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Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

Год написания книги
2019
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Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume

That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse

Of Tobit’s son, and with a vengeance sent

From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.

Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill

Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;

But further way found none, so thick entwined,

As one continued brake, the undergrowth

Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed

All path of man or beast that passed that way.

One gate there only was, and that looked east

On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw,

Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt,

At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound

Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within

Lights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf,

Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,

Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve

In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,

Leaps o’er the fence with ease into the fold:

Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash

Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,

Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault,

In at the window climbs, or o’er the tiles:

So clomb this first grand thief into God’s fold;

So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.

Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life,

The middle tree and highest there that grew,

Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life

Thereby regained, but sat devising death

To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought

Of that life-giving plant, but only used

For prospect, what well used had been the pledge

Of immortality. So little knows

Any, but God alone, to value right

The good before him, but perverts best things

To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.

Beneath him with new wonder now he views,

To all delight of human sense exposed,

In narrow room, Nature’s whole wealth, yea more,

A Heaven on Earth: For blissful Paradise

Of God the garden was, by him in the east

Of Eden planted; Eden stretched her line

From Auran eastward to the royal towers

Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings,

Or where the sons of Eden long before

Dwelt in Telassar: In this pleasant soil

His far more pleasant garden God ordained;

Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow

All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
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