What though the field be lost All is not lost

“What though the field be lost? All is not lost” is the pivotal expression through which Satan answers defeat with defiance. Spoken after God has hurled Satan and his followers from Heaven into Hell, it does not deny the loss of the battlefield; instead, it relocates the contest from external power to the mind, where Satan claims that will, revenge, hatred, courage, and refusal to submit remain intact.

Situation and Speaker

The expression arises in the immediate aftermath of the War in Heaven. Satan has been cast down with his “horrid crew,” lying vanquished in the fiery gulf for nine days and nights as measured by mortal time. He awakens in a prison of penal fire, surrounded by “darkness visible,” endless torture, sulphur, sorrow, and separation from God and the light of Heaven. His physical and political defeat is therefore absolute: Heaven is lost, his authority has been broken, and the Rebel Angels have been reduced to fallen prisoners.

Yet Satan’s first response is not submission. He surveys the devastation, recognizes Beelzebub beside him, and recalls their former alliance in Heaven: shared counsels, equal hope, and common danger. The expression emerges from that contrast between former glory and present ruin. The greater the external fall, the more forcefully Satan insists that something essential has survived it.

Meaning of the Defiance

The first clause acknowledges reality: “the field” has been lost. Satan does not pretend that the battle ended in ambiguity or that the Rebel Angels have retained their former position. God’s power has prevailed, and Satan admits that the victor now triumphs and rules Heaven. The second clause nevertheless refuses to let military defeat become total defeat. What remains, in Satan’s account, is the “unconquerable Will,” together with the study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield.

The expression thus distinguishes bodily condition from inward disposition. Satan’s outward lustre has changed, and his happy state has been swallowed by misery, but he presents the mind as a territory that God’s victory has not conquered. The statement’s force lies in this substitution: when power over place and body has been lost, resistance survives as a decision not to acknowledge the conqueror’s moral authority.

Political and Moral Program

Satan’s declaration is more than consolation. It becomes a program for continued opposition. He rejects the possibility of bowing, suing for grace, or worshipping the power that defeated him, treating such submission as an even deeper disgrace than the fall itself. He argues that the divine victory has taught the Rebel Angels the strength of their enemy while leaving them capable of renewed action; with greater experience and foresight, they may wage an “eternal Warr” by force or guile.

The expression therefore turns defeat into strategy. Satan imagines resistance as continuous and adaptable: open warfare may give way to deception, and failure may become instruction for a later attempt. His claim that “All is not lost” depends on the survival of agency, even under punishment. The very qualities that make his speech impressive—resolve, memory, strategic intelligence, and refusal of humiliation—are directed toward revenge rather than reconciliation.

Paradox and Inner Contradiction

The expression carries a severe irony because Satan’s assertion of invincibility occurs inside a place expressly prepared for rebellious beings, where peace, rest, and hope never come. He speaks of an unconquerable will while suffering pain, despair, and the knowledge that God’s power has in fact overthrown his armies. His rhetoric is therefore both resistance and self-defense: it preserves a sense of identity by converting catastrophe into a chosen posture.

The phrase also contains a paradoxical value shift. The Rebel Angels have moved from glory to defeat, freedom in Heaven to imprisonment in Hell, and communal power to physical ruin. Satan attempts to reverse that downward movement by declaring that the most important value—liberty of mind—has shifted from threatened to preserved. But his proposed freedom is inseparable from hatred and opposition. The inward sovereignty he celebrates becomes a form of captivity to revenge, so that the claim that nothing essential is lost is challenged by the direction in which the surviving will chooses to move.

Relation to Beelzebub’s Doubt

Beelzebub’s reply exposes the pressure beneath Satan’s confidence. He agrees that the mind and spirit remain invincible and that strength may return, but he wonders whether God has deliberately preserved that strength so the fallen beings can suffer longer, satisfy divine vengeance, or serve as instruments in Hell. The question transforms Satan’s apparent resource into a possible part of his punishment.

Satan rejects that interpretation by insisting that the fallen will never undertake good. If God’s providence brings good out of their evil, Satan says, their task will be to pervert that end and extract evil from good. His answer clarifies the expression’s darker implication: “All is not lost” means not merely that resistance remains possible, but that Satan intends to preserve evil as a deliberate counter-principle against God’s will.

Narrative Significance

As an expression, “What though the field be lost? All is not lost” crystallizes Satan’s early identity and establishes the governing rhetoric of his plot trajectory. It gives memorable form to his refusal to accept defeat, links personal pride with political rebellion, and turns the aftermath of the heavenly battle into the beginning of a new campaign. The line’s lasting power comes from its double movement: it recognizes ruin with unusual clarity, then attempts to defeat ruin by naming an inward remainder that cannot be surrendered.

Within the poem’s moral structure, however, the declaration is not a simple triumph of freedom. Satan’s will survives, but survival does not equal restoration. The same speech that celebrates courage also confirms “immortal hate,” and the promise of continued action already points toward revenge and further evil. The field is lost; the war, in Satan’s mind, continues—but the form of resistance he chooses reveals that his preserved freedom is increasingly governed by the very opposition that has made Hell his own condition.