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 the 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, nam'd of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. Far off from these a slow and silent stream, Lethe the river of oblivion rolls
Her watry 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 gulph profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire. Thither by harpy-footed furies hail'd,
At certain revolutions all the damn'd
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 Immoveable, infix'd, 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 the 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 confus'd march forlorn, the adventrous bands With shudd'ring horror pale, and eyes aghast View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest through many a dark and dreary vale They pass'd, and many a region dolorous, O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
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, Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd, Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.
Mean while the adversary' of God and Man, Satan, with thoughts inflam'd of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards 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 descry'd 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 seem'd Far off the flying fiend: at last appear
Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice three-fold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock,
Impenetrable, impal'd with circling fire,
Yet unconsum'd. Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape;
The one seem'd woman to the waste, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If ought disturb'd their noise, into her womb, And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd, Within unseen. Far less abhorr'd than these Vex'd Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore : Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when call'd In secret, riding through the air she comes Lur'd 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 call'd, that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, For each seem'd either; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd 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. The undaunted fiend what this might be admir'd,
« ForrigeFortsæt » |