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

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

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

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

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

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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

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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, travérsing 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 Tigris at the foot of Paradise

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 involved in rising mist, then sought

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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

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,

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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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Bane, and in Heav'n much worse would be my state.
But neither here seek I, no, nor in Heav'n

To dwell, unless by mast'ring Heav'n'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

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To my relentless thoughts; and him destroy'd,
Or won to what may work his utter loss,

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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
Th' infernal Pow'rs, 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
Th' angelic name, and thinner left the throng
Of his adorers; he to be avenged,

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And to repair his numbers thus impair'd,

Whether such virtue spent of old now fail'd
More Angels to create, if they at least
Are his created, or to spite us more,
Determined to advance into our room

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A creature form'd of earth, and him endow,

Exalted from so base original,

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With heav'nly spoils, our spoils. What he decreed

He effected; Man he made, and for him built

Magnificent this world, and earth his seat,

Him lord pronounced, and, O indignity!
Subjected to his service Angel wings,
And flaming ministers, to watch and tend
Their earthly charge. Of these the vigilance
I dread, and to elude, thus wrapt in mist
Of midnight vapour, glide obscure, and pry

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