stepped between
them, declaring she is Sin, Satan's daughter, and that in an
incestuous union they two produced Death, whom even they cannot
subdue. She adds that she dares not unlock the gates, but, when Satan
urges that if she will only let him pass, she and Death will be
supplied with congenial occupations in the new world, she produces a
key, and, "rolling toward the gates on scaly folds," flings wide the
massive doors which no infernal power can ever close again. Through
these gaping portals one now descries Chaos, where hot and cold, moist
and dry contend for mastery, and where Satan will have to make his
way through the elements in confusion to reach the place whither he is
bound.

The poet now graphically describes how, by means of his wings or on
foot, Satan scrambles up high battlements and plunges down deep
abysses, thus gradually working his way to the place where Chaos and
Night sit enthroned, contemplating the world "which hangs from heaven
by a golden chain." Addressing these deities, Satan commiserates them
for having lost Tartarus, now the abode of the fallen angels, as well
as the region of light occupied by the new world. When he proposes to
restore to them that part of their realm by frustrating God's plans,
they gladly speed him toward earth, whither "full fraught with
mischievous revenge accursed in an accursed hour he hies."

_Book III._ After a pathetic invocation to light, the offspring of
heaven, whose rays will never shine through his darkness, Milton
expresses a hope that like other blind poets and seers he may describe
all the more clearly what is ever before his intellectual sight. Then
he relates how the Eternal Father, gazing downward, contemplates hell,
the newly-created world, and the wide cleft between, where he descries
Satan "hovering in the dun air sublime." Summoning his hosts, the
Almighty addresses his Only Begotten Son,--whose arrival in heaven has
caused Satan's rebellion,--and, pointing out the Adversary, declares
he is bent on revenge which will redound on his own head. Then God
adds that, although the angels fell by their own suggestion, and are
hence excluded from all hope of redemption, man will fall deceived by
Satan, so that, although he will thus incur death, he will not forever
be unforgiven if some one will pay the penalty of his sin. Because
none of the angels feel holy enough to make so great a sacrifice,
there is "silence in heaven," until the Son of God, "in wh