Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not: in thy book record their 5 Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint 5 groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient Purification in the old law did save, fold And such as yet once more I trust to have Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that Full sight of her in Heaven without rerolled straint, Mother with infant down the rocks. Their Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow ΙΟ IO Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person So clear as in no face with more delight. PARADISE LOST 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 hastens 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, thunderstruck 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 |