Poem 10

So saying, with delight he snuffed the smell Of mortal change on Earth. As when a flock Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote, Against the day of battle, to a field, Where armies lie encamped, come flying, lured With scent of living carcases designed For death the following day in bloody fight: So scented the grim Feature, and upturned His nostril wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his quarry from so far. Then both, from out Hell-gates, into the waste Wide anarchy of Chaos damp and dark Flew diverse, and with power (their power was great) Hovering upon the waters, what they met Solid or slimy, as in raging sea Tossed up and down, together crowded drove, From each side shoaling, towards the mouth of Hell; As when two polar winds, blowing adverse Upon the Cronian sea, together drive Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined way Beyond Petsora eastward, to the rich Cathaian coast. The aggregated soil Death with his mace petrific, cold and dry, As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm As Delos, floating once; the rest his look Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move, And with asphaltic slime; broad as the gate Deep to the roots of Hell the gathered beach They fastened, and the mole immense wrought on Over the foaming Deep high-arched, a bridge Of length prodigious, joining to the wall Immovable of this now fenceless World, Forfeit to Death; from hence a passage broad, Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell. So, if great things to small may be compared, Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke, From Susa, his Memnonian palace high, Came to the sea, and, over Hellespont Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined, And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves. Now had they brought the work by wondrous art Pontifical, a ridge of pendent rock, Over the vexed Abyss, following the track Of Satan, to the self-same place where he First lighted from his wing, and landed safe From out of Chaos, to the outside bare Of this round World. With pins of adamant And chains they made all fast, too fast they made And durable; and now in little space The confines met of empyrean Heaven And of this World, and on the left hand Hell With long reach interposed; three several ways, In sight, to