Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame

Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood

A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change,

His will who reigns above, to aggravate
Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
Used by the tempter: on that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining
For one forbidden tree a multitude

Now risen, to work them further woe or shame;
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain,
But on they rolled in heaps, and up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curled Megara: greedily they plucked
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake2 where Sodom flamed;
This, more delusive, not the touch but taste
Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected: oft they assayed,
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft,
With hatefullest disrelish writhed their jaws
With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell
Into the same illusion, not as man
Whom they triumphed once lapsed.
And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss,
Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed;
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo
This annual humbling certain numbered days,
To dash their pride, and joy for man seduced.
However, some tradition they dispersed
Among the heathen of their purchase got,
And fabled how the serpent, whom they called
Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide

1 One of the furies.

[plagued Thus were they

2 The lake Asphaltites, near which Sodom and Gomorrah were situated. Josephus affirms, the shapes and fashions of them and three other cities, called the cities of the plain, were to be seen in his days, and trees loaden with fair fruit (styled the apples of Sodom) rising out of the ashes, which at the first touch dissolved into ashes and smoke.

3 i. e., over whom, once lapsed, they triumphed.-Newton.

Encroaching Eve, perhaps, had first the rule
Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven,
And Ops, ere yet Dictæan Jove was born.

Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair
Too soon arrived; Sin, there in power before,
Once actual, now in body, and to dwell
Habitual habitant; behind her Death

Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet
On his pale horse: to whom Sin thus began:

"Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death, What think'st thou of our empire now, though earned With travel difficult, not better far

Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have sat watch,
Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved?”
Whom thus the Sin-born monster answered soon:
"To me, who with eternal famine pine,

Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven;

There best, where most with ravine I may meet;
Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems
To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corps."1
To whom the incestuous mother thus replied:
"Thou, therefore, on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
Feed first, on each beast next, and fish, and fowl,
No homely morsels; and whatever thing

The scythe of Time mows down, devour unspared;
Till I, in man residing, through the race,
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions all infect,
And season him thy last and sweetest prey."
This said, they both betook them several ways,
Both to destroy, or unimmortal make
All kinds, and for destruction to mature
Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing,
From his transcendent seat the saints among,
To those bright orders uttered thus his voice:
"See with what heat these dogs of Hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created, and had still
Kept in that state, had not the folly of man
Let in these wasteful furies, who impute
Folly to me; so doth the prince of Hell
And his adherents, that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess

1 Alluding to his lean and meagre appearance, the skin hanging sely about him.

A place so heavenly; and conniving seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,

That laugh, as if, transported with some fit
Of passion, I to them had quitted all,

At random yielded up to their misrule;

And know not that I called and drew them thither,
My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which man's polluting sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure, till, crammed and gorged nigh burst
With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,
Both Sin, and Death, and yawning grave, at last
Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of Hell
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.

Then Heaven and earth, renewed, shall be made pure
To sanctity that shall receive no stain:

Till then the curse pronounced on both precedes."1
He ended, and the heavenly audience loud
Sung hallelujah, as the sound of seas,

Through multitude that sung: "Just are thy ways,
Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works;

Who can extenuate thee?" Next, to the Son,
"Destined Restorer of mankind, by whom
New Heaven and earth shall to the ages rise,

Or down from Heaven descend." Such was their song;
While the Creator, calling forth by name
His mighty angels, gave them several charge,
As sorted best with present things. The sun
Had first his precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable; and from the north to call
Decrepit winter; from the south to bring
Solstitial summer's heat. To the blank moon
Her office they prescribed: to the other five
Their planetary motions and aspécts,

In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite

1 I should prefer "proceeds," with Bentley; although "precedes" uay perhaps be used in the same sense.

2 The word "solstitial" seems sufficient to determine from how far south Milton meant that this "summer's heat" was brought, viz., so far from the south as the sun is when he is in the summer solstice, or about 23 degrees southward.

3 If a planet in one part of the zodiac be distant from another by a sixth part of twelve, that is, by two signs, their aspect is called sextile: if by a fourth, square by a third, trine; and if by one half,

Of noxious efficacy; and when to join

In synod unbenign: and taught the fixed
Their influence malignant when to shower;
Which of them, rising with the sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous. To the winds they set
Their corners; when with bluster to confound
Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll
With terror through the dark aërial hall.
Some say he bid his angels turn askance
The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more
From the sun's axle; they with labour pushed
Oblique the centric globe: some say1 the sun

opposite; which last is said to be of noxious efficacy, because the planets so opposed are thought to strive, debilitate, and overcome one another; deemed of evil consequence to those born under or subject to the influence of the distressed star.-Hume.

1 It was eternal spring before the fall, and he is now accounting for the change of seasons after the fall, and mentions the two famous hypotheses. Some say it was occasioned by altering the position of the earth, by turning the poles of the earth above 20 deg. aside from the sun's orb: "he bid his angels turn askance the poles of earth twice ten degrees and more from the sun's axle ;" and the poles of the earth are about 23 deg. distant from those of the ecliptic; "they with labour pushed oblique the centric globe," it was erect before, but is oblique now; the obliquity of a sphere is the proper astronomical term, when the pole is raised any number of degrees less than 90; the "centric globe" fixed on its centre, and therefore moved with labour and difficulty, or rather centric, as being the centre of the world, according to the Ptolemaic system, which our author usually follows. Some say, again, this change was occasioned by altering the course of the sun, "the sun was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road," in which he had moved before, like distant breadth" in both hemispheres; "to Taurus with the seven Atlantic sisters," the constellation Taurus, with the seven stars in his neck, the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas; "and the Spartan twins," the sign Gemini, Castor and Pollux, twin brothers, and sons of Tyndarus king of Sparta; "up to the tropic crab," the tropic of cancer, the sun's farthest stage northwards; "thence down amain," Dr. Bentley reads 'as much," as much on one side of the equator as the other, but if any alteration were necessary, is it easier to read " thence down again by Leo and the Virgin," the sign Virgo; "and the scales," the con stellation Libra; 66 as deep as Capricorn," the tropic of Capricorn, which is the sun's farthest progress southwards. This motion of the sun in the ecliptic occasions the variety of seasons, "else had the spring perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers," if the sun had continued to move in the equator. It is likewise Dr. Burnet's assertion, that the primitive earth enjoyed a perpetual spring, and for the same reason of the sun's moving in the equator. But though this notion of a perpetual spring may be very pleasing in poetry, yet

Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road
Like distant breadth to Taurus, with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,
Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain
By Leo, and the Virgin, and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn, to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers,
Equal in days and nights, except to those
Beyond the polar circles; to them day
Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun,
To recompense his distance, in their sight
Had rounded still the horizon, and not known
Or east, or west, which had forbid the snow
From cold Estotiland,' and south as far
Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit
The sun, as from Thyéstean banquet, turned
His course intended; else how had the world
Inhabited, though sinless, more than now,
Avoiding pinching cold and scorching heat?
These changes in the heavens, though slow, produced
Like change on sea and land; sideral blast,
Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot,
Corrupt and pestilent: now from the north
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,

Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice,
And snow, and hail, and stormy gust, and flaw; 5
Boreas, and Cæcias, and Argestes loud,

it is very false in philosophy; and this position of the earth, so far from being the best, is one of the worst it could have, as Dr. Keill hath proved excellently well in the fourth chapter of his "Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth."-Newton.

1 A tract of North America, towards the Arctic Circle and Hudson's Bay.

2 In South America, so called from its discoverer, Fred. Magellan, in 1520.

3 In N. America.

4 In the N. E. of Muscovy, upon the Frozen Ocean.

5 The same as "gust," but of stronger signification, from pλáw, to break.

6 The north wind; " Cacias," the north-west; "Argestes," the northeast; "Thracias," blowing from Thrace, northward of Greece; "Notus," the south wind; "Afer," or Africus, the south-west from Africa. "From Serraliona or Lion Mountains, a range of mountains so called because of the perpetual storms there roaring like a lion. These are to the south-west of Africa, within a few leagues of