Paradise Lost. Джон Мильтон

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       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,

       Obominable, 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,

       Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,

       Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed

       Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear

       Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,

       And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,

       Three iron, three of adamantine rock,

       Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

       Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat

       On either side a formidable Shape.

       The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,

       But ended foul in many a scaly fold,

       Voluminous and vast—a serpent armed

       With mortal sting. About her middle round

       A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked

       With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung

       A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,

       If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,

       And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled

       Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these

       Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts

       Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore;

       Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called

       In secret, riding through the air she comes,

       Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance

       With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon

       Eclipses at their charms. The other Shape—

       If shape it might be called that shape had none

       Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

       Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,

       For each seemed either—black it stood as Night,

       Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

       And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head

       The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

       Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

       The monster moving onward came as fast

       With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

       Th' undaunted Fiend what this might be admired—

       Admired, not feared (God and his Son except,

       Created thing naught valued he nor shunned),

       And with disdainful look thus first began:—

       "Whence and what art thou, execrable Shape,

       That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance

       Thy miscreated front athwart my way

       To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,

       That be assured, without leave asked of thee.

       Retire; or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,

       Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heaven."

       To whom the Goblin, full of wrath, replied:—

       "Art thou that traitor Angel? art thou he,

       Who first broke peace in Heaven and faith, till then

       Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms

       Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons,

       Conjured against the Highest—for which both thou

       And they, outcast from God, are here condemned

       To waste eternal days in woe and pain?

       And reckon'st thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven

       Hell-doomed, and breath'st defiance here and scorn,

       Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,

       Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,

       False fugitive; and to thy speed add wings,

       Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue

       Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart

       Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."

       So spake the grisly Terror, and in shape,

       So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold,

       More dreadful and deform. On th' other side,

       Incensed with indignation, Satan stood

       Unterrified, and like a comet burned,

       That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge

       In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair

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