Classic Poem

Withdrawn from that dire field, and far remote
Each from the other in the unbounded waste,
The hostile powers took counsel for their state
What farther, on each part, might be devised
To end the war, and in their vexed domain
Fix the disputed sceptre. And not long
The place to which the angelic tribes retired
To build again the wreck of war, remained
Without intelligent sound amidst the roar
Of elements dismayed, and guttural dash
And low-lisped threatenings of the sinking storm.
First, Baal lingered up, and cast around
A sullen eye, as if to seek a foe
Or challenge accusation; but none stirred.
Some sat with head bowed low, some lay supine
At monstrous length, and others, half reclined,
Looked up into the darkness with fixed eye.
But by their apathy not less enraged,
His fury dashed itself against despair,
In words like these: “Since none who shared with me
This late prodigious fortune, would impeach
My conduct of the war, or cares to hint
It otherwise had fallen had Satan led,
There haply needs not to enforce my words
The rebel-dared decadence of this hand.
Yet why of words speak I? at all why speak!
'Tis not the skill of words can cure these wounds,
Or heal the breach in our strong title up:
It lies not in the flowery epilogue
To an act barren of glory, or the pomp
Of eloquent declaim 'gainst earless fate,
To excuse dishonor, thus dishonored more,
And doubly shamed defeat, from foes so weak.
But this we all have proved long since, that fate,
Who to the strong gave courage, on the weak
Bestowed more cunning, and, for want of power
Found in themselves, the mastery o'er powers
Extrinsic: yet their artifice once known,
What more can it avail? But strength bestowed
Is a perpetual gift, if courage not deserts
The citadel of all power. Rise then, and arm!
Prevent their new devices, and perchance
Their triumph may prove prologue, in the end,
To worse disgrace, and be to our defeat
As when one lifts a foe above his head
To dash him from the height beneath his feet.”
He spake; but none who bowed looked up, and they
Who flooded all the field with disarray,
And loose disordered arms, rose not, nor stirred.
Then to the moody senate, from his seat,
Composed, nor with defeat in look or mien,
Stood up mercurial Asmod the divine:
His argent shield, thrown back in peaceful guise,
Horizoned, round, his head and shoulders fair;
And on his ebon spear he leaned, with mien
That made it seem for this, not war designed.
And thus, unchecked by Baal's hostile eye,
He spake. “Much have I heard of late, oh friends,
Since the all-golden day of our estate
Gave place to this sad night, in which we dream,
With strange invention—heard and pondered much,
In the celestial argument of gods,
And imitative poesy of men,
Of destiny, necessity, and fate:
But only this have learned thus far, that fate
Is power, and power in us is fate, till met
With greater power, be it of strength, or skill
That makes strength instrumental. Both we find
Abundant in our foe, though of the first
Our leader but complains, with what just cause
Both to accuse ye know. Omniscient craft
I, least, can doubt in them, who me so oft,
Their instigator to device, have taught
Means to the end. The race, in motion warm,
Symposiac and amorous, yet forced
To rear their lives upon an iron soil,
And make their over-peopled rock yield life
Against its nature, every faculty
Of art apply, exhaust; and hither still
The warlike breed descend, and bring to these
Who arm against us each invention strange,
Each artifice and new implement of war—
Huge catapult, or enginery to raze
Walled cities at a blow, or overthrow
Whole armies, at safe distance, and secure.
What can avail blind force, though armed like Jove,
And limbed like Atlas, that bears up the world,
Against high stratagem, that turns its harm
Against itself, and binds it with the chain
Of its own rage, toils in its own attempt,
And makes its arms the armory whence it draws
Means for assault. Sooner shall we, here shut
Under the dark, unyielding doors of earth,
Storm the closed gates of heaven, and repossess
The seats imperial where our ruin sits,
Or, from this gulf of night ascending up,
Hang trophies on the pillars of the sun,
Than found a kingdom, here, upon the forced
Subjection of these less, yet more than gods.
Our utmost flight of hope must perch, this side
Success, on special victory, whose bruit
May clamor 'gainst the fame of this defeat.
But from what stratagem, since even here
Mere force is vain, as this sad field attests,
Shall hope commence? I know of none but this;
They through old instinct, though with choice of state,
Still keep their ancient shape, firm-knit to tread
The earth their limitation. Also we,
Though in this dungeon shut with human gnomes,
Agile and tall remain, with wings to soar,
Or dive, or sweep the air in circles, or extend
The equator, or the horizontal plane,
Or the deep pole. I counsel, then, to ascend
Into the darkness, bearing all our war,
And, coasting near the upper light and air,
Until arrived to where they sit secure,
In loose unharnessed ease, and pæans sing,
On them—whose wave of battle in this deep
Broke highest, and o'erwhelmed us—down descend
In cataract of main war. Which, if approved,
With instant speed perform: lest while we sit
And meditate the voyage, they prevent
Our purpose with the sudden clang of wings
Induced at like suggestion, and rain chains
And fiery missiles from the darkness down;
Or come trailing along the ground some damned
Invention, and strange implement, to throw
Huge fragments, crags, and flaming stones, and turn
Hell's bottom on our heads, who sit thus prone,
Disordered, unresolved, a host disarmed
With arms around, as if, without a foe,
By their own weapons fallen; so dismayed
And lost we seem, without all pride and shame,
Thus miserably escaped their first assault.”
He ceased; and they approved his words as wise,
And fit to become deeds. Straight, from the heap
Of waste confusion Alpine statures tall
Gathered themselves upright, and plucked their arms,
And standards reared, redressed their shattered gear,
And in their threatening limbs, new-armed, their strength
And purpose felt, and poised themselves in air
On their long-idle wings; with not less stir
Than the black cranes in Lithuania's fens
When, from the austral winter overpast,
Rise all the stormy clans, and seek the north.

Meantime, the earth-descended powers convened
In martial diet; and—high-seated Cain
First worshipped with obeisance due—began
Colonial Cecrops, father of the West,
And founder of the famed Athenian pile:
With weighty brow, that frowned high enterprise
Above sagacious eyes that tempered fear,
He stood erect, and crowned with that sole star
Of Hesperus; and these his words, that fell
With sound of weight, that echoed ponderous thought.
“Not less, in this armed council, than the first
To exult, I glory in the event
Of this late trial with the elder powers
Of their celestial vaunt. Yet victory I know
Not certain conquest; and to overthrow
Not always subjugates; nor in one field
Is empire lost or won; nor can one day
Decide the next, when foes so potent join.
They who best know and prize themselves, least fear
To prize their enemies. To us their power
Is neither shame nor loss, to think them weak
No credit to our own; nor shames it strength
To seek for aid, that oft prevents its need:
Which, not delayed, I counsel for our cause,
Against the next encounter, sure to fall.
None here would use a thought to look for help
To mighty Aïdoneus where he sits
With Hecate forlorn. Nor, if unsought,
Perhaps for sullen ages may he rise
From his stern apathy: while these will wage
Eternal war; and as the blue-eyed race
Of Asar, daily, in their own demesne,
On bannered fields, with joyful peal of arms,
Contend in tournament and knightly joust,
Or downright battle soon repaired—so we,
Not with like gentle purpose and stern love,
But fierce unsated hate, the deadly rut
Of unrepairing rage, and pined revenge,
By slaughter unappeased, but fed by strife,
Shall meet a foe as strong and stern; and, each
Unconquerable, to each the endless strife
Shall be defeat. In numbers we exceed,
And this advantage will our party still,
With augmentation, keep; for every death
On earth above, save of the few who pass
To blest Elysium, is to us a birth:
While to their side, the kindred powers of heaven,
Unprocreant, immortal, and ordained
Infallible, yield not the numerous might
Of their addition. But we need not wait
The harvest of our race for multitude,
If not controlling, not to be controlled.
The sons of Cœlus and of Odin sit,
Titans and fierce Einherier, undisturbed,
Each in their toparchy; and have not heard
The larum of loud war, or from the noise
Of elemental conflict in these gulfs
Distinguished it. I counsel that from these,
Ambassadors, on early foot, entreat
Availful aid. Besides the advantage sought,
'Twere to mankind much shame that our bad foes,
Who no relationship sustain or ties,
But of degree or rank, should make one cause,
And we, derived from the same loins, with one
Sole father, and one common spring
Of all our streams, not make one flood, one sea
Of confluent battle, and in one armed wave
Break on their leaguer, or main head of fight,
From Saturn, of the Titans youngest born,
So the Olympian parables unfold,
(Whom the pragmatic Judeans would fain
Demonstrate Noah,) sprang the race of gods.
Him vengeful Earth, we story, armed with steel
And saved from Uranus what time he thrust
His giant offspring from his sight beneath
The floor of day, but whom by Heaven himself
They celebrate preserved. From him, three sons
Shared all the earth we also said, and named
Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. But the Greeks
To old Iäpetus trace the human stream,
Brother of Saturn, whom these call his son;
From him Iöan, whence the Iönians spread
Westward; and from fair Gomer, eldest born
Of the same sire, the north derives its swarm,
That from the flowery south poured forth, to hive
In frost and cold; from him it takes its name
Cimmeria, thence the Cymri, and from him
The Rome-recoiling German; and his sons,
Guileless and simple, virtuous without lore,
And warlike without pomp, spread from the steep
Sides of hoar Caucasus to the region dark
That neighbors the sea-washed Atlantis vast,
And northward, at the entrance to these shades,
Shores on the cavernous pole. There oft, at night,
The solitary fisher hears upon his door
The hollow summons to his task, and finds
His boat deep-freighted, sinking to the edge
Of the dark flood, and voices hears, yet sees
No substance; but arrived where once again
His skiff floats free, hears friends to friends
Give lamentable welcome: the unseen
Shore resounds, and all the specious air
Weeps forth the names of father, brother, wife.
There the weak commonalty of mankind
Most haunt, reluctant exiles, who their fond
Abode choose regional to earth; the more
Heroic enter the immediate heart
Of most profound perdition, and divide,
In these interior depths, their full-swayed power,
Imperial, with the ancient thrones of night.
But not the whole of our unhappy race
Make that dark journey: they who erred
Through Heaven's ark counsel, or by high constraint,
Just homicides, and violators bred
To violence, the rash incontinent,
And they who break injurious oaths, at death
Are wafted to deep-realmed Atlantis, o'er
The wide sea unwounded by a keel.
Immense and dark the land; all the remote
Wild region in one solemn shadow lies
Of green contiguous woods, with rivers spanned,
That in their arms wind half the earth, and hills
Dependent, and dividing the blue air,
From arctic to antarctic Cold: and here
Live the new race a timid, twilight life,
Oblivious and expiatory, spent
In feeble war or chase. But soon, (so shows
Our divination dark, a gift no more,
Itself informs us, to suborn the praise
And adoration, as to gods, of men,—
Once yielded to our oracles, on earth
For ever sealed; yet who can cease to feel
A human interest in our common race,
And their dark history, storied or foretold?)—
Soon shall this upper limbo, and in part
Elysium, dissolve; the older breed
Of actual men shall touch the farther shore
Of ocean, and the hybrid race shall fade
Like hyperborean flowers, that in the rear
Of winter spring, and at his bleak regress
Fall, sickled by the steely touch of frost.
West from the gulfèd pillars of the wide,
Victorious Hercules, swift equine ships
Shall ride the unfooted ocean-road, before
O'erpassed but by the chariot of the sun;
Or when his golden cup Alcmena's child
Employed for Erythea, and against
Old Ocean bent his bow, so fable tells.
These, one shall guide, whose greater deeds shall make
Mine, and the more vociferated fame
Of Jason—in the voyage that called gods
To venture, and pressed Theseus to the oar,
The Dioscuri, and the aged might
Of Hercules—an old-time tale, a faint,
Far-listened echo in the ears of men.
Him following, the sons of that stern race,
Here seated by themselves, but whose strong aid,
If I advise with wisdom, should be sought,
Shall there build up a world against the old,
And balance East and West, and wield far-swayed
But liberal empire, and themselves their king.
But what imports us more than such discourse,
Though what at other times best pleased to hear,
Is now to fortify our assaulted state
With league proposed to their great ancestry,
Already storied in deific runes,
And to our own and theirs, the Titan brood,
Antediluvian; and to this end,
Let speedy heralds to the north and east,
Their early-seized partitions of this realm,
Fly, winged with your commands.” Here ceased the sound;
And the pleased diet on his proper hand
The peaceful wand imposed, and bade him seek
The Titans with soft words; the other charge
On fleet, aerial Perseus bestowed;
Then rose, and filled the dusky height with shape
And feature, and, for dawn of danger, roused
The hoarse, prophetic thunder of a camp.