Chapter 22 20
Before thir eyes appear in sudden view [ 890 ]
The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark
Illimitable Ocean without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, & height,
And time and place are lost; where the oldest Night
And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold [895]
Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise
Of endless Warrs, and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring
Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag [ 900 ]
Of each his faction, in thir several Clanns,
Light-armd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,
Swarm populous, unnumbered as the Sands
Of Barca or Cyrenes torrid soil,
Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise [ 905 ]
Thir lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
Hee rules a moment; Chaos Umpire sits,
And by decision more imbroiles the fray
By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter
Chance governs all. Into this wilde Abyss, [ 910 ]
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confusdly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th Almighty Maker them ordain [ 915 ]
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wild Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,
Pondering his Voyage: for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his eare less peald [ 920 ]
With noises loud and ruinous (to compare
Great things with small) then when Bellona storms,
With all her battering Engines bent to rase
Som Capital City; or less then if this frame
Of Heavn were falling, and these Elements [ 925 ]
In mutinie had from her Axle torn
The stedfast Earth. At last his Sail-broad Vannes
He spreads for flight, and in the surgical smoak
Uplifted spurs the ground, then many a League
As in a cloudy Chair ascending rides [ 930 ]
Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuum: all unawares
Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance [ 935 ]
The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud
Instinct with Fire and Niter hurried him
As many miles aloft: that furie stayed,
Quencht in a Boggy Syrtis, neither Sea,
Nor good dry Land: nigh founderd on he fares, [ 940 ]
Treading the crude consistency, half on foot,
Half flying; behaves him now both Oare and Saile.
As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness
With winged course ore Hill or moarie Dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stelth [945]
Had from his wakeful custody purloind
The guarded Gold: So eagerly the fiend
Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes: [ 950 ]
At length a universal hubbub wilde
Of stunning sounds and voices all confused
Borne through the hollow dark assaults his eare
With loudest vehemence: thither he plyes,
Undaunted to meet there what ever power [ 955 ]
Or Spirit of the nethermost Abyss
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the neerest coast of darkness lyes
Bordering on light; when strait behold the Throne
Of Chaos, and his dark Pavilion spread [ 960 ]
Wide on the wasteful Deep; with him Enthrond
Sat Sable-vested Night, oldest of things,
The Consort of his Reign; and by them stood
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name
Of Demogorgon; Rumor next and Chance, [ 965 ]
And Tumult and Confusion all imbroild,
And Discord with a thousand various mouths.