Paradise Lost.
Manuscript of Book I, in the hand of an amanuensis, ca. 1665.
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their Generalls voice they soon obai'd;
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amrams son in Egipts evill day
Wav'd round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of Locusts, warping on the Eastern wind,
That ore the realm of impious Pharoah hung
Like night, and dark'n'd all the Land of Nile.
So numberless were those bad Angells seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell
T'wixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till, as a signal given, th' uplifted speare
Of thir great Sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even ballance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain;
A multitude, like which the populous North
Pour'd never from her frozen loyns, to passe
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Lybian sands.
Forthwith from every squadron and each band
The heads and Leaders thither hast where stood
Thir great Commander; Godlike shap's & formes
Excelling human, Princely dignities,