While he before them sat who with a word
Had made them voiceless, and spake not again,

And looked not up, since when his looked despair
Had darkened hell, and like a black eclipse
Covered the hope that was its only day.

Half to his throne ascended, on the steep

Sole-touched by his proud feet, as if dethroned
By his own act, and into ruin fallen
Self-hurled, sat Aïdoneus,' discrowned,

With foot upon a broken sceptre set,

And head stooped forward to his hands, and seemed,

But for the rising and the slow decline

Of his wide-lifting shoulders, like one dead.
And dread his aspect, even to their eyes
Used to all sights of grandeur and despair,
All tragic posture and the pomp of woe;
Not only for his immemorial state
Abandoned, and the rightful awe that still
Sat on his unkinged head and vacant hand,
But him most capable of grief they deemed
Whose strength was greatest to endure or dare,
And deepest his despair whose hope was first.

So there before him, each upon his throne,

Sat as if throne and shape were but one stone;
And, for that space, more like their idols seemed
In regions orient, sitting, hushed and dark,
Within a woody cloister of close palms,

Or, old with lifeless years, in some forgot,
Rare-pilgrimed temple, or dim cavern, ranged,—
Unseen by all the stars. At length to break
The latent chain that bound the force of limb
And faculty in each fierce spirit, rose
Barbarian Baal; in his depth of shade,

Save by their gloomy and familiar eyes,
Not from the dark discerned; in shape conjoined
Angel and brute, in temper brute, but strong,
And third from Satan; whom with unfixed glance,
Under low-dropped and sternly neighboring brows,
He now regarded, as a frenzied beast

On his still dreaded master rolls his fierce,
Inconstant orbs. Him, ages now, unfed

With blood of slaughtered bulls and fragrant smoke,
Sharp hunger seized, and lion-pangs, to taste
Again such offerings, and repossess

The dark and secret land, whence fled of late

His desperate chief; not now from the armed voice

Of his great plaintiff, summoning its bands

Of vassal evils; not from thunder piled

On the crushed air, and titan-lightnings hurled
From his black solitary heaven, high

Above all reach; but from his far-stretched hand
Disguised as human, and the all-pure force

Of virtue, clad in human voice and shape.

Thus hindered of that hope, and chafed, and what
Was godlike in him fired with shame, to think
How one by one the ethnic gods had fallen,
Disarmed, before the constant powers of heaven,
Met in the battle-region of the earth—
How many forced by slight antagonists,
Of puny frame and seeming, from their old
Usurped domain,-himself, on Carmel's top
Amid his howling prophets, by a man,
Defeated, and their prowest, in the wide
And wild arena where he met the last

And wondrous apparition marked with signs
Of Heaven and hostile purpose;-by such scorns
Panged and enraged, and long made pale with hate
Of gods terrestrial-born, but equal made

With the celestial, and to like domain

By Satan raised-the mighty bulk stood up,
Strong but irresolute, and sought to throw

The weight of that stern presence from his soul,
And from its ward unlock imprisoned sound.

But scarce they heard the first hoarse breath, that died Ere his dumb lips had shaped it to a word.

Of any import, when throughout the throng

They stirred, and grasped their arms, as if some ill,
Long pondered and expected, from the heights
Of ether suddenly had fallen; he,

Around and upward, looked with listening stare;
Then, like a cloud arming in heaven, grew
More black and dreadful, and his giant peers,
With copied brow, frowned back dread sympathy,
Published revolt and general discontent:

Yet unprepared they heard, when words like these,
Forth poured like shaped, articulate thunder, shook
The wide Infern, that from its shadowy sides,
Of deepest region, ruined back the sound,
As when one shouts within a hollow cave.

66 Abjects-once gods! befits it now that he, Sole cause of this despair, and for whose sake We suffer, that his pride may play at Jove,"

God of this subterraneous world—with us,
His toys, for subjects-should here sit infirm,
Like his Memnonian image, blind and deaf
To evils that can add to grief that seemed,
Ere this, at greatest, and where all was lost
Bring ruin, and make woe in hell? 'Tis fit,
And time, methinks some monarch should ascend
The abdicated throne, which he perchance
Leaves to his recent victor, hitherward
Pursuing him, with unfamiliar feet

In the blind access hindered, if aright

The babbling lips of oracle have told

Of such a one's descent to these abodes."

He paused, checked by no voice, by none assured:
As when a ship, that on the world's great sides
Climbs the wave-ribbed Pacific, 'gainst the weight
Of tempests from the skiey Andes pressed
Upon the barriered continent of air,
Resistless back, and leaning on the sea,
Is hit by thunder, and intestine fire.

Breaks forth, and lights the inexorable face
Of her wild doom; the stark, bewildered crew
Give her to wind and sea, and as she swings,