John Milton

O'er 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 flies.

Incens'd with indignation Satan stood

Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge

In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair

Shakes pestilence and war.

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.

Arm th' obdur'd breast

With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

To compare

Great things with small.

Adam the goodliest man of men since born

His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.

Death

Grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile, to hear

His famine should be fill'd.

A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog

Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,

Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air

Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire.

Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd,

At certain revolutions all the damn'd

Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes,—extremes by change more fierce;

From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round,

Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.

Where eldest Night

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold

Eternal anarchy amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand;

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,

Strive here for mast'ry.

Before mine eyes in opposition sits

Grim Death, my son and foe.

A grateful mind

By owing owes not, but still pays, at once

Indebted and discharg'd.

And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps

At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity

Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill

Where no ill seems.