Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me dost thou ask?
10 The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty’s defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world’s vain masque
Content though blind, had I no better guide.
‘Fix Here’
Fix here ye overdated spheres
That wing the restless foot of time.
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE PROSE WORKS
From Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (1641)
(i)
Ah Constantine, of how much ill was cause
Not thy conversion, but those rich domains
That the first wealthy Pope received of thee.
Dante, Inferno xix 115–17
(ii)
Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
’Gainst them that raised thee dost thou lift thy horn?
Impudent whore, where hast thou placed thy hope?
In thy adulterers, or thy ill-got wealth?
5 Another Constantine comes not in haste.
Petrarch, Rime cxxxviii 9–13
(iii)
Then passed he to a flow’ry mountain green,
Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously;
This was that gift (if you the truth will have)
That Constantine to good Sylvestro gave.
Ariosto, Orlando Furioso xxxiv 80
From The Reason of Church Government (1641)
(iv) When I die,let the earth be rolled in flames.
From An Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
(v) Laughing to teach the truth
What hinders? As some teachers give to boys
Junkets and knacks, that they may learn apace.
Horace, Satires I i 24–6.
(vi)
Jesting decides great things
Stronglier, and better oft than earnest can.
Horace, Satires I x 14–15.
(vii) ’
Tis you that say it, not I; you do the deeds,
And your ungodly deeds find me the words.
Sophocles, Electro, 624–5.
From the title-page of Areopagitica (1644)
(viii)
This is true liberty, when freeborn men
Having to advise the public may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;
Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;
5 What can be juster in a state than this?
Euripides, Supplices 438–41
From Tetrachordon (1645)
(ix)
Whom do we count a good man, whom but he
Who keeps the laws and statutes of the Senate,
Who judges in great suits and controversies,
Whose witness and opinion wins the cause;
5 But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood
Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.
Horace, Epistles I xvi 40–45.
From The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
(x)
There can be slain
No sacrifice to God more ácceptáble
Than an unjust and wicked king.
Seneca, Hercules Furens 922–4
From The History of Britain (1670)
(xi)
Goddess of shades, and huntress, who at will
Walk’st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep,
On thy third reign the earth look now, and tell
What land, what seat of rest thou bidd’st me seek,
5 What certain seat, where I may worship thee
For ay, with temples vowed, and virgin choirs.
(xii)
Brutus far to the west, in th’ ocean wide
Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies,
Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old;
Now void, it fits thy people; thither bend
5 Thy course, there shalt thou find a lasting seat,
There to thy sons another Troy shall rise,
And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded might
Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold.
(xiii)
Low in a mead of kine under a thorn,
Of head bereft li’th poor Kenelm king-born.
PARADISE LOST
The Verse
The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that
of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no
necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse,
in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous
5 age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed
since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away
by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and
constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most
part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not
10 without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets
of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter
works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as
a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true
musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity
15 of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one
verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings,
a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all
good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be
taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar
20 readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the
first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem
from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.
BOOK I
The Argument
This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man’s
disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he
was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the
serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who revolting from
5 God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was by
the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his crew
into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem hastes
into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his angels now
fallen into Hell, described here, not in the centre (for heaven
10 and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet
accursed) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos:
here Satan with his angels lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck
and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from
confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by
15 him; they confer of their miserable fall, Satan awakens all his
legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded;
they rise, their numbers, array of battle, their chief leaders
named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan
and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech,
20 comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells
them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be
created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in Heaven;
for that angels were long before this visible Creation, was the
opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of
25 this prophecy, and what to determine thereon he refers to a full
council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandaemonium
the palace of Satan rises, sudden
ly built out of the deep:
the infernal Peers there sit in council.
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
5 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heav’ns and earth
10 Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
15 Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
20 Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the heighth of this great argument
25 I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Say first, for Heav’n hides nothing from thy view
Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
30 Favoured of Heav’n so highly, to fall off
From their Creator and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
35 Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his host
Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
40 He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in Heav’n and battle proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
45 Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
50 Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf
Confounded though immortal: but his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
55 Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdúrate pride and steadfast hate:
At once as far as angels’ ken he views
60 The dismal situation waste and wild,
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
65 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With eve–burning sulphur unconsumed:
70 Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of Heav’n
As from the centre thrice to th’ utmost pole.
75 O how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and welt’ring by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
80 Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beëlzebub. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heav’n called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
If thou beest he; but O how fall’n! how changed
85 From him, who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright: if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
90 Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest
From what heighth fall’n, so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? yet not for those,
95 Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind
And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,
That with die mightiest raised me to contend,
100 And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of Spirits armed
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
In dubious battle on the plains of Heav’n,
105 And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
110 That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire, that were low indeed,
115 That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by Fate the strength of gods
And this empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
120 We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war
Irreconcilable, to our grand Foe,
Who now triúmphs, and in th’ excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heav’n.
125 So spake th’ apostate angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair:
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer.
O Prince, O chief of many thronèd Powers
That led th’ embattled Seraphim to war
130 Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heav’n’s perpetual King;
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate;
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
135 That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heav’n, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as gods and Heav’nly essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
140 Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallo
wed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror, (whom I now
Of force believe Almighty, since no less
145 Than such could have o’erpow’red such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thrallsc
150 By right of war, whate’er his business be,
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy deep;
What can it then avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
155 To undergo eternal punishment?
Whereto with speedy words th’ Arch-Fiend replied.
Fall’n Cherub, to be weak is miserable
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
160 But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his Providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
165 And out of good still to find means of evil,
Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see the angry Victor hath recalled
170 His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heav’n: the sulphurous hail
Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of Heav’n received us falling, and the thunder
175 Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip th’ occasion, whether scorn,
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
180 Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,