Will vanish, and deliver ye to woe

More woe, the more your taste is now of joy. Sight hateful, sight tormenting! Thus these two, Imparadised in one another's arms,

The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill

Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am thrust,
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,
Among our other torments not the least,
Still unfulfilled, with pain of longing pines!
Yet let me not forget what I have gained
From their own mouths. All is not theirs, it seems;
One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge called,
Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless! Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be sin to know?
Can it be death? And do they only stand
By ignorance? Is that their happy state,
The proof of their obedience and their faith?
O fair foundation laid whereon to build
Their ruin! Hence I will excite their minds
With more desire to know, and to reject
Envious commands, invented with design
To keep them low, whom knowledge might exalt
Equal with gods. Aspiring to be such,
They taste and die: what likelier can ensue?"

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.
He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring. Oft he bowed

His turret crest and sleek enamelled 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:-
"Queen of this Universe! do not believe

Those rigid threats of death. Ye shall not die.
How should ye? By the Fruit? it gives you life
To knowledge. By the Threatener? look on me,
Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live,
And life more perfet have attained than Fate
Meant me, by ventring higher than my lot.
Shall that be shut to Man which to the Beast
Is open? or will God incense his ire
For such a petty trespass, and not praise
Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain

Hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.

To exercise righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. What shall it profit, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him?

Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness.

Know thou, and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for thee, to have left the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not with thee.

One speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait.

Before the eyes of the Lord are the ways of man, and all his tracks doth he weigh in the balance.

He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise.

They shall meet with darkness in the day, and grope at noonday as in the night.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

Of death denounced, whatever thing Death be,
Deterred not from achieving what might lead
To happier life, knowledge of Good and Evil?
Of good, how just! of evil-if what is evil
Be real, why not known, since easier shunned?
God, therefore, cannot hurt ye, and be just;
Not just, not God; not feared then, nor obeyed:
Your fear itself of death removes the fear.
Why, then, was this forbid? Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers? He knows that in the day
Ye eat thereof your eyes, that seem so clear,
Yet are but dim, shall perfetly be then
Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods,
Knowing both good and evil, as they know.
What can your knowledge hurt him, or this Tree
Impart against his will, if all be his?

Or is it envy? and can envy dwell

In Heavenly breasts? These, these and many more Causes import your need of this fair Fruit. Goddess humane, reach, then, and freely taste!"

He ended; and his words, replete with guile,
Into her heart too easy entrance won.
Fixed on the Fruit she gazed, which to behold
Might tempt alone; and in her ears the sound
Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned
With reason, to her seeming, and with truth.

Pausing a while, thus to herself she mused:-
"Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of Fruits,
Though kept from Man, and worthy to be admired,
Whose taste, too long foreborne, at first assay
Gave elocution to the mute, and taught

The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise.
Thy praise he also who forbids thy use

Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree

Of Knowledge, knowledge both of Good and Evil;
Forbids us then to taste. But his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it infers the good
By thee communicated, and our want;
For good unknown sure is not had, or, had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.

In plain, then, what forbids he but to know?
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise!
Such prohibitions bind not. But, if Death
Bind us with after-bands, what profits then
Our inward freedom? In the day we eat

Of this fair Fruit, our doom is we shall die!
How dies the Serpent? He hath eaten, and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns,
Irrational till then. For us alone

Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.

Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. The prayer out of the mouth of the poor shall reach the ears of God.

Thy heart is not right in the sight of God.

How can you believe, who receive glory one from another and the glory which is from God alone, you do not seek?

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
He that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife.

A man's pride shall bring him low.

Take heed to thyself, and attend diligently to what thou hearest for thou walkest in danger of thy ruin.

Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased.

Better is it to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide spoil with the proud.

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

Or can he walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be burnt?

The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee.

Was death invented? or to us denied

This intellectual food, for beasts reserved?
What fear I, then? rather, what know to fear
Under this ignorance of Good and Evil,
Of God or Death, of law or penalty?
Here grows the cure of all, this Fruit divine,
Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,

Of virtue to make wise. What hinders, then,
To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?"

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour

Forth-reaching to the Fruit, she plucked, she eat.
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost.

"But what if God have seen,
And death ensue? Then I shall be no more;
And Adam, wedded to another Eve,
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct!

A death to think! Confirmed, then, I resolve
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe.

So dear I love him that with him all deaths

I could endure, without him live no life."

So saying, from the Tree her step she turned.

To him she hasted; in her face excuse

Came prologue, and apology to prompt,

Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed :"Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay?

Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived

Thy presence-agony of love till now

Not felt, nor shall be twice; for never more
Mean I to try, what rash untried I sought,
The pain of absence from thy sight. But strange
Hath been the cause, and wonderful to hear.
This Tree is not, as we are told, a Tree
Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown

Opening the way, but of divine effect

To open eyes, and make them Gods who taste;
And hath been tasted such. The Serpent wise,
Or not restrained as we, or not obeying,
Hath eaten of the Fruit, and is become

Not dead, as we are threatened, but thenceforth
Endued with human voice and human sense,
Reasoning to admiration, and with me
Persuasively hath so prevailed that I
Have also tasted, and have also found
The effects to correspond-opener mine eyes,
Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart,
And growing up to Godhead; which for thee
Chiefly I sought, without thee can despise.