Paradise Lost

by John Milton

  183. peculiar grace: grace given uniquely to some extraordinary souls. See S. Fallon 1998, 95–97.

  186. betimes: in time.

  187–90. The language carefully indicates that God’s offered grace is not irresistible. It only invites, and may suffice rather than “will suffice.” The Protestant belief in conditional election and resistable grace is called Arminianism, after the Dutchman Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), who tried to introduce free will into Calvin’s deterministic theology.

  189. stony hearts: See Ezek. 11.19.

  197. persisting: remaining steadfast; safe arrive: attain salvation in the end.

  200–202. In CD 1.8, Milton argues that when God blinds or hardens a sinner, “he is not the cause of sin” (MLM 1213).

  204. fealty: allegiance.

  208. sacred and devote: absolutely doomed; the words are near synonyms, with sacred meaning “dedicated to a deity for destruction” and devote meaning “given to destruction as by a vow.”

  212. The idea that the Atonement satisfied justice originated with Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo 1.11–16, 19–21.

  215. just: in that he is “able” and “willing” to “pay / The rigid satisfaction, death for death” (ll. 211–12). 219. Patron: advocate.

  221. ransom set: put down the ransom price, which is a life. 224. doom: judgment.

  226. mediation: One of the Son’s traditional titles is mediator between God and man (and in Milton’s poem, between God and angel as well).

  231. unprevented: unanticipated (that is to say, not prayed for).

  233. dead in sins: See Col. 2.13.

  234. meet: adequate.

  236–38. me … me … me … me: The self-emphasis of the repetition is perhaps balanced by the humility of me being in all four cases an unstressed syllable. Me is both repeated and stressed in the battlefield oration of 6.812–18.

  241. on me: Here at last me occurs in the stressed position (see previous note); wreck: give vent to.

  244. Cp. John 5.26.

  247–49. “Thou will not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. 16.10).

  253. his mortal sting disarmed: 1 Cor. 15.55: “O death, where is thy sting?” See 12.432.

  255. maugre: in spite of; show: to the Father.

  258. ruin: hurl down.

  259. Death last: 1 Cor. 15.26: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” glut the grave: gratify to the full the appetite of the grave. For the commonplace metaphor of the hungry grave, see Shakespeare’s ROM 5.3.45–48.

  270. attends: awaits.

  271. Admiration: wonder.

  276. complacence: pleasure.

  281–82. “Therefore join your nature to the nature of those whom only you can redeem.”

  285. room: place, stead.

  287–88. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15.22).

  290–91. thy merit/Imputed: Christ’s merit is imputed, “attributed vicariously,” to saved human beings. Cp. 12.407–10; CD 1.22.

  299. Giving: submitting.

  300. dearly: both “lovingly” and “expensively.”

  301. still: always.

  306. Equal to God: applies to throned in highest bliss, not to the Son’s divine nature.

  307. fruition: enjoyment; quitted: both “left” (in becoming incarnate) and “paid, redeemed” (man’s debt of sin).

  317–18. all power/I give thee: “All power is given to me” (Matt. 28.18).

  318–19. assume/Thy merits: echoes Horace’s Odes 3.30.14–15.

  320. The line lists the four orders of angels found in Col. 1.16; see also 5.840.

  321–22. “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth” (Phil. 2.10). See Satan’s resentment of this “knee-tribute” at 5.782.

  326. all winds: all quarters of the compass.

  327. cited: summoned.

  328. doom: judgment.

  329. Cp. Nat Ode 155–56.

  330. saints: righteous worshipers.

  331. arraigned: accused.

  334. The world shall burn: See 2 Pet. 3.10–13.

  340. need: be necessary. The regal conception of deity will in the end be abandoned.

  341. God shall be all in all: See 1 Cor. 15.28.

  342. compass: accomplish, but perhaps anticipating the compasses of 7.225.

  343. as me: If this phrase means “as you do me,” God is simply prescribing rites of adoration, but if it means “as if me” he is sharing or even handing over his kingship. Cp. John 5.23.

  348. jubilee: jubilation; hosannas: from the Hebrew “Save, we pray.”

  353. amarant: a legendary immortal flower; see 11.78n, Lyc 149.

  357. fount of life: See Rev. 7.17, 22.1–2.

  359. amber: clear.

  363. sea of jasper: See Rev. 21.11.

  367. preamble: musical prelude.

  370. exempt: excluded.

  377. but: except.

  381. that: so that.

  382. veil their eyes: See Isa. 6.2.

  383. of all creation first: The phrase has biblical precedent (Rev. 3.14, Col. 1.15–17), but for Milton such verses were not, as they were for believers in the orthodox Trinity, metaphorical. On Christ as the first creation, see CD 1.5, and, on Milton’s Arianism, Bauman 1987.

  387. Whom … behold: See Exod. 33.18–20; John 1.18, 14.9.

  388. effulgence: radiance.

  392. Dominations: usually one of the nine angelic orders, but here apparently, by synecdoche, a name for all of the nine orders.

  397. powers: angels.

  412–15. The promise to devote future songs to the praise of a god was conventional in classical hymns. See Callimachus, Hymns 3.137.

  418. opacous: opaque.

  419. first convex: the outer sphere or primum mobile of our universe.

  429. vexed: tossed about.

  430. at large: freely.

  431. Imaüs: mountains that were believed to stretch from Afghanistan to the Arctic.

  432. roving Tartar: nomadic inhabitants of central Asia, “a people the most barbarous, bloody, and fierce of all mankind … the scourges of God on the civilized world” (Hume). Tartar is also a shortened form of Tartarus, or hell.

  434. yeanling: newborn.

  435. the springs: Both the Ganges and the Hydaspes (the modern Jhelum) have their springs, or sources, in the Himalayas.

  438. Sericana: China; Chineses was the standard seventeenth-century plural form.

  439. With sails and wind: Peter Heylyn, Cosmography (1620), notes that the Chinese “have carts and coaches driven with sails” (867); cany: made of cane or bamboo.

  444–97. Milton’s Paradise of Fools has its seed in Ariosto’s OF 34, where the English knight Astolfo goes to the Limbo of Vanity on the moon in search of his lost wits. Milton may also have been influenced by Ovid’s House of Fame (Met. 12.52–61).

  444. store: plenty.

  449. fond: foolish.

  452. painful: painstaking.

  454. empty: The Latin for empty is vanus, the etymological root of vanity (447).

  455. unaccomplished: unfinished, lacking.

  456. Abortive: fruitless, useless; unkindly: unnaturally.

  457. fleet: glide away.

  459. some: Ariosto for one (OF 34.73ff).

  461. Translated saints: righteous men such as Enoch and Elijah, who were taken from Earth without having to die (cp. 11.670–71).

  464. giants: sired by the Sons of God (fallen angels in one tradition) on human women (Gen. 6.4). See 11.573–627; PR 2.178–81.

  467. Sennaär: Vulgate form of Shinar (Gen. 11.2).

  470. fondly: foolishly.

  471. Empedocles: a philosopher who threw himself into Etna to hide his mortality. The volcano threw back one of his sandals. See Horace, De Arte Poetica 464–66.

  473. Cleombrotus: A philosopher who drowned himself after reading of Elysium in Plato’s Phae
do. See Callimachus, Epigrams 25.

  474. Embryos: beings in an unrealized state; eremites: hermits; friars: Franciscan friars taught that idiots and unbaptized infants went not to Heaven but to a limbo above the earth; Milton in a satirical gesture puts the friars in his Paradise of Fools along with embryos and idiots.

  475. The Carmelites wore a white mantle, the Dominicans a black, and the Franciscans a gray. trumpery: religious ornaments.

  476–77. The pilgrims to Golgotha repeat the error of the Apostles before learning of the Resurrection: “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24.5).

  478–80. It was not uncommon for dying Roman Catholics to disguise themselves as members of religious orders to ease their passage to Heaven.

  481–83. This depiction of the Ptolemaic cosmos includes seven planetary spheres, the sphere of the fixed stars (the eighth), the crystálline sphere (ninth), and the primum mobile or that first moved (tenth). The crystalline sphere was a late and controversial insertion, invented to account for precession of the equinoxes and a perceived oscillation of the starry sphere, i.e., the trepidation talked. The poles of this hypothetical crystalline orb were thought to correspond to the equinoctial opposites of Aries and Libra in the eighth. The balance that measures (weighs) the trepidation may thus refer to Libra (“the balance”) (Fowler). Or it may refer to the librating axis of the crystalline sphere, which imparts (weighs) irregular motions as it moves back and forth like a beam holding scales. Cp. “trepidation of the spheres” in Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”

  484. wicket: a small door made in, or placed beside, a large one.

  485. keys: the keys of the kingdom of Heaven given to Peter (Matt. 16.19). Cp. Lyc 108–11.

  489. devious: off their main course.

  491. beads: rosaries.

  492. For Protestants, sale of indulgences granting released time from Purgatory was a main Catholic abuse. Dispenses or dispensations voided obligations. Pardons absolved from offenses. Bulls were papal edicts.

  494. backside of the world: the dark side of the primum mobile, farthest from Heaven.

  495. limbo: fringe region.

  496. Paradise of Fools: a proverbial phrase; see Shakespeare, ROM 2.4.163.

  501. traveled: punning on “travailed, wearied.”

  502. degrees: steps, stairs.

  506. frontispiece: ornamental pediment above an entranceway.

  507. orient: lustrous as pearl.

  510–15. See Gen. 28.10–17.

  513. The 1667 and 1674 editions have no comma after Padan-Aram but include one after Luz. We insert the first and omit the second to avoid geographical confusion. Jacob’s vision occurs in the vicinity of Luz, or Bethel, just north of Jerusalem. He sleeps there en route to Padan-Aram in northwest Mesopotamia.

  516. mysteriously: symbolically, as an allegorical figure.

  518. Viewless: unseen.

  518–19. bright sea … pearl: The Argument identifies this bright sea as “waters above the firmament that flow about [the gate of Heaven].” Cp. 7.619.

  521. Wafted: gently floated, as Lazarus was (Luke 16.22).

  522. Rapt: carried away or caught up, as Elijah was (2 Kings 2.11; cp. PR 216–17)

  526–28. Direct … Earth: At the bottom of the stairway, precisely above Paradise, a wide passage opened down to Earth.

  530. That refers to the passage over the Promised Land, described in lines 531–37. It is distinct from the passage traveled by Satan and from the one over Mount Sion. These occasional thoroughfares are presented as avenues of divine purpose, like the stairway.

  534. eye with choice regard: “His eye also passed, with preferential attention.” Angels are later identified as God’s eyes (ll. 650–53).

  535. Paneas: mountain spring at the northern border of Israel, a chief source of the Jordan River (flood); also, Greek name for Dan, the city associated with this fount. Cp. the scriptural idiom “from Dan even to Beersheba” (e.g., 1 Sam. 3.20).

  536. Beërsaba: Vulgate form of Beersheba, city on Israel’s southern border.

  538–39. The opening to the passageway occurs at the boundary separating light from the darkness of chaos.

  543. world: cosmos, universe.

  547. discovers: reveals.

  552. though after Heaven seen: “Though previously he had witnessed the splendors of Heaven.”

  556–61. circling … breadth: Satan views the interior of the cosmos from an opening in the primum mobile at its most eastern point (corresponding to Libra, the scales). Peering down (westward), Satan sees the dark side of the Earth and its rotating, canopy-like shadow (the shadow’s rotation would be annual in a Copernican cosmos; diurnal in a Ptolemaic). At the western extreme from Satan, behind the Earth and sun, lies Aries, the fleecy star (astrologically, the ram). Its position in the sky is below that of Andromeda (mythological princess threatened by a sea monster). From Satan’s perspective, the ram thus appears to bear the princess past the horizon of the western ocean (Atlantic seas). Finally, to observe the breadth of the cosmos before him, Satan looks north and south, from pole to pole.

  562. world’s first region: uppermost portion of the universe, above the sphere of the moon.

  563–64. Satan dives straight down (flight precipitant) through the sparkling (marble) air. Once among the stars, however, he follows a characteristically indirect and slanted course (winds … his oblique way). 565–66. shone/Stars distant: “From a distance appeared to be stars” (Greek idiom).

  567. Or … or: “either … or.” Various seventeenth-century authors, and some ancients, speculated about other inhabited worlds. Milton is notably persistent about this possibility. Cp. line 670; 7.621–22; 8.140–58, 175–76. happy isles: Islands of the Blessed in Greek mythology, where a favored few abide in bliss rather than face death.

  568. Hesperian gardens: where grew golden apples guarded by a dragon. Associated with Hesperus, the evening star, these gardens were thought to lie beyond the western ocean (where Aries bears Andromeda; see 556–61n). Cp. Masque 393–97, 981–83; PR 2.357.

  571. above: more than.

  573–76. thither … longitude: Milton’s noncommittal description of Satan’s route sunward accommodates competing seventeenth-century astronomical models.

  577. Aloof: apart from (preposition).

  580. numbers: music of the spheres regarded as the measure of a dance (cp. 8.125; Masque 112–14). The choric role of the stars in pacing the drama of creation was a classical commonplace.

  583. magnetic beam: attractive power of the sun; a pre-Newtonian principle of celestial dynamics, proposed by Kepler.

  586. virtue: efficacy; the deep: here means the farthest reaches and most inward parts of the created universe, including underground parts. Sunlight does not penetrate the realm of Chaos, which is also known as “the deep.”

  587. station: Although it suggests a sedentary sun, as in the Copernican system, station could also refer to the fixed sphere or course of the sun in the Ptolemaic cosmos.

  588–90. Galileo built the first telescope (glazed optic tube) and published his discoveries, sunspots among them, in Siderius Nuncius (1610). Cp. 1.288. Tube was a common seventeenth-century term for telescope. Cp. Marvell, “To the King”: “So his bold tube man to the sun applied/And spots unknown in the bright star descried” (1–2).

  592. metal: Editions 1 and 2 have “medal.” See the repetition of metal and stone at lines 595–96.

  596. carbuncle: precious stone, fiery red, like little glowing coals (the word’s etymological origin) or like serpents’ eyes (9.500). The gems referred to were all thought to be luminous, i.e., informed/With radiant light (593–94). chrysolite: yellow-green gemstone.

  597–98. to … breastplate: “the forementioned radiant stones plus the others on Aaron’s breastplate, to the total of twelve.” See Exod. 28.17–20 for a description of the breastplate.

  598. stone: the philosopher’s stone; the grand goal of alchemical aspira
tion, able to confer immortality and transmute base metal into gold.

  601. Philosophers: alchemists.

  602–5. bind … form: Alchemists considered mercury (Hermes) a primary basis of material being and subjected it to much experimentation. Liquid at room temperature, it was deemed volatile—difficult to bind or fix. Proteus is the shape-shifting sea god, symbolic of primary matter, who had to be restrained in his native form before he would speak true. Limbec is a corrupted form of alembic, a retort used by alchemists to distill and fix matter in its original condition. Note the repetitions of stone and vain in lines 598–602.

  607–8. Breathe … gold: Like the fields and streams in Paradise (5.185–86), those on the sun breathe forth mists, but on the sun the exhaled mist is elixir—a vaporous manifestation of the philosopher’s stone with life-extending properties, also identified as potable gold.

  608. virtuous: efficacious.

  609. arch-chemic: of supreme chemical power.

  610. terrestrial humor: earthly fluid or moisture. Sunlight was thought to penetrate the earth’s surface and produce precious gems from subterranean moisture (cp. l. 586). Cp. Masque 732–36. Similar processes occur in Heaven (6.475–81).

  612. effect: appearance, efficacy.

  617. Culminate from th’ equator: reach their zenith relative to the equator, i.e., at equatorial noon.

  618–19. whence … fall: In the prelapsarian cosmos, the sun’s rays are perpendicular to the surface at equatorial noon so that no way round shadows fall. On the always shadowless solar surface, the sun’s beams always (still) shoot directly upward.

  620–21. Nowhere … far: According to some classical theories widely accepted in the seventeenth century, vision depends on extromission, “a beam issuing out of the eye to the object” (Hume; cp. SA 163). The eye was thus deemed a sunlike organ. Satan’s eyebeam is sharpened in a literal sense, like one knife sharpened against another, and so made able to pierce to objects distant far.

  622. ken: visual range.

  623. “And I saw an angel standing in the sun” (Rev. 19.17).

  625. tiar: crown.

  627. Illustrious: brightly shining.

  634. casts: contrives.

  637. prime: first in order of existence or rank; primary.