Satan, having compassed the earth, with meditated guile returns, as a mist, by night, into Paradise; enters into the serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her, found alone. Eve, loth to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength; Adam at last yields; the serpent finds her alone: his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking; with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech, and such understanding, not till now: the serpent answers that, by tasting of a certain tree in the garden, he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of both. Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the tree of knowledge, forbidden: the serpent, now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments, induces her at length to eat; she, pleased with the taste, deliberates awhile whether to impart thereof to Adam or not; at last brings him of the fruit relates what persuaded her to eat thereof. Adam, at first amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehemence of love, to perish with her; and, extenuating the trespass, eats also of the fruit: the effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of one another.
O MORE of talk where God, or angel guest, With man, as with his friend, familiar used To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast; permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt And disobedience on the part of heaven, Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, That brought into this world a world of woe, Sin and her shadow, Death, and Misery, Death's harbinger. Sad task! yet argument Not less, but more heroic than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued, Thrice fugitive, about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Perplex'd the Greek, and Cytherea's son ; If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse:
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late;
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deem'd; chief mastery to dissect, With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights, In battles feign'd; the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung; or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, emblazon'd shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshall'd feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneschals; The skill of artifice or office mean,
Not that which justly gives heroic name
To person or to poem. Me, of these Nor skill'd nor studious, higher argument Remains; sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing Depress'd; and much they may, if all be my, Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear. The sun was sunk, and after him the star Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter
"Twixt day and night; and now, from end to end, Night's hemisphere had veil'd the horizon round; When Satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved
In meditated fraud and malice, bent
On man's destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless return'd. By night he fled, and at midnight return'd From compassing the earth; cautious of day, Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried His entrance, and forewarn'd the cherubim That kept their watch; thence, full of anguish, driven, The space of seven continued nights he rode With darkness: thrice the equinoctial line He circled; four times cross'd the car of night From pole to pole, travérsing each colúre; On the eighth return'd, and, on the coast averse From entrance or cherubic watch, by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place, Now not; though sin, not time, first wrought the change, Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,
Into a gulf shot under ground, till part
Rose up a fountain by the tree of life: In with the river sunk, and with it rose,
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