"And hourly born, with sorrow infinite

"To me: for, when they list, into the womb
"That bred them they return, and howl and gnaw
“My bowels, their repast; then, bursting forth
"Afresh, with conscious terrors vex me round,
"That rest or intermission none I find.1

800

"Before mine eyes, in opposition, sits

“Grim Death, my son and foe, who sets them on;
"And me, his parent, would full soon devour
“For want of other prey, but that he knows

805

"His end with mine involved; and knows that I
"Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane,
"Whenever that shall be; so Fate pronounced."
"But thou, O father! I forewarn thee, shun
"His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope
"To be invulnerable in those bright arms,
"Though tempered heavenly; for that mortal dint,3
"Save he who reigns above, none can resist."

810

815

She finished, and the subtle fiend his lore Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered smooth: "Dear daughter! since thou claim'st me for thy sire, "And my fair son here show'st me, the dear pledge "Of dalliance had with thee in Heaven, and joys "Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire change 820 "Befallen us, unforeseen, unthought of; know "I come no enemy, but to set free,

"From out this dark and dismal house of pain,
"Both him and thee, and all the heavenly host
"Of spirits, that, in our just pretences armed,
"Fell with us from on high: from them I go

1 "That rest or intermission none I find.”—See Isa. lvii. 20, 21.

825

2 So Fate pronounced.-The fallen angels and sin are here represented as attributing events to Fate, as if this was a power superior to God, so that their opposition to him might be palliated.

3 Dint, stroke.

▲ Dear daughter.--Satan's character is well illustrated by this change of language: he had just said he had never seen sight more detestable, 1. 745; but now, having learned his lore, or lesson, it is "dear daughter," and "fair son."

"This uncouth errand sole; and, one for all,

"Myself expose, with lonely steps, to tread

"The unfounded deep, and through the void immense, "To search with wandering quest a place foretold "Should be, and, by concurring signs, ere now

830

66 'Created, vast and round;-a place of bliss
"In the purlieus1 of Heaven, and therein placed
"A race of upstart creatures, to supply

"Perhaps our vacant room; though more removed, 835
"Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude,
"Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or aught
"Than this more secret, now designed,2 I haste
"To know; and, this once known, shall soon return,
"And bring ye to the place where thou and Death
"Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen

Wing silently the buxom3 air, embalmed

"With odours: there ye shall be fed and filled

"Immeasurably; all things shall be your prey."

840

He ceased; for both seemed highly pleased, and Death 845 Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear

His famine should be filled, and blessed his maw

Destined to that good hour: no less rejoiced

His mother bad, and thus bespake her sire: "The key of this infernal pit by due,

"And by command of Heaven's all-powerful King, "I keep, by him forbidden to unlock

850

"These adamantine gates; against all force

"Death ready stands to interpose his dart,
"Fearless to be o'ermatched by living might.
"But what owe I to his commands above,
"Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down

855

I Purlieus. This term originally denoted lands, which, having once belonged to the royal forests, were separated from them, and set free from the severity of the forest-laws: in its ordinary use now it means border, neighbourhood, suburb.

2 Be this...designed.-The conjunction omitted, as sometimes in Latin; "1 haste to know if this be designed," &c.

3 Buxom, flexible, elastic;-German, biegsam.

• There shall ye be fed,-Ps. xlix 14, "Death shall feed on them "

"Into this gloom of Tartarus1 profound,

"To sit, in hateful office here confined,

"Inhabitant of Heaven and heavenly born; "Here, in perpetual agony and pain,

860

"With terrors and with clamours compassed round "Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed?

"Thou art my Father, thou my author, thou

'My being gavest me; whom should I obey

865

"But thee?-whom follow? thou wilt bring me soon
"To that new world of light and bliss, among
"The gods who live at ease, where I shall reign
"At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems
"Thy daughter and thy darling, without end."
Thus saying, from her side the fatal key,
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took;
And, towards the gate rolling her bestial train,

870

Forthwith the huge portcullis high up drew, 2
Which, but herself, not all the Stygian powers

875

Could once have moved; then in the keyhole turns

The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar

Of massy iron, or solid rock, with ease
Unfastens. On a sudden open fly,

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,

880

The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate

Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She opened; but to shut

Excelled her power: the gates wide open stood,

1 Tartarus, the name given by the ancients to the place of punishment in the infernal regions; which, according to Homer, (11. viii. 16), is as much below the mansions of the dead as the heavens are above the earth

2 How admirably is the versification accommodated to the sense! The drawing up of the portcullis, the sudden shooting of the bolts, the flying open of the doors, and the accompanying noises, are not only described, but imitated by the laborious motion of the poetic feet, the sudden breaks in the versification, and the harsh discordant sound of the words, heightened by the reiteration of the letter r: and then, when they are thrown open once and for ever, the lines flow on with a majestic pomp and swell. Portcullis, a frame of crossed timber, armed below with iron spikes, which is hung over the gateway of a fortified town, to be let down in case of surprise, to prevent the entrance of the enemy. Erebus,-a poetic name for the infernal regions.

That with extended wings a bannered host,
Under spread ensigns marching, might pass through,
With horse and chariots ranked in loose array;

885

So wide they stood, and, like a furnace mouth,
Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.
Before their eyes, in sudden view, appear
The secrets of the hoary deep;1 a dark

890

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension; where length, breadth, and height,
And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold

895

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand:

For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce,
Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring

Their embryon atoms; they around the flag

900

Of each his faction, in their several clans,

Light armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow,

Swarm populous, (unnumbered as the sands

Of Barca, or Cyrene's 2 torrid soil,

Levied to side with warring winds,) and poise

905

Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,

He rules a moment: Chaos umpire sits,

And by decision more embroils the fray,

By which he reigns: next him, high arbiter,
Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss,
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave,-
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these, in their pregnant causes, mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain

910

915

His dark materials to create more worlds ;-
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend

Stood on the brink of Hell, and looked3 a while,

1 Hoary deep,-See Job xli. 32.

2 Barca or Cyrenè,-a city and province of Lybia in Africa, mostly covered with a light sand, which the winds continually shift about.

3 The wary fiend stood on the brink of Hell, and looked. The sentence begins at 1. 910, but the poet artfully seems to be doing what he describes:

Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed
With noises loud and ruinous, (to compare

Great things with small,) than when Bellona1 storms,
With all her battering engines bent to rase
Some capital city; or less than if this frame

In mutiny, had from her axle torn

920

Of Heaven were falling, and these elements,

925

The steadfast Earth. At last his sail-broad vans2
He spreads for flight, and, in the surging smoke

Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league,
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides

930

Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets

A vast vacuity: all unawares,

Fluttering his pennons3 vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep; and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance,
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft: that fury stayed,
Quenched in a boggy syrtis,*-neither sea,
Nor good dry land-nigh foundered on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail.5
As when a gryphon, through the wilderness

6

With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,

935

940

like Satan, on the brink of Chaos, he seems to ponder it before launching forth. Stood and looked, must be considered as equivalent to standing looked. The principal action was "looking into the abyss of Chaos;" his standing where he did was a mere circumstance.

1 Bellona, the goddess of war.

2 Vans, -as fan, b. v. 1. 269, properly a large winnowing machine; sailbroad-as Satan had before been compared to a fleet of vessels at a distance.

3 Pennons,-pinions: plumb, perpendicular, as shown by the plumb-line. 4 Boggy syrtis,—a soft quicksand, neither sea nor dry land.

5 Both oar and sail,-a proverbial saying to denote every possible effort as explained in the following description.

• Gryphon,—a fabulous creature, with the wings and head of an eagle, an d the body and limbs of a lion. Arimaspians,—a supposed one-eyed people of Scythia, fond of adorning their hair with gold, which they obtained b purloining it from treasures guarded by gryphons.