Us happy, and without love no happiness Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st (And pure thou wert created), we enjoy In eminence; and obstacle find none Of membrance, joint, or limb, exclusive bars; Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace, Total they mix, union of pure with pure Desiring, nor restrain'd conveyance need, As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul. But I can now no more; the parting sun Beyond the Earth's green cape and verdant isles Hesperian sets, my signal to depart
Be strong, live happy, and love! But, first of all, Him, who to love is to obey, and keep His great command: take heed lest passion sway Thy judgment to do aught, which else free will Would not admit: thine, and of all thy sons, The weal or wo in thee is placed: beware! I in thy persevering shall rejoice,
And all the bless'd: Stand fast; to stand or fall Free in thine own arbitrement it lies. Perfect within, no outward aid require ; And all temptation to transgress repel.
So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus Follow'd with benediction. Since to part, Go, Heavenly guest, ethereal messenger, Sent from whose sov'reign goodness I adore! Gentle to me and affable hath been Thy condescension, and shall be honor'd ever With grateful memory: Thou to mankind Be good and friendly still, and oft return!
So parted they; the Angel up to Heaven From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower.
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 forwarned should attempt her found alone; Eve, loath 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 inthe 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 knowleged 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 fail to variance and accusation of one another.
No 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 wo, 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, imblazon'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 mine, Not hers, who brings it nightly to my ear. The sun was sunk, and after him the star Of Hesperns, 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 day, descried His entrance, and forwarn'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
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