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The prison of his tyranny who reigns By our delay? No! let us rather choose, Armed with hell flames and fury, all at once, O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into horrid arms Against the torturer; when, to meet the noise Of his almighty engine, he shall hear Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his Angels, and his throne itself Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire, His own invented torments. But perhaps The way seems difficult and steep to scale With upright wing against a higher foe. Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench Of that forgetful lake benumb not still, That in our proper motion we ascend Up to our native seat: descent and fall To us is adverse. Who but felt of late, When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, With what compulsion and laborious flight We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy then. The event is feared; should we again provoke Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find To our destruction,—if there be in hell Fear to be worse destroyed. What can be worse Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned In this abhorred deep to utter woe, Where pain of unextinguishable fire Must exercise us1 without hope of end, The vassals of his anger, when the scourge Inexorable, and the torturing hour, Call us to penance? More destroyed than thus

On either side a formidable shape.

Book II., lines 648, 649.

^\* Exercise us.—Torment or try us—the Latin sense of the word.