O for that warning voice, which he who saw The Apocalypse heard cry in Heaven aloud, Then when the Dragon, put to second rout, Came furious down to be revenged on men, “Woe to the inhabitants on Earth!” that now, While time was, our first parents had been warned The coming of their secret foe, and scaped, Haply so scaped, his mortal snare! For now Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down, The tempter ere the accuser of mankind, To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell: Yet not rejoicing in his speed, though bold Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast, Begins his dire attempt; which, nigh the birth Now rolling, boils in his tumultuous breast, And like a devilish engine back recoils Upon himself. Horror and doubt distract His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir The hell within him; for within him Hell He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell One step, no more than from himself, can fly By change of place. Now conscience wakes despair That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse: of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue! Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad; Sometimes towards Heaven and the full-blazing sun, Which now sat high in his meridian tower: Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began:
“O thou that, with surpassing glory crowned, Look’st from thy sole dominion like the god Of this new World; at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call, But with no friendly voice, and add thy name, O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere, Till pride and worse ambition threw me down, Warring in Heaven against Heaven’s matchless King! Ah, wherefore? He deserved no such return From me, whom he created what I was In that bright