To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
Oh, then at last relent: is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent. Ay me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of Hell.
With diadem and sceptre high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery; such joy ambition finds.
But say I could repent, and could obtain
By act of grace my former state; how soon
Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore! ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my punisher; therefore îs far
From granting he, as I from begging peace :
All hope excluded thus, behold instead
Of us outcast, exiled, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear,
Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven's King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As man ere long and this new world shall know."1
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face,
Thrice changed with pale ire, envy and despair;
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed
Him counterfeit, if
any eye beheld.
For heavenly minds from such distempers foul
Are ever clear. Whereof he soon aware,
Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm,
Artificer of fraud; and was the first
That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge;
Yet not enough had practised to deceive
Uriel once warned; whose eye pursued him down
The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount1
Saw him disfigured, more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort: his gestures fierce
He marked and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and overhead up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung:
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed:
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed
That landscape; and of pure, now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair: now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
1 Dr. Bentley reads Armenian mount; but Niphates is by Pliny reckoned between Armenia and Assyria, and therefore may be called Assyrian. It is plain from Milton's account of the situation of Eden, v. 210, 285, that Eden was in Assyria; and it is plain from comparing iii. 742 with iv. 27, that Niphates was not far from Eden; so that Milton must have placed it in Assyria, at least on the borders of it.-Pearce.
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles:
So entertained those odorous sweets the fiend
Who came their bane, though with them better pleased
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 slight bound high overleaped 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
1This fine passage is undoubtedly taken from as fine a one in Shakspeare's Twelfth Night, at the beginning
"like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."
2 Asmodeus was the evil spirit, enamoured of Sarah the daughter of Raguel, whose seven husbands he destroyed; but after that she was married to the son of Tobit, he was driven away by the fumes of the heart and liver of a fish; "the which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him." See the book of Tobit, chap. viii.-Newton.
3 i. e. that would have passed. So in 642-" So seemed," i. e. would have seemed, if any one had been there to see him.
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 line1
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;
And all amid them stood the tree of life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,
Our death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by,
1 This province (in which the terrestrial Paradise was planted) extended from " Auran," or Haran, or Charran, or Charræ, a city of Mesopotamia near the river Euphrates, extended, I say, from thence eastward to "Seleucia," a city built by Seleucus, one of the successors of Alexander the Great, upon the river Tigris. Or, in other words, this province was the same, where the children of Eden dwelt in "Telassar" (as Isaiah says, chap. xxxvii. 12), which "Telassar," or falatha, was a province and a city of the children of Eden, placed by Ptolemy in Babylonia, upon the common stream of Tigris and Euphrates. See Sir Isaac Newton's Chronol. p. 275. So that our author places Eden, agreeably to the accounts in Scripture, somewhere in Mesopotamia.-Newton.
Knowledge of good, bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river' large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath engulfed; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden mould high raised
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden, thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And now divided into four main streams,2
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crispéd brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendent shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpiercéd shade
Embrowned the noontide bowers: thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm,
1 Probably the river formed by the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, which flows southward.
3 This is grounded upon the words of Moses, Gen. ii. 10:-" And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads." Now the most probable account that is given of these four rivers we conceive to be this. The river that watered the garden of Eden was, as we think, the river formed by the junction of Euphrates and Tigris; and this river was parted into four other main streams or rivers; two above the garden, namely, Euphrates and Tigris before they are joined, and two below the garden, namely, Euphrates and Tigris after they are parted again; for Euphrates and Tigris they were still called by the Greeks and Romans, though in the time of Moses they were named Pison and Gihon. Our poet expresses it as if the river had been parted into four other rivers below the garden; but there is no being certain of these particulars; and Milton, sensible of the great uncertainty of them, wisely avoids giving any farther description of the countries through which the rivers flowed, and says in the general that no account needs to be given of them here.-Newton.
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