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Paradise Regained - Book IVb (thing)
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To whom the
Fiend
, with fear
abashed
, replied:--
"Be not so sore offended,
Son of God
--
Though Sons of
God
both
Angels
are and
Men
--
If I, to try whether in higher sort
Than these thou bear'st that title, have proposed
What both from
Men
and
Angels
I receive, 200
Tetrarchs
of
Fire
,
Air
,
Flood
, and on the
Earth
Nations besides from all the quartered winds--
God
of this
World
invoked, and
World
beneath.
Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold
To me most fatal, me it most concerns.
The trial hath
indamaged
thee no way,
Rather more honour left and more esteem;
Me naught
advantaged
, missing what I aimed.
Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,
The
kingdoms
of this world; I shall no more 210
Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.
And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined
Than to a worldly crown, addicted more
To contemplation and profound dispute;
As by that early
action
may be judged,
When, slipping from thy mother's eye, thou went'st
Alone into the
Temple
, there wast found
Among the gravest
Rabbies
, disputant
On points and questions fitting
Moses
' chair,
Teaching, not taught. The
childhood
shews the man, 220
As morning shews the day. Be famous, then,
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o'er all the world
In
knowledge
; all things in it comprehend.
All knowledge is not couched in
Moses
'
law
,
The
Pentateuch
, or what the
Prophets
wrote;
The
Gentiles
also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by
Nature
's light;
And with the
Gentiles
much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean'st. 230
Without their
learning
, how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute
Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this
specular
mount,
Westward
, much nearer by
south-west
; behold
Where on the
AEgean
shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil--
Athens
, the eye of
Greece
, mother of arts 240
And
Eloquence
, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive-grove of
Academe
,
Plato
's
retirement
, where the
Attic
bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There, flowery hill,
Hymettus
, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there
Ilissus
rowls
His
whispering
stream. Within the walls then view 250
The schools of ancient sages--his who bred
Great
Alexander
to subdue the world,
Lyceum
there; and painted Stoa next.
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
Of
harmony
, in tones and
numbers
hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
AEolian
charms and
Dorian
lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind
Melesigenes
, thence Homer called,
Whose
poem
Phoebus
challenged for his own. 260
Thence what the lofty grave
Tragedians
taught
In
chorus
or
iambic
, teachers best
Of moral
prudence
, with delight received
In brief
sententious
precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and
chance
, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best
describing
.
Thence to the
famous
Orators
repair,
Those ancient whose
resistless
eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce
democraty
,
Shook the
Arsenal
, and fulmined over Greece 270
To
Macedon
and
Artaxerxes
' throne.
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From
Heaven
descended to the low-roofed house
Of
Socrates
--see there his tenement--
Whom, well inspired, the
Oracle
pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous
streams, that watered all the schools
Of
Academics
old and new, with those
Surnamed
Peripatetics
, and the sect
Epicurean
, and the
Stoic
severe. 280
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;
These rules will render thee a
king
complete
Within thyself, much more with empire joined."
To whom our
Saviour
sagely thus replied:--
"Think not but that I know these things; or, think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought. He who receives
Light from above, from the
Fountain of Light
,
No other
doctrine
needs, though granted true; 290
But these are
false
, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures
,
fancies
, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling
fell
and smooth
conceits
;
A third sort doubted all things, though
plain
sense;
Others in
virtue
placed
felicity
,
But virtue
joined
with riches and long life;
In
corporal
pleasure
he, and careless ease;
The Stoic last in
philosophic
pride, 300
By him called
virtue
, and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equal to
God
, oft
shames
not to prefer,
As fearing
God
nor man, contemning all
Wealth
,
pleasure
,
pain
or
torment
,
death
and
life
--
Which, when he
lists
, he leaves, or boasts he can;
For all his
tedious
talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of
God
much more, 310
And how the World began, and how Man fell,
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry;
And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves
All glory
arrogate
, to
God
give none;
Rather accuse him under usual
names
,
Fortune
and
Fate
, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things. Who,
therefore
, seeks in these
True wisdom finds her not, or, by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, 320
An empty cloud.
However
, many books,
Wise men have said, are
wearisome
; who reads
Incessantly
, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in
himself
,
Crude or intoxicate,
collecting
toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a
sponge
,
As
children
gathering pebbles on the shore
. 330
Or, if I would
delight
my private hours
With music or with
poem
, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace? All our
Law
and
Story
strewed
With
hymns
,
our
Psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our
Hebrew
songs
and
harps
, in
Babylon
That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived--
Ill imitated while they loudest sing
The vices of their
deities
, and their own, 340
In
fable
,
hymn
, or
song
, so
personating
Their gods
ridiculous
, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling
epithetes
, thick-laid
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); 350
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
. 360
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
370
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, 380
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; 390
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. 400
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 410
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 420
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 430
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, 440
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:-- 450
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Paradise Regained - Book IVc
Paradise Regained - Book IVa