Of grove or garden-plot more pleasant lay,

Their tendance, or plantation for delight;

By fountain or by shady rivulet

He sought them both, but wished his hap might find

Eve separate; he wished, but not with hope

Of what so seldom chanced; when to his wish,

Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,

Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,
Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round
About her glowed, oft stooping to support
Each flower of tender stalk, whose head, though gay
Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold,
Hung drooping, unstained; then she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.
Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm;
Then voluble and bold; now hid, now seen
Among thick woven arborets, and flowers
Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve:
Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned
Or of revived Adonis, or renowned
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son,

Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse,
Much he the place admired, the person more:
As one who, long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick, and sewers, annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight;
The smell of grain, or tedded grass or kine,
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;
If chance, with nymph-like step, fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,

She most. and in her look sums all delight.
Such pleasure took the serpent to behold
This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone; her heavenly form
Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture, or least action, overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought.
That space the evil one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good; of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.
But the hot hell that always in him burns,
Though in mid-heaven, soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more, the more he sees
Of pleasure, not for him ordained: then soon
Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts
Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites :

Thoughts, whither have ye led me! With what sweet Compulsion thus transported, to forget What hither brought us? Hate, not love; nor hope Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, Save what is in destroying; other joy To me is lost. Then, let me not let pass Occasion which now smiles; behold alone The woman opportune to all attempts, Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh, Whose higher intellectual more I shun, And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb Heroic built, though of terrestrial mold; Foe not informidable, exempt from wound, I not; so much hath Hell debased, and pain Enfeebled me, to what I was in Heaven. She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods!

Not terrible, though terror be in love

And beauty, not approached by stronger hate, Hate stronger, under show of love well feigned, The way which to her ruin now I tend.

So spake the enemy of mankind enclosed In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve Addressed his way: not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape, And lovely; never since of serpent-kind Lovelier; nor those that in Illyria changed Hermione and Cadmus, or the god In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen; He, with Olympias, this, with her who bore Scipio, the height of Rome. With tract oblique At first, as one who sought access, but feared To interrupt, sidelong he works his way. As when a ship, by skillful steersman wrought, Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the wind Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail: So varied he, and of his tortuous train Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, To lure her eye. She, busied, heard the sound Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used To such disport before her through the field, From every beast, more duteous at her call, Than at Circean call the herd disguised. He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood, But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed His turret crest, and sleek enameled neck,

Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod.
His gentle dumb expression turned at length
The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad
Of her attention gained, with serpent tongue
Organic, or impulse of vocal air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began:

Wonder not, sovereign mistress, if, perhaps,
Thou canst, who art sole wonder; much less arm
Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain,
Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze
Insatiate, I thus single, nor have feared
Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired.
Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,
Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine
By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore,
With ravishment beheld! there best beheld,
Where universally admired. But here,
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern
Half what in thee is fair, one man except,

Who sees thee? - and what is one – who shouldst be seen

A goddess among gods, adored and served

By Angels numberless, thy daily train.

So glozed the tempter, and his proem tuned ; Into the heart of Eve his words made way, Though at the voice much marveling: at length, Not unamazed, she thus in answer spake :

What may this mean? language of man, pronounced

By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed!
The first, at least, of these, I thought denied
To beasts, whom God, on their creation-day,
Created mute to all articulate sound;

The latter I demur; for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.
Thee, serpent, subtlest beast of all the field
I knew, but not with human voice endued;

Redouble, then, this miracle, and say,

How camest thou speakable of mute, and how
To me so friendly grown, above the rest
Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight?
Say, for such wonder claims attention due.

To whom the guileful tempter thus replied :
Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve!
Easy to me it is to tell thee all

What thou commandest, and right thou shouldst be obeyed. I was at first as other beasts that graze

The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low,

As was my food; nor aught but food discerned,

Or sex, and apprehended nothing high:
Till, on a day roving the field, I chanced
A goodly tree far distant to behold,
Loaden with fruit of fairest colors mixed,
Ruddy and gold. I nearer drew to gaze ;
When from the boughs a savory odor blown,
Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense
Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats
Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even,
Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their play.
To satisfy the sharp desire I had

Of tasting those fair apples, I resolved
Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once,
Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent
Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen.
About the mossy trunk I wound me soon;
For, high from ground, the branches would require
Thy utmost reach, or Adam's: round the tree,
All other beasts that saw, with like desire
Longing and envying stood, but could not reach.
Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung
Tempting, so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill
I spared not; for such pleasure, till that hour,
At feed or fountain, never had I found.