Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy, With purpose to explore or to disturb The secrets of your realm; but, by constraint Wandering this darksome desert, as my way Lies through your spacious empire up to light, Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds to bring the Confine with Heaven; or, if some other place, From your dominion won, the Ethereal King Possesses lately, thither to arrive
I travel this profound. Direct my course; Directed, no mean recompense it brings To your behoof, if I that region lost, All usurpation thence expelled, reduce To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey), and once more 985 Erect the standard there of ancient Night. Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge.' Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old, With faltering speech and visage incomposed, Answered: I know thee, stranger, who thou art That mighty leading Angel, who of late Made head against Heaven's King, though over- thrown.
I saw and heard, for such a numerous host Fled not in silence through the frighted Deep With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates Poured out by millions her victorious bands, Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence if all I can will serve
That little which is left so to defend,
new world under their
dominion.
Chaos directs Encroached on still through our intestine broils
Weak'ning the sceptre of old Night: first, Hell, Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath; Now lately, Heaven and Earth, another World, Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain 1005 To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell. If that way be your walk, you have not far; So much the nearer danger. Go, and speed; Havoc, and spoil, and ruin are my gain.'
He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply, 1010 But, glad that now his sea should find a shore, With fresh alacrity, and force renewed, Springs upward like a pyramid of fire
Into the wild expanse, and, through the shock Of fighting elements, on all sides round Environed, wins his way; harder beset And more endangered than when Argo passed Through Bosporus, betwixt the justling rocks, Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered. 1020 So he with difficulty and labor hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labor he;
But, he once passed, soon after, when man fell, Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track (such was the will of Heaven), Paved after him a broad and beaten way Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length, From Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse With easy intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace. But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
He at length pauses, and contemplates the new
1045 world.
A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire, As from her outmost works, a broken foe, With tumult less, and with less hostile din ; That Satan with less toil, and now with ease, Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light, And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn; Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living sapphire, once his native seat; And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent World, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge, Accursed, and in a cursèd hour, he hies.
The Verse. Perhaps the best illustration of Milton's meaning may be found in a comparison of a passage from Paradise Lost with Dryden's imitation of it in The Fall of Man. The lines are, P. L. 1: 315-325:
Warriors, the Flower of Heaven - once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns?
The passage from Dryden is:
Dominions, Powers, ye chiefs of Heaven's bright host (Of Heaven, once yours; but now in battle lost), Wake from your slumber! Are your beds of down? Sleep you so easy there? Or fear the frown
Of Him who threw you hence, and joys to see Your abject state confess His victory?
One should especially note whether Dryden has here expressed anything 'otherwise, and for the most part worse,' than else he would have expressed it; whether Dryden's rime is 'trivial and of no true musical delight;' and whether Milton has, in addition to 'apt numbers,' and 'fit quantity of syllables,' 'the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another.'
Note the cæsuras of the successive Miltonic lines, then of those by Dryden.
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