Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides, Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, Briarios or Typhon, whom the den By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream. Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixèd anchor in his skaly rind, Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay, Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought