By falfe prefumptuous hope, the ranged Pow'rs Disband, and wand'ring, each his feveral way Purfues, as inclination or fad choice
Leads him perplex'd, where he may likelieft find
Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain
The irksome hours, till his great Chief return.
Part on the plain, or in the air fublime
Upon the wing, or in fwift race contend,
As at th' Olympian games, or Pythian fields:
Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigads form.
As when, to warn proud cities, war appears
Wag'd in the troubled sky, and armies rush
To barrel in the clouds; before each van
Prick forth the aery Knights, and couch their spears
Till thickeft legions clofe; with feaths of arms
From either end of heav'n the welkin burns.
Others, with vaft Typhaan rage, more fell!
Rend up bath rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind: hell fcarce holds the wild uproar.
As when Alcides from Oechalia crown'd
With conqueft, felt th' invenom'd robe, and tore
Through paimup by the roots Thessalian pines 5
And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw
Into th' Euboic Sea. Others more mild
Retreated in a filent valley, fing
With notes. Angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battel and complain that fate
Free virtue should inthrall to force, or chance,
Their fong was partial; but the harmony (What could it lefs when spirits immortal sing?) Sufpended hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In difcourfe more fweet, (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense) Others apart fat on a hill retir'd,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high,
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate;
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge abfolute;
And found no end, in wandring mazes loft.
Of good, and evil, much they argu'd then,
Of happiness, and final misery,
Paffion, and apathy, and glory, and shame :
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy !
Yet, with a pleasing forcery, could charm
Pain for a while, or anguish; and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdurate breaft
With stubborn patience, as with triple steel.
Another part, in fquadrons and grofs bands
On bold adventure to discover wide
That difmal world (if any clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation) bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks
Of four infernal rivers, that difgorge
Into the burning lake their baleful ftreams:
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron, of forrow; black and deep!
Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream: fierce Phlegeton
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with raged
Far off from thefe, a flow and filent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her wat'ry labyrinth; whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former ftate and Being forgets,
Forgets both joy, and grief, pleasure, and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark, and wild; beat with perpetual ftorms
Of whirlwind, and dire hail; which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile: all elfe, deep snow and ice:
A gulf profound! as that Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata, and mount Cafius old,
Where armies whole have funk: the parching air
Burns frore, and cold perfoms th' effect of fire.
Thither by harpy-footed furies hal'd,
At certain revolutions, all the damn'd
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Offierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce!
From beds of raging fire to ftarve in ice
Their foft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immoveable, infix'd, and frozen round,
Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire,
They ferry over this Lethaan Sound
Both to and fro, their forrow to augment,
And wish, and ftruggle as they pass, to reach
The tempting ftream, with one small drop to lose
In fweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and fo near the brink :
But Fate withstands, and to oppofe th'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 th' advent'rous bands,
With shudd'ring horror pale, and eyes agaft,
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No reft through many a dark and dreary vale
They pafs'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 univerfe of death! which God by curfe
Created evil; for evil only good,
Where alllife dies, death lives, and nature breeds
Perverse, all monftrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable; and worse
Than Fables yet have feign'd, or fear concciv'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 fwift wings, and tow'rds the gates of hell
Explores his folitary flight : fometimes
He fcours the right-hand coaft, fometimes the left:
Now shaves with level wing the Deep; then foars
Up to the fiery concave tow'ring high.
As when far off at fea a fleet defcry'd,
Hangs in the clouds, by Æquinoctial winds
Chofe failing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate, and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood
Through the wide Æthiopian, to the Cape
Ply, ftemming nightly tow'rd the Pole : so seem'd
Far off the flying Fiend. At laft appear
Hell bounds, high-reaching to the horrid roof;
And thrice threefold the gates: three folds were
Three iron, three of adamantine rock;
Impenetrable, impal'd with circling fire,
Yet unconfum'd. Before the gates there fat
On either fide a formidable shape;
The one feem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a fcaly fold,
Voluminous and vaft! a ferpent arm'd
With mortal fting: about her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never ceafing bark'd
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal: yet, when they lift, would creep
If ought difturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there ; yet there still bark'd, and howl'd
Within, unfeen. Far lefs abhor'd than these
Vex'd Scylla, bathing in the fea that parts
Calabria from the hoarfe Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the Night-hag, when call'd
In fecret, riding through the air she comes
Lur'd with the fimell of infant-blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the lab'ring Moon
Eclipfes at their charms. The other shape
(If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
Diftinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or fubftance might be call'd that shadow feem'd,
|