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More safe I sing with mortal voice unchanged To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn Purples the east. Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few. But drive far off the barbarous dissonance Of Baechus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard1 In Rodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned Both harp and voice; nor could the muse defend Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores; For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream.

Say, goddess, what ensued when Raphael, The affable Archangel, had forewarned Adam, by dire example, to beware Apostasy, by what befell in heaven To those apostates, lest the like befall In Paradise to Adam or his race, Charged not to touch the interdicted tree, If they transgress, and slight that sole command, So easily obeyed amid the choice Of all tastes else to please their appetite Though wandering. He, with his consorted Eve, The story heard attentive, and was filled With admiration and deep muse,2 to hear Of things so high and strange; things to their thought So unimaginable as hate in heaven, And war so near the peace of God in bliss, With such confusion: but the evil, soon

^&lt;sup>1</sup> The Thracian bard.—The Thracians were said to have torn the poet Orpheus, the son of the Muse Calliope, to pieces. Milton here refers to the riotous cavaliers and courtiers of the time of Charles II., from whose hands he ² With admiration and deep muse.—With wonder and deep thought.