Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (42 page)

In our defense, lest unawares we lose

This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.’

   “To whom the Son with calm aspect and clear

Lightning divine, ineffable, serene,

Made answer. ‘Mighty Father, thou thy foes

Justly hast in derision
⁷³⁶
, and secure

Laugh’st at their vain designs and tumults vain,

Matter to me of glory, whom their hate

Illustrates
⁷³⁹
, when they see all regal power

Giv’n me to quell their pride, and in event
⁷⁴⁰

Know whether I be dextrous
⁷⁴¹
to subdue

Thy rebels, or be found the worst in Heav’n.’

   “So spake the Son, but Satan with his powers

Far was advanced on wingèd speed, an host

Innumerable as the stars of night,

Or stars of morning, dewdrops
⁷⁴⁶
, which the sun

Impearls on every leaf and every flower.

Regions they passed, the mighty regencies
⁷⁴⁸

Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones

In their triple degrees
⁷⁵⁰
, regions to which

All thy dominion, Adam, is no more

Than what this garden is to all the earth,

And all the sea, from one entire globose

Stretched into longitude; which having passed

At length into the limits of the north

They came, and Satan to his royal seat

High on a hill, far blazing, as a mount

Raised on a mount, with pyramids
⁷⁵⁸
and tow’rs

From diamond quarries hewn, and rocks of gold,

The palace of great Lucifer, (so call

That structure in the dialect of men

Interpreted) which not long after, he

Affecting
⁷⁶³
all equality with God,

In imitation of that mount
⁷⁶⁴
whereon

Messiah was declared in sight of Heav’n,

The Mountain of the Congregation
⁷⁶⁶
called;

For thither he assembled all his train,

Pretending so commanded to consult

About the great reception of their King,

Thither to come, and with calumnious art

Of counterfeited truth thus held their ears.

   “ ‘Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,

If these magnific titles yet remain

Not merely titular, since by decree

Another now hath to himself engrossed
⁷⁷⁵

All power, and us eclipsed under the name

Of King anointed, for whom all this haste

Of midnight march, and hurried meeting here,

This only to consult how we may best

With what may be devised of honors new

Receive him coming to receive from us

Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile,

Too much to one, but double how endured,

To one and to his image now proclaimed?

But what if better counsels might erect

Our minds and teach us to cast off this yoke
⁷⁸⁶
?

Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend

The supple knee? Ye will not, if I trust

To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves

Natives and sons of Heav’n possessed before

By none, and if not equal all, yet free,

Equally free; for orders and degrees

Jar not with liberty, but well consist.

Who can in reason then or right assume

Monarchy over such as live by right

His equals, if in power and splendor less,

In freedom equal? Or can introduce

Law and edict on us, who without law

Err not, much less for this
⁷⁹⁹
to be our Lord,

And look for adoration to th’ abuse

Of those imperial titles which assert

Our being ordained to govern, not to serve?’

   “Thus far his bold discourse without control

Had audience, when among the Seraphim

Abdiel
⁸⁰⁵
, than whom none with more zeal adored

The deity, and divine commands obeyed,

Stood up, and in a flame of zeal severe

The current of his fury thus opposed.

   “ ‘O argument blasphemous, false and proud!

Words which no ear ever to hear in Heav’n

Expected, least of all from thee, ingrate,

In place thyself so high above thy peers.

Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn

The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn,

That to his only Son by right endued

With regal scepter, every soul in Heav’n

Shall bend the knee, and in that honor due

Confess him rightful King? Unjust thou say’st,

Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free,

And equal over equals to let reign,

One over all with unsucceeded
⁸²¹
power.

Shalt thou give law to God, shalt thou dispute

With him the points of liberty, who made

Thee what thou art, and formed the pow’rs of Heav’n

Such as he pleased, and circumscribed their being?

Yet by experience taught we know how good,

And of our good, and of our dignity

How provident he is, how far from thought

To make us less, bent rather to exalt

Our happy state under one head more near

United. But to grant it thee unjust,

That equal over equals monarch reign:

Thyself though great and glorious dost thou count,

Or all angelic nature joined in one,

Equal to him begotten Son, by whom
⁸³⁵

As by his Word the mighty Father made

All things, ev’n thee, and all the spirits of Heav’n

By him created in their bright degrees,

Crowned them with glory, and to their glory named

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,

Essential powers, nor by his reign obscured,

But
⁸⁴²
more illustrious made, since he the head

One of our number thus reduced becomes,

His laws our laws, all honor to him done

Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage,

And tempt not these; but hasten to appease

Th’ incensèd Father, and th’ incensèd Son,

While pardon may be found in time besought.’

   “So spake the fervent Angel, but his zeal

None seconded, as out of season judged,

Or singular and rash, whereat rejoiced

Th’ Apostate, and more haughty thus replied.

‘That we were formed then say’st thou? And the work

Of secondary hands, by task transferred

From Father to his Son? Strange point and new!

Doctrine which
⁸⁵⁶
we would know whence learnt: who saw

When this creation was? Remember’st thou

Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?

We know no time when we were not as now;

Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised
⁸⁶⁰

By our own quick’ning power, when fatal course

Had circled his full orb, the birth mature

Of this our native Heav’n, ethereal sons.

Our puissance is our own, our own right hand
⁸⁶⁴

Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try

Who is our equal: then thou shalt behold

Whether by supplication we intend

Address
⁸⁶⁸
, and to begirt th’ Almighty throne

Beseeching or besieging
⁸⁶⁹
. This report,

These tidings carry to th’ anointed King;

And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight.’

   “He said, and as the sound of waters deep

Hoarse murmur echoed to his words applause

Through the infinite host, nor less for that

The flaming seraph fearless, though alone

Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold.

   “ ‘O alienate from God, O spirit accursed,

Forsaken of all good; I see thy fall

Determined, and thy hapless crew involved

In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread

Both of thy crime and punishment: henceforth

Not more be troubled how to quit the yoke

Of God’s Messiah; those indulgent laws
⁸⁸³

Will not be now vouchsafed, other decrees

Against thee are gone forth without recall;

That golden scepter which thou didst reject

Is now an iron rod to bruise and break

Thy disobedience. Well thou didst advise,

Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly

These wicked tents devoted
⁸⁹⁰
, lest the wrath

Impendent, raging into sudden flame,

Distinguish not: for soon expect to feel

His thunder on thy head, devouring fire.

Then who created thee lamenting learn,

When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know.’

   “So spake the Seraph Abdiel faithful found,

Among the faithless, faithful only he;

Among innumerable false, unmoved,

Unshaken, unseduced,
⁸⁹⁹
unterrified,

His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;

Nor number, nor example with him wrought

To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind

Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,

Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained

Superior, nor of violence feared aught;

And with retorted scorn
⁹⁰⁶
his back he turned

On those proud tow’rs to swift destruction doomed.”

5.
temperate vapors bland
: soothing and perfectly proportioned vapors. Sleep, it was believed, was caused by vapors arising in the stomach. Adam’s benign internal system is here perfectly blended with the external breezes and streams of Eden.
th’ only sound:
the sound only.

6.
fuming rills
: foaming brooks; some editors gloss fuming as “misting,” but the exhalations of lines 185–6 are not said to rise from streams.
Aurora:
goddess of the dawn.

15.
peculiar
: its (beauty’s) own, from the Latin
peculium
, “private property.”

16.
Zephyrus on Flora breathes
: The west wind (
Zephyrus
) blows gently (
breathes
) on the flowers (
Flora
, goddess of flowers).

17–25.
Awake … liquid sweet:
The language of Adam’s aubade is drawn from Song of Solomon 2.10–13, 7.12.

21.
prime
: sunrise, or the first hour of the day, which in Paradise is always six o’clock.

22.
blows
: blooms.

23.
balmy reed
: balsam.

38.
Why sleep’st thou Eve?
: Satan used much the same formula, as we will soon learn (l. 673), to awaken Beëlzebub, his first co-conspirator.

44.
his eyes
: the stars.

47.
still
: always.

60.
god
: angel. See
CD
1.5.

61.
reserve
: referring to both God’s restriction on the fruit and man’s self-restraint.

65.
horror chilled
: Cp. 9.890.

66.
vouched with
: affirmed by.

79.
“The words
as we
are so placed between the two sentences, as equally to relate to both” (Todd).

94.
sad
: grave, serious.

98.
uncouth
: strange, unpleasant.

100–13.
But … late:
The main outlines of this conventional account of the role of “Fancy” (sometimes called “Phantasy”) in dreaming can be found in Renaissance encyclopedias (Svendsen 1969, 36–38); Sir John Davies,
Nosce Teipsum
, 46–47; and Robert Burton,
The Anatomy of Melancholy
, 139–40.

109.
cell
: ventricle of the brain.

115.
our last evening’s talk
: Yesterday they spoke in general of the prohibition on the Tree of Knowledge (4.419–28) and, prompted by Eve’s question, about why the stars shine at night (4.657–88). Both concerns reappear in Eve’s dream. Yet only the second conversation took place at evening.

118.
so
: provided that it remains;
unapproved:
unchosen.

123.
wont to be
: are accustomed to being.

133–34.
he ere they fell/Kissed:
Adam’s tender gesture enacts the words
be not sad
(l. 116) and
Be not disheartened then, nor cloud those looks
(l. 122) from his just-concluded speech.

146–50.
Their morning prayers unite the fallen alternatives of deliberate artistic elaboration (
various style
), favored by Anglicans in Milton’s day, and spontaneous inspiration (
holy rapture, Unmeditated
), favored by Puritans.

147.
wanted
: lacked.

150.
numerous
: subject to numbers, therefore measured, rhythmic, musical.

153–208.
Giving voice to Creation, the orisons evoke Psalm 148 primarily, with touches drawn from the “Song of the Three Children,” prescribed for morning prayers as the canticle “Benedicite omnia opera Domini” in the Book of Common Prayer.

165.
Cp. Rev. 22.13 (“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last”), and Ben Jonson, “To Heaven,” l. 10.

166–67.
Fairest of stars:
Venus or Lucifer;
last … dawn:
Venus, the last star of morning, is also, as Hesperus, the first star of evening.

178.
not without song
: the music of the spheres, inaudible on Earth after the Fall; see
Nat Ode
125–29,
Arcades
63–73.

181.
in quaternion
: in a group of four (earth, air, fire, and water).

205.
still
: always.

214.
pampered
: overgrown.

215–19.
Fruitless embraces … leaves:
The feminine vine curled about the masculine elm was a traditional emblem of marriage; cp. Eve’s vinelike hair at 4.307.

221–23.
Raphael
, Hebrew for “Health of God,” helps Tobias claim his bride in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. Raphael is often associated with Christian medicine; see Cotton Mather, 48–54.

238.
swerve
: err;
secure:
overconfident. 244–45.
pretend/Surprisal:
claim to have been the victim of a surprise attack.

249.
ardors
: angels, ardent (burning) with the love of God.

250.
Veiled
: Cp. 3.382.

253.
empyreal
: belonging to the empyrean realm beyond the outermost sphere of Creation.

254.
self-opened
: Cp. the grating gates of Hell at 2.881–82.

257–59.
No cloud or star interposed itself between Raphael and the sight of Earth, which appeared as small as the other stars.

259.
Not unconform to
: like to.

263.
Imagined
: conjectured. Galileo’s conjectures about lunar topography are not rejected at 1.288–91; Raphael seems to sanction their rejection at 5.419–20, but leaves the question open at 8.144–45.

264–65.
Cyclades … Samos:
islands in the Aegean, including the supposedly floating island of
Delos; Samos
, an island off the coast of Asia Minor, did not belong to the Cyclades.

265.
kens
: discerns.

266.
prone
: bent forward and downward.

270.
Winnows the buxom air
: parts the yielding air. On
buxom
see 2.842n and
L’All
24n.

271.
tow’ring eagles
: Descending Raphael has just reached the apex of ascending eagles.

271–74.
to all … flies:
To earthly birds, the bright and unique Raphael seems a phoenix. This mythical bird, of which there was only one, regenerated every five hundred or one thousand years by immolating itself, then depositing its own ashes (
relics
) at the temple of the sun in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis.

277.
six wings
: like the angels in Isa. 6.2.

279.
mantling
: covering him, as with a mantle.

281.
starry zone
: belt of stars (cp. 11.247).

284.
feathered mail
: The feathers lie in overlapping rows suggestive of the metal plates in mail armor.

285.
Sky-tinctured
: blue, a sacred color among the Israelites, as Fowler notes, citing Cowley’s
Davideis
, bk. 1, n. 60;
grain:
dye;
Maia’s son:
Mercury, messenger of the gods.

288.
state
: status.

293.
cassia, nard, and balm
: aromatic spices.

296.
more sweet
: Nature’s splurging sweetness recalls Eve at 4.439, 641–56. She translates this aspect of Eden into the spiritual Paradise of their marriage.

297.
Wild above rule or art
: The organic at its height is superior to artifice at its height, as we have just seen in the “clothing” of Raphael;
enormous:
beyond the norm, immense.

300.
while now
: Raphael arrives precisely at noon.

305.
disrelish
: destroy the relish for.

306.
nectarous
: as sweet as nectar;
milky:
sweet (not salty).

319.
disburd’ning
: harvesting.

321.
earth’s hallowed mold
:
Adam
is sometimes said to derive from the Hebrew for “red,” alluding to the red earth from which he was formed.

324.
frugal
: careful in the use of food (from Lat.
frux
, “fruit”). Thriftiness is not implied.

333–36.
“Eve’s composing of food” is “a trope for poetry” (D. McColley 1993, 133), the culinary equivalent of Milton’s “the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another” (see his note on
The Verse
, p. 9).

339.
India
: Indies;
middle shore:
lands to the north (
Pontus
, the shore of the Black Sea) and the south (
Punic
, the shore of North Africa) of the Mediterranean Sea.

341.
Alcinous
: Homer’s King of the Phaeacians, whose garden bore fruit in every season (
Od
. 7.112–32).

345.
meathes
: sweet drinks; obsolete spelling of
meads
.

346.
Metrically, the double anapests make for an unusual line.

349.
unfumed
: unburned (unlike incense in the fallen world).

350.
primitive
: primary, original.

353.
state
: ceremonial display.

356.
besmeared with gold
: See Horace,
Odes
4.9.14f.

371.
Virtue
: one of the lower angelic orders. Milton uses these hierarchical titles interchangeably, since Raphael is also termed a Seraph (5.277) and an Archangel (7.41).

378.
Pomona’s arbor
: the lodging of the goddess of fruit trees, to whom Eve is compared at 9.393.

381.
fairest goddess
: Aphrodite, whom Paris chose over Athena and Juno. Since his reward was Helen, his choice was the mythical origin of the Trojan War. The episode was popular in Renaissance painting and literature.

384.
virtue-proof
: armored by, and therefore protected by, virtue.

385–87.
“Hail” … second Eve:
The passage alludes to Luke 1.28, where the angel Gabriel greets Mary: “Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” On Mary as second Eve, see 10.183n.

397.
author
: progenitor.

408.
Intelligential substances
: angels. The word
substance
, used variously in metaphysics, here declares that the angels inhabit a
degree
of matter (see ll. 473–74) in which intelligence is pervasive: smart stuff, as it were.

412.
concoct, digest, assimilate
: Three stages in the physiology of nourishment: in concoction, food is broken down into a milky fluid called “chyle”; it is then digested, or dispersed by means of blood to the various parts of the body; finally it is assimilated, transformed into the nourished being.

419–20.
See 263n.

429.
mellifluous
: fluid, sweet.

430.
pearly grain
: dew, but also evoking the manna or angel’s food of Exod. 16.14 and Ps. 78.

433.
nice
: fastidious, hard to please.

434.
nor seemingly
: not just apparently (as opposed to really).

435.
nor in mist
: nor in vapor, as when a visiting angel takes on an airy body;
common gloss:
This part of the poem, we are given to know, is
not
conventional. That angels are corporeal, and therefore eat, is entailed by the spiritual materialism set forth in Milton’s
CD
1.7: all Creation is material, even the human soul (
MLM
1205–06).

437.
real hunger, and concoctive heat
: Raphael’s body has the same heat that was thought to fuel the digestive process in the human body.

438.
transubstantiate
: to transform one substance (earthly fruit) into another (the angelic body).

438–39.
what … ease:
Unassimilated food (
what redounds
) escapes vaporously through the pores of angels, reminding fallen readers of the more trying evacuations they know so well. “This artfully avoids the indecent idea, which would else have been apt to have arisen on the Angel’s feeding, and withal gives a delicacy to these spirits, which finely distinguishes them from us in one of the most humbling circumstances relating to our bodies” (Richardson).

439–43.
nor wonder … mine:
The upward transformations claimed in alchemy are intended to make the idea of an angel assimilating earthly food seem plausible rather than an inexplicable
wonder
. At least one physician in the Paracelsan tradition, Jean-Baptiste van Helmont, developed the idea of digestion as an “inner alchemist” (see Multhauf; Pagel 1955 and 1956).

440.
empiric
: experimental. The word is sometimes pejorative, and means “quack.” Milton may be contrasting the
empiric alchemist
, concentrating on the refinement of metals, with adepts of a more philosophical and spiritual outlook.