Page:Milton - Milton's Paradise Lost, tra il 1882 e il 1891.djvu/19

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BOOK I.—184–217].
PARADISE LOST.
7

From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
There rest—if any rest can harbour there—
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair.

Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove ;
Briareus, or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held ; or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all His works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lea, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays :
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay
Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs, -
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others : and, enraged, might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth