Milton: Paradise Lost

Alastair Fowler, Alastair Fowler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317865728
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the great works of literature, of any time and in any language. Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition it is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years it has held generation upon generation of scholars, students and readers in rapt attention and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture. First published in 1968, with John Carey's Complete Shorter Poems, Alastair Fowler's Paradise Lost is widely acknowledged to be the most authoritative edition of this compelling work.

An unprecedented amount of detailed annotation accompanies the full text of the first (1667) edition, providing a wealth of contextual information to enrich and enhance the reader's experience. Notes on composition and context are combined with a clear explication of the multitude allusions Milton called to the poem's aid. The notes also summarise and illuminate the vast body of critical attention the poem has attracted, synthesizing the ancient and the modern to provide a comprehensive account both of the poem's development and its reception. Meanwhile, Alastair Fowler's invigorating introduction surveys the whole poem and looks in detail at such matters as Milton's theology, metrical structure and, most valuably, his complex and imaginary astronomy. The result is an enduring landmark in the field of Milton scholarship and an invaluable guide for readers of all levels.

Paradise Lost

DOI: 10.4324/9781315834726-10

The Argument

Satan having compassed the earth, with meditated guile returns as a mist by night into Paradise, enters into the serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt¹ her found alone: Eve loth to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength; Adam at last yields: the serpent finds her alone; his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking, with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve wondering to hear the serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech and such understanding not till now; the serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain tree in the garden he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the tree of knowledge forbidden: the serpent now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces her at length to eat; she pleased with the taste deliberates a while whether to impart thereof to Adam or not, at last brings him of the fruit, relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam at first amazed,² but perceiving her lost, resolves through vehemence³ of love to perish with her; and extenuating⁴ the trespass eats also of the fruit: the effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of one another.

No more of talk where God or angel guest

With man, as with his friend, familiar used

To sit indulgent, and with him partake

Rural repast, permitting him the while

5 Venial discourse unblamed: I now must change

Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach

Disloyal on the part of man, revolt,

And disobedience: on the part of heaven

Now alienated, distance and distaste,

10 Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,

That brought into this world a world of woe,

Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery

Death’s harbinger: sad task, yet argument

Not less but more heroic than the wrath

15 Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued

Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage

Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused,

Or Neptune’s ire or Juno’s, that so long

Perplexed the Greek and Cytherea’s son;

20 If answerable style I can obtain

Of my celestial patroness, who deigns

Her nightly visitation unimplored,

And díctates to me slumbering, or inspires

Easy my unpremeditated verse:

25 Since first this subject for heroic song

Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late;

Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect

30 With long and tedious havoc fabled knights

In battles feigned; the better fortitude

Of patience and heroic martyrdom

Unsung; or to describe races and games,

Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,

35 Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds;

Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights

At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast

Served up in hall with sewers, and seneschals;

The skill of artifice or office mean,

40 Not that which justly gives heroic name

To person or to poem. Me of these

Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument

Remains, sufficient of itself to raise

That name, unless an age too late, or cold

45 Climate, or years damp my intended wing

Depressed, and much they may, if all be mine,

Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.

The sun was sunk, and after him the star

Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring

50 Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter

Twixt day and night, and now from end to end

Night’s hemisphere had veiled the horizon round:

When Satan who late fled before the threats

Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved

55 In meditated fraud and malice, bent

On man’s destruction, maugre what might hap

Of heavier on himself, fearless returned.

By night he fled, and at midnight returned

From compassing the earth, cautious of day,

60 Since Uriel regent of the sun descried

His entrance, and forewarned the cherubim

That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven,

The space of seven continued nights he rode

With darkness, thrice the equinoctial line

65 He circled, four times crossed the car of Night

From pole to pole, traversing each colure;

On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse

From entrance or cherubic watch, by stealth

Found unsuspected way. There was a place,

70 Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change,

Where Tigris at the foot of Paradise

Into a gulf shot under ground, till part

Rose up a fountain by the tree of life;

In with the river sunk, and with it rose

75 Satan involved in rising mist, then sought

Where to lie hid; sea he had searched and land

From Eden over Pontus, and the pool

Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob;

Downward as far Antarctic; and in length

80 West from Orontes to the ocean barred

At Darien, thence to the land where flows

Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roamed

With narrow search; and with inspection deep

Considered every creature, which of all

85 Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found

The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Him after long debate, irresolute

Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose

Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom

90 To enter, and his dark suggestions hide

From sharpest sight: for in the wily snake,

Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark,

As from his wit and native subtlety

Proceeding, which in other beasts observed

95 Doubt might beget of diabolic power

Active within beyond the sense of brute.

Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief

His bursting passion into plaints thus poured:

O earth, how like to heaven, if not preferred

100 More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built

With second thoughts, reforming what was old!

For what god after better worse would build?

Terrestrial heaven, danced round by other heavens

That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,

105 Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,

In thee concentring all their precious beams

Of sacred influence: as God in heaven

Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou

Centring receiv’st from all those orbs; in thee,

110 Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears

Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth

Of creatures animate with gradual life

Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man.

With what delight could I have walked thee round,

115 If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange

Of hill and valley, rivers, woods and plains,

Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned,

Rocks, dens, and caves; but I in none of these

Find place or refuge; and the more I see

120 Pleasures about me, so much more I feel

Torment within me, as from the hateful siege

Of contraries; all good to me becomes

Bane, and in heaven much worse would be my state.

But neither here seek I, no nor in heaven

125 To dwell, unless by mastering heaven’s supreme;

Nor hope to be myself less miserable

By what I seek, but others to make such

As I, though thereby worse to me redound:

For only in destroying I find ease

130 To my relentless thoughts; and him destroyed,

Or won to what may work his utter loss,

For whom all this was made, all this will soon

Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe;

In woe then, that destruction wide may range:

135 To me shall be the glory sole among

The infernal powers, in one day to have marred

What he almighty styled, six nights and days

Continued making, and who knows how long

Before had been contriving, though perhaps

140 Not longer...