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From “Paradise Lost,” Book III.
HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born! | |
| Or of the Eternal coeternal beam | |
| May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, | |
| And never but in unapproachèd light | |
| Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, | 5 |
| Bright effluence of bright essence increate! | |
| Or hear’st thou rather pure ethereal stream, | |
| Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun | |
| Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice | |
| Of God, as with a mantle, did invest | 10 |
| The rising world of waters dark and deep, | |
| Won from the void and formless infinite. | |
| Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, | |
| Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained | |
| In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight | 15 |
| Through utter and through middle darkness borne, | |
| With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, | |
| I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, | |
| Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down | |
| The dark descent, and up to reascend, | 20 |
| Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, | |
| And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou | |
| Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain | |
| To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; | |
| So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, | 25 |
| Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more | |
| Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt | |
| Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, | |
| Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief | |
| Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, | 30 |
| That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, | |
| Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget | |
| Those other two equalled with me in fate, | |
| So were I equalled with them in renown, | |
| Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, | 35 |
| And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: | |
| Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move | |
| Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird | |
| Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid | |
| Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year | 40 |
| Seasons return, but not to me returns | |
| Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, | |
| Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, | |
| Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; | |
| But cloud, instead, and ever-during dark, | 45 |
| Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men | |
| Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair | |
| Presented with a universal blank | |
| Of nature’s works, to me expunged and rased, | |
| And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. | 50 |
| So much the rather thou, celestial Light, | |
| Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers | |
| Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence | |
| Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell | |
| Of things invisible to mortal sight. | 55 |
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