In earth above, on the celestial round
Open to heaven, and clad with air and wave,
And on that side of the great polar stream,
Where the bold Genoese touched the strand, till then
The virgin of the sea, a marble stands,
Whose shape by old Ilissus many a one
Might equal, none excel; a fresh antique,
Birth of the old world and the new, that shows
How Orpheus at the twilight doors of hell,
Fast by lulled Cerberus, with forward stoop
And hand above his patient brow, explored
The hushed and awful deep. And thus, arrived
To where he left of late his numerous league,
With standards fixed and warlike sheen and din,
To find it silent now and void and dim,
Gazed Cecrops: and the hindered Titans stood
Expecting when his voice should clear the cause
Of their delay. But nothing heard or saw
The infernal pilot, whom conjecture strange
Held dreamy mute, and fixed on leaden foot.
For them dispersed upon the battered field,
Like fear possessed of heavenly argument
Proved perilous to the disputant, as those
Who brought their mischief, and on pinions fled;
And for the passion of whatever ill
Moved toward them, like a storm-predicting host
In deep Sahara, these, from sight and sound
Self-buried, lie, and wait the dismal wave.
At length he spake; concealing what he feared,
That they through paler after-thought had fled,
Doubting the dread alliance which he brought,
Of equal power to injure as to aid.
“Or have they gone, for whom I broke your rest,
O sons of Uranus, impatient grown
To seek the foe, or by a greater power
Dispersed, without a vestige fled—oh thought
Too sad, though but conjecture, for a dream
Improbable!—I doubt; nor can surmise
Which—or what else befallen: but this I know,
That in this dreary void I left a host,
Like gods in strength, and men in multitude,
And, but by you, unmatched in earth or hell.”
To whom attentive Cain made quick reply.
“Fled—even sight should not convict the eye
Of one who knows us, although welcomed back
To worse affliction, than thy absence sought
With vain-successful mission to avoid.
Nor yet by greater force you find us fallen,
But by mistake and guile, thanks to the prompt
And helpful malice of inveterate Heaven.”
At this, all they who cowered beneath the storm,
Still felt, though past, of their angelic foe,
All to whom hope, undying, though shot through
With every star's malignancy, or pride,
Or curious inclination to behold
Their great allies, gave strength, uprose and stood;
Some towering straight and firm, some half upright;
And some from deep gulfs labored up, and gazed
On the large brood of Cœlus, whom their mate
Held with mute gesture and persuasive mien
Adroitly governed, yet, himself,—like him
Who yoked the lions, or who first bestrid
The snorting steed for battle, on the amazed
Confronted infantry seen moving swift,
And footless, like a god,—half awed, half proud.
Gyes and Cottus loomed in sight, and huge
Briareus with a hundred folded hands,
Typhœus terrible with as many heads,
Each breathing storms, immense Enceladus,
Cœlus and Creus, female Themis stern,
More feared than loved, and pale Mnemosyne;
And, from behind, Hyperion looked down,
Like his rebated orb, when half beneath,
And half above, he leans upon the earth,
And on the shadowy hills and forests bleak
That edge upon his light, and the great world
About to rise above him, frowning night
And cold against his beam, casts down, from far,
One wide, last look of majesty supreme.
These to the eye of Cain familiar seemed,
And nearer to himself, though he with those
Of younger date, and less affined, stood leagued.
And now, erect, with hoary might redressed,
And like an earth-fast oak—that stronger seems,
Its twisted fibre bared, when sacred made
To vegeance by the unvictimed bolt of Heaven,
Than when its rooted strength and verdant tower
Turned the direct north wind—before them stood
Their Elder, and undoubted paramount.
But thoughtful most the seeming shame and loss
Of his confounded myrmidons to retrieve,
Soon, at his hest, a rousing trumpet broke
With melancholy clamor through the deep.
Nor might the chains of Erebus, nor the draught,
Lethean, of unmixed despair, nor fear
Of Heaven's thunder, nor superior force
In men, or gods, or elemental powers,
Retain them idle at that summons blown:
But, to the confines of the sight, the field
Uprose, throughout, and armied all the space;
Thus, when the swooping wind a pliant marsh
Of osiers bends along, its wings o'erpast,
They rise like one, and stand with whispering leaves.
Nor did the Titans less in these admire
Each splendid feature, burnished shield emblazed,
And silver-seeming limb, and pictured crest
With shading wings or plume, than they in those
Their monstrous breadth and stature, (for their bulk,
Whether on horizontal line it poised,
Or vertical, seemed hard to tell,) and strength
And aspect, as of things in nature, hills,
Or massy clouds in the horizon heaped,
And shaped by storms, were those, as these,
Endued with life and motion. But not thus
The bearded Asar, as they frowned apart,
Or without order started from their fall,
Saw the huge ancients; and the comers deemed
The Jötuns without doubt, spirits of fire
And aching frost, the native powers of hell;—
Part of their myth unrealized till now.
And soon perhaps the war had sprung anew
Between these loose allies, had not again
The airy plague, returning with worse shock,
Made manifest the common foe. But now
The assailants hovered lower, and more near
The flight of warriors to their quarry came,
Like vultures stooping on a conquered field.
And some, with bolder fury, on the cast
Of spear and javelin following, sword in hand,
Leaped down; but the main army kept the air;
And each strange foes, and stronger, finds to cope,
And not inferior, though beneath. Wide raged
Tisiphone and her fateful sisters, sprung
From parricide, or the monstered womb of Night.
Their living twine, they resting, to the ground
Hung sleeping; or, if seated, spread around;
But now a thousand serpents hissed the ear,
And from their eyes shot madness. Otus fought,
And Ephialtes, and the iron blows
Of Steropes and Brontes clashed in air.
The triple-hundred hands of Gyes leagued
With Cottus and Briareus, searched the gloom,
And dragged down wingéd squadrons, as the arts
Of fowlers in a snare surprise their prey.
And loud Typhœus, fierce, together drove
Whole armies whirled and crushed, or wide dispersed
With storms blown east and west, and north and south;
As when a tempest with the fluttering leaves
Of a stripped forest plays, and on the air
The scattered tresses of shorn Ceres strows.
But who, though frenzied with a strength like theirs,
And by heroic meditation stern
Trained like an athlete for the mighty theme,
Would dare to sing the strife where powers diverse,
Diversely armed, and numberless to thought,
Ranged, in one field, the depths and heights of hell;
To see, if sight might be, as from the peak
Of a jarred mountain one beholds the sea
Beneath, and storm above, and vapor mixed,
In the wild clouds, with light and glancing fire,
And all the sky involved with one wide wreck
Of solid earth, in whirlwind, with torn trees
And human fabric in the darkened air:
Or as if rather the essential powers
Of water, earth, air, fire, at once should meet,
In naked elemental force, to try
Which should destroy and reign; nor might it seem
Less greatly terrible when the four chief powers
Of hell encountered, in a war that left
No second battle theirs, but one full act
Of many made, and all the lingering plot
And circumstantial march of ruin marred
With the swift access of inbreaking death.
But suddenly on the night, the element
Of tumult now, as once of silence, fell
A vast and spreading circle of clear light,
That from the side next paradise encroached
Upon the darkness, thickened more beyond;
And soon revealed the vexed and horrid space
With all its battle painted clear, and held
Distinct in its bright orb, in depth and height
And utmost bounds; as if celestial day
Had windowed their opaque dark roof, and purged
The atmospheric dross from all the clime;
And, on its edge, swept in vast demi-cirque,
The host of angels, unconcealed, it drove
Wide o'er their foes beneath; and far beyond
Alighting, they began retreat, by these
Close followed: with what cause for fear
Behold, and wonder—One of human shape,
In simple guise, unarmed, and o'er his head
A white and hovering dove! and far behind,
On all sides flocking to this emblem fair
As to a standard, legions wide-displayed,
And deep with multitude, the prospect closed;
But without spear or martial sign or sound,
Clad in the candid drapery of peace.
Yet were their garments clear not touched, nor feet
Pained by the burning soil; for, godlike, they
In moving walked not, but came gliding smooth,
Like stars adown the sky, or clouds along
The unimprinted air moved by the wind.
As from its shores, a shining river floats,
(Such things are told) unmingled through a pool,
So came the argent host; and from the van
Of glory, seeking darkness and the shades
Of deeper regions, all the dusky bands
Before them fled, like night before the morn.
Oh! that the voice were mine, and mine the ear
And visionary power of that inspired
First builder of a Christian song, whose speech
Prophetic, laboring things too high for verse,
Foretold the end of time—doomed at the sound
And dreadful confirmation by the hand
Of that eternal angel on the earth
And restless sea upborne—and all the scenes
Of glory and of darkness in the act
Of consummated earth, and heaven withdrawn
With awful pomp, and solemn trumpets blown,
Pouring alternate ecstasy and loud woe.
I too must sing of judgment: not thy theme,
Celestial seer, the mid-air throne and throng
Beneath, paining the eye with multitudes
From the discovered depths of earth and sea
Uprising to the world-dissolving trump,
And filling east and west and high and deep,—
But of the angels, fallen first, and so
Prejudged in him their head, and head no less
Of human faction: On whom now retired,
Before the unshadowed face of heaven expressed
In human lineaments, both friends and foes,
And monstrous things and shapes, a gloomy rout
From the extremest boundaries of pain.
Why done, or with what hope none knew; but him
They knew the greatest, and to where he sat,
Still like their god, though bowed, and by despair
Self-turned to stone, cast up an awful look
Of doubt and supplication. He his eyes
Fixed on the spectacle, like one long blind,
Who stares, suspectful of some dread approach;
Then half uprose, and thrice again made feint
Of rising, ere the strength in his pale limbs
His stubborn heart diffused to bear him up:
But stood, at length, with air supreme o'er fear,
A shape of heaven, or with such look and mien
As God himself, who now in human form
He dared confront, had rather been arrayed,
Shaped to the eye of heroes, when they prayed
To Jove the arbiter. Soon, through the ranks,
Opening in vista wide and deep, he moved
To meet the bright invasion. Armed he came,
Plutonian, measureless, and dread as night;
Whose king indeed he seemed, and fit to reign
Over all powers; and wide around he cast
A darkness at his coming, as a storm
That from the ridge of some bleak mountain torn
With all its clouds, moves down in earth and sky
To overwhelm the sun. But when his strides
Had measured half the space—with what design
Who knows but He who gave him power thus far?—
He faltered, and with haughty steps reversed,
Before the calm severity of mien
And feature in his opposite, retired;
But lingered so, and sought against the shame
Of his retreat to hold himself upstayed,
Each backward step impressed the bedded flint
Whereon he set his strength and sought to stand;
Till at the gates of the dark fort which held
The keys of heavenly access, and of that pit
Sole egress, their appointed keeper paused.
Immense they stood, shut by almighty power,
And barred secure against less force and skill
In human or infernal siege applied.
And here, at bay, the great apostate turned
Full on his enemy, and frowned despair;
And roused his strength, and to his soul, sublime
With sense of single greatness, while his host
Stood imbecile, up-summoned for this hour
The thoughts of all that he had been in heaven,
Or hoped or claimed on earth, or held in hell.
With steady front advanced the shining siege;
The unarmed army onward, and converged,
Came, glorious with numbers: but alone
Moved their eternal leader, and from far
His aspect shone with unremitted beam
Direct on Satan: He his dusky shield—
That heretofore, thrown back, his gloomy head
Around, and on his mighty shoulders lay
Like the horizon on the earth at eve—
Cast forward, drooping his huge spear, inclined,
But not full-levelled. All the host of saints
Stood still, and fatal sympathy first moved
A murmur in his own, with slumberous stir
As of awaking war: but onward and more near
Came the celestial Man; when once again
He moved, and with a forward step shook hell.
But at the instant, as with lightning struck,
Though none perceived the stroke, with arms upthrown,
Self-hurled, on the disputed gates he fell,
And ruined down their strength; nor fell alone,
But all his host the silent thunder felt,
And smote, with wide and simultaneous roar
Of armored limbs, the adamantine floor.
But other noise soon rung, and from the saints
Hosannah, and hosannah! sweet and loud,
In that deep cavern, from the echoing air
Sunk far beneath the roots of earth, as sung
By warbling seraphs in the top of heaven.
Now as the golden wheel of day that climbs
The precipice of the world, on that side whence
He shines at morning—brightening, as he comes,
Forests and craggy heights and seas and fields—
To early eyes, throws high into the air,
Opaque, or formless void, his welcome light,
And shapes the dark with splendid fantasy,
While hovering glories stoop upon his beam,
And crimson clouds troop in the bannered east;
So in the gloomy steeps and utmost height,
Zenith, and all sides round, of teeming hell,
Angels on cloudy wings hung looking down;
Or in the radiance hovered; or, on high,
In peopled vistas opening into heaven,
With bosom-seraphim, transcendent shapes,
And awful cherubim, before unseen
In earth or heaven, stood creation's grand
And glittering guardians, not revealed till now,
Lest deemed allies at need; and gazed, while Christ
And all the armies beatific passed,
In bright defile, o'er Satan, where he lay
Along the heap that thundered in his fall,
Supine, with upward face: But not o'erclimbed
By men thus easily, without wings to stead,
Had been the prostrate fiend. Then rose they all
Into the air, and swift the plumy throng,
Encircling, held them in their bright caress.
And in the midst, the cloud which that old fane
Made glorious with apparition of a form
Of human aspect, by awed priests beheld,
Received its body now; and like one cloud
Together rose the whole; while from the air
A voice fell on the ear of each beneath,
But seemed in Satan's, sole to him addressed—
“The Foe is judged.” And still their eyes they turned,
And still their looks hung on the rising host,
Till seen like a receding sun, and then,
In the blank height of darkness, like a star;
And then the darkness covered all, but still
They looked into its depths, nor stirred nor spake.