Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/337

Hovering upon the waters, what they met
Solid or slimy, as in raging sea
Tost up and down, together crowded drove,
From each side shoaling, toward the mouth of hell;
—As when two polar winds, blowing adverse
Upon the Cronian sea, together drive290
Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined way
Beyond Petsora eastward to the rich
Cathaian coast.—The aggregated soil
Death with his mace petrific, cold and dry,
As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm
As Delos, floating once; the rest his look
Bound with Gorgonian rigor not to move,
And with asphaltic slime. Broad as the gate,
Deep to the roots of Hell the gathered beach
They fastened, and the mole immense wrought on,
Over the foaming Deep high arched, a bridge301
Of length prodigious, joining to the wall
Immovable of this now fenceless World,
Forfeit to Death; from hence a passage broad,
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell.
So, if great things to small may be compared,
Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke,
From Susa, his Memnonian palace high,
Came to the sea, and, over Hellespont
Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined;310
And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves.