Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

Автор

Джон Мильтон

Год написания книги

2019

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Black fire and horror shot with equal rage

Among his Angels, and his throne itself

Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,

His own invented torments. But perhaps

The way seems difficult, and steep to scale

With upright wing against a higher foe!

Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench

Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,

That in our proper motion we ascend

Up to our native seat; descent and fall

To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,

When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear

Insulting, and pursued us through the Deep,

With what compulsion and laborious flight

We sunk thus low? Th’ ascent is easy, then;

Th’ event is feared! Should we again provoke

Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find

To our destruction, if there be in Hell

Fear to be worse destroyed! What can be worse

Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned

In this abhorred deep to utter woe!

Where pain of unextinguishable fire

Must exercise us without hope of end

The vassals of his anger, when the scourge

Inexorably, and the torturing hour,

Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus,

We should be quite abolished, and expire.

What fear we then? what doubt we to incense

His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged,

Will either quite consume us, and reduce

To nothing this essential—happier far

Than miserable to have eternal being!—

Or, if our substance be indeed divine,

And cannot cease to be, we are at worst

On this side nothing; and by proof we feel

Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven,

And with perpetual inroads to alarm,

Though inaccessible, his fatal throne:

Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.”

He ended frowning, and his look denounced

Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous

To less than gods. On th’ other side up rose

Belial, in act more graceful and humane.

A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed

For dignity composed, and high exploit.

But all was false and hollow; though his tongue

Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear

The better reason, to perplex and dash

Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low—

To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds