Paradise Lost

by John Milton

Farewel happy Fields Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time. The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less then hee Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.

A Universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,

A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd With wide CERBEREAN mouths full loud, and rung A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb, And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd Within unseen.

I fled, and cry'd out DEATH; Hell trembl'd at the hideous Name, and sigh'd From all her Caves, and back resounded DEATH.

The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark Illimitable Ocean without bound, Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth, And time and place are lost; where eldest Night And CHAOS, Ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal ANARCHIE, amidst the noise Of endless warrs and by confusion stand.

Farr off th' Empyreal Heav'n, extended wide In circuit, undetermind square or round, With Opal Towrs and Battlements adorn'd Of living Saphire, once his native Seat; And fast by hanging in a golden Chain This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon.

ingrate, he had of mee All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love, Where onely what they needs must do, appeard, Not what they would?

Through Heav'n and Earth, so shall my glorie excel, But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine.

under thee as Head Supream Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions I reduce: All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide In Heaven, or Earth, or under Earth in Hell;

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 Spheare;

which way shall I flie Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire? Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threatning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.

For never can true reconcilement grow Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep:

So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear, Farwel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least Divided Empire with Heav'ns King I hold By thee, and more then half perhaps will reigne; As Man ere long, and this new World shall know.

Of knowledge, planted by the Tree of Life, So neer grows Death to Life, what ere Death is, Som dreadful thing no doubt; for well thou knowst

But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?

Sleep on, Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek No happier state, and know to know no more.

Which taught thee yet no better, that no pain Can equal anger infinite provok't.

Though for possession put to try once more What thou and thy gay Legions dare against; Whose easier business were to serve thir Lord High up in Heav'n, with songs to hymne his Throne, And practis'd distances to cringe, not fight.

But mark what I arreede thee now, avant; Flie thither whence thou fledst: if from this houre Within these hallowd limits thou appeer, Back to th' infernal pit I drag thee chaind, And Seale thee so, as henceforth not to scorne The facil gates of hell too slightly barrd.

Awake My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found, Heav'ns last best gift, my ever new delight, Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field Calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring Our tended Plants, how blows the Citron Grove, What drops the Myrrhe, & what the balmie Reed, How Nature paints her colours, how the Bee Sits on the Bloom extracting liquid sweet.

And why not Gods of Men, since good, the more Communicated, more abundant growes, The Author not impair'd, but honourd more?

This may be well: but what if God have seen, And Death ensue? then I shall be no more, And ADAM wedded to another EVE, Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; A death to think.

So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure; without him live no life.

Flesh of Flesh, Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

Our State cannot be severd, we are one, One Flesh; to loose thee were to loose my self.

AMERICAN

Hell yeah

For dust thou art, and shalt to dust returne.

Here let us live, though in fall'n state, content.