ON Paradise Lost. WHEN I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold, In slender book his vast design unfold; Heav'n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All! the argument Might hence presume the whole creation's day My causeless, yet not impious surmise. Thou hast not miss'd one thought that could be fit, That majesty which through thy work doth reign, Draws the devout, deterring the profane: And things divine thou treat'st of in such state, Where could'st thou words of such a compass find? Well might'st thou scorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhyme of thy own sense secure; While the town-bays writes all the while and spells, And, like a pack-horse, tires without his bells: Their fancies like our bushy points appear, The poets tag them, we for fashion wear. I too transported by the mode commend, And while I mean to praise thee must offend. Thy verse created like thy theme sublime, In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme. ANDREW MARVELL. ARGUMENT. This first book proposes first (in brief) the whole subject, Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed; then touches the prime cause of his fall-the Serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem hastes into the midst of things; presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, described here not in the centre (for Heaven and Earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed,) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos: Here Satan, with his Angels lying on the burning lake thunder-struck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him; they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded: they rise, their numbers, array of battle, their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan, and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech; comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven; but tells them, lastly, of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in Heaven; (for that Angels were long before this visible creation was the opinion of many ancient Fathers.) To find out the truth of this pro phecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep; the infernal peers there sit in council. Paradise Lost. BOOK I. OF Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, 5 10 15 Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flow'd |