Nature’s works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate: there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Now had the Almighty Father from above, From the pure Empyrean where he sits High throned above all highth, bent down his eye, His own works and their works at once to view: About him all the Sanctities of Heaven Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received Beatitude past utterance; on his right The radiant image of his glory sat, His only Son. On Earth he first beheld Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the Happy Garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love, In blissful solitude. He then surveyed Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there, Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side Night In the dun air sublime, and ready now To stoop with wearied wings and willing feet On the bare outside of this World, that seemed Firm land imbosomed without firmament, Uncertain which, in ocean or in air. Him God beholding from his prospect high, Wherein past, present, future, he beholds, Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake:
“Only-begotten Son, seest thou what rage Transports our Adversary? whom no bounds Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the chains Heaped on him there, nor yet the main Abyss Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems On desperate revenge, that shall redound Upon his own rebellious head. And now, Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way Not far off Heaven, in the precincts of light, Directly towards the new-created World, And Man there placed, with purpose to assay If him by force he can destroy, or, worse, By some false guile pervert: and shall pervert; For Man will hearken to his glozing lies, And easily transgress the sole command, Sole pledge of his obedience; so will fall He and his faithless progeny. Whose fault? Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of