Paradise Lost

John Milton

• Publisher: HarperPerennial Classics
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781443437806
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Religious Poetry

Beginning with the story of Satan after he was expelled from Heaven along with his followers, Paradise Lost details Satan's journey to the Garden of Eden and his intent to destroy God's new creation. The poem also depicts the perspectives of both Adam and Eve, examining their personalities and motivations before and after Eve's fateful temptation.

After publishing Paradise Lost, author John Milton was immediately recognized and lauded as one of the greatest English poets. Paradise Lost has since influenced numerous poets and writers, including many of the Romantics, William Blake, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and T. S. Eliot.

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BOOK 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 tragic; 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 heroic 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 heroic song

Pleas’d me long choosing, and beginning late;

Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deem’d chief mastery to dissect

With long and tedious havock fabled knights

In battles feign’d; the better fortitude

Of patience and heroic 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 heroic 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 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

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,

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 antarctic; 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 diabolic 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...