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Or hear'st thou rather1 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,

2

Escaped the Stygian pool; though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight

Through utter3 and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphéan 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 safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll 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 equalled with me in fate,

1 Or hear'st thou rather—a pure Latinism-dost thou delight rather to be called?

2 Escaped the Stygian pool, &c.-i.e. having escaped from describing the burning lake in the first book, and chaos and night in the second book.

3 Through utter, &c.—i.e. Through hell, and the great gulf between heaven

and hell.

4 Hard and rare-difficult and seldom achieved.

5 Drop serene, &c.-in reference to the gutta serena, "drop serene," and

cataract.

6 Brooks-Kedron and Siloa.

7 Nor sometimes forget―i. e. sometimes remember; nor being here, in imitation of the Latin idiom, equivalent to, and not.

8 Those other two-Milton speaks of two and then names four.-Newton's explanation is, "Though he mentions four, yet there are two whom he particularly desires to resemble; and those he distinguishes both with the epithet 'blind,' to make the likeness more striking." He adds, "It seems therefore as if Milton had intended at first to mention only these two, and then currente calamo had added the two others."

So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,1
And Tiresias,2 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 wisdom3 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.

SATAN'S MEETING WITH URIEL IN THE SUN."

HE SOON

4

Saw within ken a glorious angel stand,
The same whom John saw5 also in the sun :
His back was turned, but not his brightness hid:
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar

Circled his head; nor less his locks behind
Illustrious on his shoulders, fledges with wings,

Lay waving round; on some great charge employed
He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep.

1 Mæonides-Homer, so called from Mæonia, the supposed place of his birth. 2 And Tiresias, &c.-Dr. Pearce proposes to correct the false accent in this line, by making" Tiresias" and "Phineus" change places.

3 And wisdom, &c.-i. e. and presented with wisdom, enfeebled and disparaged. 4 "The figures introduced here," remarks Hazlitt, "have all the elegance and drecision of a Greek statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light." 5 John saw" And I saw an angel standing in the sun :" Rev. xix, 17. Tiar-tiard, or diadem-the ornamental head-dress of the Eastern princes. Illustrious-bright, glossy.

6

7

8 Fledge-for fledged-able to fly.

Glad was the Spirit impure, as now in hope
To find who might direct his wandering flight
To Paradise, the happy seat of man,

His journey's end, and our beginning woe.1
But first he casts to change his proper shape,
Which else might work him danger or delay:
And now a stripling cherub3 he appears,
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Suitable grace diffused, so well he feigned:
Under a coronet his flowing hair

In curls on either cheek played; wings he wore
Of many a coloured plume, sprinkled with gold;
His habit fit for speed succinct, and held
Before his decent steps a silver wand.

He drew not nigh unheard; the angel bright,
Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turned,
Admonished by his ear, and straight was known
The archangel Uriel, one of the seven

Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,
Stand ready at command, and are his eyes?

That run through all the heavens, or down to th' earth
Bear his swift errands over moist and dry,

O'er sea and land.

SATAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.8

Abridged.

O THOU! that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god

1 Our beginning woe-the first cause of woe to us.

2 Casts-casts in his mind, contrives a plan.

3 Stripling cherub, &c.—“A finer picture of a young angel," says Newton, "could not be drawn by the pencil of Raphael, than is here by the pen of Milton."

4 Prime-first or highest dignity.

5 His habit, &c.-i. e. His robe was girded up for freedom of action; he was prepared for motion.

6 Decent-as the Latin decens, graceful, comely.

7 His eyes, &c.-"Those seven, they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth:" Zech. iv, 10.

8 "The opening of this speech to the Sun," says Addison, "is very bold and noble. It is, I think, the finest ascribed to Satan in the whole poem." The consummate skill too with which the poet describes the conflict of passions in the mind of Satan, is noticed by the same judicious writer.

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Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell-how glorious once above thy sphere!-
Till pride and worse2 ambition threw me down,
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King.
Ah, wherefore! He deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was

In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high
I'sdained subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome,5 still paying, still to owe:
Forgetful what from him I still received;
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged; what burden then?
Oh! had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferior angel, I had stood

Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition. Yet why not? some other power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part; but other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within

Or from without, to all temptations armed.

Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?
Thou hadst. Whom hast thou then, or what, to accuse,
But heaven's free love, dealt equally to all?

This new world-Satan is now alighted on earth, and from the top of Mount Niphates thus addresses the sun, which "sat high in his meridian tower." The ruined archangel, the mighty orb of day, the lone mountainsummit, each the greatest of its kind, present in their combination, a magnificent picture.

2

Worse ambition-worse, because it led to daring impiety and its retribution. 3 What could be, &c.-i. e. what service could be less hard, &c.

4 I'sdained-disdained.

5 So burdensome, &c.-i. e. it being so burdensome, &c.

Be then his love accursed, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.

Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell!
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

PARADISE.1

So on he fares,2 and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head3
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque, and wild,
Access denied; and over-head up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,

Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre

Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops

1 This beautiful description has been compared with the finest specimens of the same kind, as Homer's description of the gardens of Alcinous, and of Calypso's shady grotto, Ariosto's of the garden of Paradise, Tasso's of the garden of Armida, and Marino's of the garden of Venus, and though doubtless a general imitation of some of them, is thought greatly to exceed them all. In reference to Milton's power of delineating external scenery, Mr. Macaulay remarks, (Edin. Rev., vol. xlii,) "Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the song of nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains. His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche."

2 Fares-from the Anglo-Saxon far-an, to go-goes. We have the same element in "thoroughfare"-i. e. through-go.

3 Champaign head, &c.-open top or table land of a steep hill, whose rough and prickly sides were covered with a wild growth of thickets and bushes.

4 Overhead, &c.-i. e. overhead above these thickets, on the side of the hill likewise, grew the loftiest trees rising one above another like the seats of an amphitheatre.

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