But I can now no more: the parting Sun Beyond the Earth's green Cape and verdant Isles Hesperean sets, my signal to depart.
Be strong, live happy, and love! but first of all Him whom to love is to obey, and keep His great command; take heed lest passion sway Thy judgment to do aught which else free-will Would not admit; thine and of all thy sons The weal or woe in thee is placed; beware! I in thy persevering shall rejoice,
And all the Blest. Stand fast; to stand or fall Free in thine own arbitrement it lies. Perfect within, no outward aid require; And all temptation to transgress repel."
So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus Followed with benediction:-"Since to part, Go, Heavenly Guest, Ethereal Messenger, Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore! Gentle to me and affable hath been Thy condescension, and shall be honoured ever With grateful memory. Thou to Mankind. Be good and friendly still, and oft return!"
So parted they, the Angel up to Heaven From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower.
THE END OF THE EIGHTH BOOK.
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, loth 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.
O 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 Heaven,
Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, That brought into this World a world of woe, 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 Perplexed 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 slumbering, 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 deemed, chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights
In battles feigned (the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung), or to describe races and games, Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds, Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals : The skill of artifice or office mean;
Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem! Me, of these Nor skilled 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 Depressed; 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 veiled the horizon round, When Satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved
In meditated fraud and malice, bent
On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless returned. By night he fled, and at midnight returned From compassing the Earth-cautious of day Since Uriel, Regent of the Sun, descried
His entrance, and forewarned the Cherubim
That kept their watch. Thence, full of anguish, driven, The space of seven continued nights he rode With darkness-thrice the equinoctial line
He circled, four times crossed the car of Night From pole to pole, traversing each colure- On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse From entrance or cherubic watch by stealth
Found unsuspected way. There was a place
(Now not, though Sin, not Time, first wrought the change) 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
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 Ganges and Indus. Thus the orb he roamed. With narrow search, and with inspection deep Considered every creature, which of all
Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found. The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field. Him, after long debate, irresolute
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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 poured :- "O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as built With second thoughts, reforming what was old! For what God, after better, worse would build? Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other Heavens, That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, In thee concentring all their precious beams Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven 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,
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