Began to parch that temperate clime: whereat
In either hand1 the hastening Angel caught
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappeared.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,

Waved over by that flaming brand;3 the gate

With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.

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Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon: 645 The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

1 In either hand,-alluding to the way in which the angel conducted Lot from Sodom. Gen. xix. 15-26.

2 Subjected,-lying beneath.

3 Brand,-from the Italian branda, a sword: used by the old English poets. The ancients are said to have formed their swords of a wavy shape like a flame of fire.

4 They, hand in hand, &c.-Critics have vainly cavilled at this ending of the poem, and sought to improve it by transposing or omitting these two lines. The conclusion is worthy of the author and his work. The feeling of sadness left on the reader's mind by the last words is not out of proportion to the loss which the poem commemorates; and is well fitted to teach the value of those revelations of mercy, pardon, and future bliss, with which Michael is made to cheer the minds of Adam and his frail partner, and prepare them to resign without a murmur the inheritance which their transgression had forfeited.

2 B

387

PARADISE REGAINED.

BOOK I.

THE ARGUMENT.

THE subject proposed. Invocation of the Holy Spirit. The poem opens with John baptizing at the river Jordan. Jesus, coming there, is baptized; and is attested by the descent of the Holy Ghost, and by a voice from Heaven, to be the Son of God. Satan, who is present, upon this immediately flies up into the regions of the air; where, summoning his infernal council, he acquaints them with his apprehensions that Jesus is that seed of the Woman, destined to destroy all their power; and points out to them the immediate necessity of bringing the matter to proof, and of attempting, by snares and fraud, to counteract and defeat the person from whom they have so much to dread: this office he offers himself to undertake; and, his offer being accepted, sets out on his enterprise. In the meantime, God, in the assembly of holy Angels, declares that he has given up his Son to be tempted by Satan; but foretells that the tempter shall be completely defeated by him: upon which the Angels sing a hymn of triumph. Jesus is led up by the Spirit into the wilderness, while he is meditating on the commencement of his great office of Saviour of mankind. Pursuing his meditations, he narrates, in a soliloquy, what divine and philanthropic impulses he had felt from his early youth, and how his mother, Mary, on perceiving these dispositions in him, had acquainted him with the circumstances of his birth, and informed him that he was no less a person than the Son of God; to which he adds what his own inquiries and reflections had supplied in confirmation of this great truth, and particularly dwells on the recent attestation of it at the river Jordan. Our Lord passes forty days, fasting in the wilderness; where the wild beasts become mild and harmless in his presence. Satan now appears under the form of an old peasant; and enters into discourse with our Lord, wondering what

could have brought him alone into so dangerous a place, and at the same time professing to recognize him for the person lately acknowledged by John at the river Jordan, to be the Son of God. Jesus briefly replies. Satan rejoins with a description of the difficulty of supporting life in the wilderness; and entreats Jesus, if he be really the Son of God, to manifest his divine power, by changing some of the stones into bread. Jesus reproves him, and at the same time tells him that he knows who he is. Satan instantly avows himself, and offers an artful apology for himself and his conduct. Our blessed Lord severely reprimands him, and refutes every part of his justification. Satan, with much semblance of humility, still endeavours to justify himself; and, professing his admiration of Jesus and his regard for virtue, requests to be permitted at a future time to hear more of his conversation; but is answered, that this must be as he shall find permission from above. Satan then disappears, and the book closes with a short description of night coming on in the desert.

I, WHO erewhile the happy garden sung,
By one man's disobedience lost,1 now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.2

Thou Spirit, who ledst this glorious eremite3
Into the desert, his victorious field,

Against the spiritual foe, and broughtst him thence
By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire,
As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute;
And bear, through height or depth of Nature's bounds,
With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds
Above heroic, though in secret done,

5

10

15

1 By one man's disobedience lost, &c.-Compare Rom. v. 12, 18, 19. 2 And Eden raised in the waste wilderness,—a beautiful allusion, and contrast to the curse which the fall of Adam brought on the primeval earth. Compare Isa. li. 3.

3 Thou Spirit, who ledst this glorious eremite,-Compare Matt. iv. 1. Eremite, "hermit," dweller in the desert, used in Paradise Lost, b. iii. 1. 474. Compare with this invocation the opening of Paradise Lost, and note on 1. 6; and the invocation to Urania, at the beginning of b. vii., and note. 4 Full summed,-In falconry a hawk is said to be full summed when all his feathers are full grown, and fit for vigorous flight.

And unrecorded left through many an age;
Worthy to have not remained so long unsung.
Now had the great proclaimer,1 with a voice
More awful than the sound of trumpet, cried
Repentance, and Heaven's kingdom nigh at hand
To all baptized: to his great baptism flocked
With awe the regions round, and with them came
From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed
To the flood Jordan; came, as then obscure,
Unmarked, unknown; but him the Baptist soon
Descried, divinely 2 warned, and witness bore
As to his worthier, and would have resigned
To him his heavenly office; nor was long
His witness unconfirmed: on him baptized
Heaven opened, and in likeness of a dove
The Spirit descended, while the Father's voice
From Heaven pronounced him his beloved Son.
That heard the Adversary, who, roving still
About the world, at that assembly famed
Would not be last; and, with the voice divine
Nigh thunder-struck, the exalted man to whom
Such high attest was given, awhile surveyed

With wonder; then, with envy fraught and rage,
Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid air
To council summons all his mighty peers,
Within thick clouds and dark tenfold involved,

40

1 Proclaimer," preacher, herald" of Christ-John the Baptist. Voice more awful than the sound of trumpet,-See Isa. lviii. 1; Heb. xii. 18, 19; Rev. i. 10; iv. 1; and for the next fourteen lines, see Matt. chap. iii. 2 Divinely, by inspiration, or revelation from God.

3 The Adversary,-as the name Satan imports, as referred to in Paradise Lost, b i. 1. 81. Roving still about the world, &c.-Compare Job i. 6, 7; 1 Pet. v 8.

4 Awhile surveyed with wonder;...then flies to his place, &c.-When Satan first saw Eve, he prepared to enter at once on his temptation, Paradise Lost, b. ix. 1. 479, &c.; but on sight of the promised seed who was to bruise his head, he is very properly made to hetake himself to the council of his peers. Dark,-darkness. Gloomy consistory,-named after the meeting of the Pope and Cardinals. Compare Par. Lost, b. i. 1. 795, where he calls the same council "secret conclave;" and b. x. l. 457, where he calls it "their dark divan," after the name of the Turkish council.