a spacious world, to our native Heaven
Little inferior, by my adventure hard,

With peril great, achieved. Long were to tell
What I have done, what suffered; with what pain
Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded Deep

Of horrible confusion; over which,

By Sin and Death, a broad way now is paved,
To expedite your glorious march; but I
Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to ride
The untractable Abyss, plunged in the womb
Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild,
That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely opposed
My journey strange, with clamorous uproar
Protesting fate supreme; thence, how I found
The new-created world, which fame in Heaven
Long had foretold; a fabric wonderful,
Of absolute perfection; therein man,
Placed in a Paradise, by our exile

Made happy. Him by fraud I have seduced

From his Creator; and, the more to increase
Your wonder, with an apple. He, thereat
Offended

worth your laughter - hath given up
Both his beloved Man and all this world,
To sin and death a prey, and so to us,
Without our hazard, labor, or alarm,
To range in, and to dwell, and over man
To rule as over all He should have ruled.
True is, me also he hath judged, or rather
Me not, but the brute serpent, in whose shape
Man I deceived. That which to me belongs
Is enmity, which he will put between

Me and mankind. I am to bruise his heel;

His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head.
A world who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain? Ye have the account
Of my performance. What remains, ye gods,
But up, and enter now into full bliss?

So having said, awhile he stood, expecting
Their universal shout, and high applause,
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears,
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more.
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each other, till, supplanted, down he fell
A monstrous serpent, on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain; a greater Power
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom. He would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue
To forked tongue. For now were all transformed
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories

To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din

Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbæna dire,

Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Ellops drear,

And Dipsas not so thick swarmed once the soil
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle
Ophiusa - but still greatest he the midst,
Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
Ingendered in the Pythian vale on slime,
Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed
Above the rest still to retain. They all
Him followed, issuing, forth to the open field,
Where all yet left of that revolted rout,
Heaven-fallen, in station stood, or just array,
Sublime with expectation when to see
In triumph issuing forth their glorious chief.
They saw, but other sight instead - a crowd
Of ugly serpents! Horror on them fell,
And horrid sympathy for, what they saw,

They felt themselves now changing. Down their arms, Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast, And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form

Catched, by contagion, like in punishment,

As in their crime. Thus the applause they meant,
Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame,

Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood
A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change,

His will who reigns above, to aggravate

Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that

Which grew in Paradise, the bait of eve

Used by the tempter. On that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining

For one forbidden tree a multitude

Now risen, to work them further woe or shame.
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain;

But on they rolled in heaps, and up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curled Megæra. Greedily they plucked
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed;
This more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceived. They, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected. Oft they assayed,
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft,
With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws,
With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell

Into the same illusion, not as Man

Whom they triumphed once lapsed. Thus were they plagued,

And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss,

Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed,
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo

This annual humbling, certain numbered days,
To dash their pride, and joy for man seduced.
However, some tradition they dispersed
Among the heathen, of their purchase got,
And fabled how the serpent, whom they called
Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide-
Encroaching Eve, perhaps, had first the rule
Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven
And Ops, ere yet Dictæan Jove was born.

Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair
Too soon arrived; Sin, there in power before,
Once actual; now in body, and to dwell
Habitual habitant; behind her, Death,

Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet
On his pale horse: to whom Sin thus began :

Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death!
What thinkest thou of our empire now, though earned
With travail difficult? Not better far