Paradise Regained - Milton John - Страница 11

Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold

To me most fatal, me it most concerns.

The trial hath indamaged thee no way,

Rather more honour left and more esteem;

Me naught advantaged, missing what I aimed.

Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,

The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more

Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.

And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined

Than to a worldly crown, addicted more

To contemplation and profound dispute;

As by that early action may be judged,

When, slipping from thy mother's eye, thou went'st

Alone into the Temple, there wast found

Among the gravest Rabbies, disputant

On points and questions fitting Moses' chair,

Teaching, not taught. The childhood shews the man,

As morning shews the day. Be famous, then,

By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,

So let extend thy mind o'er all the world

In knowledge; all things in it comprehend.

All knowledge is not couched in Moses' law,

The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote;

The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach

To admiration, led by Nature's light;

And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,

Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean'st.

Without their learning, how wilt thou with them,

Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?

How wilt thou reason with them, how refute

Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?

Error by his own arms is best evinced.

Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,

Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold

Where on the AEgean shore a city stands,

Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil—

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And Eloquence, native to famous wits

Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades.

See there the olive-grove of Academe,

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;

There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound

Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rowls

His whispering stream. Within the walls then view

The schools of ancient sages—his who bred

Great Alexander to subdue the world,

Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next.

There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power

Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,

AEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,

Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,

Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.

Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught

In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received

In brief sententious precepts, while they treat

Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,

High actions and high passions best describing.

Thence to the famous Orators repair,

Those ancient whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce democraty,

Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece

To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,

From heaven descended to the low-roofed house

Of Socrates—see there his tenement—

Whom, well inspired, the Oracle pronounced

Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth

Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools

Of Academics old and new, with those

Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect

Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.

These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,

Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;

These rules will render thee a king complete

Within thyself, much more with empire joined."

To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied:—

"Think not but that I know these things; or, think

I know them not, not therefore am I short

Of knowing what I ought. He who receives

Light from above, from the Fountain of Light,

No other doctrine needs, though granted true;

But these are false, or little else but dreams,

Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.

The first and wisest of them all professed

To know this only, that he nothing knew;

The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;

A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;

Others in virtue placed felicity,

But virtue joined with riches and long life;

In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;

The Stoic last in philosophic pride,

By him called virtue, and his virtuous man,

Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,

Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,

As fearing God nor man, contemning all

Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life—

Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can;

For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,

Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.

Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,

Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,

And how the World began, and how Man fell,

Degraded by himself, on grace depending?

Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry;

And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves

All glory arrogate, to God give none;

Rather accuse him under usual names,

Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who, therefore, seeks in these

True wisdom finds her not, or, by delusion

Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,

An empty cloud. However, many books,

Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior,

(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)

Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys

And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Or, if I would delight my private hours

With music or with poem, where so soon

As in our native language can I find

That solace? All our Law and Story strewed

With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,

Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon

That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare

That rather Greece from us these arts derived—

Ill imitated while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities, and their own,

In fable, hymn, or song, so personating

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.

Remove their swelling epithetes, thick-laid

As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,

Thin-sown with aught of profit or delight,

Will far be found unworthy to compare

With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,

Where God is praised aright and godlike men,

The Holiest of Holies and his Saints

(Such are from God inspired, not such from thee);

Unless where moral virtue is expressed

By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.

Their orators thou then extoll'st as those

The top of eloquence—statists indeed,

And lovers of their country, as may seem;

But herein to our Prophets far beneath,

As men divinely taught, and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government,

In their majestic, unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,

What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;

These only, with our Law, best form a king."

So spake the Son of God; but Satan, now

Quite at a loss (for all his darts were spent),

Thus to our Saviour, with stern brow, replied:—