2l6
��PARADISE LOST
��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 470
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 op- posed
My journey strange, with clamorous up- roar
Protesting Fate supreme; thence how T
found 480
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 se- duced
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 his World To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us, 490 Without our hazard, labour, 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 be- longs
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, 500
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, a while he stood, expect- ing
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. 510
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and
spare,
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwin- ing
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 trans- formed
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories 520 To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarm- ing now
With complicated monsters, head and tail Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbsena 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 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 531
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 ar- ray,
Sublime with expectation when to see In triumph issuing forth their glorious
Chief.
They saw, but other sight instead a crowd
�� �
