The weal or woe in thee is placed; beware! I in thy persevering shall rejoice, And all the Blest. Stand fast; to stand or fall Perfect And ain, no outward aid require ; . So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus Thy condescension, and shall be honoured ever So parted they, the Angel up to Heaven 640 look for mrice. 650 THE END OF THE EIGHTH BOOK. 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 a while 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 where God or Angel Guest No more of talk where his friend, familiar used To sit indulgent, and with him partake Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change And disobedience; on the part of Heaven, IC Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son: Of my celestial Patroness, who deigns And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late, Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals: The skill of artifice or office mean; Not that which justly gives heroic name That name, unless an age too late, or cold The Sun was sunk, and after him the Star 20 30 40 50 'Twixt day and night, and now from end to end Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon round, 60 His entrance, and forewarned 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 crossed the car of Night From pole to pole, traversing each colure On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse Found unsuspected way. There was a place (Now not, though Sin, not Time, first wrought the change) 70 Into a gulf shot under ground, till part In with the river sunk, and with it rose, Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought Where to lie hid. Sea he had searched and land Downward as far antarctic; and, in length, Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose "O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou Centring receiv'st from all those orbs; in thee, Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears, Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man. Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries; all good to me becomes Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my state. But neither here seek I, no, nor in Heaven, To dwell, unless by mastering Heaven's Supreme; Nor hope to be myself less miserable By what I seek, but others to make such As I, though thereby worse to me redound. To my relentless thoughts; and him destroyed, For whom all this was made, all this will soon The Angelic Name, and thinner left the throng And to repair his numbers thus impaired- 120 130 140 A creature formed of earth, and him endow, 150 With heavenly spoils, our spoils. What he decreed He effected; Man he made, and for him built Magnificent this World, and Earth his seat, |