IN PARADISUM AMISSAM SUMMI
POETAE IOHANNIS MILTONI
[On the Supreme Poet John Milton’s Paradise Lost]
Qui legis Amissam Paradisum, grandia magni
Carmina Miltoni, quid nisi cuncta legis?
Res cunctas et cunctarum primordia rerum
Et fata et fines continet iste liber.
Intima panduntur magni penetralia mundi,
Scribitur et toto quicquid in orbe latet:
Terraeque tractusque maris coelumque profundum
Sulphureumque Erebi flammivomumque specus;
Quaeque colunt terras pontumque et Tartara caeca,9
Quaeque colunt summi lucida regna poli;
Et quodcunque ullis conclusum est finibus usquam,
Et sine fine chaos et sine fine Deus,
Et sine fine magis, si quid magis est sine fine,
In Christo erga homines conciliatus amor.
Haec qui speraret quis crederet esse futurum?
Et tamen haec hodie terra Britanna legit.
O quantos in bella duces, quae protulit arma!
Quae canit et quanta praelia dira tuba!
Coelestes acies, atque in certamine coelum,
Et quae coelestes pugna deceret agros!
Quantus in aetheriis tollit se Lucifer armis,
Atque ipso graditur vix Michaele minor!
Quantis et quam funestis concurritur iris
Dum ferus hic stellas protegit, ille rapit!
Dum vulsos montes ceu tela reciproca torquent
Et non mortali desuper igne pluunt,
Stat dubius cui se parti concedat Olympus
Et metuit pugnae non superesse suae.
At simul in coelis Messiae insignia fulgent,
Et currus animes armaque digna Deo,
Horrendumque rotae strident, et saeva rotarum
Erumpunt torvis fulgura luminibus,
Et flammae vibrant, et vera tonitrua rauco
Admistis flammis insonuere polo,
Excidit attonitis mens omnis et impetus omnis,
Et cassis dextris irrita tela cadunt.
Ad poenas fugiunt, et ceu foret Orcus asylum
Infernis certant condere se tenebris.
Cedite romani scriptores, cedite Graii
Et quos fama recens vel celebravit anus.
Haec quicunque leget tantum cecinisse putabit
Maeonidem ranas, Virgilium culices.
9. pontumque: “portumque” (harbor) in the 1674 Paradise Lost.
S.B. M.D.
English Translation
You who read Paradise Lost, great Milton’s grand poem, what do you read but everything? This book contains all things, and the origins of all things, and their fates and their ends. The innermost secrets of the great universe are displayed, and whatever in the whole world is hidden is written out: the lands and the expanses of the sea and deep heaven and the sulfurous and flame-vomiting cave of Erebus; and those things that inhabit the lands and the sea and blind Tartarus, and those that inhabit the bright realms of highest heaven; and whatever anywhere is enclosed within any boundaries, and boundless Chaos, and boundless God; and more boundless—if anything is more boundless—Christ’s love directed toward men. Who would have believed there would come someone who would aspire to such things?—and yet today the land of Britain reads them. How many chieftains he brought to war, and what weaponry! What battles he sings, and with what a trumpet!—battlelines in Heaven, and Heaven in conflict, and fighting that befits the fields of Heaven! What a Lucifer lifts himself to ethereal warfare, and strides scarcely lower than Michael himself! With what great and fatal rage the fight is joined while one in his fierceness protects the stars, the other assaults them! While they hurl uprooted mountains as retaliatory weapons and they rain down from above with no mortal fire, Olympus stands unsure to which side to yield, and fears it will not survive its own battle. But as soon as the Messiah’s standards shine out in Heaven and you rouse his chariot and the arms worthy of God, and the wheels shriek horrifyingly and savage lightning breaks from the wheels with grim flashes, and flames shake and true thunderclaps resound with a mixture of flames in the clangorous sky, all consciousness falls from those who have been struck, and all strength, and their useless weapons drop from their empty hands. They flee to punishment, and as if the underworld were asylum they strive to settle themselves in the infernal shades. Yield, Roman writers, yield, Greeks, and those whom recent or ancient fame has celebrated; whoever reads this will think Homer just sang of frogs, Vergil of gnats.
S[amuel] B[arrow]
ON MR. MILTON’S PARADISE LOST
When I beheld the poet blind, yet bold,
In slender book his vast design unfold,
Messiah crowned, God’s reconciled decree,
Rebelling angels, the Forbidden Tree,
Heav’n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, all; the argument5
Held me a while misdoubting his intent,
That he would ruin (for I saw him strong)
The sacred truths to fable and old song,
(So Samson groped the temple’s posts in spite)9
The world o’erwhelming to revenge his sight.
Yet as I read, soon growing less severe,
I liked his project, the success did fear;
Through that wide field how he his way should find
O’er which lame Faith leads Understanding blind,
Lest he perplexed15 the things he would explain,
And what was easy he should render vain.
Or if a work so infinite be spanned,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand18
(Such as disquiet always what is well,
And by ill imitating would excel)
Might hence presume the whole Creation’s day
To change in scenes and show it in a play.
Pardon me, mighty poet, nor despise
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.
But I am now convinced that none will dare
Within thy labors to pretend a share.
Thou hast not missed one thought that could be fit,
And all that was improper dost omit:
So that no room is here for writers left,
But to detect30 their ignorance or theft.
That majesty which through thy work doth reign
Draws the devout, deterring the profane.
And things divine thou treat’st of in such state
As them preserves, and thee, inviolate.
At once delight and horror on us seize,
Thou sing’st with so much gravity and ease;
And above human flight dost soar aloft,
With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.
The bird named from that paradise39 you sing
So never flags, but always keeps on wing.
Where couldst thou words of such a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast expense of mind?
Just heaven thee, like Tiresias43, to requite,
Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight.
Well might’st thou scorn thy readers to allure
With tinkling rhyme46, of thine own sense secure;
While the Town-Bays47 writes all the while and spells,
And like a pack horse tires without his bells.
Their fancies like our bushy points49 appear:
The poets tag them; we for fashion wear.
I too transported by the mode offend,
And while I meant to praise thee must commend.
Thy verse created like thy theme sublime,
In number, weight, and measure54, needs not rhyme.
5. argument: the plot or subject matter.
9. Marvell appears to have read Samson Agonistes, first published in 1671. But the primary allusion is to Judges 16.28, a passage that Milton does not represent in SA.
15. perplexed: complicated unnecessarily.
18. some less skilful hand: Dryden, who asked Milton if he could make a rhymed drama of Paradis
e Lost. “Mr. Milton received him civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses” (Aubrey, p. lxviii).
30. detect: expose.
39. bird named from that paradise: Birds of Paradise were thought to live entirely in the air, never touching ground.
43. Tiresias: The legendary seer, mentioned in PL 3.36, was given prophetic vision in recompense for his blindness.
46. tinkling rhyme: Cp. Milton’s “jingling sound of like endings” in his remarks on “The Verse” of PL.
47. Town-Bays: In Buckingham’s play The Rehearsal, Dryden is lampooned in the character of Bayes. The name alludes to the laurel used to crown poets, which by synecdoche refers to all fame-seeking versifiers.
49. bushy points: Points attached the hose to the doublet. They were either tasseled (bushy) or gathered together, like modern shoelaces, in a metal tag. Tagging bushy laces is here a metaphor for introducing regular end-rhyme in Milton’s flowing blank verse.
54. In number, weight, and measure: See Wisdom 11:20: “thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.”
PARADISE LOST
THE PRINTER TO THE READER1
Courteous Reader, there was no argument at first intended to the book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the poem rhymes not. S. Simmons
THE VERSE
The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Vergil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame meter; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.
1. The defense of blank verse and the prose arguments summarizing each book “procured” by Milton’s printer, Samuel Simmons, were inserted in bound copies of the first edition beginning in 1668, with this brief note.
BOOK I
THE ARGUMENT
This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man’s disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent, who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his crew into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his angels now fallen into Hell, described here, not in the center (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. Here Satan with his angels lying on the burning lake, thunder-struck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him. They confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded; they rise, their numbers, array of battle, their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in Heaven; for that angels were long before this visible creation was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandaemonium the palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the deep. The infernal peers there sit in council.
Of man’s1 first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man4
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat5,
Sing Heav’nly Muse6, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd8, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning9 how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos10: or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God11, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,
That with no middle flight14 intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian mount15, while it pursues
Things unattempted16 yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly17 thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat’st brooding21 on the vast abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the highth of this great argument24
I may assert25 eternal providence,
And justify26 the ways of God to men.
Say first,27 for Heav’n hides nothing from thy view
Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause
Moved our grand29 parents in that happy state,
Favored of Heav’n so highly, to fall off30
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?33
Th’ infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time36 his pride
Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his host
Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equaled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Raised impious war in Heav’n and battle proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power44
Hurled headlong45 flaming from th’ ethereal sky
With hideous ruin46 and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine48 chains and penal fire,
Who durst49 defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times50 the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf
Confounded53 though immortal: but his doom
Reserved54 him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful56 eyes
That witnessed57 huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate:
At once as far as angels ken59 he views
The dismal situation waste and wild,
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible63
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Re
gions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest66 can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but67 torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulfur unconsumed:
Such place70 eternal justice had prepared
For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
In utter darkness72, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of Heav’n73
As from the center74 thrice to th’ utmost pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and welt’ring78 by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beëlzebub81. To whom th’ Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heav’n called Satan82, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
“If thou beest he; but O how fall’n!84 How changed
From him, who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright: if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest
From what highth fall’n, so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,