📔 Paradise Lost

He on his side / Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love / Hung over her enamoured.

Forth rush the levant and the ponent winds.

Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, / While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof.

Much pleasure we have lost while we abstained / From this delightful fruit, nor known till now / True relish, tasting.

more, it seems, inflamed with lust than rage

Meanwhile the eternal eye, whose sight discerns Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount, And from within the golden lamps that burn Nightly before him, saw without their light Rebellion rising,—saw in whom, how spread Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes Were banded to oppose his high decree;

His fair large front and eye sublime declared / Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks / Round from his parted forelock manly hung / Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:

Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons / Conjured against the Highest.

With solemn adoration down they [the angels] cast / Thir Crowns inwove with Amarant and Gold; / Immortal Amarant, a Flour which once / In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life / Began to bloom, but soon for mans offence / To Heav'n remov'd where first it grew, there grows, / And flours aloft shading the Fount of Life, […]

[T]he Cohort bright / Of watchful Cherubim; four faces each / Had, like a double Janus, all thir shape / Spangl'd with eyes more numerous then those / Of Argus, and more wakeful then to drouze, […]