Book 2 Flashcards
Describing Satan on his throne
“High on a throne of royal state”, “Satan exalted sat, by merit raised / To that bad eminence”
Try to validate and justify his throne
“safe unenvied throne / Yielded with full consent.”, “who here / will envy whom the highest place exposes / Foremost to stand against the Thunderer’s aim”
Proposing war not giving an option for peace
“Whether of open war or covert guile, / We now debate; who can advise, may speak”
Moloch - what could be worse than to stay in hell
“what can be worse / Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned / In this abhorred deep to utter woe”
Moloch - thinks they are strong enough to fight God
“Our power sufficient to disturb his Heav’n”
Moloch - aim is revenge
“if not victory is yet revenge”
Belial -
“he seemed / For dignity composed … / But all was false and hollow”
Belial - insincere and hollow
“he seemed / For dignity composed … / But all was false and hollow”
Belial - describing his lazy nature
“his thought were low, / To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds / Timorous and slothful”
Belial - saying how untouchable God is
“our great enemy / All incorruptible, would on his throne / Sit unpolluted, and th’ ethereal mold / Incapable of stain”
Belial - describing how bad death is
“for who would lose, / Though full of pain, this intellectual being, … / swallowed up and lost, / In the wide womb of uncreated night, / Devoid of sense or motion?
Belial - directly addressing Moloch’s argument, saying it isn’t worse to stay in hell
“Is this then worst, / Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms?”
Belial’s tripartite construction on what would be worse
“Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved / … this would be worse.”
Belial proposes inaction
“Better these than worse / By my advice”
Belial’s well spoken but empty words
“with words clothes in reason’s garb / Counseled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth / Not Peace”
Mammon - mocking worshipping God though hymns
“celebrate his throne / With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing / Forced hallelujahs”
Mammon - renouncing servitude in heaven and proposing to stay free in hell
“Eternity so spent in worship paid / To whom we hate”, “Hard liberty before the easy yoke / Of servile pomp”
Mammon - proposes imitating God’s light
“As he our darkness, cannot we his light, / Imitate when we please?”
comparing the demon’s speech to the wind
“as when hollow rocks retain / The sound of blust’ring winds, which all night long / Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull / Seafaring men o’erwatched”
Beezlebub’s physical state
“in his rising seemed / A pillar of state”, “Majestic though in ruin”, “Atlantean shoulders fit to bear / The weight of mightiest monarchies
Beezlebub countering Mammon saying they were free in hell
“In strictest bondage” “captive multitude”, “but over Hell extend / His empire, and with iron scepter rule / Us here, as with his golden those in Heav’n”
Beezlebub proposing they find an easier option
“What if we find / Some easier enterprise?”
Beezlebub mentioning the creation of humans
“To be created like to us, though less / in power and excellence, but favoured more / Of him who rules above”
Beezlebub proposing to seduce humans due to their weakness
“may lie exposed, / The utmost border of his kingdom, left / To their defense”, “Seduce them to our party, that their God / May prove their foe and with repenting hand / Abolish his own works”
Beezlebub on the fall of humans
“his darling sons / Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse / Their frail original”
the demons blindly follow
“joy / Sparkled in all their eyes; with full assent / They vote”
demons revealed to be cowards
“all sat mute” “pondering the danger with deep thoughts; and each / In other’s count’nance read his own dismay” “None among the choice and prime / Of those Heav’n-warring champions”
Satan trying to validate this power, saying he accepts the danger he is exposed to by being leader
“Wherefore do I assume / These royalties, and not refuse to reign, / Refusing to accept as great a share / Of hazard as of honor, due alike / To him who reigns, and so much to him due / Of hazard more, as he above the rest / High honoured sits?”
Satan announcing he will undergo the mission by himself
“all the coasts of dark destruction seek / Deliverance for us all: this enterprise / None shall partake with me”
Satan winning the respect he hasn’t earned
“winning cheap the high repute / Which he through hazard huge must earn”
Demons kneel before Satan in blashemous praise
“Towards him they bend / With awful reverence prone; as a god / Extol him equal to the Highest of Heav’n”
the hatred between humans
“live in hatred, enmity, and strife / Among themselves, and levy cruel wars”
demons entertain themselves while Satan is away
“entertain / The irksome hours, till his great chief return”
Satan’s title
“the Adversary of God and man”
Sin’s description
“The one seemed a woman to the waist, and fair, / But ended foul in many a scaly fold / Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed / With mortal sting”
Demons singing of their ‘bravery’
“sing / with notes angelical to many a harp / Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall / By doom of battle”
Demons seducing with their songs
“took with ravishment / The thronging audience” “For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense”
Demons arguing morals
“Of good and evil much they argued”
Narrator dimissing philosophy
“Vain wisdom and false philosophy”
Demons looking for easier dwellings
“Might yield them easier habitation”
Even though they explore Hell they only find death and hardship
“Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, / A universe of death which God by curse / Created evil, for evil only good / Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds / Perverse”
Satan trying to use his heavenly status but Death reminds him of his fallen nature
“learn by proof, / Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heav’n”, “traitor angel” “outcast from God”
Satan stands to fight Death enraged
“Incensed with indignation Satan stood / Unterrified, and like a comet burned / That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge”
Sin revealing that Death is Satan’s son
“What fury O son, / possesses thee to bend that mortal dart / Against thy father’s head?”
Sin describing her emerging from Satan’s head
“Likest to thee in shape and count’nance bright, / Then shining heav’nly fair, a goddess armed / out of thy head I sprung”
Sin’s fall echoes the fall of Satan
“Driv’n headlong from the pitch of Heaven”
Sin describing her pregnancies, pregnancy = punishment
“Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown / Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes.”
Visceral language to describe Death’s birth
“Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain / Distorted”
Hell itself rejects Death
“I fled and cried out ‘Death’; / Hell trembled at the hideous name”
Satan seducing Sin and Death by using humans
“there ye shall be fed and filled / Immeasurably, all things shall be your prey”, “A race of upstart creatures, to supply / Perhaps our vacant room”
No one but God can escape Death
“Save he who reigns above, none can resist”
Satan persuading Sin and Death that he is not their enemy
“I come no enemy, but to set free / From out this dark and dismal house of pain”
Death grinning
“Death / Grinned horrible a ghastly smile”
Chaos
Into this abyss / The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave
Satan falling in Chaos
Vain plumb down he drops
Satan struggling to travel through chaos
And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies
Chaos letting Satan leave
Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain
