EVE'S LAMENT ON HER EXPULSION FROM PARADISE.
O UNEXPECTED stroke, worse than of death! Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave Thee, native soil! these happy walks and shades, Fit haunt of gods? where I had hope to spend, Quiet though sad, the respite of that day That must be mortal to us both. O flowers, That never will in other climate grow, My early visitation, and my last
At eve, which I bred up with tender hand, From the first opening bud, and gave ye names! Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial15 fount? Thee lastly, nuptial bower! by me adorned With what to sight or smell was sweet! from thee How shall I part, and whither wander down Into a lower world; to this obscure
And wild? how shall we breathe in other air Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?
THE SUBSIDING OF THE WATERS OF THE DELUGE.
He looked and saw the ark hull16 on the flood,
Which now abated; for the clouds were fled, Driven by a keen north wind, that, blowing dry, Wrinkled the face of Deluge, as decayed; And the clear Sun on his wide watery glass Gazed hot, and of the fresh wave largely drew, As after thirst; which made their flowing shrink From standing lake to tripping ebb, that stole With soft foot towards the Deep; who now had stopt His sluices, as the Heaven his windows shut. The ark no more now floats, but seems on ground, Fast on the top of some high mountain fixed. And now the tops of hill, as rocks, appear; With clamour thence the rapid currents drive, Towards the retreating sea, their furious tide. Forthwith from out the ark a raven flies, And after him, the surer messenger, A dove sent forth once and again to spy Green tree or ground, whereon his foot may light: The second time returning, in his bill An olive-leaf he brings, pacific sign:
15 ambrosial, salutary, delicious, like ambrosia, the fabled food of the pagan gods.
16 hull, fall to one side, as a ship run aground.
Anon, dry ground appears, and from his ark The ancient Sire descends, with all his train, Then with uplifted hands, and eyes devout, Grateful to Heaven, over his head beholds A dewy cloud, and in the cloud a bow Conspicuous with three listed' colours gay, Betokening peace from God, and covenant new.
SAMSON'S LAMENT FOR THE LOSS OF HIS SIGHT. O LOSS of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime's work of God, to me's extinct, And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased, Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me; They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors, or without, still a fool,
In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created Beam, and thou great Word, Let there be light, and light was over all; Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? The sun to me is dark,
And silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave1o!
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,
She all in every part; why was the sight To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quenched?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, That she might look, at will, through every pore? Then had I not been thus exiled from light, As in the land of darkness, yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death,
17 listed, striped.
18 prime, first.
19 Hid in her vacant interlunar cave!
During that part of the month in which the dark side of the moon is turned to the earth.
And buried; but, O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave; Buried, yet not exempt,
By privilege of death and burial,
From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs: But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
DESCRIPTION OF A LADY SINGING.
[From the Masque of Comus.]
CAN any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? Sure something holy lodges in that breast, And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testify his hidden residence.
How swiftly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness, till it smiled! I have oft heard My mother Circe" with the Sirens 22 three, Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs; Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul, And lap it in Elysium; Scylla's wept, And chid her barking waves into attention, And fell Charybdis25 murmured soft applause: Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense: And in sweet madness robbed it of itself: But such a sacred and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss, I never heard till now.
20 obnoxious, exposed to.
21 Circe, a celebrated enchantress in the heathen mythology. She wasfabled to be the daughter of the Sun.
22 Sirens, the Sirens were nymphs fabled to inhabit an island in the western Mediterranean; so sweet was their song, that mariners who heard it, forgot home and all its endearments, and steering direct to the island, were wrecked on its rocks.
23 flowery-kirtled, wearing a kirtle or gown embroidered with flowers.
24 Naiades, nymphs of the sea. 25 Scylla and Charybdis, the one was a rock, and the other a whirlpool, in the straits of Messina, between Sicily and Italy, that proved very destructive to the early voyagers. They were fabled by the poets to be cruel monsters that devoured mariners.
[From the PARADISE REGAINED.]
And either tropic26 now
'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; the clouds, From many a horrid rift abortive27, poured Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire In ruin reconciled: nor slept the winds Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad From the four hinges of the world, and fell On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines, Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks, Bowed their stiff necks, loaded with stormy blasts, Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then, O patient Son of God, yet only stoodst Unshaken! Nor yet stayed the terror there; Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
Environed thee, some howled, some yelled, some shrieked, Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Satst unappalled in calm and sinless peace! Thus passed the night so foul, till morning fair Came forth, with pilgrim steps, in amice* gray; Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar Of thunder, chased the clouds, and laid the winds, And grisly spectres, which the fiend had raised To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire. And now the sun with more effectual beams Had cheered the face of earth, and dried the wet From drooping plant or dropping tree; the birds, Who all things now behold more fresh and green, After a night of storm so ruinous,
Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and spray, To gratulate the sweet return of morn.
HAIL, holy light, offspring of Heaven first born, Or of the Eternal co-eternal 30 beam,
May I express thee, unblamed! Since God is light, And never but in unapproached light, Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
26 tropic, the tropics are imaginary lines that mark the limits of the ecliptic, or apparent annual path of the sun through the heavens.
27 abortive, springing from.
28 amice, a robe or garment anciently worn by the clergy.
29 gratulate, welcome.
30 co-eternal, existing with, from eternity.
Bright effluence31 of Bright essence increate. Or hearest thou rather, pure ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun, Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, 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 Orphean3 lyre, I sung of Chaos and eternal night,
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, Through hard and rare; thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene35 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 Mæonides37, And Tiresiasse and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers, as the wakeful bird 40 Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. 31 effluence, that which flows from
Thus with the year
36 Thamyris, an ancient poet, said in fable to have been deprived of sight for contending against the Muses.
37 Mæonides, a name given to Homer.
38 Tiresias, an ancient soothsayer, fabled to have been struck blind by Juno.
39 Phineus, a king of Thrace, fabled to have been punished with blindness for cruelty to his children.
40 wakeful bird, the nightingale.
« PreviousContinue » |