20

Before thir eyes in sudden view appear [ 890 ]

The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark

Illimitable Ocean without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth, & highth,

And time and place are lost; where eldest Night

And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold [ 895 ]

Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise

Of endless Warrs, and by confusion 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 faction, in thir several Clanns,

Light-armd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,

Swarm populous, unnumberd as the Sands

Of Barca or Cyrenes torrid soil,

Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise [ 905 ]

Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,

Hee rules a moment; Chaos Umpire sits,

And by decision more imbroiles the fray

By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter

Chance governs all. Into this wilde Abyss, [ 910 ]

The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,

Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,

But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt

Confusdly, and which thus must ever fight,

Unless th 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,

Pondering his Voyage: for no narrow frith

He had to cross. Nor was his eare less peald [ 920 ]

With noises loud and ruinous (to compare

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 ascending 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 chance [ 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, neither Sea,

Nor good dry Land: nigh founderd on he fares, [ 940 ]

Treading the crude consistence, 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 confusd

Borne through the hollow dark assaults his eare

With loudest vehemence: thither he plyes,

Undaunted to meet there what ever power [ 955 ]

Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss

Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask

Which way the neerest coast of darkness lyes

Bordering on light; when strait behold the Throne

Of Chaos, and his dark Pavilion spread [ 960 ]

Wide on the wasteful Deep; with him Enthrond

Sat Sable-vested Night, eldest of things,

The Consort of his Reign; and by them stood

Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name

Of Demogorgon; Rumor next and Chance, [ 965 ]

And Tumult and Confusion all imbroild,

And Discord with a thousand various mouths.