Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out
To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet
Mortality, my sentence, and be earth

Insensible! How glad would lay me down,
As in my mother's lap! There I should rest,
And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more
Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse
To me, and to my offspring, would torment me
With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt

Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die;

Lest that pure breath of life the spirit of Man
Which God inspired, cannot together perish
With this corporeal clod; then, in the grave,
Or in some other dismal place, who knows
But I shall die a living death? O thought
Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath
Of life that sinned. What dies but what had life
And sin? The body properly had neither.

All of me, then, shall die: let this appease

The doubt, since human reach no farther knows:

For though the Lord of all be infinite,

Is his wrath also? Be it, man is not so,

But mortal doomed. How can he exercise

Wrath without end on man, whom death must end? Can he make deathless death? That were to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself

Impossible is held, as argument

Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out,

For anger's sake, finite to infinite

In punished man, to satisfy his rigor,

Satisfied never? That were to extend

His sentence beyond dust and nature's law,

By which all causes else, according still

To the reception of their matter, act,

Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say
That death be not one stroke, as I supposed,

Bereaving sense, but endless misery

From this day onward - which I feel begun
Both in me, and without me- and so last
To perpetuity: ah, me! that fear

Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution
On my defenseless head.
defenseless head. Both death and I
Are found eternal, and incorporate both;

Nor I on my part single; in me all

Posterity stands cursed

fair patrimony

That I must leave ye, sons! Oh, were I able
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none:

So disinherited, how would ye bless

Me, now your curse! Ah, why should all mankind,
For one man's fault, thus guiltless be condemned,
If guiltless? But from me what can proceed
But all corrupt; both mind and will depraved,

Not to do only, but to will the same

With me? How can they, then, acquitted stand

In sight of God? Him, after all disputes,

Forced I absolve: all my evasions vain,

And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still But to my own conviction: first and last

On me- me only, as the source and spring

Of all corruption, all the blame lights due;

So might the wrath! Fond wish! couldst thou support
That burden, heavier than the earth to bear
Than all the world much heavier, though divided
With that bad woman? Thus, what thou desirest,
And what thou fearest, alike destroys all hope

Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable
Beyond all past example and future;

To Satan only like, both crime and doom.

O conscience! Into what abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged!
Thus Adam to himself lamented loud,

Through the still night; not now, as ere man fell,
Wholesome, and cool, and mild, but with black air
Accompanied; with damps and dreadful gloom,
Which to his evil conscience represented

All things with double terror, on the ground
Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground, and oft
Cursed his creation; Death as oft accused
Of tardy execution, since denounced

The day of his offense. Why comes not Death,
Said he, with one thrice-acceptable stroke

To end me? Shall Truth fail to keep her word,
Justice divine not hasten to be just?

But Death comes not at all; Justice divine

Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries.
O woods, O fountains, hillocks, dales, and bowers!
With other echo late I taught your shades
To answer, and resound far other song.
Whom thus afflicted, when sad Eve beheld,
Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh,
Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed;
But her, with stern regard, he thus repelled:

Out of my sight, thou serpent! That name best
Befits thee, with him leagued, thyself as false
And hateful. Nothing wants, but that thy shape,
Like his, and color serpentine, may show

Thy inward fraud, to warn all creatures from thee
Henceforth, lest that too heavenly form, pretended
To hellish falsehood, snare them! But for thee
I had persisted happy, had not thy pride
And wandering vanity, when least was safe,
Rejected my forewarning, and disdained
Not to be trusted; longing to be seen,
Though by the Devil himself, him overweening
To over-reach; but, with the serpent meeting,
Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by thee,
To trust thee from my side, imagined wise,

Constant, mature, proof against all assaults;
And understood not all was but a show,
Rather than solid virtue; all but a rib
Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears,
More to the part sinister, from me drawn;
Well if thrown out, as supernumerary

To my just number found. Oh! why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
With spirits masculine, create at last

This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
Of nature, and not fill the world at once
With men, as angels, without feminine;
Or find some other way to generate

Mankind? This mischief had not then befallen,
And more that shall befall; innumerable
Disturbances on earth through female snares,
And straight conjunction with this sex: for either
He never shall find out fit mate, but such

As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained
By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame;
Which infinite calamity shall cause

But Eve,

To human life, and household peace confound.
He added not, and from her turned.
Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing,
And tresses all disordered, at his feet

Fell humble; and, embracing them, besought
His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint:

Forsake me not thus, Adam! witness, Heaven,
What love sincere, and reverence in my heart,
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,
Unhappily deceived! Thy suppliant,

I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not,
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel, in this uttermost distress
My only strength and stay; forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?
While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace; both joining,
As joined in injuries, one enmity

Against a foe by doom express assigned us,
That cruel serpent. On me exercise not
Thy hatred for this misery befallen;

On me, already lost, me than thyself

More miserable. Both have sinned; but thou
Against God only, I against God and thee;
And to the place of judgment will return,
There with my cries importune Heaven, that all
The sentence, from thy head removed, may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe;

Me

me only, just object of his ire!

She ended, weeping; and her lowly plight
Immovable till peace obtained from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
Commiseration. Soon his heart relented,
Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress;
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid.
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,

And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon:
Unwary, and too desirous, as before,

So now, of what thou knowest not, who desirest The punishment all on thyself; alas!

Bear thine own first, ill able to sustain

His full wrath, whose thou feelest as yet least part, And my displeasure bearest so ill. If prayers

Could alter high decrees, I to that place