National Epics Part 54

So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub Thus answered:--"Leader of those armies bright Which, but the Omnipotent, none could have foiled!

If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge Of hope in fears and dangers--heard so oft In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge Of battle, when it raged, in all a.s.saults Their surest signal--they will soon resume New courage and revive, though now they lie Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, As we erewhile, astounded and amazed; No wonder, fallen from such pernicious highth!"

He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the sh.o.r.e; his ponderous s.h.i.+eld, Ethereal temper, ma.s.sy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circ.u.mference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic gla.s.s the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.

His spear--to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand-- He walked with, to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle, not like those steps On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.

Nathless he so endured, till on the beach Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called His legions--Angel Forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when the fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe sh.o.r.e their floating carcases And broken chariot wheels. So thick bestrewn, Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change.

He called so loud that all the hollow deep Of h.e.l.l resounded:--"Princes, Potentates, Warriors, the Flower of Heaven--once yours; now lost, If such astonishment as this can seize Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?

Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern The advantage, and descending, tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?-- Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!"

_Book I._, 240-330.

APOSTROPHE TO LIGHT.

This pa.s.sage forms the beginning of Book III., in which the poet visits the realms of light after having described h.e.l.l and its inhabitants.

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!

Or of the Eternal coeternal beam May I express thee unblamed? since G.o.d is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity--dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate!

Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun, Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of G.o.d, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite!

Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair, Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

So much the rather thou, Celestial Light, s.h.i.+ne 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.

_Book III_

PARADISE REGAINED.

"A cold and n.o.ble epic."--TAINE.

Paradise regained was written by Milton, judging from a pa.s.sage in the Autobiography of Thomas Ellwood, in the winter of 1665-6, but was not published until 1671. It was printed at Milton's expense in a small volume together with Samson Agonistes.

Paradise Regained tells the story of Christ's temptation in the Wilderness, and the material was taken from the accounts of Matthew and Luke, which the poet, with great skill, expanded without essentially deviating from them.

The t.i.tle has been criticised on the ground that the poem should have extended over the whole of Christ's life on earth. But Paradise Regained was written as a sequel to Paradise Lost, and, as in the first poem the poet showed that Paradise was lost by the yielding of Adam and Eve to Satan, so in the second, he wished to show that Paradise was regained by the resistance of Christ to temptation, Satan's defeat signifying the regaining of Paradise for men by giving them the hope of Christ's second coming. Therefore the poem naturally ends with Satan's rebuff and his final abandonment of the attempt on the pinnacle of the Temple.

The poem has been criticised for its shortness, some scholars even affecting to believe it unfinished; its lack of variety, in that it has but two characters, its lack of action, and the absence of figurative language.

But with all these faults, it has a charm of its own, entirely different from that of Paradise Lost. Satan has degenerated during his years of "roaming up and down the earth;" he is no longer the fallen angel of Paradise Lost, who struggled with himself before making evil his good. He is openly given over to evil practices, and makes little effort to play the hypocrite. His temptations are worked up from that of hunger to that of the vision of the kingdoms of the earth with a wonderful power of description which makes up for the lack of action and the few actors. The pathless, rockbound desert, the old man, poorly clad, who accosts the Christ, the mountain-top from which all the earth was visible, the night of horror in the desert, and the sublime figure of the Savior, are all enduring pictures which compensate for any rigidity of treatment. If figurative language is omitted it is because the theme does not need it, and does not show that the poem is less carefully finished than Paradise Lost. Its lack of action and similarity of subject to the longer poem sufficiently account for its not meeting with popular favor. Johnson was correct when he said, "had this poem been written not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received universal praise."

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, PARADISE REGAINED.

H. C. Beeching, On the Prosody of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, 1889;

Charles Dexter Cleveland's Complete Concordance to Milton's Poetical Works, 1867;

William T. Dobson's The Cla.s.sic Poets, their Lives and Times etc., 1879;

George Gilfillan's Second Gallery of Literary Portraits, 1852, pp. 15-16;

Samuel Johnson's Milton (see his Lives of the Poets, ed. by Mrs. Alexander Napier, 1890, vol. i.);

Thomas Babington Macaulay's Milton (see his Critical and Historical Essays, ed, 10, 1860, vol. i.);

David Ma.s.son's Introduction to Paradise Regained (see his ed. of Milton's Poetical works, 1893, vol. iii., pp. 1-14);

David Ma.s.son's Life of Milton, 1880, vol. vi., 651-661;

Richard Meadowcourt's Critique on Milton's Paradise Regained, 1732;

A Critical Dissertation on Paradise Regained with Notes, 2d ed. 1748;

John Robert Seeley's Milton (see his Roman Imperialism and other Lectures and Essays, 1871, pp. 152-157);

Mark Pattison's John Milton (English Men of Letters Series), n. d.;

H. A. Taine's History of English Literature, Tr. by H. Van Laun, 1877, vol. ii.

THE STORY OF PARADISE REGAINED.

After the expulsion from Paradise of Adam and Eve, Satan and his followers did not return to h.e.l.l, but remained on earth, the fallen angels becoming the evil G.o.ds of various idolatrous nations and Satan engaging in every kind of evildoing which he knew would vex the Powers of Heaven. All the time he was troubled by the thought of the heavenly foe who he had been told would one day appear on earth to crush him and his rebel angels.

Now John had come out of the wilderness, proclaiming his mission, and among those who came to him to be baptized was one who was deemed the son of Joseph of Nazareth. John recognized in the obscure carpenter's son the one "mightier than he" whose coming he was to proclaim, and this fact was further made clear to the mult.i.tude and the observant Satan by the opening of the Heavens and the descent therefrom on Christ's head of the Dove, while a voice was heard declaring, "This is my beloved Son."

Satan, enraged, fled to the council of the fiends to announce to them the presence on earth of their long-dreaded enemy. He was empowered by them to attempt his overthrow, and they were the more confident because of his success with Adam and Eve.

Satan's purpose was known to the Eternal Father, who smiled to see him unwittingly fulfilling the plan so long foreordained for his destruction.

After his baptism, the Father had sent his Son into the wilderness to gain strength for his struggle with Sin and Death, and there Satan, in the guise of an old, poorly clad rustic, found him. Although the Son of G.o.d had wandered through the rock-bound, pathless desert, among wild beasts, without food for forty days, he had no fear, believing that some impulse from above had guided him thither before he should go out among men to do his divinely appointed task.

Then, when hunger came upon him as he wandered, thinking of past events and those to come, he met the aged man and was addressed by him.

"Sir, how came you hither, where none who ventures alone escapes alive? I ask because you look not unlike the man I lately saw baptized by John and declared the Son of G.o.d."

"I need no guide," replied the Son. "The Power who brought me here will bring me forth."

"Not otherwise than by miracle. Here we subsist only upon dry roots and must often endure parching thirst. If thou art indeed the Son of G.o.d, save thyself and relieve us wretched people by changing these stones to bread."

"Men live not by bread alone," replied the Son, "but by the word of G.o.d.

Moses in the Mount was without food and drink for forty days. Elijah also wandered fasting in the wilderness. Thou knowest who I am as I know who thou art; why shouldest thou suggest distrust to me?"