Paradise Lost: The Arguments - WW Norton & Company

26 John Milton
Some source of consolation from above,
Secret refreshings that repair his strength 665
And fainting spirits uphold. 4
God of our fathers! what is man,
That thou towards him with hand so various—
Or might I say contrarious?—
Temper’st thy providence through his short course: 670
Not evenly, as thou rul’st
The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute,
Irrational and brute. 5
Nor do I name of men the common rout,
That, wandering loose about, 675
Grow up and perish as the summer fly,
Heads without name, no more remembered;
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorned,
To some great work, thy glory, 680
And people’s safety, which in part they effect.
Yet toward these, thus dignified, thou oft,
Amidst their height of noon,
Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard
Of highest favors past 685
From thee on them, or them to thee of service. 6
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit
To life obscured, which were a fair dismission,
But throw’st them lower than thou didst exalt them high,
Unseemly falls in human eye, 690
Too grievous for the trespass or omission;
Oft leav’st them to the hostile sword
Of heathen and profane, their carcasses
To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captìved,
Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, 695
And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude. 7
4. Cf. Job’s answers to his comforters, especially in chap. 14.
5. The chorus feels that the beings above and below man on the Great Chain of Being (the nine orders of
angels above, the mute beasts below) are ruled by a less capricious code than is man.
6. Manoa has already voiced this plaint (lines 368–372).
7. After the Restoration, many Puritan leaders were executed, jailed, or exiled, while even the corpses of some
were exhumed, beheaded, and publicly exhibited.