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
Followed with benediction: Since to part,
Go, heavenly guest, ethereal messenger,
Sent from whose sovereign 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.

BOOK IX.

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 labors, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each laboring 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 cat 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.

N°

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
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.

Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect,
With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights,
In battles feigned - the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung-or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament, then marshaled 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 skilled 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
Depressed; 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 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 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 may 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,

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
From Eden over Pontus, and the pool

Mæotis, up beyond the river Ob;
Downward as far antarctic; and, in length,
West from Orontes to the ocean barred

At Darien, thence to the land where flows
Ganges and Indus. Thus the orb he roamed
With narrow search, and, with inspection deep,
Considered every creature, which of all

Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found
The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.
Him, after long debate, irresolute,

Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose.

Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom

To enter, and his dark suggestions hide
From sharpest sight; for, in the wily snake,
Whatever sleights, none would suspicious mark,
As from his wit and native subtlety

Proceeding, which, in other beasts observed,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power

Active within, beyond the sense of brute.
Thus he resolved, but first, from inward grief,
His bursting passion into plaints thus poured:

O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred
More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built
With second thoughts, reforming what was old!
For what god, after better, worse would build?
Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,
In thee concentring all their precious beams
Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven

Is center, yet extends to all; so thou,
Centring, receivest from all those orbs; in thee,
Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth

Of creatures animate with gradual life

Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man. With what delight could I have walked thee round, If I could joy in aught! Sweet interchange

Of hill, and valley, rivers, woods, and plains,

Now land, now sea, and

Rocks, dens, and caves!

shores with forest crowned,

But I in none of these

Find place or refuge; and the more I see
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel
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.

For only in destroying I find ease