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Adam relating, she sole auditress :
Her husband the relater she preferred
Before the angel, and of him to ask1

Chose rather; he, she knew, would intermix
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute

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With conjugal caresses; from his lip

Not words alone pleased her.-O! when meet now

Such pairs, in love and mutual honour joined?—

With goddess-like demeanour forth she went,
Not unattended; for on her, as queen,

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A pomp2 of winning Graces waited still,
And from about her shot darts of desire
Into all eyes, to wish her still in sight.

And Raphael now, to Adam's doubt proposed,
Benevolent and facile3 thus replied:

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"To ask or search, I blame thee not; for Heaven "Is as the book of God before thee set, "Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn "His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years: "This to attain, whether Heaven move or Earth, "Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest "From man or angel the great Architect "Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge "His secrets to be scanned by them who ought "Rather admire; or, if they list to try "Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens "Hath left to their disputes; perhaps to move "His laughter at their quaint opinions wide⭑ "Hereafter, when they come to model Heaven "And calculate the stars; how they will wield "The mighty frame ;--how build, unbuild, contrive,

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1 She preferred... of him to ask.--In making Eve withdraw from the discussion of abstruse subjects with the angel, and preferring to ask instruction from her husband when alone with him, Milton is supported by 1 Cor. xiv. 35, &c.

2 Pomp,-train of attendants, procession.

3 Facile,-affable.

4 Quaint opinions wide,-ingenious, artificial systems; wide, i. e. remote from the truth, and different from each other.

"To save appearances ;-how gird the sphere

"With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,

"Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb:1

"Already by thy reasoning this I guess,

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"Who art to lead thy offspring, and supposest

"That bodies bright and greater should not serve

"The less not bright; nor Heaven such journeys run, "Earth sitting still, when she alone receives "The benefit. Consider first, that great,

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"Or bright, infers not excellence: the earth,
“Though, in comparison of Heaven, so small,
"Nor glistering, may of solid good contain
"More plenty than the Sun that barren shines;
"Whose virtue on itself works no effect,
"But in the fruitful earth; there first received,
"His beams, inactive else, their vigour find.
"Yet not to Earth are those bright luminaries
"Officious; but to thee, Earth's habitant.
"And for the Heaven's wide circuit, let it speak
"The Maker's high magnificence, who built
"So spacious, and his line stretched out so far,*
"That man may know he dwells not in his own;
"An edifice too large for him to fill,

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1 It was a prejudiced opinion among the ancient astronomers, that the motions of the heavenly bodies must necessarily be in circles; and, in order to make that doctrine tally with observation, they invented in succession the two theories of Epicycles and Eccentrics. In the former, called also the Concentric Theory, the earth was supposed to be placed in the centre of a circle, on the circumference of which the centre of another circle revolved; and on the circumference of this second circle (called an Epicycle, or circle on a circle), the planet was imagined to move-a supposition which accounted, in some degree, for the apparent irregularity of its motion. In the Eccentric Theory, the earth was also placed stationary in the starry sphere; but the sun was carried round in a circle, the centre of which was eccentric from that of the earth.

2 Aiready by thy reasoning this I guess,-from Adam's reasoning, Raphael conjectured that his offspring would form many quaint but contradictory systems of astronomy.

Officious;-serviceable.

4 His line stretched out so far.-See Job xxxviii. 5.

"Ordained for uses to his Lord best known.1

"The swiftness of those circles áttribute,

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Though numberless, to his omnipotence,

"That to corporeal substances could add

"Speed almost spiritual: me thou thinkest not slow, 110 "Who since the morning-hour set out from Heaven, "Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived

"In Eden; distance inexpressible

"By numbers that have name! But this I urge,
"Admitting motion in the Heavens, to show
"Invalid that which thee to doubt it moved;
"Not that I so affirm, though so it seem

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"To thee, who hast thy dwelling here on earth. "God, to remove his ways from human sense, "Placed Heaven from Earth so far, that earthly sight, 120 "If it presume, might err in things too high,

"And no advantage gain. What if the sun
"Be centre to the world; and other stars,

"By his attractive virtue and their own
"Incited, dance about him various rounds?

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"Their wandering course, now high, now low, then hid, "Progressive, retrograde, or standing still,

"In six thou seest;3 and what if seventh to these
"The planet Earth, so steadfast though she seem,
66 'Insensibly three different motions move?
"Which else to several spheres thou must ascribe,

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1 This fine reflection, 1. 103-106, it has been remarked, is confirmed by the authority of the greatest philosophers, who seem to attribute the first notion of religion in man to his observing the grandeur of the universe. Compare also the devout sentiments of the Psalmist, inspired by contemplating the starry heavens, Psalms viii. and xix., &c.

2 Though numberless,-though these circles are numberless, yet the swiftness of them all is so vast, that it must be attributed to Omnipotence as alone able to cause it.

3 In six thou seest;-in the moon, and the five other wandering fires, as they are called, b. v. 1. 177. Their motions are evident: what if the earth should be a seventh planet, and move three different motions? i. e. the daily motion round her own axis, causing day and night, the annual motion round the sun, and the motion of nutation of its axis, by which the pole of the heavens (the point immediately over the pole of the earth) describes a wavy curve round the pole of the ecliptic.

"Moved contrary with thwart obliquities; "Or save the Sun his labour, and that swift "Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb1 supposed, "Invisible else above all stars, the wheel

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"Of day and night: which needs not thy belief,
"If Earth, industrious of herself, fetch day
"Travelling east, and with her part averse

What if that light,

"From the Sun's beam meet night, her other part
"Still luminous by his ray.
"Sent from her through the wide transpicuous3 air,
"To the terrestrial Moon be as a star,

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140

Enlightening her by day, as she by night

"This Earth, reciprocal, if land be there,

"Fields and inhabitants? Her spots thou seest

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"As clouds, and clouds may rain, and rain produce "Fruits in her softened soil, for some to eat

"Allotted there; and other suns perhaps,
"With their attendant moons, thou wilt descry,
Communicating male and female light5
"(Which two great sexes animate the world),

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150

1 That swift nocturnal and diurnal rhomb,-using the word rhomb in the Greek sense of it, which, as usual, he explains in the next line by "the wheel of day and night: so he calls the primum mobile; and this primum mobile, in the ancient astronomy, was an imaginary sphere above those of the planets and fixed stars, and, therefore, said by our author to be supposed, and invisible above all stars. This was supposed to be the first mover, and to carry all the subordinate spheres round along with it, communicating to them a motion by which they revolved in twenty-four hours.

2 Which needs not thy belief,-there is no need to believe this, if the earth, by revolving on her own axis from west to east in twenty-four hours, enjoys day in that half of her globe which is turned towards the sun, and is shrouded in night in the other half turned away from the

sun.

3 Transpicuous,-transparent, that can be penetrated by the sight.

4 Her spots thou seest as clouds, &c.-This beautiful fancy about the moon being fertile and habitable, is completely overturned by the revelations of powerful telescopes in modern times, which show the surface of the moon to be bare and rocky, covered with vast numbers of craters of extinct volcanoes, and immense masses of rock, in incalculable multitude, strewed all around them; no traces of vapour, rain, or sea, being discernible.

5 Communicating male and female light; the suns being said, poetically, to give male, and the moons, female light: this mode of speaking was used by the ancients, as may be seen from Pliny's Natural History, b. ii. c. 100.

"Stored in each orb perhaps with some that live:1
"For such vast room in nature unpossessed
"By living soul, desert and desolate,

"Only to shine, yet scarce to cóntribute

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"Each orb a glimpse of light, conveyed so far

"Down to this habitable, which returns

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'Light back to them, is obvious to dispute.

"But whether thus these things, or whether not,"Whether the Sun, predominant in Heaven, "Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun; "He from the East his flaming road begin, "Or she from West her silent course advance "With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps "On her soft axle, while she paces even, "And bears thee soft with the smooth air along; "Solicit not thy thoughts3 with matters hid: "Leave them to God above; him serve and fear.4 "Of other creatures, as him pleases best, "Wherever placed, let him dispose; joy thou "In what he gives to thee-this Paradise "And thy fair Eve: Heaven is for thee too high "To know what passes there; be lowly wise: "Think only what concerns thee, and thy being; "Dream not of other worlds; what creatures there "Live, in what state, condition, or decree: "Contented that thus far hath been revealed, "Not of Earth only, but of highest Heaven.

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To whom thus Adam, cleared of doubt, replied: "How fully hast thou satisfied me, pure

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1 Stored in each orb perhaps with some that live.-This should be read in connection with line 150. It is light that is spoken of as stored in each orb; and from the abundance of light distributed among these worlds, he suggests the probable idea of living beings to enjoy it. The 151st line should thus be read as a parenthesis. ED.

2 This habitable,-earth being understood, as in b. vi. 1. 78, this terrene. The corresponding adjective in Greek is used in the same way without the substantive.

* Solicit not thy thoughts,—in the Latin sense, disturb not thy thoughts. * Leave them to God above; him serve and fear, &c.-See Eccles. xii. 13; ix. 9 10; Ps. cxxxi. 1.

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