Paradise Lost - Long or Short

Something I found amazing about Paradise Lost is the way that time tends to fall away in the poem. The story seems like it takes all of a few days or a few scenes, but John Milton inflates everything with mounds of astounding metaphors, allusions, word games, illustration and more. Because the story takes place at the beginning of when man and woman were supposed to have been made, there is already a sense of being without time (or sometimes space, for that matter), and yet the sequence into which all of the events fall is very easy to follow once you have gone through the poem in its entirety. But Milton is masterful in the way he wraps his words around the reader and makes he or she dizzy. I have probably never read anything filled with so many rushing images in my life and even though Milton is certainly tough to get through, I think reading Paradise Lost is extremely valuable for anybody who loves literature (and/or wants to be a writer.)