PARADISE LOST
��Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian
spouse. Much he the place admired, the person
more.
As one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the
air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to
breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives
delight 449
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural
sound If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin
pass, What pleasing seemed for her now pleases
more,
She most, and in her look sums all delight: Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve Thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form Angelic, but more soft and feminine, Her graceful innocence, her every air Of gesture or least action, overawed 460 His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought. That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time re- mained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge. But the hot hell that always in him burns, Though in mid Heaven, soon ended his de- light, And tortures him now more, the more he
sees Of pleasure not for him ordained. Then
soon 470
Fierce hate he recollects, and all his
thoughts
Of mischief, gratulatiug, thus excites: " Thoughts, whither have ye led me ?
with what sweet
Compulsion thus transported to forget What hither brought us ? hate, not love,
nor hope
Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, Save what is in destroying; other joy 478 To me is lost. Then let me not let pass Occasion which now smiles. Behold alone The Woman, opportune to all attempts
��Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh, Whose higher intellectual more I shun, And strength, of courage haughty, and of
limb
Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould; Foe not informidable, exempt from
wound
I not; so much hath Hell debased, and pain Infeebled me, to what I was in Heaven. She fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods, Not terrible, though terror be in love, 49 o And beauty, not approached by stronger
hate, Hate stronger under show of love well
feigned
The way which to her ruin now I tend." So sp.ake the Enemy of Mankind, en- closed
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; 500 With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape And lovely; never since of serpent kind Lovelier not those that in Illyria changed Hermione and Cadmus, or the God In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline, was seen, He with Olympias, this with her who bore Scipio, the highth of Rome. With tract
oblique 5 10
At first, as one who sought access but
feared
To interrupt, sidelong he works his way. As when a ship, by skilful steersman
wrought Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the
wind Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her
sail,
So varied he, and of his tortuous train Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of
Eve, To lure her eye. She, busied, heard the
sound
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used To such disport before her through the
field 520
From every beast, more duteous at her call
�� �
