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 us'd
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast; permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam'd. I now must change
Those notes to tragick; 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 judgement 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 heroick than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd;
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long
Perplex'd the Greek, and Cytherea's son;
If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplor'd,

And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse:

Since first this subject for heroick song
Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late;
Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroick deem'd; chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights
In battles feign'd: the better fortitude
Of patience and heroick martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd shields,
Impresses quaint,1 caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshall'd feast
Serv'd up in hall with sewers and seneschals;
The skill of artifice or office mean,

Not that which justly gives heroick name

Το

person or to poem. Me, of these

Nor skill'd nor studious, higher argument

Remains; sufficient of itself to raise

"Impresses quaint:' devices on the shield.-Bases:' mantles worn by knights.

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
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 the horizon round:
When Satan, who late fled before the threats
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'd

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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, descried
His entrance, and forewarn'd 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 cross'd the car of night
From pole to pole, traversing each colure;1
On the eighth return'd; and on the coast averse
From entrance or Cherubic watch, by stealth
Found unsuspected way. There was a place,
Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change,
Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,

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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, involv'd in rising mist; then sought
Where to lie hid: sea he had search'd, and land,
Colure:' a circle at right angles with the poles of the world.

From Eden over Pontus and the pool
Mæotis, up beyond the river Ob;1

Downward as far antarctick: and in length,
West from Orontes 2 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

Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found
The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Him after long debate, irresolute

Of thoughts revolv'd, 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 observ'd,
Doubt might beget of diabolick power
Active within, beyond the sense of brute.
Thus he resolv'd, but first from inward grief
His bursting passion into plaints thus pour'd.

O Earth, how like to Heaven, 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 Heaven, danc'd round by other Heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,
In thee concentering all their precious beams
Of sacred influence! As God in heaven
Is center, yet extends to all; so thou,

Ob: a river of Russia, near the north pole.-'Orontes :' a river of Syria.Darien' the isthmus joining North and South America together.

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Centering, 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 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,
Now land, now sea, and shores with forest 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
Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be
But neither here seek 1, no, nor in Heaven

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state.

To dwell, unless by mastering Heaven's Supreme;
Nor hope to be myself less miserable

By what I seek, but others to make such

As I, though thereby worse to me redound:
For only in destroying I find ease

To my relentless thoughts; and, him destroy'd,
Or won to what may work his utter loss,
For whom all this was made, all this will soon
Follow, as to him link'd in weal or woe;
In woe then; that destruction wide may range :
To me shall be the glory sole among

The infernal Powers, in one day to have marr'd
What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days
Continued making; and who knows how long
Before had been contriving? though perhaps
Not longer than since I, in one night, freed
From servitude inglorious well nigh half
The Angelick name, and thinner left the throng

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