Paradise Lost.
Manuscript of Book I, in the hand of an amanuensis, ca. 1665.
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904
Rather then human. Nor did Israel scape
Th' infection when thir borrow'd gold compos'd
The Calfe in Oreb: and the rebell King
Doubl'd that sin in Bethel and in Dan,
Likning his Maker to the grazed ox,
Jehovah, who in one night when he past
From Egipt marching, equall'd with one stroke
Both her first born and all her bleating Gods.
Belial came last, then whom a spirit more lewd
Fell not from heaven, or more grosse to love
Vice for it selfe: to him no temple stood
Or altar smoakd; yet who more oft then hee
In temples and at Altars, when the Preist
Turns Atheist, as did Ely's sonns, who fill'd
With lust and violence the house of God.
In Courts and Palaces he also reigns
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above thir loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage: and when night
Darkens the streets then wander forth the sonns
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witnesse the streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when hospitable doors
Yeilded thir Matrons to avoide worse rape.
These were the prime in order and in might;
Paradise Lost. Manuscript of Book I, in the hand of an amanuensis, ca. 1665.