The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) ‘The Verse’ (preface, added 1668)

The troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.

‘Paradise Lost’ (1667) ‘The Verse’ (preface, added 1668)

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden.

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Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

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What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

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The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind.

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Him the almighty power

Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the omnipotent to arms.

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A dungeon horrible, on all sides round

As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all.

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But O how fallen! how changed

From him, who in the happy realms of light Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine Myriads though bright.

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United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise.

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Yet not for those,

Nor what the potent victor in his rage Can else inflict, do I repent or change,

Though changed in outward lustre; that fixed mind And high disdain, from sense of injured merit.

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What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome?

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Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair.

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Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering: but of this be sure, To do aught good never will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight.

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And out of good still to find means of evil.

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What reinforcement we may gain from hope; If not, what resolution from despair.

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The will

And high permission of all-ruling heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation.

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Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost archangel, this the seat

That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom For that celestial light?

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Farewell, happy fields

Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell Receive thy new possessor: one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

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Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in hell: Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

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His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, He walked with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marl.

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Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High overarched imbower.

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First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears.

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For spirits when they please

Can either sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is their essence pure.

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But in what shape they choose, Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, Can execute their aery purposes.

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Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns.

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Thammuz came next behind,

Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate

In amorous ditties all a summer’s day, While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea.

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And when night

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

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The imperial ensign, which full high advanced Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind.

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Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent

A shout that tore hell’s concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.

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Anon they move

In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mode Of flutes and soft recorders.

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That small infantry Warred on by cranes.

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What resounds

In fable or romance of Uther’s son Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore

When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia.

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As when the sun new risen

Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

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Who overcomes

By force, hath overcome but half his foe.

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Mammon led them on,

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My sentence is for open war: of wiles More unexpert, I boast not.

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Belial, in act more graceful and humane; A fairer person lost not heaven; he seemed For dignity composed and high exploit:

But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason.

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For who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?

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There to converse with everlasting groans, Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,

Ages of hopeless end.

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Thus Belial with words clothed in reason’s garb Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, Not peace.

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Our torments also may in length of time Become our elements.

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With grave

Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed

A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat and public care;

And princely counsel in his face yet shone, Majestic though in ruin.

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To sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires.

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Who shall tempt with wandering feet

The dark unbottomed infinite abyss

And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way.

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Long is the way

And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

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O shame to men! Devil with devil damned Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational.

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In discourse more sweet

(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense,) Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.

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Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery,

Passion and apathy, and glory and shame, Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy.

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The parching air

Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.

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Feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.

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O’er many a frozen, many a fiery alp,

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, A universe of death, which God by curse

Created evil, for evil only good,

Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.

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The other shape,

If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,

For each seemed either, black it stood as night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

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Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?

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Incensed with indignation Satan stood Unterrified, and like a comet burned That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.

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Their fatal hands

No second stroke intend.

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I fled, and cried out Death!

Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resounded Death.

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On a sudden open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder.

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Chaos umpire sits,

And by decision more embroils the fray By which he reigns; next him high arbiter Chance governs all.

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Sable-vested Night, eldest of things.

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With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, Confusion worse confounded.

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So he with difficulty and labour hard

Moved on, with difficulty and labour he.

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Hail, holy Light, offspring of heaven first-born, Or of the eternal co-eternal beam

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproachéd light

Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate. Or hear’st thou rather pure ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell?

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Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers, as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature’s works to me expunged and razed, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

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Die he or justice must.

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Dark with excessive bright.

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So on this windy sea of land, the fiend Walked up and down alone bent on his prey.

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Into a limbo large and broad, since called The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.

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For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.

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At whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads.

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Warring in heaven against heaven’s matchless king.

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A grateful mind

By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and discharged.

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Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep

Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

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So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.

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So clomb this first grand thief into God’s fold: So since into his church lewd hirelings climb. Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life, The middle tree and highest there that grew, Sat like a cormorant.

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Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm, Others whose fruit burnished with golden rind

Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, If true, here only.

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Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.

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Not that fair field

Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis

Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain.

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For contemplation he and valour formed, For softness she and sweet attractive grace,