Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?"

To whom the angel, with a smile that glowed Celestial rosy-red, love's proper hue,

Answered :-" Let it suffice thee that thou know'st

Us happy, and without love no happiness.
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars.
Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.
But I can now no more: the parting sun
Beyond the earth's green cape and verdant isles
Hesperean sets, my signal to depart.

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630

Be strong, live happy, and love! but first of all
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep

His great command; take heed lest passion sway
Thy judgment to do aught which else free will
Would not admit; thine and of all thy sons
The weal or woe in thee is placed; beware!

I in thy persevering shall rejoice,

And all the blessed. Stand fast; to stand or fall
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 honoured 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.

640

650

BOOK IX.

THE ARGUMENT.

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.

No 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 marshalled 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,

20

30

40

50

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

60

(Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change) 70 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

80

BOOK IX.]

PARADISE LOST.

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?
Terrestial 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 centre, yet extends to all, so thou

Centring receiv'st 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 shores with forest crowned,
Rocks, dens, and caves! 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