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Perfect within, no outward aid require;
And all temptation to transgress repel."

So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus
Followed with benediction: "Since to part,
Go, heavenly guest, ethereal messenger,
Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore.
Gentle to me and affable hath been
Thy condescension, and shall be honored 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.

645. to part, thou art about to depart.

645

650

647. from whose, from him whose.

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BOOK IX.

THE ARGUMENT.

SATAN, having compassed the earth, with meditate a mist by night into Paradise, and enters into th Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their proposes to divide in several places, each labor consents not, alleging the danger lest that ene were forewarned should attempt her found alone thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges the rather desirous to make trial of her streng yields. The serpent finds her alone; his subtl gazing, then speaking, with much flattery extoll other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the ser how he attained to human speech and such under now; the serpent answers, that by tasting of a ce garden he attained both to speech and reason, t both. Eve requires him to bring her to that tre be the tree of knowledge forbidden. The serp bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces I eat: she, pleased with the taste, deliberates aw impart thereof to Adam or not; at last brings h relates what persuaded her to eat thereof. Adam, but perceiving her lost, resolves through vehem perish with her; and extenuating the trespass e fruit. The effects thereof in them both; they see nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of

No more of talk where God or angel g With man, as with his friend, familiar use To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblamed: I now must c Those notes to tragic; foul distrust and br 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
Perplexed 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,

13. argument. See I. 24.

14-16. The subject of Homer's Iliad is the wrath of Achilles, or his quarrel with Agamemnon, and its consequences. Here, the wrath of stern Achilles is the spirit of revenge roused by the death of his friend Patroclus, who was killed by the Trojan hero, Hector. This foe he chased three times round the walls of Troy, and, having slain him, tied his body to his chariot and dragged it to his ships.

16, 17. Reference is here made to a part of the story of Eneas, related by Virgil in the Æneid. Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus, had been promised in marriage to Turnus. She was given by her father to Æneas, and thus disespoused from Turnus.

18, 19. The Greek, perplexed so long by Neptune's ire, was Ulysses, or Odysseus, whose adventures are related by Homer in the Odyssey. Cytherea's son, so long perplexed by Juno's ire, was

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Eneas. Cytherea was one of the names of Venus. Milton declares that the subject of his own poem is not less but more heroic than that of either of the three great epic poems of antiquity, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Æneid, inasmuch as it treats of the anger and just rebuke of Heaven, rather than of the wrath of stern Achilles, or the rage of Turnus, or Neptune's ire or Juno's.

20. answerable, suitable.

21. my celestial patroness, the heavenly Muse invoked at the opening of the First Book and again in the Seventh.

22. Her nightly visitation. See III. 26-40.

26. long choosing and beginning late. Earlier in life, Milton had proposed to write an epic poem of which King Arthur should be the subject; but the present poem was not begun till after he was fifty years old.

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Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissec
With long and tedious havoc fabled kn
In battles feigned (the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung); or to describe races and gam
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous kni
At joust and tournament; then marshal
Served up in hall with sewers and senes
The skill of artifice or office mean,
Not that which justly gives heroic name
To person or to poem. Me, of these
Nor skilled nor studious, higher argumen
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or col
Climate, or years, damp my intended wir
Depressed, and much they may, if all be
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.

The sun was sunk, and after him the st Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring

27. sedulous to indite, sedulously bent on inditing.

28-31. The wars of fabled knights formed the subject of the old romantic poems, such as the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto.

34. tilting furniture, all the array with which the knights who engaged in tilts, or contests with the lance, were furnished and accompanied. - emblazoned, adorned with the devices of heraldry, or armorial bearings.

35. Impresses quaint, fanciful emblems or subjects on the shield. These were generally some figure, with a motto.

36. Bases were a which was worn when on horseback to the knees.

37, 38. The k were attended by placed the guests their rank, while ranged the meats under the superinte seneschal, or house

41-43. To me, wh skilled nor studio things as these, the higher theme or sub

44. that name. S 49. Hesperus. Se

Twilight upon the earth; short arbiter

50

55

60

'Twixt day and night; and now from end to end
Night's hemisphere had veiled 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 returned.
By night he fled, and at midnight returned
From compassing the earth, cautious of day,
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried
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
From entrance or cherubic watch by stealth
Found unsuspected way. There was a place

65

(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
Satan involved in rising mist, then sought
Where to lie hid; sea he had searched and land

50. arbiter, one who comes between two parties to settle their conflicting claims.

56. mangre, notwithstanding; in spite of.

59. cautious of, careful to avoid.

60. Uriel. See IV. 125 and 555-592.

63. The space of, during. 65. crossed the car of night, as it moved westward round the

70

75

earth, bringing darkness, while his course was from pole to pole.

66. each colure. The colures are two great circles which cross the ecliptic and intersect each other at right angles in the poles of the world or universe. - traversing, passing along, in a direction at right angles to the course. of the car of night.

67. the coast averse, that part of the border of Paradise away from.

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