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Should prove tempestuous: to the winds they set 
Their corners, when with bluster to confound 
Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll 
With terror through the dark aerial hall. 
Some say He bid his angels turn ascanse 
The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more 
From the sun’s axle. They with labour push d 
Oblique the centric globe; some say the sun 
Was bid turn reins from th’ equinoxial road 
Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven 
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins 
Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain 
By Leo and the Virgin, and the Scales, 
As deep as Capricorn, to bring in change 
Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring 
Perpetual smil'd on earth with vernantflowers, 
Equal in days and nights, except to those 
Beyond the polar circles; to them day 
Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun. 
To recompense his distance, in their sight 
Had rounded still th’ horizon, and not known 
Or east or west, which had forbid the snow 
From cold Estotiland, and south as far 
Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit 
The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turn’d 
His course intended; else how had the world 
Inhabited, though sinless, more than now. 
Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat ? 
These changes in the Heav’ns, though slow, produc’d 
Like change on sea and land, sideral blast. 
Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot. 
Corrupt and pestilent: now from the north 
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore. 
Bursting their brazen dungeon, arm’d with ice. 
And snow, and hail, and stormy gust, and flaw, 
Boreas, and Caecias, and Argestes loud, 
And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn; 
With adverse blast upturns them from the south 
Notus and Afer; black with thund’rous clouds, 
From Serraliona; thwart of these as fierce 
Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, 
Eurus and Zephyr, with their lateral noise. 
Sirocco and Lebecchio. Thus began 
Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first, 
Daughter of Sin, among the irrational. 
Death introduc’d through fierce antipathy: 
Beast now with beast ’gan war, and fowl with fowl, 
And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving. 
Devour’d each other; nor stood much in awe 
Of man, but fled him, or with count’nance grim 
Glar’d on him passing. These were from without 
The growing miseries which Adam saw 
Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade, 
