"To labor, sweat, and arduous slavery."
He is, furthermore, to act as sentinel over the garden and over the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Ozias is enjoined to capture and securely bind the host of the infernal animals with the lion and the dragon, who so furiously raged against the standard of Heaven. Listen to this stern command:
"Sweep from the sky these hordes accursed, and bind
Them neck and claw, and chain them forcibly."
Azarias is entrusted with the key of the bottomless abyss, wherein he is commanded to lock all that assail the powers of Heaven. To Maceda is given the torch to light the sulphurous lake down in the centre of the earth, wherein Lucifer, the evil-breeding protagonist, with poetic justice, so near the scene of his last flagrant crime, is doomed to endless solitary torment; there,
"... In the eternal fire
Unquenchable, with chilling frosts commingled,"
"Amid the bitter blast of memory's regret,"
to suffer the throes of ten thousand hells, and to discover
"How slow time limps upon a crutch of pain,"
through an eternity of keen remorse.
For the last time the chorus comes on the stage, echoing in a brief epilogue the one silvery voice of hope that speaks from that dark conclusion of multitudinous despair.