The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems by John Milton, Burton Raffel Read Free Book Online

boundless deep
178
      
Let us not slip 1479 th’ occasion, whether scorn
179
      
Or satiate 1480 fury yield it from our foe
180
      
    “Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild
181
      
The seat of desolation, void of light
182
      
Save what the glimmering of these livid 1481 flames
183
      
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend 1482
184
      
From off the tossing of these fiery waves
185
      
There rest, if any rest can harbor 1483 there
186
      
And, re-assembling our afflicted 1484 Powers
187
      
Consult how we may henceforth most offend 1485
188
      
Our enemy, our own loss how repair
189
      
How overcome this dire calamity
190
      
What reinforcement we may gain from hope
191
      
If not, what resolution from despair
192
      
    Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 1486
193
      
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
194
      
That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides
195
      
Prone on the flood, 1487 extended long and large
196
      
Lay floating many a rood, 1488 in bulk as huge
197
      
As whom the fables name of monstrous size
198
      
Titanian 1489 or earth-born, 1490 that warred on Jove
199
      
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
200
      
By ancient Tarsus 1491 held, 1492 or that sea-beast
201
      
Leviathan, 1493 which God of all His works
202
      
Created hugest that swim th’ ocean-stream
203
      
Him, haply 1494 slumbering on the Norway foam, 1495
204
      
The pilot of some small night-foundered 1496 skiff
205
      
Deeming 1497 some island, oft, as seamen tell
206
      
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 1498
207
      
Moors by his side under the lee, 1499 while night
208
      
Invests 1500 the sea, and wishèd morn delays
209
      
So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay
210
      
Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence
211
      
Had risen or heaved 1501 his head, but that the will
212
      
And high permission of all-ruling Heav’n
213
      
Left him at large to his own dark designs
214
      
That with reiterated crimes he might
215
      
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
216
      
Evil to others, and enraged might see
217
      
How all his malice served but to bring forth
218
      
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown
219
      
On man by him seduced, but on himself
220
      
Treble confusion, 1502 wrath, and vengeance poured
221
      
    Forthwith 1503 upright he rears from off the pool
222
      
His mighty stature. On each hand the flames
223
      
Driv’n backward slope their pointing spires and, rolled
224
      
In billows, leave in th’ midst a horrid vale
225
      
Then with expanded 1504 wings he steers his flight
226
      
Aloft, incumbent 1505 on the dusky air
227
      
That felt unusual weight, till on dry land
228
      
He lights 1506 —if it were land that ever burned
229
      
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire
230
      
And such 1507 appeared in hue 1508 as when the force
231
      
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
232
      
Torn from Pelorus, 1509 or the shattered side
233
      
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
234
      
And fuellèd entrails thence conceiving fire
235
      
Sublimed 1510 with mineral fury, aid the winds
236
      
And leave a singèd bottom 1511 all involved 1512
237
      
With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole
238
      
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate
239
      
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian 1513 flood 1514
240
      
As 1515 gods, and by their own recovered strength
241
      
Not by