Folio 3r

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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: 

In adamantine chaines & penall fire
Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to armes.
Nine times the space that measures day & night
To mortall men, hee with his horrid crue
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery gulfe
Confounded though immortall: But his doome
Reservd him to more wrauth; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness & lasting paine
Torments him, round he throws his balefull eyes
That witness'd huge affliction & dismay
Mix'd with obdurate pride & stedfast hate:
At once as farr as Angells kenne he views
The dismal scituation waste & wilde
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great Furnace flam'd, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darknes visible
Serv'd only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, dolefull shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell; Hope never comes
That comes to all: but torture without end
Still urges, & a fiery deluge fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsum'd:
Such place eternall Justice had prepar'd
For these rebellious, here thir prison ordain'd