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Express they? by looks only? or do they mix
Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?

To whom the Angel, with a smile that glow'd
Celestial rosy red (love's proper hue),
Answer'd: 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; not restrain'd 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
Hesperian sets, my signal to depart.

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

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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 Blest. 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
Follow'd with benediction: Since to part,
Go heav'nly Guest, ethereal Messenger,
Sent from whose sov'reign goodness I adore.
Gentle to me and affable hath been

Thy condescension, and shall be honour'd ever
With grateful memory; thou to mankind
Be good and friendly still, and oft return.
So parted they; the Angel up to Heav'n

From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower.

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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, loath 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

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Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience: on the part of Heav'n
Now alienated, distance and distaste,

Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,
That brought into this world a world of woe,

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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
Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's son:
If answerable style I can obtain

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Of my celestial patroness, who deigns

Her nightly visitation unimplored,

And dictates to me slumb'ring, or inspires

Easy my unpremeditated verse.

Since first this subject for heroic song

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Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late;
Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deem'd, chief mast'ry 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, emblazon'd shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds;
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshal'd 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 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

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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 th' 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 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, descry'd
His entrance, and forewarn'd the Cherubim

That kept their watch: thence full of anguish driven,
The space of sev'n continued nights he rode
With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line
He circled; four times cross'd the car of night
From pole to pole, traversing each colúre;

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On th' eighth return'd, and on the coast averse

From entrance or Cherubic watch, by stealth

Found unsuspected way. There was a place,

Now not, tho' sin, not time, first wrought the change,

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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

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Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found

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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 pour'd:
O Earth, how like to Heav'n, if not preferr'd
More justly! seat worthier of Gods! as built
With second thoughts, reforming what was old!
For what God after better worse would build!
Terrestrial Heav'n, danced round by other Heav'ns
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 Heav'n

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

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Of growth, sense, reason, all summ'd up in Man.

With what delight could I have walk'd thee round,
If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods and plains;

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Now land, now sea, and shores with forests crown'd,
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
Milton's Poetical Works.

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