Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Джон Мильтон

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СКАЧАТЬ by the heavenly Muse to venture down

      The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,

      Though hard and rare: Thee I revisit safe,

      And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou

      Revisit’st not these eyes, that roll in vain

      To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;

      So thick a drop serene hath quench’d their orbs,

      Or dim suffusion veil’d. Yet not the more

      Cease I to wander, where the Muses haunt,

      Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,

      Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief

      Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,

      That wash thy hallow’d feet, and warbling flow,

      Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget

      So were I equall’d with them in renown,

      Thy sovran command, that Man should find grace;

      Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,

      And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old:

      Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move

      Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird

      Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid

      Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year

      Seasons return; but not to me returns

      Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,

      Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,

      Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

      But cloud instead, and ever-during dark

      Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men

      Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair

      Presented with a universal blank

      Of nature’s works to me expung’d and ras’d,

      And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

      So much the rather thou, celestial Light,

      Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers

      Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence

      Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell

      Of things invisible to mortal sight.

      Now had the Almighty Father from above,

      From the pure empyrean where he sits

      High thron’d above all hight, bent down his eye

      His own works and their works at once to view:

      About him all the Sanctities of Heaven

      Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv’d

      Beatitude past utterance; on his right

      The radiant image of his glory sat,

      His only son; on earth he first beheld

      Our two first parents, yet the only two

      Of mankind in the happy garden plac’d

      Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,

      Uninterrupted joy, unrivall’d love,

      In blissful solitude; he then survey’d

      Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there

      Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side Night

      In the dun air sublime, and ready now

      To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet,

      On the bare outside of this world, that seem’d

      Firm land imbosom’d, without firmament,

      Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.

      Him God beholding from his prospect high,

      Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,

      Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake.

      “Only begotten Son, seest thou what rage

      Transports our Adversary? whom no bounds

      Prescrib’d no bars of Hell, nor all the chains

      Heap’d on him there, nor yet the main abyss

      Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems

      On desperate revenge, that shall redound

      Upon his own rebellious head. And now,

      Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way

      Not far off Heaven, in the precincts of light,

      Directly towards the new created world,

      And man there plac’d, with purpose to assay

      If him by force he can destroy, or, worse,

      By some false guile pervert; and shall pervert;

      For man will hearken to his glozing lies,

      And easily transgress the sole command,

      Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall

      He and his faithless progeny: Whose fault?

      Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me

      All he could have; I made him just and right,

      Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

      Such I created all the ethereal Powers

      And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail’d;

      Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.

      Not free, what proof could they have given sincere

      Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,

      Where only what they needs must do appear’d,

      Not СКАЧАТЬ