Milton John. Paradise Regained

   As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,
   Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,
   Will far be found unworthy to compare
   With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
   Where God is praised aright and godlike men,
   The Holiest of Holies and his Saints
   (Such are from God inspired, not such from thee);
   Unless where moral virtue is expressed
   By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.
   Their orators thou then extoll'st as those
   The top of eloquence—statists indeed,
   And lovers of their country, as may seem;
   But herein to our Prophets far beneath,
   As men divinely taught, and better teaching
   The solid rules of civil government,
   In their majestic, unaffected style,
   Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
   In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
   What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
   What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
   These only, with our Law, best form a king."
   So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now
   Quite at a loss (for all his darts were spent),
   Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, replied:—
   "Since neither wealth nor honour, arms nor arts,
   Kingdom nor empire, pleases thee, nor aught
   By me proposed in life contemplative
   Or active, tended on by glory or fame,
   What dost thou in this world? The Wilderness
   For thee is fittest place: I found thee there,
   And thither will return thee. Yet remember
   What I foretell thee; soon thou shalt have cause
   To wish thou never hadst rejected, thus
   Nicely or cautiously, my offered aid,
   Which would have set thee in short time with ease
   On David's throne, or throne of all the world,
   Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,
   When prophecies of thee are best fulfilled.
   Now, contrary—if I read aught in heaven,
   Or heaven write aught of fate—by what the stars
   Voluminous, or single characters
   In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
   Sorrows and labours, opposition, hate,
   Attends thee; scorns, reproaches, injuries,
   Violence and stripes, and, lastly, cruel death.
   A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
   Real or allegoric, I discern not;
   Nor when: eternal sure—as without end,
   Without beginning; for no date prefixed
   Directs me in the starry rubric set."
   So saying, he took (for still he knew his power
   Not yet expired), and to the Wilderness
   Brought back, the Son of God, and left him there,
   Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,
   As daylight sunk, and brought in louring Night,
   Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,
   Privation mere of light and absent day.
   Our Saviour, meek, and with untroubled mind
   After hisaerie jaunt, though hurried sore,
   Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest,
   Wherever, under some concourse of shades,
   Whose branching arms thick intertwined might shield
   From dews and damps of night his sheltered head;
   But, sheltered, slept in vain; for at his head
   The Tempter watched, and soon with ugly dreams
   Disturbed his sleep. And either tropic now
   'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven; the clouds
   From many a horrid rift abortive poured
   Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire,
   In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds
   Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad
   From the four hinges of the world, and fell
   On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines,
   Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks,
   Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
   Or torn up sheer. Ill wast thou shrouded then,
   O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st
   Unshaken! Nor yet staid the terror there:
   Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
   Environed thee; some howled, some yelled, some shrieked,
   Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
   Sat'st unappalled in calm and sinless peace.
   Thus passed the night so foul, till Morning fair
   Came forth with pilgrim steps, in amice grey,
   Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar
   Of thunder, chased the clouds, and laid the winds,
   And griesly spectres, which the Fiend had raised
   To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
   And now the sun with more effectual beams
   Had cheered the face of earth, and dried the wet
   From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,
   Who all things now behold more fresh and green,
   After a night of storm so ruinous,
   Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and spray,
   To gratulate the sweet return of morn.
   Nor yet, amidst this joy and brightest morn,
   Was absent, after all his mischief done,
   The Prince of Darkness; glad would also seem
   Of this fair change, and to our Saviour came;
   Yet with no new device (they all were spent),
   Rather by this his last affront resolved,
   Desperate of better course, to vent his rage
   And mad despite to be so oft repelled.
   Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
   Backed on the north and west by a thick wood;
   Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape,
   And in a careless mood thus to him said:—
   "Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God,
   After a dismal night. I heard the wrack,
   As earth and sky would mingle; but myself
   Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them,
   As dangerous to the pillared frame of Heaven,
   Or to the Earth's dark basis underneath,
   Are to the main as inconsiderable
   And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze
   To man's less universe, and soon are gone.
   Yet, as being ofttimes noxious where they light
   On man, beast, plant, wasteful and turbulent,
   Like turbulencies in the affairs of men,
   Over whose heads they roar, and seem to point,
   They oft fore-signify and threaten ill.
   This tempest at this desert most was bent;
   Of men at thee, for only thou here dwell'st.
   Did I not tell thee, if thou didst reject
   The perfect season offered with my aid
   To win thy destined seat, but wilt prolong
   All to the push of fate, pursue thy way
   Of gaining David's throne no man knows when
   (For both the when and how is nowhere told),
   Thou shalt be what thou art ordained, no doubt;
   For Angels have proclaimed it, but concealing
   The time and means? Each act is rightliest done
   Not when it must, but when it may be best.
   If thou observe not this, be sure to find
   What I foretold thee—many a hard assay
   Of dangers, and adversities, and pains,
   Ere thou of Israel's sceptre get fast hold;
   Whereof this ominous night that closed thee round,
   So many terrors, voices, prodigies,
   May warn thee, as a sure foregoing sign."
   So talked he, while the Son of God went on,
   And staid not, but in brief him answered thus:—
   "Me worse than wet thou find'st not; other harm
   Those terrors which thou speak'st of did me none.
   I never feared they could, though noising loud
   And threatening nigh: what they can do as signs
   Betokening or ill-boding I contemn
   As false portents, not sent from God, but thee;
   Who, knowing I shall reign past thy preventing,
   Obtrud'st thy offered aid, that I, accepting,
   At least might seem to hold all power of thee,
   Ambitious Spirit! and would'st be thought my God;
   And storm'st, refused, thinking to terrify
   Me to thy will! Desist (thou art discerned,
   And toil'st in vain), nor me in vain molest."
   To whom the Fiend, now swoln with rage, replied:—
   "Then hear, O Son of David, virgin-born!
   For Son of God to me is yet in doubt.
   Of the Messiah I have heard foretold
   By all the Prophets; of thy birth, at length
   Announced by Gabriel, with the first I knew,
   And of the angelic song in Bethlehem field,
   On thy birth-night, that sung thee Saviour born.
   From that time seldom have I ceased to eye
   Thy infancy, thy childhood, and thy youth,
   Thy manhood last, though yet in private bred;
   Till, at the ford of Jordan, whither all
   Flocked to the Baptist, I among the rest
   (Though not to be baptized), by voice from Heaven
   Heard thee pronounced the Son of God beloved.
   Thenceforth I thought thee worth my nearer view
   And narrower scrutiny, that I might learn
   In what degree or meaning thou art called
   The Son of God, which bears no single sense.
   The Son of God I also am, or was;
   And, if I was, I am; relation stands:
   All men are Sons of God; yet thee I thought
   In some respect far higher so declared.
   Therefore I watched thy footsteps from that hour,
   And followed thee still on to this waste wild,
   Where, by all best conjectures, I collect
   Thou art to be my fatal enemy.
   Good reason, then, if I beforehand seek
   To understand my adversary, who
   And what he is; his wisdom, power, intent;
   By parle or composition, truce or league,
   To win him, or win from him what I can.
   And opportunity I here have had
   To try thee, sift thee, and confess have found thee
   Proof against all temptation, as a rock
   Of adamant and as a centre, firm
   To the utmost of mere man both wise and good,
   Not more; for honours, riches, kingdoms, glory,
   Have been before contemned, and may again.
   Therefore, to know what more thou art than man,
   Worth naming the Son of God by voice from Heaven,
   Another method I must now begin."
   So saying, he caught him up, and, without wing
   Of hippogrif, bore through the air sublime,
   Over the wilderness and o'er the plain,
   Till underneath them fair Jerusalem,
   The Holy City, lifted high her towers,
   And higher yet the glorious Temple reared
   Her pile, far off appearing like a mount
   Of alablaster, topt with golden spires:
   There, on the highest pinnacle, he set
   The Son of God, and added thus in scorn:—
   "There stand, if thou wilt stand; to stand upright
   Will ask thee skill. I to thy Father's house
   Have brought thee, and highest placed: highest is best.
   Now shew thy progeny; if not to stand,
   Cast thyself down. Safely, if Son of God;
   For it is written, 'He will give command
   Concerning thee to his Angels; in their hands
   They shall uplift thee, lest at any time
   Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.'"
   To whom thus Jesus: "Also it is written,
   'Tempt not the Lord thy God.'" He said, and stood;
   But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell.
   As when Earth's son, Antaeus (to compare
   Small things with greatest), in Irassa strove
   With Jove's Alcides, and, oft foiled, still rose,
   Receiving from his mother Earth new strength,
   Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joined,
   Throttled at length in the air expired and fell,
   So, after many a foil, the Tempter proud,
   Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride
   Fell whence he stood to see his victor fall;
   And, as that Theban monster that proposed
   Her riddle, and him who solved it not devoured,
   That once found out and solved, for grief and spite
   Cast herself headlong from the Ismenian steep,
   So, strook with dread and anguish, fell the Fiend,
   And to his crew, that sat consulting, brought
   Joyless triumphals of his hoped success,
   Ruin, and desperation, and dismay,
   Who durst so proudly tempt the Son of God.
   So Satan fell; and straight a fiery globe
   Of Angels on full sail of wing flew nigh,
   Who on their plumy vans received Him soft
   From his uneasy station, and upbore,
   As on a floating couch, through the blithe air;
   Then, in a flowery valley, set him down
   On a green bank, and set before him spread
   A table of celestial food, divine
   Ambrosial fruits fetched from the Tree of Life,
   And from the Fount of Life ambrosial drink,
   That soon refreshed him wearied, and repaired
   What hunger, if aught hunger, had impaired,
   Or thirst; and, as he fed, Angelic quires
   Sung heavenly anthems of his victory
   Over temptation and the Tempter proud:—
   "True Image of the Father, whether throned
   In the bosom of bliss, and light of light
   Conceiving, or, remote from Heaven, enshrined
   In fleshly tabernacle and human form,
   Wandering the wilderness—whatever place,
   Habit, or state, or motion, still expressing
   The Son of God, with Godlike force endued
   Against the attempter of thy Father's throne
   And thief of Paradise! Him long of old
   Thou didst debel, and down from Heaven cast
   With all his army; now thou hast avenged
   Supplanted Adam, and, by vanquishing
   Temptation, hast regained lost Paradise,
   And frustrated the conquest fraudulent.
   He never more henceforth will dare set foot
   In paradise to tempt; his snares are broke.
   For, though that seat of earthly bliss be failed,
   A fairer Paradise is founded now
   For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou,
   A Saviour, art come down to reinstall;
   Where they shall dwell secure, when time shall be,
   Of tempter and temptation without fear.
   But thou, Infernal Serpent! shalt not long
   Rule in the clouds. Like an autumnal star,
   Or lightning, thou shalt fall from Heaven, trod down
   Under his feet. For proof, ere this thou feel'st
   Thy wound (yet not thy last and deadliest wound)
   By this repulse received, and hold'st in Hell
   No triumph; in all her gates Abaddon rues
   Thy bold attempt. Hereafter learn with awe
   To dread the Son of God. He, all unarmed,
   Shall chase thee, with the terror of his voice,
   From thy demoniac holds, possession foul—
   Thee and thy legions; yelling they shall fly,
   And beg to hide them in a herd of swine,
   Lest he command them down into the Deep,
   Bound, and to torment sent before their time.
   Hail, Son of the Most High, heir of both Worlds,
   Queller of Satan! On thy glorious work
   Now enter, and begin to save Mankind."
   Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek,
   Sung victor, and, from heavenly feast refreshed,
   Brought on his way with joy. He, unobserved,
   Home to his mother's house private returned.