"But see! the angry Victor hath recalled
"His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
"Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,
"Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid
"The fiery surge, that from the precipice
"Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
"To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
"Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn,
"Or satiate fury, yield it from our foe.
"Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
"The seat of desolation, void of light,
"Save what the glimmering of these livid flamcs
"Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
"From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
"There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
"And, reassembling 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,
Briareos, 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 lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays.