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 Venial discourse unblamed: I now must change And disobedience; on the part of Heaven Of my celestial patroness, who deigns * The argument of the Iliad. The argument of the Æneid. Cupid, the son of Venus. 20 Her nightly visitation unimplored,* And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late,+ Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights 30 In battles feigned; the better fortitude Not that which justly gives heroic name That name, unless an age too late, or cold The sun was sunk, and after him the star 40 50 "Twixt day and night, and now from end to end Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon round; On man's destruction, maugre what might hap His entrance, and forewarned the cherubim That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven, Milton was accustomed to study at night. 60 Milton had early intended to write an epic poem on the subject of King Arthur. Witty devices or emblems, painted on their shields usually with a motto. Milton was nearly sixty years of age when this poem was published. That is, he was three days moving round from east to west, as the sun does, but always on the opposite side of the globe in darkness. L He circled; four times crossed the car of night Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change, Where Tigris at the foot of Paradise 71 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 Where to lie hid; sea he had searched, 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 barred At Darien; thence to the land where flows 80 Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose, Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom To enter, and his dark suggestions hide O earth! how like to Heaven, if not preferred Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou Centring receiv'st from all those orbs; in thee, 90 100 * Did not move directly on with the night as before, but crossed over from N. to S. and from S. to N. pole. The "colures" are two great circles, intersecting each other at right angles in the poles of the world, and encompassing the earth from N. to S. and from S. to N. Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man. Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries; all good to me becomes Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my 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: To my relentless thoughts; and him destroyed, For whom all this was made, all this will soon And to repair his numbers thus impaired, Whether such virtue spent of old now failed A creature formed of earth, and him endow, 150 With heavenly 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 (oh, indignity!) * Milton seems to have had the old story of Prometheus in mind, repre senting the evil portion of the gods as jealous of the benefit bestowed on mankind. Their earthly charge: of these the vigilance That to the height of deity aspired! 160 But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? who aspires must down as low As high he soared, obnoxious first or last 170 To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed, Of Heaven, this man of clay, son of despite, His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles : Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den, Nor nocent* yet, but on the grassy herb Fearless, unfeared, he slept: in at his mouth The devil entered, and his brutal sense, In heart or head, possessing, soon inspired With act intelligential; but his sleep Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn. In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed * Baleful. 180 190 200 |