Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Inhabitant of heaven and heavenly-born,

Here, in perpetual agony and pain,

With terrours and with clamours compass'd round
Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed?
Thou art my father, thou my authour, thou
My being gavest me; whom should I obey
But thee? whom follow? thou wilt bring me soon
To that new world of light and bliss, among
The gods who live at ease; where I shall reign
At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems
Thy daughter and thy darling, without end.
Thus saying, from her side the fatal key,
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took;
And, towards the gate rolling her bestial train,
Forthwith the huge portcullis high up drew,
Which but herself not all the Stygian powers

Could once have moved; then in the keyhole turns
The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar
Of massy iron or solid rock with ease
Unfastens: on a sudden open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She open'd, but to shut

860

865

870

875

850

Excell'd her power; the gates wide open stood,

That with extended wings a banner'd host,

885

Under spread ensigns marching, might pass through

With horse and chariots rank'd in loose array;

So wide they stood, and like a furnace mouth

Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.

Before their eyes in sudden view appear
The secrets of the hoary deep; a dark

890

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth,

And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold

895

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand:

Strive here for mastery, and to battel bring

Their embryon atoms; they around the flag

Of each his faction, in their several clans,

883.

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,

Light-arm'd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow,
Swarm populous, unnumber'd as the sands
Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil,

Levied to side with warring winds, and poise
Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,

She open'd, but to shut Excell'd her power. "The grandeur here, both of the thought and the picture, is incomparable."-BRYDGES.

898. For hot, &c. "The reader may compare this whole description of Chaos

905

with Ovid's, and he will easily see how the Roman poet has lessened the grandeur of his, by puerile conceits and quaint antitheses. Every thing in Milton is great and masterly."-NEWTON.

906. To whom, &c. That is, to what side

900

He rules a moment: Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray,
By which he reigns: next him, high arbiter,
Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave,-
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mix'd
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds;-
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell, and look'd a while
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less peal'd
With noises loud and ruinous, (to compare

910

915

920

Great things with small) than when Bellona storms,
With all her battering engines bent to rase
Some capital city; or less than if this frame
Of heaven were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn

925

The stedfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke
Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league.
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides
Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuity: all unawares

Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep; and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft: that fury stay'd,
Quench'd in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea,
Nor good dry land; nigh founder'd on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail.
As when a gryphon, through the wilderness
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloin'd
The guarded gold; so eagerly the fiend

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,

Foever the atoms temporarily adhere, that side rules for the moment.

918. Stood on the brink. Satan pauses for a moment, terrified at the danger of his enterprise.

927. Vans, wings: so Beaumont and Fletcher have "sail-stretched wings."

938. That fury stay'd. That fiery rebuff ceased, quenched, and put out by a soft quicksand: Syrtis is explained by neither sea nor good dry land.

930

მან

940

945

943. Gryphon. The gryphon, or griffin, was a fabulous, bird-like species of animal, with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. They were fabled to dwell in the Riphaan mountains, between the Hyperboreans and the one-eyed Arimaspians, and to guard the gold of the north. These one-eyed Arimaspians were said to be of Scythia, and to adorn their hair with gold.

948. O'er bog, &c. "The difficulty of

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
At length a universal hubbub wild

Of stunning sounds and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear
With loudest vehemence: thither he plies,
Undaunted to meet there whatever power

950

955

Or spirit of the nethermost abyss

Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask

Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies,

Bordering on light; when straight behold the throne

Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread

960

Wide on the wasteful deep: with him enthroned
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things,

The consort of his reign; and by them stood
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name
Of Demogorgon; Rumour next, and Chance,

965

And Tumult and Confusion all embroil'd;

And Discord with a thousand various mouths.

To whom Satan turning boldly, thus:-Ye powers,

And spirits of this nethermost abyss,

Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy,

970

With purpose to explore or to disturb

The secrets of your realm; but by constraint
Wandering this darksome desert,- -as my way
Lies through your spacious empire

to light,

Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek

975

What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds
Confine with heaven; or if some other place,

From your dominion won, the Ethereal King

Possesses lately, thither to arrive

I travel this profound: direct my course;
Directed, no mean recompense it brings
To your behoof, if I that region lost,
All usurpation thence expell'd, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway,
Which is my present journey, and once more
Erect the standard there of ancient Night:
Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge.

Thus Satan; and him thus the anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
Answer'd:-I know thee, stranger, who thou art;
That mighty leading angel, who of late

Made head against heaven's King, though overthrown.
I saw and heard; for such a numerous host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep,
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and heaven gates
Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands

Satan's voyage is very well expressed by so many monosyllables as follow, which cannot be pronounced but slowly, and with frequent pauses."-NEWTON.

980

985

990

995

964. Orcus. Orcus for Pluto. Ades for any dark place, or the world of the dead. "The very name of Demogorgon the ancients supposed capable of producing the

Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve,
That little which is left so to defend,

Encroach'd on still through your intestine broils
Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first hell,
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath;
Now lately heaven and earth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm, link'd in a golden chain
To that side heaven from whence your legions fell:
If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger: go, and speed:
Havock, and spoil, and ruin are my gain.

He ceased; and Satan stay'd not to reply;
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity and force renew'd
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,
Into the wild expanse; and through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environ'd, wins his way; harder beset
And more endanger'd, than when Argo pass'd
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks;
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunn'd
Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steer'd.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
But he once past, soon after, when man fell,

1000

1005

1010

1015

1020

(Strange alteration!) Sin and Death amain

Following his track, (such was the will of Heaven)

1025

Paved after him a broad and beaten way

Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf

Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length

From hell continued, reaching the utmost orb

Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse
With easy intercourse pass to and fro

1030

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night

most terrible effects, which they therefore dreaded to pronounce. He is mentioned as of great power in incantations." -NEWTON.

999. If all I can, &c. As if he had said, "If all I can do will serve so (that is, by my keeping here upon my frontiers) to defend that little which is still encroach'd on through your intestine broils, I shall do that all. That your broils have weakened my sceptre is clear, for in consequence of your rebellion Hell first eneroached on my domains, it being formed out of them for the abode of the apostate angels; and then Earth with the surrounding heavens encroached on them,

1035

as formed out of Chaos for the residence of man. That is, the substance from which Hell and Earth were formed, bolonged, before the "intestine broils" took place in heaven, to the kingdom of Chaos and old Night.

1018. Justling rocks. These rocks, at the entrance of the Black Sea from the Bosporus, are called in Greek Symplegades, from two words meaning "to strike together," because they were so near that at a distance they seemed to open and shut again, and to justle one another, as the ship varied her course from side to side: so Satan's voyage through the fighting elements was more

A glimmering dawn: here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her utmost works, a broken foe,
With tumult less and with less hostile din;
That Satan, with less toil, and now with ease,
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light;
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorn'd
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

difficult and dangerous than that of the Argonauts through narrow seas betwixt justling rocks.

1052. This pendent world. "By this is meant not the Earth, but the new creation, Heaven and Earth, (line 1004,) or the new created universe; for Satan did not see the Earth yet: he was afterwards sur

1040

1045

1050

1055

prised at the sudden view of all this world at once, (iii. 542.) This new created universe, when beheld far off, appeared, in comparison with the empyreal heaven no bigger than a star of smallest magnitude when close by the moon, whose superior light causes a star so near to be scarcely visible.”—NEWTON.

« AnteriorContinuar »