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Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

Год написания книги
2019
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Translated Saints, or middle Spirits hold

Betwixt the angelical and human kind.

Hither of ill-joined sons and daughters born

First from the ancient world those giants came

With many a vain exploit, though then renowned:

The builders next of Babel on the plain

Of Sennaar, and still with vain design,

New Babels, had they wherewithal, would build:

Others came single; he, who, to be deemed

A God, leaped fondly into Aetna flames,

Empedocles; and he, who, to enjoy

Plato’s Elysium, leaped into the sea,

Cleombrotus; and many more too long,

Embryos, and idiots, eremites, and friars

White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery.

Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek

In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heaven;

And they, who to be sure of Paradise,

Dying, put on the weeds of Dominick,

Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised;

They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed,

And that crystalling sphere whose balance weighs

The trepidation talked, and that first moved;

And now Saint Peter at Heaven’s wicket seems

To wait them with his keys, and now at foot

Of Heaven’s ascent they lift their feet, when lo

A violent cross wind from either coast

Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry

Into the devious air: Then might ye see

Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost

And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads,

Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,

The sport of winds: All these, upwhirled aloft,

Fly o’er the backside of the world far off

Into a Limbo large and broad, since called

The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown

Long after; now unpeopled, and untrod.

All this dark globe the Fiend found as he passed,

And long he wandered, till at last a gleam

Of dawning light turned thither-ward in haste

His travelled steps: far distant he descries

Ascending by degrees magnificent

Up to the wall of Heaven a structure high;

At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared

The work as of a kingly palace-gate,

With frontispiece of diamond and gold

Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems

The portal shone, inimitable on earth

By model, or by shading pencil, drawn.

These stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw
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