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CHEN KILLSU
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May 18, 2016 19:52
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May 18, 2016 19:53
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~ BOOK I ~ Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing heavenly muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of chaos: Or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou Oh spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou knowest; thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great argument I may assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men. Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause Moved our grand parents in that happy state, Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off From their Creator, and transgress his will For one restraint, lords of the world besides? Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equaled the most high, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf Confounded though immortal: But his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes That witnessed huge affliction and dismay Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: At once as far as angels ken he views The dismal situation waste and wild, A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed With ever-burning sulfur unconsumed: Such place eternal justice had prepared For those rebellious, here their prison ordained In utter darkness, and their portion set As far removed from God and light of Heaven As from the center thrice to the utmost pole. Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell! There the companions of his fall, overwhelmed With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, He soon discerns, and weltering by his side One next himself in power, and next in crime, Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub. To whom the arch-enemy, And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words Breaking the horrid silence thus began. If thou beest he; But oh how fallen! how changed From him, who in the happy realms of light Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine Myriads though bright: If he whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise, Joined with me once, now misery hath joined In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest From what heighth fallen, so much the stronger proved He with his thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? yet not for those, Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage Can else inflict, do I repent or change, Though changed in outward luster; that fixed mind And high disdain, from sense of injured merit, That with the mightiest raised me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of spirits armed That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power opposed In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? That glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deify his power, Who from the terror of this arm so late Doubted his empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods And this empyreal substance cannot fail, Since through experience of this great event In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, We may with more successful hope resolve To wage by force or guile eternal war Irreconcilable, to our grand Foe, Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven. So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair: And him thus answered soon his bold Compeer. Oh Prince, Oh chief of many throned powers, That led the embattled seraphim to war Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King; And put to proof his high supremacy, Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate, Too well I see and rue the dire event, That with sad overthrow and foul defeat Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host In horrible destruction laid thus low, As far as gods and heavenly essences Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains Invincible, and vigor soon returns, Though all our glory extinct, and happy state Here swallowed up in endless misery. But what if he our Conqueror, (whom I now Of force believe Almighty, since no less Then such could have overpowered such force as ours) Have left us this our spirit and strength entire Strongly to suffer and support our pains, That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, Or do him mightier service as his thralls By right of war, what e're his business be Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire, Or do his errands in the gloomy deep; What can it then avail though yet we feel Strength undiminished, or eternal being To undergo eternal punishment? Whereto with speedy words the arch-fiend replied. Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable Doing or suffering: but of this be sure, To do ought good never will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being the contrary to his high will Whom we resist. If then his providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labor must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil; Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from their destined aim. But see the angry Victor hath recalled His ministers of vengeance and pursuit Back to the gates of Heaven: The sulfurous hail Shot after us in storm, overblown hath laid The fiery Surge, that from the precipice Of Heaven received us falling, and the thunder, Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and boundless deep. Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn, Or satiate fury yield it from our foe. Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend From off the tossing of these fiery waves, There rest, if any rest can harbor there, And reassembling our afflicted powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our enemy, our own loss how repair, How overcome this dire calamity, What reinforcement we may gain from hope, If not what resolution from despair. Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate With head up-lift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that war’s on Jove, Briareos or Typhon, whom the Den By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the Ocean stream: Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam The Pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as sea-men tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays: So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others, and enraged might see How all his malice served but to bring forth Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shown On man by him seduced, but on himself Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance poured. Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air That felt unusual weight, till on dry Land He lights, if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire; And such appeared in hue, as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Aetna, whose combustible And fueled entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom all involved With stench and smoke: Such resting found the sole Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate, Both glorying to have escaped the Stygian flood As gods, and by their own recovered strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal Power. Is this the Region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost archangel, this the seat That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is sovran can dispose and bid What shall be right: farthest from him is best Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell happy fields Where joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell Receive thy new possessor: One who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less then he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven. But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, The associates and copartners of our loss Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy mansion, or once more With rallied arms to try what may be yet Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell? So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub Thus answered. Leader of those armies bright, Which but the Omnipotent none could have foiled, If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge Of battle when it raged, in all assaults Their surest signal, they will soon resume New courage and revive, though now they lye Groveling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, As we erewhile, astounded and amazed, No wonder, fallen such a pernicious heighth. He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. His Spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, He walked with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marle, not like those steps On Heaven’s azure, and the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire; Nathless he so endured, till on the beach Of that inflamed sea, he stood and called His Legions, angel forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High overarched embower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves overthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcasses And broken chariot wheels, so thick bestrown Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. He called so loud, that all the hollow deep Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates, Warriors, the flower of Heaven, once yours, now lost, If such astonishment as this can seize Eternal spirits; or have ye chosen this place After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from Heaven gates discern The advantage, and descending tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen. They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; Yet to their general’s voice they soon obeyed Innumerable. As when the potent rod Of Amrams son in Egypt’s evil day Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That ore the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile: So numberless were those bad angels seen Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell edwixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear Of their great sultan waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain; A multitude, like which the populous north Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the south, and spread Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. Forthwith from every squadron and each band The heads and leaders thither hast where stood Their great commander; godlike shapes and forms Excelling human, princely dignities, And powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones; Though of their names in heavenly records now Be no memorial blotted out and rased By their rebellion, from the Books of Life. Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve Got them new names, till wandering ore the Earth, Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man, By falsities and lies the greatest part Of mankind they corrupted to forsake God their Creator, and the invisible Glory of him that made them, to transform Oft to the image of a brute, adorned With gay religions full of pomp and gold, And devils to adore for deities: Then were they known to men by various names, And various idols through the heathen world. Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last, Roused from the slumber, on that fiery couch, At their great emperor’s call, as next in worth Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof? The chief were those who from the pit of Hell Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix Their seats long after next the seat of God, Their altars by his altar, gods adored Among the nations round, and durst abide Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned Between the cherubim; yea, often placed Within his sanctuary it self their shrines, Abominations; and with cursed things His holy rites, and solemn feasts profaned,] And with their darkness durst affront his light. First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents tears, Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud Their children’s cries unheard, that past through fire To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant Valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab’s sons, From Aroar to Nebo, and the wild Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Horonaim, Seon’s realm, beyond The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleale to the Asphaltic pool. Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim on their march from Nile To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate; Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell. With these came they, who from the bordering flood Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male, These feminine. For spirits when they please Can either sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is their essence pure, Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, Can execute their aerie purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfill. For those the race of Israel oft forsook Their living strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down To bestial gods; for which their heads as low Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear Of despicable foes. With these in troop Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of Heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs, In Sion also not unsung, where stood Her temple on the offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king, whose heart though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To Idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer’s day, While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale Infected Sion’s daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when by the vision led His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of alienated Judah. Next came one Who mourned in earnest, when the captive Ark Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopped off In his own temple, on the grunsel edge, Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshipers: Dagon his name, sea monster, upward man And downward fish: yet had his temple high Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds. Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. He also against the house of God was bold: A leper once he lost and gained a king, Ahaz his sottish conqueror, whom he drew Gods altar to disparage and displace For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn His odious offerings, and adore the gods Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared A crew who under names of old renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms Rather then human. Nor did Israel escape The infection when their borrowed gold composed The calf in Oreb: and the rebel king Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, Likening his Maker to the grazed ox, Jehovah, who in one night when he passed From Egypt marching, equaled with one stroke Both her first born and all her bleating gods. Belial came last, then whom a spirit more lewd Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love Vice for itself: To him no temple stood Or altar smoked; yet who more oft then he In temples and at altars, when the priest Turns atheist, as did Ely's sons, who filled With lust and violence the house of God. In courts and palaces he also reigns And in luxurious cities, where the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury and outrage: And when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night In Gibeah, when the hospitable door Exposed a matron to avoid worse rape. These were the prime in order and in might; The rest were long to tell, though far renowned, The Ionian gods, of Javan’s issue held Gods, yet confessed later then Heaven and Earth Their boasted parents; Titan, Heaven’s first born, With his enormous brood, and birthright seized By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove His own and Rhea's son like measure found; So Jove usurping reigned: these first in Crete And Ida known, thence on the snowy top Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air Their highest Heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds Of Doric land; or who with Saturn old Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, And ore the Celtic roamed the utmost isles. All these and more came flocking; but with looks Down cast and damp, yet such wherein appeared Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost In loss it self; which on his countenance cast Like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears. Then strait commands that at the warlike sound Of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared His mighty standard; that proud honor claimed Azazel as his right, a cherub tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled The imperial ensign, which full high advanced Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind With gems and golden luster rich emblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies: all the while Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent A shout that tore Hell’s concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of chaos and old night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise into the air With orient colors waving: with them rose A forest huge of spears: and thronging helms Appeared, and serried shields in thick array Of depth immeasurable: Anon they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised To height of noblest temper hero's old Arming to battle, and in stead of rage Deliberate valor breathed, firm and unmoved With dread of death to flight or foul retreat, Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they Breathing united force with fixed thought Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed Their painful steps over the burnt soil; and now Advanced in view, they stand, a horrid front Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise Of warriors old with ordered spear and shield, Awaiting what command their mighty chief Had to impose: He through the armed files Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse The whole battalion views, their order due, Their visages and stature as of gods, Their number last he sums. And now his heart Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength Glories: For never since created man, Met such embodied force, as named with these Could merit more then that small infantry Warred on by cranes: though all the giant brood Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds In fable or romance of Uther’s son Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed Their dread commander: he above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less then archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured: As when the sun new risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone Above them all the archangel: but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast Signs of remorse and passion to behold The fellows of his crime, the followers rather (Far other once beheld in bliss) condemned For ever now to have their lot in pain, Millions of spirits for his fault amerced Of Heaven, and from eternal splendors flung For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood, Their glory withered. As when Heaven’s fire Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth though bare Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With all his peers: attention held them mute. Thrice he assayed, and thrice in spite of scorn, Tears such as angels weep, burst forth: at last Words interwove with sighs found out their way. Oh Myriads of immortal spirits, Oh powers Matchless, but with the Almighty, and that strife Was not inglorious, though the event was dire, As this place testifies, and this dire change Hateful to utter: but what power of mind Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth Of knowledge past or present, could have feared, How such united force of gods, how such As stood like these, could ever know repulse? For who can yet believe, though after loss, That all these puissant Legions, whose exile Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend Self-raised, and repossess their native seat? For me be witness all the host of Heaven, If counsels different, or danger shunned By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns Monarch in Heaven, till then as one secure Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute, Consent or custom, and his regal state Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed, Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall. Henceforth his might we know, and know our own So as not either to provoke, or dread New war, provoked; our better part remains To work in close design, by fraud or guile What force effected not: that he no less At length from us may find, who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe. Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife There went a fame in Heaven that he ere long Intended to create, and therein plant A generation, whom his choice regard Should favor equal to the sons of Heaven: Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere: For this infernal pit shall never hold Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts Full counsel must mature: Peace is despaired, For who can think submission? War then, war Open or understood must be resolved. He spake: and to confirm his words, out-flew Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty cherubim; the sudden blaze Far round illumined hell: highly they raged Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven. There stood a Hill not far whose grisly top Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic ore, The work of sulfur. Thither winged with speed A numerous brigade hastened. As when bands Of pioneers with spade and pickax armed Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From Heaven, for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heavens pavement, trodden gold, Then aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific: by him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransacked the center, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane. And here let those Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings Learn how their greatest monuments of fame, And strength and art are easily out-done By spirits reprobate, and in an hour What in an age they with incessant toil And hands innumerable scarce perform. Nigh on the plain in many cells prepared, That underneath had veins of liquid fire Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude With wondrous art found out the massy ore, Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross: A third as soon had formed within the ground A various mould, and from the boiling cells By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook, As in an organ from one blast of wind To many a row of pipes the sound-board breaths. Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation, with the sound Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did there want Cornice or freeze, with bossy sculptures graven, The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon, Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equaled in all their glories, to inshrine Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxury. the ascending pile Stood fixed her stately heighth, and strait the doors Opening their brazen folds discover wide Within, her ample spaces, over the smooth And level pavement: from the arched roof Pendant by subtle magic many a row Of starry lamps and blazing cressets fed With naphtha and asphaltus yielded light As from a sky. The hasty multitude Admiring entered, and the work some praise And some the architect: his hand was known In Heaven by many a towered structure high, Where sceptered angels held their residence, And sat as princes, whom the supreme King Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright. Nor was his name unheard or unadored In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer over the crystal battlements: from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer’s day; and with the setting sun Dropt from the zenith like a falling star, On Lemnos the Aegean isle: thus they relate, Erring; for he with this rebellious rout Fell long before; nor aught availed him now To have built in Heaven high towers; nor did he escape By all his engines, but was headlong sent With his industrious crew to build in hell. Mean while the winged heralds by command Of sovran power, with awful ceremony And trumpets sound throughout the host proclaim A solemn council forthwith to be held At Pandemonium, the high capital Of Satan and his peers: their summons called From every band and squared regiment By place or choice the worthiest; they anon With hundreds and with thousands trooping came Attended: all access was thronged, the gates And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall (Though like a covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan’s chair Defied the best of Paynim chivalry To mortal combat or career with Lance) Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with baum, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the aerie crowd Swarmed and were straitened; till the signal given. Behold a wonder! they but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons Now less then smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that Pigmean race Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth Wheels her pale course, they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, Though without number still amidst the hall Of that infernal court. But far within And in their own dimensions like themselves The great seraphic lords and cherubim In close recess and secret conclave sat, A thousand demigods on golden seats, Frequent and full. After short silence then And summons read, the great consult began. ~ BOOK II ~ BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II BOOK II . Back to Top ~ BOOK II ~ High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence; and, from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, His proud imaginations thus displayed: Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven, For, since no deep within her gulf can hold Immortal vigor, though oppressed and fallen, I give not Heaven for lost: from this descent Celestial virtues rising will appear More glorious and more dread than from no fall, And trust themselves to fear no second fate. Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven, Did first create your leader, next, free choice With what besides in council or in fight Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss, Thus far at least recovered, hath much more Established in a safe, unenvied throne, Yielded with full consent. The happier state In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw Envy from each inferior; but who here Will envy whom the highest place exposes Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share Of endless pain? Where there is, then, no good For which to strive, no strife can grow up there From faction: for none sure will claim in Hell Precedence; none whose portion is so small Of present pain that with ambitious mind Will covet more! With this advantage, then, To union, and firm faith, and firm accord, More than can be in Heaven, we now return To claim our just inheritance of old, Surer to prosper than prosperity Could have assured us; and by what best way, Whether of open war or covert guile, We now debate. Who can advise may speak. He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptered king, Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair. His trust was with the Eternal to be deemed Equal in strength, and rather than be less Cared not to be at all; with that care lost Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse, He recked not, and these words thereafter spake: My sentence is for open war. Of wiles, More unexpert, I boast not: them let those Contrive who need, or when they need; not now. For, while they sit contriving, shall the rest, Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait The signal to ascend, sit lingering here, Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling-place Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame, The prison of his tyranny who reigns By our delay? No! let us rather choose, Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into horrid arms Against the Torturer; when, to meet the noise Of his almighty engine, he shall hear Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his Angels, and his throne itself Mixed with Tartarean sulfur and strange fire, His own invented torments. But perhaps The way seems difficult, and steep to scale With upright wing against a higher foe! Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench Of that forgetful lake benumb not still, That in our proper motion we ascend Up to our native seat; descent and fall To us is adverse. Who but felt of late, When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, With what compulsion and laborious flight We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy, then; The event is feared! Should we again provoke Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find To our destruction, if there be in Hell Fear to be worse destroyed! What can be worse Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned In this abhorred deep to utter woe! Where pain of unextinguishable fire Must exercise us without hope of end The vassals of his anger, when the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour, Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus, We should be quite abolished, and expire. What fear we then? what doubt we to incense His utmost ire? which, to the height enraged, Will either quite consume us, and reduce To nothing this essential, happier far Than miserable to have eternal being. Or, if our substance be indeed divine, And cannot cease to be, we are at worst On this side nothing; and by proof we feel Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven, And with perpetual inroads to alarm, Though inaccessible, his fatal throne: Which, if not victory, is yet revenge. He ended frowning, and his look denounced Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous To less than gods. On the other side up rose Belial, in act more graceful and humane. A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed For dignity composed, and high exploit. But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low, To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Timorous and slothful. Yet he pleased the ear, And with persuasive accent thus began: I should be much for open war, Oh peers, As not behind in hate, if what was urged Main reason to persuade immediate war Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success; When he who most excels in fact of arms, In what he counsels and in what excels Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair And utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are filled With armed watch, that render all access Impregnable: oft on the bordering Deep Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing Scout far and wide into the realm of night, Scorning surprise. Or, could we break our way By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise With blackest insurrection to confound Heaven's purest light, yet our great Enemy, All incorruptible, would on his throne Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mould, Incapable of stain, would soon expel Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire, Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope Is flat despair: we must exasperate The Almighty Victor to spend all his rage; And that must end us; that must be our cure, To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows, Let this be good, whether our angry Foe Can give it, or will ever? How he can Is doubtful; that he never will is sure. Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, Belike through impotence or unaware, To give his enemies their wish, and end Them in his anger whom his anger saves To punish endless? Wherefore cease we, then? Say they who counsel war; we are decreed, Reserved, and destined to eternal woe; Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, What can we suffer worse? Is this, then, worst, Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms? What when we fled amain, pursued and struck With Heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought The Deep to shelter us? This Hell then seemed A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay Chained on the burning lake? That sure was worse. What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage, And plunge us in the flames; or from above Should intermitted vengeance arm again His red right hand to plague us? What if all Her stores were opened, and this firmament Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire, Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall One day upon our heads; while we perhaps, Designing or exhorting glorious war, Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled, Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey Or racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk Under yon boiling ocean, wrapped in chains, There to converse with everlasting groans, Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved, Ages of hopeless end? This would be worse. War, therefore, open or concealed, alike My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye Views all things at one view? He from Heaven's height All these our motions vain sees and derides, Not more almighty to resist our might Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles. Shall we, then, live thus vile, the race of Heaven Thus trampled, thus expelled, to suffer here Chains and these torments? Better these than worse, By my advice; since fate inevitable Subdues us, and omnipotent decree, The Victor's will. To suffer, as to do, Our strength is equal; nor the law unjust That so ordains. This was at first resolved, If we were wise, against so great a foe Contending, and so doubtful what might fall. I laugh when those who at the spear are bold And venturous, if that fail them, shrink, and fear What yet they know must follow, to endure Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain, The sentence of their conqueror. This is now Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear, Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed, Not mind us not offending, satisfied With what is punished; whence these raging fires Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames. Our purer essence then will overcome Their noxious vapor; or, inured, not feel; Or, changed at length, and to the place conformed In temper and in nature, will receive Familiar the fierce heat; and, void of pain, This horror will grow mild, this darkness light; Besides what hope the never-ending flight Of future days may bring, what chance, what change Worth waiting, since our present lot appears For happy though but ill, for ill not worst, If we procure not to ourselves more woe. Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, Counseled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth, Not peace; and after him thus Mammon spake: Either to disenthrone the King of Heaven We war, if war be best, or to regain Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we then May hope, when everlasting fate shall yield To fickle chance, and chaos judge the strife. The former, vain to hope, argues as vain The latter; for what place can be for us Within Heaven's bound, unless Heaven's Lord supreme We overpower? Suppose he should relent And publish grace to all, on promise made Of new subjection; with what eyes could we Stand in his presence humble, and receive Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing Forced hallelujahs, while he lordly sits Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes Ambrosial odors and ambrosial flowers, Our servile offerings? This must be our task In Heaven, this our delight. How wearisome Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue, By force impossible, by leave obtained Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek Our own good from ourselves, and from our own Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess, Free and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easy yoke Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear Then most conspicuous when great things of small, Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse, We can create, and in what place soe'er Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain Through labor and endurance. This deep world Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst
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May 18, 2016 19:54
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get off my leg dare
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May 18, 2016 19:55
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caroline may have gone insane and been sold into slavery but she hasnt and is just retarded? idk lets c what happenz next I AM WINNING HERP DERP /*mystical symbol that means nothing*
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May 18, 2016 19:57
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dad gay. so what posted:voted 5 Are you kidding me? Did you read the original post? This content isn't worth a 2 at best. Do not abuse the rating system.
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May 18, 2016 19:57
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AdrianChen_C.P. posted:caroline may have gone insane and been sold into slavery but she hasnt and is just retarded? idk lets c what happenz next paradise lost was a good poem though, i took a class on Milton once and learned a lot
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May 18, 2016 19:58
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hello calipygian weasel u have some massive issues quit picking ur nails etc i am a married womyn and pregnat with chump and k8s baby gl 2 ur family go gut gently caress a forest creature etc
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May 18, 2016 19:59
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Every day is hump day if you talk to a white chick
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May 18, 2016 19:59
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Nooner posted:paradise lost was a good poem though, i took a class on Milton once and learned a lot i had an idea to print milton on milk cartons. "milton milk" it was called. it failed spectacularly. we had to eat our children for warmth
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May 18, 2016 19:59
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Volume posted:Every day is hump day if you talk to a white chick this is official weekday tho according to the wiccan calendar of under the earth moon caves or watever the gently caress
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May 18, 2016 19:59
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Jerry Mumphrey posted:i had an idea to print milton on milk cartons. "milton milk" it was called. it failed spectacularly. we had to eat our children for warmth plz do not get carried away here ty i know rizz rizz wants to scalp a white girl and may have done it many times in the past but this is not the time or the place
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May 18, 2016 20:00
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AdrianChen_C.P. posted:hello calipygian weasel u have some massive issues quit picking ur nails etc i am a married womyn and pregnat with chump and k8s baby 
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May 18, 2016 20:00
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Holy gently caress I just realize this guy isn't 'a guy at all, its just early AI learning how to post. Tay... is that you?
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May 18, 2016 20:01
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v nice :-) and brick too? idk probably deceptikon
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May 18, 2016 20:01
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do the hump (war! hey!) do the humpty hump (good god, ya'll) do the hump (what is it good for?) do the humpty hump (absolutely nothin!) just imagine that mashup-style
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May 18, 2016 20:02
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Nooner posted:Satan exalted
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May 18, 2016 20:02
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THE DOG HOUSE posted:Holy gently caress I just realize this guy isn't 'a guy at all, its just early AI learning how to post. Tay... is that you? it;s cadie's singularity d00d =/
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May 18, 2016 20:02
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Sometime in the late 1970s, after he'd divorced his college sweetheart, had a kid with another woman, lost four statewide elections, and been evicted from his home on Maple Street in Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders moved in with a friend named Richard Sugarman. Sanders, a restless political activist and armchair psychologist with a penchant for arguing his theories late into the night, found a sounding board in the young scholar, who taught philosophy at the nearby University of Vermont. At the time, Sanders was struggling to square his revolutionary zeal with his overwhelming rejection at the polls—and this was reflected in a regular ritual. Many mornings, Sanders greeted his roommate with a simple statement: "We're not crazy." "I'd say, 'Bernard, maybe the first thing you should say is "Good morning" or something,'" Sugarman recalls. "But he'd say, 'We're. Not. Crazy.'" Life under Bernie What Would Life Under President Sanders Actually Look Like? Sanders eventually got a place of his own, found his way, and in 1981 was elected mayor of Burlington, the state's largest city—the start of an improbable political career that led him to Congress, and soon, he hopes, the White House. In May, after more than three decades as an independent socialist, the septuagenarian senator launched his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the Vermont city where this long, strange trip began. The 2016 election is a homecoming for Sanders in another sense. He's returning to the role he embraced during his early years in politics—that of the long shot. In Hillary Clinton, with her lengthy CV, vast donor network, and unmatched name recognition, he could hardly have picked a tougher target. But those same qualities also position Sanders, a lifelong critic of war hawks, Wall Street, and the ruling class, to exploit the angst among progressives who spent much of the last year pining for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run instead. Sanders wants to break up the biggest banks, double the minimum wage, and put the entire country on Medicare. Sanders wants to break up the biggest banks, double the minimum wage, and put the entire country on Medicare. And his message has been resonating. He's drawn massive crowds nearly everywhere he's traveled. In August, 28,000 people showed up to see him speak at an arena in Madison, Wisconsin. Two recent polls have put him ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire. Bernie-mentum—as the pundit class has dubbed the candidate's surging appeal—has the Clinton camp worried that Sanders defeat her in Iowa, according to the New York Times. Indeed, a September poll showed Sanders edging out Clinton by 10 points there. Bernie's campaign manager Meet the Comic Book King Running Bernie Sanders' Campaign Much of the enthusiasm for his candidacy is coming from college students and true believers who think the party establishment has been compromised. That was true of Barack Obama. It was also true of Ron Paul. Sanders' success will hinge on how much he can broaden his base beyond that comfort zone. Already he's become a frequent target of Black Lives Matter activists, who have argued that his ambitious platform for taking on economic inequality does not do enough to address the structural racism—in criminal justice, housing, and beyond—that perpetuates the prosperity gap. (Not long after a Seattle event was shut down by protestors, Sanders did unveil a racial justice platform.) If Sanders continues to perform as well as the polls suggest and he maintains his momentum through the upcoming debates, he might just inch the entire party, if not the country, just a few steps closer to Norway. Which, if you think about it, does sound kind of crazy. But if Sanders had the audacity to think he might stay in the ring long enough to pull together a genuine movement, it might be because he's done it before. Sanders' early years offer a blueprint for how a self-described socialist can, with the right breaks and enough persistence, make it in electoral politics. He didn't emerge into a national political force overnight. He almost never made it at all. In Vermont he discovered it wasn't enough to hold lofty ideas and wait for the revolution; he had to learn how to play the political game. Born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders grew up in a working-class family. His father, a Polish immigrant whose family largely perished in the Holocaust, sold paint; his mother died when he was 18. When Sanders was a teen, his older brother, Larry—now an aspiring progressive politician in the United Kingdom—introduced him to Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. By the time Sanders graduated from high school, where he ran for class president (and lost) on the promise of granting scholarships to Korean refugees, his political course was set. Bernie and protest Sanders was fined $25 for "resisting arrest" during a demonstration against segregation in Chicago's public schools. Chicago Tribune The University of Chicago campus Sanders arrived on in the fall of 1961, after one year at Brooklyn College, would never be confused with Berkeley circa 1969, but in spite of its stodgy reputation it was fertile ground for liberal activists. Future Weather Underground cofounder Bernardine Dohrn was a year ahead of Sanders; Malcolm X came to campus to speak during his sophomore year. Sanders' roommate in Chamberlin House, a Gothic building that evokes comparisons to Hogwarts, was a student named David Reiter, a disciple of the conservative economics professor Milton Friedman. They entered into fierce debates over socialism, but Sanders could never let the argument rest. "I went to bed, but I have a vivid memory of him just sitting there, shaking his head sadly," Reiter says. "He was so sad that I just couldn't understand what was wrong with the free market. It was more in sorrow than in anger." During Sanders' first year in Chicago, a campus scandal erupted when an interracial group of students uncovered systematic housing discrimination in university-owned apartment buildings. Apartments that were open to white students mysteriously went off the market when black students came to inquire, and then just as quickly opened up again. Sanders, a chapter leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, the civil rights group that organized the Freedom Rides, helped to launch a sit-in at the office of the university's president, aimed at ending the practice. After 15 days, CORE worked out a compromise with the administration—it would vacate the premises if the university included representatives from CORE in a new commission to study the housing issue. It was the first of many begrudging deals with the establishment he was fighting against. (When the journalist Rick Perlstein brought up the subject of CORE's compromise on the housing issue in a recent interview, the senator issued "a weary sigh.") Off campus, Sanders led a picket of a segregated restaurant, attended the 1963 March on Washington, and was arrested for protesting outside a segregated school. Bernie's manifesto Read 21-Year-Old Bernie Sanders' Manifesto on Sexual Freedom He was, by his own admission, "not a good student." Instead of studying for his political science classes, he preferred spending long hours pursuing his own interests—the Spanish Civil War, political philosophers including Marx and John Stuart Mill, and psychologists such as Freud and his disciple, Wilhelm Reich—and generally raising hell. A 2,000-word manifesto he penned for the student newspaper, attacking the administration's strict sex-segregated housing guidelines as "fornication of the Bible and Ann Landers," triggered a campus debate on free love that made national news. That crusade was classic Sanders: firm in his beliefs, fiery in his rhetoric, and unafraid of confrontation. It also failed. In that sense, it was an appropriate lesson for a young activist who would go on to spend most of his life as an outsider: Change takes time. He attacked the administration's strict sex-segregated housing guidelines as "fornication of the Bible and Ann Landers," triggering a campus debate on free love that made national news. Sanders' independent streak was evident in his choice of student groups. He joined the Young People's Socialist League ("Yipsel"), an organization that advocated the "social ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution" but was explicitly anti-communist. This put the group in an awkward position—too far left for the Democrats, too far right for the true radicals. Sanders, like many Yipsel members, also became involved in the pro-disarmament Student Peace Union, which shared the organization's alienation from Cold War politics. "They had a kind of stern independence," says Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University sociologist who was an early leader in Students for a Democratic Society, another Yipsel-influenced group. "They regarded themselves as 'third campers'—they didn't want to be identified with either the West or the Soviet bloc, and in that way they were at odds with the remnants of the Communist Party and fellow travelers." And unlike many contemporary groups, activists of Sanders' ilk believed the path to revolution passed through traditional institutions. "There was a feeling about them that they were sort of pros, they took politics seriously," Gitlin says. "They were the anti-utopians. They were impatient about fancy as-if thinking and sort of hard-headed about who to reach." Sanders and his fellow 1960s radicals did have one thing in common, though. They all seemed to want to move to Vermont. Fresh from a stint on an Israeli kibbutz, Sanders arrived in Vermont in 1964 on the crest of a wave. The state's population jumped 31 percent between 1960 and 1980, due largely to an infusion of more than 30,000 hippies. It was a retreat, in the most literal sense, from the clashes over the Vietnam War and civil rights that had defined their college years. But there was a political subtext to the move as well. A seminal essay authored by two Yale Law School students called the "Jamestown Seventy" called for the "migration of large numbers of people to a single state for the express purpose of effecting a peaceful political takeover of that state through the elective process." Sanders and his first wife bought 85 acres outside of Montpelier for $2,500. The only building on the property was an old maple-sugar shack without electricity or running water that Sanders converted into a cabin. Free-range hair and sandals notwithstanding, Sanders never quite fit the mold of the back-to-the-landers he joined. "I don't think Bernie was particularly into growing vegetables," one friend put it. Nor was he much into smoking them. "He described himself once in my hearing as 'the only person who did not get high in the '60s,'" recalls Greg Guma, a writer and activist who moved in the same circles as Sanders. "He didn't even like rock music. He likes country music." (Sanders recently revealed that he has smoked marijuana twice.) "He's not a hippie, never was a hippie," Sugarman says. "But he was always a little bit on the suburbs of society." What Sanders shared with the young radicals and hippies flocking to Vermont was a smoldering idealism, but only a fuzzy sense of how to act on it. Sanders bounced between Vermont and New York City, where he worked at a psychiatric hospital and studied at the New School for Social Research. After his marriage broke up in the late 1960s, he moved to an A-frame farmhouse outside Stannard, a tiny Vermont hamlet with no paved roads in the buckle of the commune belt. He dabbled in carpentry and tried to get by as a freelance journalist for alternative newspapers and regional publications, contributing interviews, political screeds, and, one time, a stream-of-consciousness essay on the nature of male-female sexual dynamics. "A woman enjoys intercourse with her man—as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously," Sanders wrote in one eyebrow-raising passage that recently caused controversy for his presidential campaign after Mother Jones reported on the essay. Bernie Vermont Freeman This 1972 Sanders essay, published in an alternative newspaper called the Vermont Freeman, reflected his affinity for Sigmund Freud. Vermont Freeman Sanders' politics were deeply influenced by what he learned about human psychology. Leaning heavily on the work of Reich, he wrote an essay arguing that cancer was caused by sexual frustration—which in turn was a product of bad parenting and a suffocating public school system. He criticized water fluoridation as a government intrusion on individual freedom. And, citing Freud, he elaborated on a theory of a worldwide "death instinct," in which "the human spirit has been so crushed by the society in which it exists, that the general will toward life is not very strong." Read the full essay, "Reflections on a Dying Society." Vermont State Library The way out, he believed, required a dramatic upheaval of cultural norms. "The Revolution is coming and it is a very beautiful revolution," he wrote in 1969. "It is beautiful because, in its deepest sense, it is quiet, gentle, and all pervasive. It KNOWS. What is most important in this revolution will require no guns, no commandants, no screaming 'leaders,' and no vicious publications accusing everyone else of being counter-revolutionary. The revolution comes when two strangers smile at each other, when a father refuses to send his child to school because schools destroy children, when a commune is started and people begin to trust each other, when a young man refuses to go to war, and when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has 'taught' her and accepts her boyfriend's love." Sanders had been adrift in his own ideas, until he discovered the Liberty Union Party, which had been conceived in 1970 to uproot the two-party system and end the Vietnam War. In Vermont, its leaders hoped to find a receptive audience amid the hippie newcomers. Its cofounder, a gruff, bushy-bearded man named Peter Diamondstone, had predated Sanders at the University of Chicago by a year; Diamondstone likes to joke that they "knew all the same Communists" on the South Side. By the fall of 1971, Liberty Union was floundering. "We were lost as a political party," Diamondstone says. That October, Sanders, who had done some speechwriting for one of the party's candidates a year earlier, showed up with a friend at the Goddard College library for a Liberty Union meeting. It was a large crowd by the group's standards—maybe 30 people. The party was struggling to field a candidate for the upcoming Senate special election. Sanders, with dark hair, thick black glasses, and his two-year-old son in his arms, stood up impulsively in a room full of strangers. "He said, 'I'll do it—what do I have to do?'" Diamondstone recalls. Bernie Liberty Union Before there was the 1 percent, there was the 2 percent. This lo-fi 1972 ad pitted the young Senate candidate against the elite few who control the nation's wealth. Bennington Banner Sanders lost that race, the first of four losing campaigns over the next five years (two for Senate, two for governor). In addition to opposing the war, the party pushed for a guaranteed minimum wage and tougher corporate regulations. Sanders floated hippie-friendly proposals, such as legalizing all drugs, an end to compulsory education, and widening the entrance ramps of interstate highways to allow cars to more easily pull over to pick up hitchhikers. He emerged as one of the organization's leading voices and within a few years was named Liberty Union's chairman. "He was a mouthpiece, he was an orator—we called him 'Silvertongue,'" Diamondstone says. During his 1972 campaign for governor, Sanders crisscrossed the state with the party's choice for president—the child-rearing guru Dr. Benjamin Spock. In those early years, Sanders was a true believer in what might be called small-s socialism, and he had little patience for lukewarm allies. He believed in the need for a united front of anti-capitalist activists marching in step against the corrupt establishment. Greg Guma recalled meeting Sanders for the first time and asking why he should get his vote. Sanders, in effect, told Guma that if he even needed to ask, Liberty Union wasn't for him. "Do you know what the movement is? Have you read the books?" he recalled Sanders responding. "If you didn't come to work for the movement, you came for the wrong reasons—I don't care who you are, I don't need you." "He's not a hippie, never was a hippie. But he was always a little bit on the suburbs of society." In interviews at the time, Sanders suggested that dwelling on local issues was counterproductive, because it distracted activists from the real root of the problem—Washington. "I once asked him what he meant by calling himself a 'socialist,' and he referred to an article that was already a touchstone of mine, which was Albert Einstein's 'Why Socialism?'" says Sanders' friend Jim Rader. "I think that Bernie's basic idea of socialism was just about as simple as Einstein's formulation." (In short, according to Einstein, capitalism is a soul-sucking construct that corrodes society.) Sanders started a small monthly zine called Movement to promote Liberty Union's agenda and the countercultural lifestyles of its supporters. He devoted one lengthy article to an interview with a friend who had recently given birth at home. ("Don't all mammals eat the afterbirth?" Sanders asked in one leading question.) Bernie 1974 Sanders' campaign platform, from a 1974 Liberty Union pamphlet Amherst College library special collections Sanders built his campaigns around a theme that would sound familiar to his supporters today: American society had been hijacked by plutocrats, prudes, and imperialists, and wholesale reform was needed to restore it to its rightful course. "I have the very frightened feeling that if fundamental and radical change does not come about in the very near future, that our nation, and, in fact, our entire civilization, could soon be entering an economic dark age," he said in announcing his 1974 Senate bid. Later that year, he sent an open letter to President Gerald Ford, warning of a "virtual Rockefeller family dictatorship over the nation" if Nelson Rockefeller were named vice president. He also called for the CIA to be disbanded immediately, in the wake of eye-popping revelations about the agency's misdeeds. But Sanders began to question whether Liberty Union had a future. Although the party had, at his direction, attempted to broaden its base by aligning itself with organized labor and the working poor, he drew just 6 percent of the vote when he ran for governor in 1976 (his previous three campaigns hadn't fared any better). He was drifting from the utopian ambitions of Diamondstone, who was now advocating "a worldwide socialist revolution." After the last American troops left Saigon in 1975, the anti-war party faced an existential crisis. And Sanders faced one of his own. Liberty Union could claim a few victories—it had helped to defeat a telephone rate increase, among other things. But he believed that, absent a serious change, the party would be nothing more than symbolic. "That's what distinguished [Sanders] from leftists who were more invested in the symbolism than in the outcome," Sugarman says. "He read Marx, he understood Marx's critique of capitalism—but he also understood Marx doesn't give you too many prescriptions of how society should go forward." Sanders had reason for introspection. Once again single and helping to raise a young son, he was struggling financially—a newspaper article during his 1974 race noted that he was running for office while on unemployment. Increasingly, Sanders' political gaze focused on his own backyard. Meanwhile, Sanders and Diamondstone clashed about the direction of Liberty Union—and pretty much everything else. "When I was on the road, I would stop at his house and I'd sleep downstairs, and we'd yell at each other all night long, and sometime around three o'clock in the morning, we'd say, 'We gotta stop this,' so we could get some sleep," Diamondstone recalls. "Five minutes later we'd be yelling at each other again." Sanders quit the party in 1977, and his relationship with Diamondstone continued to deteriorate; when Sanders campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984, Diamondstone followed him to every campaign stop, handing out leaflets calling the then-mayor a "quisling." After cutting his ties with Liberty Union, Sanders remained as confident as ever of the need for radical change in the nation's power structure, if less sure of how to get there. First, he had to get his life in order. "He was living in the back of an old brick building, and when he couldn't pay the [electric bill], he would take extension cords and run down to the basement and plug them into the landlord's outlet," says Nancy Barnett, an artist who lived next door to Sanders in Burlington. The fridge was often empty, but the apartment was littered with legal pads filled with Sanders' writings. When he was eventually evicted, Sanders moved in with his friend Sugarman. "The fact that neither of us could afford to live in the city where we worked was a source of great consternation to us and I think the beginning of a [mayoral] platform, honestly," Sugarman says of their roommate days. Sanders kept busy building a company he had started with Barnett called the American People's Historical Society, which produced filmstrips for elementary school classrooms on topics including women in American history and New England heroes. It was a DIY operation—Sanders did the male voices, Barnett the female ones. The work took them up and down New England's back roads, as they sold copies of the filmstrips to school administrators. "His cars were always breaking down," Barnett says. "He was extremely frugal." In one of his jalopies, Sanders (or one of his passengers) had to clear the windshield manually using the wiper blade he kept in the glove compartment. Sanders channeled his earnings from the educational films into his pièce de résistance: a documentary on the life of union leader Eugene Debs, who won nearly a million votes running for president from prison on the Socialist ticket in 1920. "We had gone to New York and lined up Howard Da Silva, who was a big Broadway booming voice actor, to play Eugene Debs' voice," Barnett explains. "But that didn't quite work out, so Bernie ended up doing the narration of Debs' voice." Bernie Sanders is from Brooklyn; Debs was not. The movie also suffered from the filmmaker's reverence for his subject. Sanders, one reviewer opined, seemed "determined to administer Debs to the viewer as if it were an unpleasant, but necessary, medicine." When Sanders tried to get the documentary aired on public television in 1978, he was rebuffed. Fearful perhaps that even humble Vermont Public Broadcasting had fallen under the dominion of corporate media, Sanders cried censorship and fought back. Eventually, the Debs documentary was broadcast. "That was a breakthrough of sorts," Sugarman says. "That was actually our first successful fight." Not long after making the Debs documentary, Sanders got back in the political game. He ran for mayor of Burlington in 1981 as an independent, and he crafted a hyperlocal platform that cut across party lines—he opposed a waterfront condominium project, supported preserving a local hill for sledding, and pushed to bring a minor league baseball team to town. Sanders was still, at heart, the same neurotic activist who picked fights with Diamondstone over socialism, but he recognized that voters in Burlington wanted to hear what he thought about Burlington. Bernie in Burlington Sanders in 1981, a few months after being sworn in as mayor of Burlington, Vermont Donna Light/AP At first, no one gave Sanders a shot. He focused on building support in Burlington's poor and working-class neighborhoods, where voters felt forsaken by the longtime Democratic incumbent, Gordon Paquette. From there, he assembled a surprisingly broad coalition, even winning the endorsement of the local police union. To everyone's surprise, he knocked off Paquette by 10 votes out of 8,650 cast. After a decade on the outside, Sanders finally had a foot in the door—and a steady job. "It's so strange, just having money," he told the Associated Press at the time. As Burlington's mayor, and later as a US representative and senator, Sanders has followed a similar formula. He's unafraid to raise hell about the corporate forces he fears are driving America into the ground—replace "Rockefeller" with "Koch" and his Liberty Union speeches don't sound dated—but always careful to keep Vermont in his sights. The days of meandering psychoanalytic cultural critiques are mostly over. And while he's running on a platform that includes some pretty radical ideas for Washington—single-payer health care; free college; 50-percent-plus income tax rates for America's top earners—at times, Sanders has shown a willingness to compromise that's disappointed longtime ideological allies. He has supported the F-35, Lockheed Martin's problem-plagued fighter jet that has led to hundreds of billions of dollars in cost overruns; Burlington's international airport was chosen as one of the homes for the planes. "He became what we call up here a 'Vermont Exceptionalist,'" Guma says of the candidate's pragmatic streak. Sanders has also drawn heat from the left over his libertarian-tinged position on gun control, which has at times allied him with his Republican colleagues, including in 2005 when he voted for a bill that shielded gun manufacturers from legal liability when their firearms are used by criminals. When he won the Burlington mayoral race, Sanders finally had a foot in the door—and a steady job. "It's so strange, just having money," he told the Associated Press at the time. Unlike his idol Debs, whose third-party campaigns earned him roughly the same percentage of the vote as Liberty Union's first electoral forays, Sanders is now running within the Democratic Party. He has chosen, as he did many years ago, relevance over purity, to engage the system rather than escape it. He could hardly have picked a better time. On many of the issues he's spent his career championing, Sanders no longer sounds so fringe. The party's progressive wing rebelled in May over President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the most polarizing free-trade deal since NAFTA (which, naturally, Sanders voted against). The $15 minimum wage is the hottest new trend in municipal governance. Billionaire donors are forming their own de facto shadow parties. Income inequality has become so pronounced even Republicans are talking about it. Despite his impressive momentum, the national polls of the presidential race still give Clinton a sizable lead over Sanders. But they also put him squarely in second place, well ahead of former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. Sanders has signaled that Clinton's early support for the Iraq War—which first created an opening for Obama in 2007—will be fair game during the race. He's jabbed the former secretary of state for her ambiguous stance on the TPP. And in a nod to the Clintons' deep pockets (and even deeper-pocketed donors), Sanders has warned that his rival is not "prepared to take on the billionaire class" that he believes is a driver and beneficiary of income inequality. Madison rally Wow, That's a Yooge Crowd to See Bernie Sanders Sanders for President/Twitter He's also learned the risks of being taken seriously. The Clinton campaign has already showed its willingness to take the gloves off. In June, Hillary-backer Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) suggested that reporters were "giving Bernie a pass" on his socialist roots and argued that he'd fall back to Earth once people started to treat him "like a serious candidate." Even as Sanders bounced from one overflow crowd to the next (3,000 in Minneapolis; 2,500 in Council Bluffs, Iowa), he spent much of the first week of his campaign explaining away that 1972 essay on gender norms. It was, he ultimately told NBC's Meet the Press, a piece of "fiction," along the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey. It wasn't the splash the campaign hoped to make, but the real news was that the story was news at all; cable news never went into overdrive over Dennis Kucinich's early years. Sanders is now standing on the biggest platform of his political career. Win or lose, his ideas will influence the national debate as never before. In some ways they already have. In August, the Democratic National Committee adopted a $15 minimum wage as part of its official platform, bringing the senator's once-radical proposal firmly into the mainstream. Sanders always seemed to know that he'd get his chance to effect big change, even if others dismissed him as a radical or derided him as a socialist. Perhaps this was what he meant when he repeated those self-affirming words—"We're not crazy"—to Richard Sugarman all those years ago. And if Sanders were to somehow defy the odds, he and Sugarman could be reunited in Washington. Sanders has promised his old friend, who still teaches at the University of Vermont, the same position he held during the mayoral years in Burlington—"Secretary of Reality."
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May 18, 2016 20:03
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AdrianChen_C.P. posted:v nice :-) and brick too? idk probably deceptikon 
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May 18, 2016 20:04
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my money's on the giant armadillo
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May 18, 2016 20:04
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everyone post a longform election article in dare threads from now on, seems to get them gassed faster 
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May 18, 2016 20:05
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wtf? why are they naked lol. iirc mankind started wearing underwear literally like a month after they were created
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May 18, 2016 20:09
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bradzilla posted:everyone post a longform election article in dare threads from now on, seems to get them gassed faster i prefer to post paradise lost
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May 18, 2016 20:11
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May 18, 2016 20:13
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Dare strikes again
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May 18, 2016 20:13
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monday: chump day tuesday: lump day wednesday: hump day thrusday: slump day friday: bump day saturday: frump day sunday: dump day
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May 18, 2016 20:13
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Nooner posted:i prefer to post paradise lost i like your taste
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May 18, 2016 20:15
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I'm going to hump your mother
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May 18, 2016 20:15
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THE DOG HOUSE posted:wtf? why are they naked lol. iirc mankind started wearing underwear literally like a month after they were created the meadowland turtlecow was a pantivore and went extinct after humans depleted natural underwear deposits
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May 18, 2016 20:16
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Mozi posted:monday: chump day Trumpday, I'm in love
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May 18, 2016 20:16
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Reminder: don't hump shotas its illegal. It doesn't matter how cute they are. You will go to prison and be called a chilly-mo the rest of your life.
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May 18, 2016 20:16
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Nathilus posted:Reminder: don't hump shotas its illegal. It doesn't matter how cute they are. You will go to prison and be called a chilly-mo the rest of your life. reminder if u fake epilepsy u will become a meme joke @ some point about it and using picture distortions of ur face irl isnt gonna change it also saying things like jessica is mine during deal time wheres the stupid brodie sound effect for this some1 do it
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May 18, 2016 20:23
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penis man posted:reminder if u fake epilepsy u will become a meme joke @ some point about it and using picture distortions of ur face irl isnt gonna change it 
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May 18, 2016 20:33
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penis man posted:reminder if u fake epilepsy u will become a meme joke @ some point about it and using picture distortions of ur face irl isnt gonna change it im going to poo poo in your pants you stupid rear end in a top hat
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May 18, 2016 20:34
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Nooner posted:im going to poo poo in your pants you stupid rear end in a top hat @ reform school there was actually a dood that poo poo his pants and anything that brodie says is aj oke u retarded kid didnt u and him make matt simms or something lel gg
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May 18, 2016 20:46
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penis man posted:@ reform school there was actually a dood that poo poo his pants and anything that brodie says is aj oke u retarded kid 
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May 18, 2016 20:49
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Make war, not love
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May 18, 2016 20:59
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gump day: run around real fast and eat shrimps
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May 18, 2016 21:16
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Nooner posted:~ BOOK I ~ 
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May 18, 2016 21:22
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