PARADISE LOST.

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 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 hunan 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 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.

No more of talk where God or Angel guest
With Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd,
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast; permitting him the while

Venial discourse unblam'd. 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 disespous'd;
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 unimplor'd,

And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires

Easy my unpremeditated verse:

Since first this subject for heroic song

Pleas'd 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
Serv'd up in ball with sewers and seneshals;
The skill of artifice or office mean,
Not that which justly gives heroic name
Το 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 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 veil'd the horizon round:
When Satan, who late fled before the threats
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'd

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 sun, descried His entrance, and forewarn'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

M

From pole to pole, traversing each colure;

On the eighth return'd; 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, involv'd in rising mist; then sought
Where to lie hid; sea he had search'd, 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 barr'd

At Darien; thence to the land where flows
Ganges and Indus: Thus the orb he roam'd
With narrow search; and with inspection deep
Consider'd 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 revolv'd, 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 observ'd,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power