Paradise Lost. Джон Мильтон

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       Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep?

       What can it the avail though yet we feel

       Strength undiminished, or eternal being

       To undergo eternal punishment?"

       Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-Fiend replied:—

       "Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,

       Doing or suffering: but of this be sure—

       To do aught good never will be our task,

       But ever to do ill our sole delight,

       As being the contrary to his high will

       Whom we resist. If then his providence

       Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,

       Our labour must be to pervert that end,

       And out of good still to find means of evil;

       Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps

       Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb

       His inmost counsels from their destined aim.

       But see! the angry Victor hath recalled

       His ministers of vengeance and pursuit

       Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,

       Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid

       The fiery surge that from the precipice

       Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,

       Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,

       Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now

       To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.

       Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn

       Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.

       Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,

       The seat of desolation, void of light,

       Save what the glimmering of these livid flames

       Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend

       From off the tossing of these fiery waves;

       There rest, if any rest can harbour there;

       And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,

       Consult how we may henceforth most offend

       Our enemy, our own loss how repair,

       How overcome this dire calamity,

       What reinforcement we may gain from hope,

       If not, what resolution from despair."

       Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,

       With head uplift above the wave, and eyes

       That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides

       Prone on the flood, extended long and large,

       Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge

       As whom the fables name of monstrous size,

       Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,

       Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

       By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast

       Leviathan, which God of all his works

       Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream.

       Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,

       The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,

       Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

       With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,

       Moors by his side under the lee, while night

       Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

       So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,

       Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence

       Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will

       And high permission of all-ruling Heaven

       Left him at large to his own dark designs,

       That with reiterated crimes he might

       Heap on himself damnation, while he sought

       Evil to others, and enraged might see

       How all his malice served but to bring forth

       Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn

       On Man by him seduced, but on himself

       Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.

       Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool

       His mighty stature; on each hand the flames

       Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled

       In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.

       Then with expanded wings he steers his flight

       Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

       That felt unusual weight; till on dry land

       He lights—if it were land that ever burned

       With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,

       And such appeared in hue as when the force

       Of subterranean wind transports a hill

       Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side

       Of thundering Etna, whose combustible

       And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,

       Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,

       And leave a singed bottom all involved

       With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole

       Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate;

       Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood

       As gods, and by their own recovered strength,

       Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.

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