But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire, As from her outmost works, a broken foe, With tumult less, and with less hostile din, That Satan with less toil, and now with ease Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light, And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn; Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide In 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 cursed hour, he hies.
GOD. sitting His throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at His right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears His own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free, and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares His purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by bim seduced. The Son of God readers praise to His Father for the manifestation of His gracious purpose towards man; but God again declares that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of Divine justice. Man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and, therefore, with all his progeny, devoted to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offense, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers Himself a ransom for man: The Father accepts Him, ordains His incarnation, pronounces His exaltation above all names in Heaven and earth; commands all the angels to adore Him. They obey, and by hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile, Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering, he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity: what persons and things fly up thither: thence comes to the gate of Heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it his passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and, pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation and man, whom God had placed there, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed: alights first on Mount Niphates.
All, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam,
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun, Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight Through utter and through middle darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre,
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;
Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare; thee I revisit sate
And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that rolled in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt, Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Those other two equaled with me in fate, So were I equaled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides, And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure Empyrean where He sits
High throned above all height, bent down His eye,
His own works, and their works at once to view: About Him all the sanctities of Heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from His sight received Beatitude past utterance; on His right The radiant image of His glory sat,
His only Son. On earth He first beheld Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivaled love,
In blissful solitude. He then surveyed Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side Night In the dun air sublime, and ready now
To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet, On the bare outside of this world, that seemed Firm land imbosomed, without firmament, Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.
Him God beholding from His prospect high, Wherein past, present, future, He beholds, Thus to His only Son foreseeing spake:
Only-begotten Son, seest thou what rage Transports our adversary? whom no bounds Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the chains Heaped on him there, nor yet the main abyss Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems On desperate revenge, that shall redound Upon his own rebellious head. And now, Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way Not far off Heaven, in the precincts of light,
Directly towards the new-created world, And man there placed, with purpose to essay
If him by force he can destroy, or, worse,
By some false guile pervert; and shall pervert; For man will hearken to his glozing lies, And easily transgress the sole command,
Sole pledge of his obedience. So will fall
He and his faithless progeny.
Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me All he could have. I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all the ethereal powers
And spirits, both them who stood, and them who failed; Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love,
Where only what they needs must do appeared,
Not what they would? What praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid?
When will and reason-reason also is choice- Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled, Made passive both, had served necessity, Not me? They therefore, as to right belonged, So were created, nor can justly accuse Their maker, or their making, or their fate, As if predestination overruled
Their will, disposed by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge. They themselves decreed Their own revolt, not I. If I foreknew, Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. So without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably foreseen, They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge, and what they choose; for so I formed them free: and free they must remain, Till they enthrall themselves; I else must change Their nature, and revoke the high decree Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained
Their freedom; they themselves ordained their fall. The first sort by their own suggestion fell, Self-tempted, self-depraved: Man falls, deceived
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