Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire, 
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep? 
What can it the avail though yet we feel 
Strength undiminished, or eternal being 
To undergo eternal punishment?" 

  Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-Fiend replied:-- 
"Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, 
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure-- 
To do aught good never will be our task, 
But ever to do ill our sole delight, 
As being the contrary to his high will 
Whom we resist. If then his providence 
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, 
Our labour must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil; 
Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps 
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb 
His inmost counsels from their destined aim. 
But see! the angry Victor hath recalled 
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit 
Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail, 
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid 
The fiery surge that from the precipice 
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder, 
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, 
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now 
To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep. 
Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn 
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe. 
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, 
The seat of desolation, void of light, 
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames 
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend 
From off the tossing of these fiery waves; 
There rest, if any rest can harbour there; 
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, 
Consult how we may henceforth most offend 
Our enemy, our own loss how repair, 
How overcome this dire calamity, 
What reinforcement we may gain from hope, 
If not, what resolution from despair." 

  Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides 
Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, 
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den 
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast 
Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim th' ocean-stream. 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay, 
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence 
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
That with reiterated crimes he might 
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 
Evil to others, and enraged might see 
How all his malice served but to bring forth 
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn 
On Man by him seduced, but on himself 
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured. 

  Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool 
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames 
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and,rolled 
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale. 
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight 
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, 
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land 
He lights--if it were land that ever burned 
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, 
And such appeared in hue as when the force 
Of subterranean wind transprots a hill 
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side 
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible 
And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire, 
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, 
And leave a singed bottom all involved 
With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole 
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate; 
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood 
As gods, and by their own recovered strength, 
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power. 

  "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," 
Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat 
That we must change for Heaven?--this mournful gloom 
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he 
Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid