Meanwhile the adversary of God and man, Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left;
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.

As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood.
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seem'd
Far off the flying fiend. At last appear
Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were
brass,

Three iron, three of adamantine rock,

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never-ceasing, bark'd,
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd,

Within unseen.

Far less abhorr'd than these

Vex'd Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the night hag, when, call'd
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none,
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seemed either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell,

And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat

The monster moving onward, came as fast

With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.
The undaunted fiend what this might be admired,
Admired not fear'd; God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valued he, nor shunn'd;
And with disdainful look, thus first began:

"Whence, and what art thou, execrable shape, That darest, though grim and terrible, advance Thy miscreated front athwart my way

To yonder gates? through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave ask'd of thee:
Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heaven.'
To whom the goblin, full of wrath, replied:
"Art thou that traitor-angel, art thou he,

Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith till then
Unbroken; and in proud, rebellious arms,

Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons,
Conjured against the Highest; for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemn'd
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of heaven,
Hell-doom'd, and breath'st defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue

Thy lingering, or, with one stroke of this dart,
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."
So spake the grisly terror, and in shape,

So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform. On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burn'd,

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levell❜d his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds,
With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front,
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid-air:
So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown; so match'd they stood;