Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Джон Мильтон

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      Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment

      The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet

      (For Eloquence the Soul, Song charms the Sense)

      Others apart sat on a hill retired,

      In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high

      Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate—

      Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

      And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.

      Of good and evil much they argued then,

      Of happiness and final misery,

      Passion and apathy, and glory and shame:

      Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!—

      Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm

      Pain for a while or anguish, and excite

      Fallacious hope, or arm th’ obdured breast

      With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

      Another part, in squadrons and gross bands,

      On bold adventure to discover wide

      That dismal world, if any clime perhaps

      Might yield them easier habitation, bend

      Four ways their flying march, along the banks

      Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge

      Into the burning lake their baleful streams—

      Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;

      Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;

      Cocytus, named of lamentation loud

      Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,

      Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.

      Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,

      Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls

      Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks

      Forthwith his former state and being forgets—

      Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

      Beyond this flood a frozen continent

      Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

      Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land

      Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems

      Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,

      A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog

      Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,

      Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air

      Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of fire.

      Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled,

      At certain revolutions all the damned

      Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change

      Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,

      From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

      Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

      Immovable, infixed, and frozen round

      Periods of time,—thence hurried back to fire.

      They ferry over this Lethean sound

      Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,

      And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach

      The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose

      In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,

      All in one moment, and so near the brink;

      But Fate withstands, and, to oppose th’ attempt,

      Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards

      The ford, and of itself the water flies

      All taste of living wight, as once it fled

      The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on

      In confused march forlorn, th’ adventurous bands,

      With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast,

      Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found

      No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale

      They passed, and many a region dolorous,

      O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp,

      Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death—

      A universe of death, which God by curse

      Created evil, for evil only good;

      Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,

      Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,

      Abominable, inutterable, and worse

      Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived,

      Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

      Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man,

      Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,

      Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell

      Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

      He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left;

      Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars

      Up to the fiery concave towering high.

      As when far off at sea a fleet descried

      Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds

      Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

      Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

      Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood,

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