Golden Deer Classics

How wearisome

Eternity so spent in worship paid

To whom we hate!

preferring

Hard liberty before the easy yoke

Of servile pomp.

or, if not drive,

Seduce them to our party, that their God

May prove their foe, and with repenting hand

Abolish his own works.

But their spite still serves

His glory to augment.

Long is the way

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

As if (which might induce us to accord)

Man had not hellish foes enow besides,

That day and night for his destruction wait!

But what owe I to his commands above,

Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down

Into this gloom of Tartarus profound,

To sit in hateful office here confined,

Inhabitant of Heaven and heavenly born—

Here in perpetual agony and pain,

With terrors and with clamours compassed round

Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed

Where there is, then, no good

For which to strive, no strife can grow up there

From faction: for none sure will claim in Hell

Precedence; none whose portion is so small

Of present pain that with ambitious mind

Will covet more!

and by proof we feel

Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven,

And with perpetual inroads to alarm,

Though inaccessible, his fatal throne:

Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.”

How he can

Is doubtful; that he never will is sure.