Paradise Lost | Page 5

though yet we feel?Strength undiminished, or eternal being?To undergo eternal punishment?"?Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-Fiend replied:--?"Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,?Doing or suffering: but of this be sure--?To do aught good never will be our task,?But ever to do ill our sole delight,?As being the contrary to his high will?Whom we resist. If then his providence?Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,?Our labour must be to pervert that end,?And out of good still to find means of evil;?Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps?Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb?His inmost counsels from their destined aim.?But see! the angry Victor hath recalled?His ministers of vengeance and pursuit?Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,?Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid?The fiery surge that from the precipice?Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,?Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,?Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now?To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.?Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn?Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.?Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,?The seat of desolation, void of light,?Save what the glimmering of these livid flames?Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend?From off the tossing of these fiery waves;?There rest, if any rest can harbour there;?And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,?Consult how we may henceforth most offend?Our enemy, our own loss how repair,?How overcome this dire calamity,?What reinforcement we may gain from hope,?If not, what resolution from despair."?Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,?With head uplift above the wave, and eyes?That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides?Prone on the flood, extended long and large,?Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge?As whom the fables name of monstrous size,?Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,?Briareos or Typhon, whom the den?By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast?Leviathan, which God of all his works?Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream.?Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,?The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,?Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,?With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,?Moors by his side under the lee, while night?Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.?So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,?Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence?Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will?And high permission of all-ruling Heaven?Left him at large to his own dark designs,?That with reiterated crimes he might?Heap on himself damnation, while he sought?Evil to others, and enraged might see?How all his malice served but to bring forth?Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn?On Man by him seduced, but on himself?Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.?Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool?His mighty stature; on each hand the flames?Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and,rolled?In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.?Then with expanded wings he steers his flight?Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,?That felt unusual weight; till on dry land?He lights--if it were land that ever burned?With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,?And such appeared in hue as when the force?Of subterranean wind transprots a hill?Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side?Of thundering Etna, whose combustible?And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,?Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,?And leave a singed bottom all involved?With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole?Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;?Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood?As gods, and by their own recovered strength,?Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.?"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"?Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat?That we must change for Heaven?--this mournful gloom?For that celestial light? Be it so, since he?Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid?What shall be right: farthest from him is best?Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme?Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,?Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,?Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,?Receive thy new possessor--one who brings?A mind not to be changed by place or time.?The mind is its own place, and in itself?Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.?What matter where, if I be still the same,?And what I should be, all but less than he?Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least?We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built?Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:?Here we may reigh secure; and, in my choice,?To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:?Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.?But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,?Th' associates and co-partners of our loss,?Lie thus astonished on th' oblivious pool,?And call them not to share with us their part?In this unhappy mansion, or once more?With rallied arms to try what may be yet?Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?"?So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub?Thus answered:--"Leader of those armies bright?Which, but th' Omnipotent, none could have foiled!?If once