252
��PARADISE REGAINED
��poem interest and charm me ? " the answer with regard to Paradise Regained will be less ready than that with regard to any other of the poems. The early poems, the sonnets, and Samson, rest on more perma- nent human foundations than either of the epics, and Paradise Regained has not the great creative impulse behind it which saves Paradise Lost. The most certain pleasure will be got from it by casting aside pre- conceptions and comparisons, by refraining
THE FIRST BOOK
I, WHO erewhile the happy Garden sung By one man's disobedience lost, now sing Recovered Paradise to all mankind, By one man's firm obedience fully tried Through all temptation, and the Tempter
foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness. Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious Ere- mite
Into the desert, his victorious field Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence 10
By proof the undoubted Son of God, in- spire, As thou art wont, my prompted song, else
mute,
And bear through highth or depth of Na- ture's bounds, With prosperous wing full summed, to tell
of deeds
Above Heroic, though in secret done, And unrecorded left through many an age: Worthy to have not remained so long un- sung. Now had the great Proclaimer, with a
voice More awful than the sound of trumpet,
cried
Repentance, and Heaven's kingdom nigh at
hand 20
To all baptized. To his great baptism
flocked With awe the regions round, and with them
came
From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed To the flood Jordan came as then obscure, Unmarked, unknown. But him the Bap- tist soon
��from a too rigid application of standards, and looking at it as one looks at an old tapestry like those at Dresden of Raphael's designing. Here and there patches of it are faded ; not a few of its admired adorn- ments seem now odd and rococo; some of its lines, that once were majestic, are now only stiff; but taken all in all it is still a fine work, massive and grave, to which age has added perhaps quite as much as it has taken away.
Descried, divinely warned, and witness
bore
As to his worthier, and would have resigned To him his heavenly office. Nor was long His witness unconfirmed: on him baptized Heaven opened, and in likeness of a Dove 30 The Spirit descended, while the Father's
voice From Heaven pronounced him his beloved
Son. That heard the Adversary, who, roving
still
About the world, at that assembly famed Would not be last, and, with the voice di- vine Nigh thunder-struck, the exalted man to
whom
Such high attest was given a while sur- veyed With wonder; then, with envy fraught and
rage,
Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid air To council summons all his mighty Peers, Within thick clouds and dark tenfold in- volved, 4 i A gloomy consistory; and them amidst, With looks aghast and sad, he thus be- spake: " O ancient Powers of Air and this wide
World
(For much more willingly I mention Air, This our old conquest, than remember Hell, Our hated habitation), well ye know How many ages, as the years of men, This Universe we have possessed, and ruled In manner at our will the affairs of Earth, Since Adam and his facile consort Eve 51 Lost Paradise, deceived by me, though
since
With dread attending when that fatal wound
�� �
