Upon the wing, or in swift race coutend,
As at th' Olympian games or Pythian fields;
Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form.
As when to warn proud cities, war appears
Wag'd in the troubled sky, and armies rush
To battle in the clouds, before each van

Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears
Till thickest legions close with feats of arms
From either end of heav'n the welkin burns.
Others with vast Typhoan rage more fell
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind; hell scarce holds the wild uproar.
As when Alcides, from Echalia crown'd

With conquest, felt th' envenom'd robe, and tore
Through pain, up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of Eta threw
Into th' Euboic sea. Others more mild;
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battle; and complain that fate
Free virtue should inthral to force or chance.
Their song was partial, but the harmony
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended hell, and took with ravishment

The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense.) Others apart sat on a hill retir'd,

In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued, then
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory, and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy:
Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm
Pain for a while, or anguish, and excite

Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
Another part in squadrons and gross bands,
On bold adventure to discover wide

That dismal world, if any clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks
Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge

Into the burning lake their baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus nam'd, of lamentation loud

Heard on the rueful stream: fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the river of oblivion rolls

Her wat'ry labrinth, where of who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice:
A gulf profound as that Serbonion bog
Betwixt Damiata and mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire.
Thither by harpy footed furies haul'd

At certain revolutions all the damn'd

Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fier:e,
From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immoveable, infix'd, and frozen round

Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean sound
Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach

The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and wo,

All in one moment, and so near the brink;
But fate withstands, and to oppose th' attempt
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The ford, and of itself the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on

In confus'u march forlorn, th' advent'rous bands
With shudd'ring horror pale, and eyes aghast,
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest through many a dark and dreary vale
They pass'd, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp.

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades c1 death,

A universe of death, which God by curse

Created evil, for evil only good,

Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds
Perverse all monstrous all prodigious things,

Abominable, unutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeræas dire.

Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man, Satan, with thoughts inflam'd of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and tow'rds the gates of hell Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left,
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave, tow'ring high.
As when far off at sea a fleet descry'd
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape
Ply, stemming nightly tow'rd the pole. So seemed
Far off the flying Fiend: at last appear
Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were trass
Three iron, three of adamantine rock
Impenetrable, empal'd with circling me,

Yet unconsum'd. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd

With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet when they list, would creep.
If ought disturb'd their noise into her womb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within, unseen. Far less abhorr'd than these
Vex'd Scylla bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when call'd
In secret; riding through the air she comes,
Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the lab'ring moon
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd
For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward, came as fast
With horrid strides, hell trembled as he strode.
Th' undaunted Fiend what this might be admir'd,
Admir'd, not fear'd: God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valu'd he nor shunn'd;
And with disdainful look thus first began:

Whence and what art thou, execrable shape'

That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated front athwart my way

To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,
That be assur'd, without leave ask'd of thee;
Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heav'n.
To whom the goblin full of wrath reply'd:
Art thou that traitor Angel, art thou he

Who first broke peace in heav'n, and faith till then
Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms

Drew after him the third part of heav'n's sons
Conjur'd against the Highest, for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemn'd
To waste eternal days in wo and pain?

And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of heav'n,
Hell-doom'd, and breath'st defiance here, and scorn
Where I reign king, and to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy ling'ring, or with one stroke of this dart
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.
So spake the grisly terror, and in shape,
So speaking and so threat'ning, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform: on th' other side
Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levell'd his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend, and such a frown
Each cast at th' other, as when two black clouds.
With heav'n's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front
Hovering a space, till winds, the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid air:
So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown, so match'd they stood.