Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Джон Мильтон

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СКАЧАТЬ and him thus the Anarch old,

      With faltering speech and visage incomposed,

      Answered: “I know thee, stranger, who thou art—

      That mighty leading Angel, who of late

      Made head against Heaven’s King, though overthrown.

      I saw and heard; for such a numerous host

      Fled not in silence through the frighted Deep,

      With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

      Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates

      Poured out by millions her victorious bands,

      Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here

      Keep residence; if all I can will serve

      That little which is left so to defend,

      Encroached on still through our intestine broils

      Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first, Hell,

      Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath;

      Now lately Heaven and Earth, another world

      Hung o’er my realm, linked in a golden chain

      To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell!

      If that way be your walk, you have not far;

      So much the nearer danger. Go, and speed;

      Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain.”

      He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply,

      But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,

      With fresh alacrity and force renewed

      Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,

      Into the wild expanse, and through the shock

      Of fighting elements, on all sides round

      Environed, wins his way; harder beset

      And more endangered than when Argo passed

      Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks,

      Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned

      Charybdis, and by th’ other whirlpool steered.

      So he with difficulty and labour hard

      Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;

      But, he once passed, soon after, when Man fell,

      Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain,

      Following his track (such was the will of Heaven)

      Paved after him a broad and beaten way

      Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf

      Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,

      From Hell continued, reaching th’ utmost orb

      Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse

      With easy intercourse pass to and fro

      To tempt or punish mortals, except whom

      God and good Angels guard by special grace.

      But now at last the sacred influence

      Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven

      Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night

      A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins

      Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,

      As from her outmost works, a broken foe,

      With tumult less and with less hostile din;

      That Satan with less toil, and now with ease,

      Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,

      And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds

      Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;

      Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,

      Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold

      Far off th’ empyreal Heaven, extended wide

      In circuit, undetermined square or round,

      With opal towers and battlements adorned

      Of living sapphire, once his native seat;

      And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain,

      This pendent World, in bigness as a star

      Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

      Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,

      Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

BOOK III

      Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn,

      Or of the Eternal coeternal beam

      May I express thee unblam’d? since God is light,

      And never but in unapproached light

      Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee

      Bright effluence of bright essence increate.

      Or hear’st thou rather pure ethereal stream,

      Whose fountain who shall tell? before the sun,

      Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice

      Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest

      The rising world of waters dark and deep,

      Won from the void and formless infinite.

      Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,

      Escap’d the Stygian pool, though long detain’d

      In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight

      Through utter and through middle darkness borne,

      With other notes than to the Orphean lyre

      I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;

      Taught СКАЧАТЬ