Free The Complete Poetry of John Milton by John Milton Page A

son, 14 [135] / she sprinkles the mountain tops with ambrosial tears, / then the keeper 15 of the starry court banished sleep, / repeating his nocturnal visions and delightful dreams. /
    There is a place enclosed in the eternal darkness of night, / once the vast foundation of a ruined dwelling, [140] / now the den of savage Murder and double-tongued Treason, / whom fierce Discord bore at one birth. / Here among the unhewn stones and broken rock lie / the unburied bones of men and corpses pierced by steel; / here malicious Deceit sits forever with distorted eyes, [145] / and Contentions and Calumny, its jaws armed with fangs, / Fury and a thousand ways of dying are seen, / and Fear and pale Horror hasten around the place, / and nimble ghosts howl perpetually through the mute silences, / and the conscious earth stagnates with blood. [150] / Besides, Murder and Treason themselves lie hid, quaking, / in the inmost depths of the cave with no one pursuing them through it, / the rough cave, full ofrocks, dark with deathly shadows. / The guilty ones disperse and run away with backward glance; / these defenders of Rome, faithful through the long ages, [155] / the Babylonian high-priest 16 summons, and thus he speaks: / “A race odious to me lives on the western limits / in the surrounding sea; prudent nature has thoroughly denied / that unworthy people to join our world. / Thither, so I command, journey with swift pace, [160] / and may the king and his nobles together, that impious race, / be blown into thin air by the Tartarean powder, / and whoever for true faith have glowed with love / invite as partners of the plot and accomplices of the deed.” / He ended, and the stern twins obeyed with eagerness. [165] /
    Meanwhile turning the heavens in a spacious arc, / the Lord, who shines forth from his ethereal height, looks down / and laughs at the efforts of the evil crew, 17 / and orders the defense of his people to be upheld. /
    They say there is a section where fertile Europe is separated [170] / from Asian land, and looks toward Mareotidan waters; / here is situated the lofty tower of Titanean Fame, 18 / brazen, broad, resounding, closer to the glowing stars / than Athos or Pelion piled on Ossa. 19 / A thousand doors and entrances lie open, and as many windows, [175] / and spacious courts shine through the thin walls; / here the accumulated people raise various whispers; / how the swarms of flies make noise about the milk pails / by buzzing, or through the sheepfolds of woven reed, / when the lofty Dog Star 20 assails the summer height of the sky. [180] / Indeed Fame herself, avenger of her mother, sits in her topmost fortress; / her head, girt with innumerable ears, projects out from that place, / attracting the faintest sound and seizing the lightest / murmur from the farthest limits of the wide world. / And you, O Argus, 21 unjust guardian of the heifer [185] / Io, did not roll so many eyes in your fierce face, / eyes never faltering in silent sleep, / eyes gazing over the adjacent lands far and wide. / With them is Fame accustomed always to survey places deprived of light, / and even those impervious to the radiant sun. [190] / And with a thousand tongues the blabbing one pours out / things heard and seen to anyone who chances by, and now lying, she lessens / the truth, and now she increases it with fabricated rumors. / Nevertheless, Fame, you deserved the praises of my song, / for one good deed than which no other speaks more truly, [195] / worthy to be sung by me, nor shall I repent having commemorated you / at such length in my song. To be sure, we unharmed English / bestow on you what is just for your services, O inconstant goddess. / God who restrains the eternal fires from their agitation / with his dispatched thunderbolt, the earth trembling, exhorts you: [200] / “Fame, are you silent? or does the impious throng of Papists / hide you, conspired against me and my English, / and a new massacre designed against