Others whose fruit burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable (Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only), and of delicious taste.1
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Another side, umbrageous grcts and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,3
That to the fringéd bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,*
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Prosérpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis5
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
I have bracketed these words, with Pearce. 2 Well watered, full of springs and rills.
3 He makes the lake, we may observe, a person, as Homer does the river Scamander and Virgil the Tiber; and Milton himself makes a person of the river of bliss, and a female person too, iii. 359, as he does here of the lake. This language is certainly more poetical; and I suppose he thought "her crystal mirror" sounded smoother and better than "its crystal mirror," or even "his crystal mirror."Newton.
4 While universal nature, linked with the graceful seasons, danced a perpetual round, and throughout the earth, yet unpolluted, led eternal spring. All the poets favour the opinion of the world's creation in the spring, Virg. Georg. ii. 338:
"Ver illud erat, ver magnus agebat."
And Homer joins both the Graces and Hours hand-in-hand with Har mony, Youth, and Venus, in his hymn to Apollo.-Hume.
The Ancients personized everything. "Pan" is nature, the "Graces" are the beautiful seasons, and the "Hours" are the time requisite for the production and perfection of things.-Richardson. 5 Pluto.
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Lybian Jove,
Hid Amalthea and her florid son,
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise, under the Ethiop line,
By Nilus' head, enclosed with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the fiend
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind
Of living creatures, new to sight, and strange.
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honour clad,
In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone;
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure
(Severe, but in true filial freedom placed),
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed;
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him:
His fair large front, and eye sublime, declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine1 locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadornéd golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed,
Then was not guilty shame: dishonest shame
Of nature's works, honour dishonourable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banished from man's life his happiest life,
1 i. e. dark purply-brown.
Simplicity and spotless innocence !
So passed they naked on, nor shunned
The sight of God or angel, for they thought no ill:
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair
That ever since in love's embraces met;
Adam, the goodliest man of men since born'
His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain side
They sat them down; and after no more toil
Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed
To recommend cool zephyr, and made ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful, to their supper fruits they fell;
Nectarine fruits, which the compliant boughs
Yielded them; sidelong as they sat recline
On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers:
The savory pulp they chew, and in the rind
Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream:
Nor gentle purpose,2 nor endearing smiles
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance as beseems
Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league,
Alone as they. About them frisking played
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
In wood or wilderness, forest or den;
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His lithe proboscis; close the serpent1 sly
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
1 This manner of expression is borrowed from the Greek language, in which we find sometimes the superlative degree used instead of the comparative. The meaning therefore is, that Adam was a goodlier man than any of his sons, and Eve fairer than her daughters. So Achilles is said to have been ὠκυμορώτατος ἄλλων, Iliad, i. 505 ; that is, more short-lived than others.- ewton.
2 From Spenser, F. Q. iii. 8, 14:
"He 'gan make gentle purpose to his dame."-Thyer.
4 We may observe that the poet is larger in the description of the serpent than of any of the other animals; and very judiciously, as he is afterwards made the instrument of so much mischief; and, at the same time, an intimation is given "of his fatal guile," to prepare the reader for what follows-Newton.
His braided train, and of his fatal guile
Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass
Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat,
Or bedward ruminating; for the sun,
Declined, was hasting now with prone career
To the ocean isles,' and in the ascending scale
Of Heaven, the stars that usher evening rose:
When Satan, still in gaze, as first he stood,
Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad:
"O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold!
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould, earth-born, perhaps,
Not spirits, yet to heavenly spirits bright
Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue
With wonder, and could love, so lively shines
In them divine resemblance, and such grace
The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured. Ah! gentle pair, ye little think how nigh
Your change approaches, when all these delights
Will vanish, and deliver ye to woe,
More woe, the more your taste is now of joy;
Happy, but for so happy ill secured
Long to continue, and this high seat, your heaven,
Ill fenced for Heaven to keep out such a foe
As now is entered; yet no purposed foe
To you, whom I could pity thus forlorn,
Though I unpitied : league with you I seek,
And mutual amity so strait, so close,
That I with you must dwell, or you with me
Henceforth my dwelling haply may not please,
Like this fair Paradise, your sense; yet such
Accept your Maker's work; he gave it me,
Which I as freely give: Hell shall unfold
The islands in the Western Ocean; for that the sun set in the sea, and rose out of it again, was an ancient poetic notion, and is be. come part of the phraseology of poetry. "And in the ascending scale of Heaven." The "balance of Heaven, or Libra, is one of the twelve signs; and when the sun is in that sign, as he is at the autumnal equinox, the days and nights are equal, as if weighed in a balance :"Libra diei somnique pares ubi fecerit horas." Virg. Georg. i. 208.
And from hence our author seems to have borrowed his metaphor of the "scales" of Heaven, weighing night and day, the one ascending as the other sinks.-Newton.
To entertain you two, her widest gates,
And send forth all her kings; there will be room,
Not like these narrow limits, to receive
Your numerous offspring; if no better place,
Thank him who puts me loth to this revenge
On you who wrong me not for him who wronged.
And should I at your harmless innocence
Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,
Honour and empire, with revenge enlarged,
By conquering this new world, compels me now
To do what else, though damned, I should abhor."
So spake the fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
Then from his lofty stand on that high tree
Down he alights among the sportful herd
Of those four-footed kinds, himself now one,
Now other, as their shape served best his end
Nearer to view his prey, and unespied
To mark what of their state he more might learn
By word or action marked: about them round
A lion now he stalks with fiery glare;
Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied
In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play,
Straight couches close, then rising changes oft
His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground.
Whence rushing he might surest seize them both,
Griped in each paw: when Adam, first of men,
To first of women, Eve, thus moving speech,
Turned him, all ear to hear new utterance flow:
"Sole partner, and sole part of all these joys,
Dearer thyself than all; needs must the Power
That made us, and for us this ample world,
Be infinitely good, and of his good
As liberal and free as infinite;
That raised us from the dust and placed us here
In all this happiness, who at his hand
Have nothing merited, nor can perform
Aught whereof he hath need, he who requires
From us no other service than to keep
This one, this easy charge, of all the trees
In Paradise that bear delicious fruit
So various, not to taste that only tree
Of knowledge, planted by the tree of life;
So near grows death to life, whate'er death is,
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