Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/72

Tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain
Distorted all my nether shape thus grew
Transformed: but he, my inbred enemy,
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,
Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death!
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded Death!
I fled, but he pursued—though more, it seems,790
Inflamed with lust than rage—and, swifter far,
Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed,
And, in embraces forcible and foul
Ingendering with me, of that rape begot
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry
Surround me, as thou sawest, hourly conceived
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite
To me; for, when they list, into the womb
That bred them they return, and howl and gnaw
My bowels, their repast; then, bursting forth800
Afresh, with conscious terrors vex me round,
That rest or intermission none I find.
Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim Death, my son and foe, who sets them on,
And me his parent would full soon devour,
For want of other prey, but that he knows
His end with mine involved, and knows that I
Should prove a bitter morsel and his bane,