Side 74 af 239

[BOOK III.-442-472 Alone, for other creature in this place, Living or lifeless, to be found was none; None yet, but store hereafter from the earth Up hither, like aerial vapours, flew Of all things transitory and vain, when sin With vanity had filled the works of men; Both all things vain, and all who in vain things Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame, Or happiness in this or the other life. All who have their reward on earth, the fruits Of painful superstition and blind zeal, Nought seeking but the praise of men, here find Fit retribution, empty as their deeds; All the unaccomplished works of Nature's hand, Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, Dissolved on earth, flee thither, and in vain, Till final dissolution, wander here; Not in the neighbouring moon, as some have dreamed; Those argent fields more likely habitants, Translated saints, or middle spirits, hold, Betwixt the angelical and human-kind.1 Hither of ill-joined sons and daughters born First from the ancient world those giants came, With many a vain exploit, though then renowned; The builders next of Babel on the plain Of Sennaar, and still with vain design New Babels, had they wherewithal, would build: Others came single; he, who to be deemed A god, leaped fondly into Ætna flames, Empedocles; and he who, to enjoy Plato's Elysium, leaped into the sea,

Cleombrotus; and many more too long, Embryos, and idiots, eremites, and friars White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery. Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek In Golgotha Him dead who lives in Heaven; And they, who, to be sure of Paradise, Dying put on the weeds of Dominic, Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised; They pass the planets seven, and passed the fixed, And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs The trepidation talked, and that first moved; And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket seems To wait them with his keys, and now at foot Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when, lo! A violent cross-wind from either coast Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry Into the devious air; then might ye see Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tossed And fluttered into rags; then relics, beads, Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, The sport of winds: all these, upwhirled aloft, Fly o'er the backside of the world far off, Into a Limbo large and broad, since called The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown Long after, now unpeopled, and untrod.

PARADISE LOST.

All this dark globe the Fiend found as he passed, And long he wandered, till at last a gleam Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste His travelled steps. Far distant he decries, Ascending by degrees magnificent Up to the wall of heaven, a structure high; At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared The work as of a kingly palace-gate,

¹ Betwixt the angelical and humankind.—See Gen. vi. 4.

^\ Sennaar. - Shinar, in Babylonia.

^\ Empedocles. —A scholar of Pythagoras, who cast himself into Etna, in hope that his mysterious disappearance would lead to his being worshipped as a god. But Etna threw back the iron pattens he wore, and the end was ridicule, not worship, (Horace, De Art, Poet., v. 464.)

^&lt;sup>1</sup> Cleombrotus.—A Greek youth, so enamoured with Plato's doctrine of immortality, that he drowned himself in 2 Many more too long. - Too long to tell. Some suppose a line to be wanting here.