Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

Автор

Джон Мильтон

Год написания книги

2019

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Warriors, the Flower of Heaven—once yours; now lost,

If such astonishment as this can seize

Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place

After the toil of battle to repose

Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find

To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?

Or in this abject posture have ye sworn

To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds

Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood

With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon

His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern

Th’ advantage, and, descending, tread us down

Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts

Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?

Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!”

They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung

Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch

On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,

Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake.

Nor did they not perceive the evil plight

In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;

Yet to their General’s voice they soon obeyed

Innumerable. As when the potent rod

Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day,

Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud

Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,

That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung

Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile;

So numberless were those bad Angels seen

Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,

‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;

Till, as a signal given, th’ uplifted spear

Of their great Sultan waving to direct

Their course, in even balance down they light

On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:

A multitude like which the populous North

Poured never from her frozen loins to pass

Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons

Came like a deluge on the South, and spread

Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.

Forthwith, form every squadron and each band,

The heads and leaders thither haste where stood

Their great Commander—godlike Shapes, and Forms

Excelling human; princely Dignities;

And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones,

Though on their names in Heavenly records now

Be no memorial, blotted out and rased

By their rebellion from the Books of Life.

Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve

Got them new names, till, wandering o’er the earth,