I, who erewhile the happy Garden
By one man's disobedience lost, now
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully
Through all temptation, and the Tempter
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness. Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious
Into the desert, his victorious
Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence 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
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
More awful than the sound of trumpet,
Repentance, and Heaven's kingdom nigh at hand To all baptized. To his great baptism
With awe the regions round, and with them
From Nazareth the son of Joseph
To the flood Jordan—came as then obscure,
Unmarked, unknown. But him the Baptist
Descried, divinely warned, and witness
As to his worthier, and would have
To him his heavenly office. Nor was
His witness unconfirmed: on him
Heaven opened, and in likeness of a Dove The Spirit descended, while the Father's
From Heaven pronounced him his beloved Son.
That heard the Adversary, who, roving
About the world, at that assembly
Would not be last, and, with the voice
Nigh thunder-struck, the exalted man to
Such high attest was given a while
With wonder; then, with envy fraught and rage,
Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid
To council summons all his mighty Peers, 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
How many ages, as the years of men,
This Universe we have possessed, and
In manner at our will the affairs of Earth, Since Adam and his facile consort
Lost Paradise, deceived by me, though
With dread attending when that fatal
Shall be inflicted by the seed of
Upon my head. Long the decrees of
Delay, for longest time to Him is short;
And now, too soon for us, the circling
This dreaded time have compassed, wherein
Must bide the stroke of that long-threatened wound(At least, if so we can, and by the head Broken be not intended all our
To be infringed, our freedom and our
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.
His birth to our just fear gave no small cause;
But his growth now to youth's full flower,
All virtue, grace and wisdom to
Things highest, greatest, multiplies my fear.
Before him a great Prophet, to proclaim His coming, is sent harbinger, who
Invites, and in the consecrated
Pretends to wash off sin, and fit them
Purified to receive him pure, or
To do him honour as their King. All come,
And he himself among them was baptized—Not thence to be more pure, but to
The testimony of Heaven, that who he
Thenceforth the nations may not doubt. I
The Prophet do him reverence; on him, rising Out of the water,
Heaven above the
Unfold her crystal doors; thence on his headA perfet Dove descend (whate'er it meant);
And out of Heaven the sovraign voice I heard,'This is my Son beloved,—in him am pleased.'His mother, than, is mortal, but his
He who obtains the monarchy of Heaven;
And what will He not do to advance his Son?
His first-begot we know, and sore have felt,
When his fierce thunder drove us to the Deep; Who this is we must learn, for Man he
In all his lineaments, though in his
The glimpses of his Father's glory shine.
Ye see our danger on the utmost
Of hazard, which admits no long debate,
But must with something sudden be opposed(Not force, but well-couched fraud, well-woven snares),
Ere in the head of nations he appear,
Their king, their leader, and supreme on Earth.
I, when no other durst, sole undertook The dismal expedition to find
And ruin Adam, and the exploit
Successfully: a calmer voyage
Will waft me; and the way found prosperous
Induces best to hope of like success." He ended, and his words impression
Of much amazement to the infernal crew,
Distracted and surprised with deep
At these sad tidings. But no time was
For long indulgence to their fears or grief: Unanimous they all commit the
And management of this man
To him, their great Dictator, whose
At first against mankind so well had
In Adam's overthrow, and led their
From Hell's deep-vaulted den to dwell in light,
Regents, and potentates, and kings, yea gods,
Of many a pleasant realm and province wide.
So to the coast of Jordan he
His easy steps, girded with snaky wiles, Where he might likeliest find this new-declared,
This man of men, attested Son of God,
Temptation and all guile on him to try—So to subvert whom he suspected
To end his reign on Earth so long enjoyed:
But, contrary, unweeting he
The purposed counsel, pre-ordained and fixed,
Of the Most High, who, in full frequence
Of Angels, thus to Gabriel smiling spake:— "Gabriel, this day, by proof, thou shalt behold, Thou and all Angels conversant on
With Man or men's affairs, how I
To verify that solemn message late,
On which I sent thee to the Virgin
In Galilee, that she should bear a son,
Great in renown, and called the Son of God.
Then told'st her, doubting how these things could
To her a virgin, that on her should
The Holy Ghost, and the power of the HighestO'ershadow her. This Man, born and now upgrown, To shew him worthy of his birth
And high prediction, henceforth I
To Satan; let him tempt, and now
His utmost subtlety, because he
And vaunts of his great cunning to the
Of his Apostasy. He might have
Less overweening, since he failed in Job,
Whose constant perseverance
Whate'er his cruel malice could invent.
He now shall know I can produce a man, Of female seed, far abler to
All his solicitations, and at
All his vast force, and drive him back to Hell—Winning by conquest what the first man
By fallacy surprised. But first I
To exercise him in the Wilderness;
There he shall first lay down the
Of his great warfare, ere I send him
To conquer Sin and Death, the two grand foes.
By humiliation and strong sufferance His weakness shall o'ercome Satanic strength,
And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh;
That all the Angels and aethereal Powers—They now, and men hereafter—may
From what consummate virtue I have
This perfet man, by merit called my Son,
To earn salvation for the sons of men." So spake the Eternal Father, and all
Admiring stood a space; then into
Burst forth, and in celestial measures moved, Circling the throne and singing, while the
Sung with the voice, and this the argument:— "Victory and triumph to the Son of God,
Now entering his great duel, not of arms,
But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles!
The Father knows the Son; therefore
Ventures his filial virtue, though untried,
Against whate'er may tempt, whate'er seduce,
Allure, or terrify, or undermine.
Be frustrate, all ye stratagems of Hell, And, devilish machinations, come to nought!" So they in Heaven their odes and vigils tuned.
Meanwhile the Son of God, who yet some
Lodged in Bethabara, where John baptized,
Musing and much revolving in his
How best the mighty work he might
Of Saviour to mankind, and which way
Publish his godlike office now mature,
One day forth walked alone, the Spirit
And his deep thoughts, the better to converse With solitude, till, far from track of men,
Thought following thought, and step by step led on,
He entered now the bordering Desert wild,
And, with dark shades and rocks environed round,
His holy meditations thus pursued:— "O what a multitude of thoughts at
Awakened in me swarm, while I
What from within I feel myself, and
What from without comes often to my ears,
Ill sorting with my present state compared! When I was yet a child, no childish
To me was pleasing; all my mind was
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
What might be public good; myself I
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
All righteous things. Therefore, above my years,
The Law of God I read, and found it sweet;
Made it my whole delight, and in it
To such perfection that, ere yet my
Had measured twice six years, at our great Feast I went into the Temple, there to
The teachers of our Law, and to
What might improve my knowledge or their own,
And was admired by all. Yet this not
To which my spirit aspired. Victorious
Flamed in my heart, heroic acts—one
To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke;
Then to subdue and quell, o'er all the earth,
Brute violence and proud tyrannic power,
Till truth were freed, and equity restored: Yet held it more humane, more heavenly,
By winning words to conquer willing hearts,
And make persuasion do the work of fear;
At least to try, and teach the erring soul,
Not wilfully misdoing, but
Misled; the stubborn only to subdue.
These growing thoughts my mother soon perceiving,
By words at times cast forth, inly rejoiced,
And said to me apart, 'High are thy thoughts,
O Son! but nourish them, and let them soar To what highth sacred virtue and true
Can raise them, though above example high;
By matchless deeds express thy matchless Sire.
For know, thou art no son of mortal man;
Though men esteem thee low of parentage,
Thy Father is the Eternal King who
All Heaven and Earth,
Angels and sons of men.
A messenger from God foretold thy
Conceived in me a virgin; he
Thou shouldst be great, and sit on David's throne, And of thy kingdom there should be no end.
At thy nativity a glorious
Of Angels, in the fields of Bethlehem,
To shepherds, watching at their folds by night,
And told them the Messiah now was born,
Where they might see him; and to thee they came,
Directed to the manger where thou lay'st;
For in the inn was left no better room.
A Star, not seen before, in heaven appearing,
Guided the Wise Men thither from the East, To honour thee with incense, myrrh, and gold;
By whose bright course led on they found the place,
Affirming it thy star, new-graven in heaven,
By which they knew thee King of Israel born.
Just Simeon and prophetic Anna,
By vision, found thee in the Temple, and spake,
Before the altar and the vested priest,
Like things of thee to all that present stood.'This having heart, straight I again
The Law and Prophets, searching what was writ Concerning the Messiah, to our
Known partly, and soon found of whom they spakeI am—this chiefly, that my way must
Through many a hard assay, even to the death,
Ere I the promised kingdom can attain,
Or work redemption for mankind, whose sins'Full weight must be transferred upon my head.
Yet, neither thus disheartened or dismayed,
The time prefixed I waited; when
The Baptist (of whose birth I oft had heard, Not knew by sight) now come, who was to
Before Messiah, and his way prepare!
I, as all others, to his baptism came,
Which I believed was from above; but
Straight knew me, and with loudest voice
Me him (for it was shewn him so from Heaven)—Me him whose harbinger he was; and
Refused on me his baptism to confer,
As much his greater, and was hardly won.
But, as I rose out of the laving stream, Heaven opened her eternal doors, from
The Spirit descended on me like a Dove;
And last, the sum of all, my Father's voice,
Audibly heard from Heaven, pronounced me his,
Me his beloved Son, in whom
He was well pleased: by which I knew the
Now full, that I no more should live obscure,
But openly begin, as best
The authority which I derived from Heaven.
And now by some strong motion I am led Into this wilderness; to what intentI learn not yet. Perhaps I need not know;
For what concerns my knowledge God reveals." So spake our Morning Star, then in his rise,
And, looking round, on every side beheldA pathless desert, dusk with horrid shades.
The way he came, not having marked return,
Was difficult, by human steps untrod;
And he still on was led, but with such
Accompanied of things past and to come Lodged in his breast as well might
Such solitude before choicest society. Full forty days he passed—whether on
Sometimes, anon in shady vale, each
Under the covert of some ancient
Or cedar to defend him from the dew,
Or harboured in one cave, is not revealed;
Nor tasted human food, nor hunger felt,
Till those days ended; hungered then at
Among wild beasts. They at his sight grew mild, Nor sleeping him nor waking harmed; his
The fiery serpent fled and noxious worm;
The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof.
But now an aged man in rural weeds,
Following, as seemed, the quest of some stray eye,
Or withered sticks to gather, which might
Against a winter's day, when winds blow keen,
To warm him wet returned from field at eve,
He saw approach; who first with curious
Perused him, then with words thus uttered spake:— "Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee to this place,
So far from path or road of men, who
In troop or caravan? for single
Durst ever, who returned, and dropt not
His carcass, pined with hunger and with droughth.
I ask the rather, and the more admire,
For that to me thou seem'st the man whom
Our new baptizing Prophet at the
Of Jordan honoured so, and called thee
Of God. I saw and heard, for we sometimes Who dwell this wild, constrained by want, come
To town or village nigh (nighest is far),
Where aught we hear, and curious are to hear,
What happens new; fame also finds us out." To whom the Son of God:—"Who brought me
Will bring me hence; no other guide I seek." "By miracle he may," replied the swain;"What other way I see not; for we
Live on tough roots and stubs, to thirst
More than the camel, and to drink go far— Men to much misery and hardship born.
But, if thou be the Son of God,
That out of these hard stones be made thee bread;
So shalt thou save thyself, and us
With food, whereof we wretched seldom taste." He ended, and the Son of God replied:—"Think'st thou such force in bread? Is it not written(For I discern thee other than thou seem'st),
Man lives not by bread only, but each
Proceeding from the mouth of God, who fed Our fathers here with manna? In the
Moses was forty days, nor eat nor drank;
And forty days Eliah without
Wandered this barren waste; the same I now.
Why dost thou, then, suggest to me
Knowing who I am, as I know who thou art?" Whom thus answered the Arch-Fiend, now undisguised:—"'Tis true,
I am that Spirit
Who, leagued with millions more in rash revolt,
Kept not my happy station, but was driven With them from bliss to the bottomless Deep—Yet to that hideous place not so
By rigour unconniving but that oft,
Leaving my dolorous prison,
I
Large liberty to round this globe of Earth,
Or range in the Air; nor from the Heaven of
Hath he excluded my resort sometimes.
I came, among the Sons of God, when
Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job,
To prove him, and illustrate his high worth; And, when to all his Angels he
To draw the proud king Ahab into fraud,
That he might fall in Ramoth, they demurring,
I undertook that office, and the
Of all his flattering prophets glibbed with
To his destruction, as I had in charge:
For what he bids I do. Though I have
Much lustre of my native brightness,
To be beloved of God,
I have not
To love, at least contemplate and admire, What I see excellent in good, or fair,
Or virtuous;
I should so have lost all sense.
What can be then less in me than
To see thee and approach thee, whom I
Declared the Son of God, to hear
Thy wisdom, and behold thy godlike deeds?
Men generally think me much a
To all mankind. Why should I? they to
Never did wrong or violence. By themI lost not what I lost; rather by them I gained what I have gained, and with them
Copartner in these regions of the World,
If not disposer—lend them oft my aid,
Oft my advice by presages and signs,
And answers, oracles, portents, and dreams,
Whereby they may direct their future life.
Envy, they say, excites me, thus to
Companions of my misery and woe!
At first it may be; but, long since with
Nearer acquainted, now I feel by proof That fellowship in pain divides not smart,
Nor lightens aught each man's peculiar load;
Small consolation, then, were Man adjoined.
This wounds me most (what can it less?) that Man,
Man fallen, shall be restored,
I never more." To whom our Saviour sternly thus replied:—"Deservedly thou griev'st, composed of
From the beginning, and in lies wilt end,
Who boast'st release from Hell, and leave to
Into the Heaven of Heavens. Thou com'st, indeed, As a poor miserable captive
Comes to the place where he before had
Among the prime in splendour, now deposed,
Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned,
A spectacle of ruin, or of scorn,
To all the host of Heaven. The happy
Imparts to thee no happiness, no joy—Rather inflames thy torment,
Lost bliss, to thee no more communicable;
So never more in Hell than when in Heaven. But thou art serviceable to Heaven's King!
Wilt thou impute to obedience what thy
Extorts, or pleasure to do ill excites?
What but thy malice moved thee to
Of righteous Job, then cruelly to afflict
With all inflictions? but his patience won.
The other service was thy chosen task,
To be a liar in four hundred mouths;
For lying is thy sustenance, thy food.
Yet thou pretend'st to truth! all oracles By thee are given, and what confessed more
Among the nations? That hath been thy craft,
By mixing somewhat true to vent more lies.
But what have been thy answers? what but dark,
Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding,
Which they who asked have seldom understood,
And, not well understood, as good not known?
Who ever, by consulting at thy shrine,
Returned the wiser, or the more
To fly or follow what concerned him most, And run not sooner to his fatal snare?
For God hath justly given the nations
To thy delusions; justly, since they
Idolatrous. But, when his purpose
Among them to declare his providence,
To thee not known, whence hast thou then thy truth,
But from him, or his Angels
In every province, who, themselves
To approach thy temples, give thee in
What, to the smallest tittle, thou shalt say To thy adorers? Thou, with trembling fear,
Or like a fawning parasite, obey'st;
Then to thyself ascrib'st the truth foretold.
But this thy glory shall be soon retrenched;
No more shalt thou by oracling
The Gentiles; henceforth oracles are ceased,
And thou no more with pomp and
Shalt be enquired at Delphos or elsewhere—At least in vain, for they shall find thee mute.
God hath now sent his living Oracle Into the world to teach his final will,
And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to
In pious hearts, an inward
To all truth requisite for men to know." So spake our Saviour; but the subtle Fiend,
Though inly stung with anger and disdain,
Dissembled, and this answer smooth returned:— "Sharply thou hast insisted on rebuke,
And urged me hard with doings which not will,
But misery, hath wrested from me. Where Easily canst thou find one miserable,
And not inforced oft-times to part from truth,
If it may stand him more in stead to lie,
Say and unsay, feign, flatter, or abjure?
But thou art placed above me; thou art Lord;
From thee I can, and must, submiss,
Cheek or reproof, and glad to scape so quit.
Hard are the ways of truth, and rough to walk,
Smooth on the tongue discoursed, pleasing to the ear,
And tunable as sylvan pipe or song; What wonder, then, if I delight to
Her dictates from thy mouth? most men
Virtue who follow not her lore. Permit
To hear thee when I come (since no man comes),
And talk at least, though I despair to attain.
Thy Father, who is holy, wise, and pure,
Suffers the hypocrite or atheous
To tread his sacred courts, and
About his altar, handling holy things,
Praying or vowing, and voutsafed his voice To Balaam reprobate, a prophet
Inspired: disdain not such access to me." To whom our Saviour, with unaltered brow:—"Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope,
I bid not, or forbid. Do as thou
Permission from above; thou canst not more." He added not; and Satan, bowling
His gray dissimulation, disappeared,
Into thin air diffused: for now
Night with her sullen wing to double-shade The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couched;
And now wild beasts came forth the woods to roam.'Milton's Paradise Regain'd has not met with the approbation that it deserves.
It has not the harmony of numbers, the sublimity of thought, and the beauties of diction, which are in Paradise Lost.
It is composed in a lower and less striking stile, a stile suited to the subject.
Artful sophistry, false reasoning, set off in the most specious manner, and refuted by the Son of God with strong unaffected eloquence, is the peculiar excellence of this poem.
Satan there defends a bad cause with great skill and subtlety, as one thoroughly versed in that craft;
His character is well drawn.-Jortin.(line 91:
Who this is we must learn...):
Our author favors the opinion of those writers,
Ignatius and others among the Ancients, and Beza and others among the Moderns, who believed that the Devil, tho' he might know Jesus to be some extraordinary person, yet knew him not to be the Messiah, the Son of God: and the words of the Devil "If thou be the Son of God" seem to express his uncertainty concerning that matter.
The Devils indeed afterward knew him and proclaimed him to be the Son of God, but they might not know him to be so at this time, before this temptation, or before he had enter'd upon his public ministry, and manifested himself by his miracles.(line 120: ....
Girded with snaky wiles,):
Alluding to the habit of sorcerers and necromancers, who are represented in some prints as girded about the middle with the skins of snakes and serpents; a cincture totally opposit to that recommended by the Apostle.
Eph.
VI. 14. "having your loins girt about with truth;" and worn by our Saviour Isa.
XI. 5. "And rightousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins." (line 271:
Not knew by sight...):
Tho' Jesus and John the Baptist were related, yet they were brought up in different countries, and had no manner of intimacy or acquaintance with each other.
John the Baptist says expressly in John I. 31, 33. "And I knew him not;" and he did not so much as know him by sight, til our Saviour came to his baptism.(line 453:
Then to thyself ascrib'd the truth foretold...):
The Demons (Lactantius says) could certainly foresee, and truly foretel many future events, from the knowledge they had of the dispositions of Providence before their fall.
And then they assumed all the honor to themselves, pretending to be the authors, and doers of what they predicted.'~ Th.
Newton,
Milton's Works, 2nd edition, 1753.
