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Paradise Lost
John Milton
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Paradise Lost
John Milton
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About This Book
In Paradise, God's favored new creations—Adam and Eve—live in bliss, untainted by sin. In another realm, Satan and his banished rebel angels collude to destroy God's tranquil new design. Into this idyll called Earth, and the confidence of Adam and Eve, Satan will instigate the fall of man.At the heart of this complex, audacious epic poem is a drama driven by the most recognizable human flaws. More than a story from Genesis, it is the extraordinary expression of Milton's search for personal truth and the meaning of existence, written to "justify the ways of God to men."
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Topic
LiteratureSubtopic
PoetryBook IX
No more of talk where God or Angel guest |
With Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd, |
To sit indulgent, and with him partake |
Rural repast; permitting him the while |
Venial discourse unblam'd. I now must change |
Those notes to tragick; foul distrust, and breach |
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, |
And disobedience: on the part of Heaven |
Now alienated, distance and distaste, |
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement 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 heroick than the wrath |
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued |
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage |
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd; |
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long |
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: |
If answerable style I can obtain |
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns |
Her nightly visitation unimplor'd, |
And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires |
Easy my unpremeditated verse: |
Since first this subject for heroick song |
Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late; |
Not sedulous by nature to indite |
Wars, hitherto the only argument |
Heroick deem'd chief mastery to dissect |
With long and tedious havock fabled knights |
In battles feign'd; the better fortitude |
Of patience and heroick martyrdom |
Unsung; or to describe races and games, |
Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd shields, |
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, |
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights |
At joust and tournament; then marshall'd feast |
Serv'd up in hall with sewers and seneshals; |
The skill of artifice or office mean, |
Not that which justly gives heroick name |
To person, or to poem. Me, of these |
Nor skill'd nor studious, higher argument |
Remains; sufficient of itself to raise |
That name, unless an age too late, or cold |
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing |
Depress'd; 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 |
Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter |
'Twixt day and night, and now from end to end |
Night's hemisphere had veil'd the horizon round: |
When satan, who late fled before the threats |
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'd |
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, |
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried |
His entrance, and foreworned 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 |
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 Cherubick watch, by stealth |
Found unsuspected way. There was a place, |
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 |
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 antarctick; and in length, |
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 |
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 |
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, |
Doubt might beget of diabolick power |
Active within, beyond the sense of brute. |
Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief |
His bursting passion into plaints thus poured. |
More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as built |
With second thoughts, reforming what was old! |
O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred |
For what God, after better, worse would build? |
Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other Heavens |
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, |
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, |
In thee concentring all their precious beams |
Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven |
Is center, yet extends to all; so thou, |
Centring, receivest from all those orbs: in thee, |
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, |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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: |
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 |
Not longer than since I, i... |
Table of contents
Citation styles for Paradise Lost
APA 6 Citation
Milton, J. (2021). Paradise Lost ([edition unavailable]). Pandora’s Box. Retrieved from https://www.perlego.com/book/2722998/paradise-lost-pdf (Original work published 2021)
Chicago Citation
Milton, John. (2021) 2021. Paradise Lost. [Edition unavailable]. Pandora’s Box. https://www.perlego.com/book/2722998/paradise-lost-pdf.
Harvard Citation
Milton, J. (2021) Paradise Lost. [edition unavailable]. Pandora’s Box. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/2722998/paradise-lost-pdf (Accessed: 15 October 2022).
MLA 7 Citation
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. [edition unavailable]. Pandora’s Box, 2021. Web. 15 Oct. 2022.