Folio 6r

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John Milton
1608–1674

Paradise Lost.

Manuscript of Book I, in the hand of an amanuensis, ca. 1665.

Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904

MA 307
Transcription: 

If not what resolution from despair.
Thus Satan talking to his neerest Mate
With head uplift above the wave, and eys
That sparkling blaz'd, his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the Den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works,
Created hugest that swim th' Ocean stream;
Him haply slumbring on the Norway foame
The Pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some Iland, oft, as Seamen tell
With fixed Anchor in his Scaly rinde
Moores by his side under the Lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delayes.
So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay
Chain'd on the burning lake, nor ever thence
Had risen or heav'd his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruleing heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes hee might