Paradise Lost. Джон Мильтон

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">       Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal

       With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form:

       As when, to warn proud cities, war appears

       Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush

       To battle in the clouds; before each van

       Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears,

       Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms

       From either end of heaven the welkin burns.

       Others, with vast Typhoean rage, more fell,

       Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air

       In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar:—

       As when Alcides, from Oechalia crowned

       With conquest, felt th' envenomed robe, and tore

       Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,

       And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw

       Into th' Euboic sea. Others, more mild,

       Retreated in a silent valley, sing

       With notes angelical to many a harp

       Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall

       By doom of battle, and complain that Fate

       Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.

       Their song was partial; but the harmony

       (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)

       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 Phlegeton,

       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, СКАЧАТЬ