Here at last We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
Silence was pleased.
Horror and doubt distract His troubled thoughts and from the bottom stir The Hell within him, for within him Hell He brings and round about him, nor from Hell One step no more than from himself can fly By change of place.
They changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell.
Only supreme in misery!
WE know no time when we were not as now...
I thence invoke my thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.
All is best, though we oft doubt, what the unsearchable dispose, of highest wisdom brings about.
The goal of all learning is to repair the ruin of our first parents.