Paradise Regained

Excerpt

THE FIRST BOOK

  I, WHO erewhile the happy Garden sung
  By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
  Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
  By one man's firm obedience fully tried
  Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
  In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
  And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.
    Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious Eremite
  Into the desert, his victorious field
  Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence 10
  By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire,
  As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute,
  And bear through highth or depth of Nature's bounds,
  With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds
  Above heroic, though in secret done,
  And unrecorded left through many an age:
  Worthy to have not remained so long unsung.
    Now had the great Proclaimer, with a voice
  More awful than the sound of trumpet, cried
  Repentance, and Heaven's kingdom nigh at hand 20
  To all baptized. To his great baptism flocked
  With awe the regions round, and with them came
  From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed
  To the flood Jordan—came as then obscure,
  Unmarked, unknown. But him the Baptist soon
  Descried, divinely warned, and witness bore
  As to his worthier, and would have resigned
  To him his heavenly office. Nor was long
  His witness unconfirmed: on him baptized
  Heaven opened, and in likeness of a Dove 30
  The Spirit descended, while the Father's voice
  From Heaven pronounced him his beloved Son.
  That heard the Adversary, who, roving still
  About the world, at that assembly famed
  Would not be last, and, with the voice divine
  Nigh thunder-struck, the exalted man to whom
  Such high attest was given a while surveyed
  With wonder; then, with envy fraught and rage,
  Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid air
  To council summons all his mighty Peers, 40
  Within thick clouds and dark tenfold involved,
  A gloomy consistory; and them amidst,
  With looks aghast and sad, he thus bespake:—
    "O ancient Powers of Air and this wide World
  (For much more willingly I mention Air,
  This our old conquest, than remember Hell,
  Our hated habitation), well ye know
  How many ages, as the years of men,
  This Universe we have possessed, and ruled
  In manner at our will the affairs of Earth, 50
  Since Adam and his facile consort Eve
  Lost Paradise, deceived by me, though since
  With dread attending when that fatal wound
  Shall be inflicted by the seed of Eve
  Upon my head. Long the decrees of Heaven
  Delay, for longest time to Him is short;
  And now, too soon for us, the circling hours
  This dreaded time have compassed, wherein we
  Must bide the stroke of that long-threatened wound
  (At least, if so we can, and by the head 60
  Broken be not intended all our power
  To be infringed, our freedom and our being
  In this fair empire won of Earth and Air)—
  For this ill news I bring: The Woman's Seed,
  Destined to this, is late of woman born....