Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

Автор

Джон Мильтон

Год написания книги

2019

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Evil to others, and enraged might see

How all his malice served but to bring forth

Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn

On Man by him seduced, but on himself

Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.

Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool

His mighty stature; on each hand the flames

Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled

In billows, leave i’ th’ midst a horrid vale.

Then with expanded wings he steers his flight

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

That felt unusual weight; till on dry land

He lights—if it were land that ever burned

With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,

And such appeared in hue as when the force

Of subterranean wind transports a hill

Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side

Of thundering Etna, whose combustible

And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,

Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,

And leave a singed bottom all involved

With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole

Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;

Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood

As gods, and by their own recovered strength,

Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.

“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,”

Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat

That we must change for Heaven?—this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since he

Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid

What shall be right: farthest from him is best

Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,

Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,

Receive thy new possessor—one who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less than he

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built

Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,

Th’ associates and co-partners of our loss,