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, So spake the Enemy of Mankind, enclosed His turret crest and sleek enamelled neck, Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue Organic, or impulse of vocal air, His fraudulent temptation thus began:- Those rigid threats of death. Ye shall not die. 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, 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, Pausing a while, thus to herself she mused:- The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise. Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree Of Knowledge, knowledge both of Good and Evil; In plain, then, what forbids he but to know? Of this fair Fruit, our doom is we shall die! 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. 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? Of virtue to make wise. What hinders, then, So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth-reaching to the Fruit, she plucked, she eat. "But what if God have seen, A death to think! Confirmed, then, I resolve 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 Opening the way, but of divine effect To open eyes, and make them Gods who taste; Not dead, as we are threatened, but thenceforth |