paradise-lost

It is so simple and easy to hate and so grueling and hard to love, when the emotional __ove forever_- revelation has become a crumbling __ove never, ever again_- crack-up. There is no route back to a paradise lost, when the bonds of trust have, irrevocably, been blasted. ("Another empty room")

And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.

Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of meeAll he could have; I made him just and right,Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.Such I created all th_ Ethereal PowersAnd Spirits, both them who stood and them who fail__;Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.Not free, what proof could they have giv__ sincereOf true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,Where only what they needs must do, appear__,Not what they would? what praise could they receive?What pleasure I from such obedience paid,When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice)Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil__,Made passive both, had served necessity,Not mee. They therefore as to right belong__,So were created, nor can justly accuseThir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate;As if Predestination over-rul__Thir will, dispos__ by absolute DecreeOr high foreknowledge; they themselves decreedThir own revolt, not I; if I foreknewForeknowledge had no influence on their fault,Which had no less prov__ certain unforeknown.So without least impulse or shadow of Fate,Or aught by me immutable foreseen,They trespass, Authors to themselves in allBoth what they judge and what they choose; for soI form__ them free, and free they must remain,Till they enthrall themselves: I else must changeThir nature, and revoke the high DecreeUnchangeable, Eternal, which ordain__Thir freedom: they themselves ordain__ thir fall.

All that can best be expressed in words should be expressed in verse, but verse is a slow thing to create; nay, it is not really created: it is a secretion of the mind, it is a pearl that gathers round some irritant and slowly expresses the very essence of beauty and of desire that has lain long, potential and unexpressed, in the mind of the man who secretes it. God knows that this Unknown Country has been hit off in verse a hundred times...Milton does it so well in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost that I defy any man of a sane understanding to read the whole of that book before going to bed and not to wake up next morning as though he had been on a journey.

But first whom shall we sendIn search of this new world, whom shall we findSufficient? Who shall tempt, with wand'ring feetThe dark unbottomed infinite abyssAnd through the palpable obscure find outHis uncouth way, or spread his aery flightUpborne with indefatigable wingsOver the vast abrupt, ere he arriveThe happy isle?

So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosedIn serpent, inmate bad! and toward EveAddressed his way: not with indented wave,Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,Circular base of rising folds, that toweredFold above fold, a surging maze! his headCrested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;With burnished neck of verdant gold, erectAmidst his circling spires, that on the grassFloated redundant: pleasing was his shapeAnd lovely; never since of serpent-kindLovelier_

They changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell.

Make your paradise here on earth, your own little paradise

Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. I am of the Devil's party and know it.

There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate." (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) "And it looks to me as if it is going to go on, because the French aren't going to give in, and certainly the Arabs aren't, because they can't. They're fighting with their backs the the wall.""I thought maybe you meant you expected a new world war," he lied."That's the least of my worries. When that comes, we've had it. You can't sit around mooning about Judgement Day. That's just silly. Everybody who ever lived has always had his own private Judgment Day to face anyway, and he still has. As far as that goes, nothing's changed at all.

What hath night to do with sleep?

A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,And pavement stars__s starts to thee appearSoon in the galaxy, that milky wayWhich mightly as a circling zone thou seestPowder'd wiht stars.

. . . Most falls aren't free -- there is always the tension, it seems to me, between what you are falling from and what you are falling to.

The most dangerous mistake that our souls are capable of, is, to take the creature for God, and earth for heaven (374).