Before thir eyes in sudden vieear [ 890 ]
The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark
Illimitable O without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, & highth,
And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, Aors of Nature, hold [ 895 ]
Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise
Of endless Warrs, and by fusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring
Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag [ 900 ]
Of each his fa, in thir several s,
Light-armd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,
Sopulous, unnumberd as the Sands
Of Barca or es torrid soil,
Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise [ 905 ]
Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
Hee rules a moment; pire sits,
And by deore imbroiles the fray
By which he Reigns: him high Arbiter
ce governs all. Into this wilde Abyss, [ 910 ]
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of her Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
fusdly, and which thus must ever fight,
Uh Almighty Maker them ordain [ 915 ]
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wild Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and lookd a while,
P his Voyage: for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his eare less peald [ 920 ]
With noises loud and ruinous (to pare
Great things with small) then when Bellona storms,
With all her battering Engines bent to rase
Som Capital City; or less then if this frame
Of Heavn were falling, and these Elements [ 925 ]
In mutinie had from her Axle torn
The stedfast Earth. At last his Sail-broad Vannes
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoak
Uplifted spurns the ground, thence many a League
As in a cloudy Chair asding rides [ 930 ]
Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuitie: all unawares
Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill ce [ 935 ]
The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud
Instinct with Fire and Nitre hurried him
As many miles aloft: that furie stayd,
Quencht in a Boggy Syrtis, her Sea,
Nood dry Land: nigh founderd on he fares, [ 940 ]
Treading the crude sistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now both Oare and Saile.
As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness
With winged course ore Hill or moarie Dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stelth [ 945 ]
Had from his wakeful custody purloind
The guarded Gold: So eagerly the fiend
Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes: [ 950 ]
At length a universal hubbub wilde
Of stunning sounds and voices all fusd
Borhrough the hollow dark assaults his eare
With loudest vehemehither he plyes,
Undauo meet there what ever power [ 955 ]
Or Spirit of the hermost Abyss
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the coast of darkness lyes
B on light; when strait behold the Throne
Of Chaos, and his dark Pavilion spread [ 960 ]
Wide on the wasteful Deep; with him Enthrond