Free The Complete Poetry of John Milton by John Milton

performed in a solemn fashion, / silent Night 9 left the embraces of old Erebus, / and now drives her headlong horses with a goading whip–[70] / blind Typhlos and spirited Melanchaetes, / torpid Siope, sprung from an infernal father, / and shaggy Phrix with bristly hair. / Meanwhile the tamer of kings, the heir of hell, / enters his chambers (for the secret adulterer [75] / does not spend sterile nights without a gentle concubine); / but sleep was scarcely closing his ready eyes, / when the dark lord of the shadows, the ruler of the dead, / the plunderer of man stood before him, concealed by a false shape. / His temples flashed with the gray hairs he had assumed; [80] / a long beard covered his breast; his ash-colored attire / swept the ground with a long train; and his hood hung down / from his shaven crown; and so that none might be absent from his frauds / he bound his lustful loins with hempen rope, / thrusting his slow feet into open sandals. [85] / In like manner, as rumor has it, Francis 10 used to wander alone / in the vast, loathsome desert through the haunts of wild beasts; / he carried the pious word of salvation to the people of the wood, / himself impious, and tamed the wolves and the Libyan lions. /
    But clothed in such garb, the cunning serpent, [90] / deceitful, separated his accursed lips with these words: / “Are you sleeping, my son? Does slumber still overpower your limbs? / O negligent of faith and neglectful of your flocks! / while a barbarous nation born under the northern sky / ridicules your throne and triple diadem, O venerable one, [95] / and while the quivered English contemn your laws! / Arise, up, arise, lazy one, whom the Roman emperor adores, / and for whom the unlocked gate of arched heaven lies open; / crush their swelling pride and insolent arrogance, / and let the sacrilegious know what your curse may be capable of, [100] / and what custody of the Apostolic key may avail; / and remember to avenge the scattered armada of the Spanish / and the banners of the Iberians swallowed up by the broad deep, / and the bodies of so many saints hanged on infamous gallows / recently by the reigning Amazonian virgin. 11 [105] / But if you prefer to become indolent in your soft bed / and refuse to crush the increasing strengthof the foe, / he will fill the Tyrrhene Sea with a vast army / and set his glittering standards on the Aventine hill: 12 / he will destroy and burn with flames the remains of the ancients, [110] / and with profane feet will trample upon your sacred neck, / you whose shoes kings were glad to give their kisses. / Yet you will not challenge him to wars and open conflict; / such would be useless labor; you are shrewd to use deception, / of which any kind is fitting in order to spread traps for heretics; [115] / and now the great king calls the nobles with foreign speech / to council, and those sprung from the stock of celebrated men / and old venerable sires with their robe of state and gray hairs. / You will be able to scatter them limb by limb throughout the air / and to give them up to cinders, by the fire of nitrous [120] / powder exploded beneath the last chambers where they have assembled. / Immediately therefore advise whatever faithful there are in England / of the proposed deed; will any of your followers / dare not dispatch the commands of the supreme Pope? / And instantly may the fierce Gaul and the savage Spaniard [125] / invade them, smitten with dread and stupefied by calamity. / Thus at last the Marian era 13 will return to that land / and you will rule again over the warlike English. / And, so you fear nothing, accept the gods and subordinate goddesses, / as many deities as are honored on your feast days.” [130] / The deceiver spoke, and laying his disguise aside, / he fled to Lethe, his abominable, gloomy kingdom. /
    Now rosy dawn, throwing open the eastern gates, / dresses the gilded world with returning light; / and hitherto grieving for the sad death of her swarthy