And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise," Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears: "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil 80 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain 110 (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake: "How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, fold! 115 Enow of such as, for their bellies' sake Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor Creep, and intrude, and climb into the lies; But lives and spreads aloft by those pure Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood, 85 Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, That strain I heard was of a higher mood: And listens to the herald of the sea, 90 He asked the waves, and asked the felon1 winds, What hard mishap hath doomed this That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues. 135 Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use5 Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes, 2 child. Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, In thy large recompense, and shalt be good To all that wander in that perilous flood. Thus sang the uncouth' swain to the oaks and rills, 186 While the still morn went out with sandals grey; He touched the tender stops of various quills,8 With eager thought warbling his Doric lay: And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, 190 And now was dropped into the western bay. At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue: To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject,-Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall,-the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great Deep. Which action passed over, the Poem hastens into the midst of things; presenting Satan, with his Angels, now fallen into Hell-described here, not in the Center (for Heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed), but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. Here Satan with his Angels, lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion; calls up him who, next in order and dignity, lay by him: they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded. They rise; their numbers; array of battle; their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech; comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven; but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy, or report, in Heaven for that Angels were long before this visible creation was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: the infernal Peers there sit in council. Of Man's first disobedience, and the The mother of mankind, what time his fruit pride Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from Reserved him to more wrath; for now the |