Invocation to Light

From “Paradise Lost,” Book III. HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born! Or of the Eternal coeternal beam May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproachèd light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate! Or hear’st thou rather pure ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, did invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight Through utter and through middle darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to reascend, Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou Revisitest not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath, That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even 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 expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.