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Воок П.-653-685]

PARADISE LOST.

They passed, 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, unutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.¹

Meanwhile, the adversary of God and man, Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of hen 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 descried Hangs in the clouds, by equinoxial 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 seemed Far off the flying fiend. At last appear Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates. Threefolds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape; The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair; But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed

i Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire. - Virgil and Tasso had fixed all these monstrous existences in their hell long since.

With mortal sting. About her middle round A cry of hell-hounds never-ceasing barked, With wide Cerberian mouths,1 full loud, and rung A hideous peal. Yet when they list, would creep, If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb, And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled Within, unseen. Far less abhorred than these Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore. Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called In secret, riding through the air she comes, Lured 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 called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either-black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed 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 admired,3 Admired, not feared. God and His Son except, Created thing nought valued he, nor shunned; And with disdainful look thus first began:

Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape!

That darest, though grim and terrible, advance

Thy miscreated front athwart my way

To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,

That be assured, without leave asked of thee.

Commonly described as having three heads, but by some poets as having many more.

\ Trinacrian.—Sicilian.

\ Admired.—Wondered.