Pain and Despair

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.

Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are.

A mighty pain to love it is, And ’tis a pain that pain to miss; But of all pains, the greatest pain It is to love, but love in vain.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day!

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good.

Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of Nature’s works to me expung’d and raz’d, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

At certain revolutions all the damn’d Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.

Unrespited, unpitied, unrepriev’d.

Moloch, scepter’d king, Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in heav’n; now fiercer by despair.

High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of 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 rais’d To that bad eminence; and from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain war with heav’n.

Thrice he assay’d, and thrice, in spite of scorn, Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth.

The seat of desolation, void of light.

To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering.

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all.

No light, but rather darkness visible.

Him the Almighty Power Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.

Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?

When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodg’d with me useless.

Give me more love or more disdain; The torrid or the frozen zone: Bring equal ease unto my pain; The temperate affords me none.

Was ever grief like mine?

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy! My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.