Paradise Lost (1667)

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n.

Who overcomes

By force, hath overcome but half his foe.

Let none admire

That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best

Deserve they precious bane.

Where there is then no good

For which to strive, no strife can grow up there

From faction; for none, sure, will claim in Hell

Precedence; none, whose portion is so small

Of present pain, that with ambitious mind

Will covet more.

Our greatness will appear

Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,

Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse,

We can create.

As when, to warn proud cities, war appears

Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush

To battle in the clouds; before each van

Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears,

Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms

From either end of Heaven the welkin burns.

The world shall burn; and from her ashes spring

New Heaven and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell.

God shall be all in all.

Order from disorder sprung.

Ease would recant

Vows made in pain, as violent and void.

For never can true reconcilement grow

Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.

This is servitude,

To serve the unwise.

Heaven, the seat of bliss,

Brooks not the works of violence and war.

Angels, contented with their fame in Heaven,

Seek not the praise of men.

Let it profit thee to have heard,

By terrible example, the reward

Of disobedience.

And God made two great lights, (great, for their use

To man,) the greater to have rule by day,

The less by night.

O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred

More justly--seat worthier of Gods, as built

With second thoughts, reforming was was old!

For what God, after better, worse would build?

For only in destroying I find ease

To my relentless thoughts.

To me shall be the glory sole among

The infernal Powers, in one day to have marred

What he--Almighty styled--six nights and days

Continued making; and who knows how long

Before had been contriving?

For not to irksome toil, but to delight,

He made us, and delight to reason join'd.

For solitude sometimes is best society,

And short retirement urges sweet return.

Know thy birth!

For dost thou art, and shalt to dust return.

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest

Live well; how long, or short, permit to Heaven.

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

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