46

Among our other torments not the least,
Still unfulfill'd, with pain of longing pines.
"Yet let me not forget what I have gain'd
"From their own mouths: all is not theirs, it seems :
"One fatal tree there stands, of knowledge call'd,
"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?

66

46

And do they only stand
"By ignorance? Is that their happy state,
"The proof of their obedience and their faith?

46

O fair foundation laid whereon to build
"Their ruin! Hence I will excite their minds
"With more desire to know, and to reject

66

66

• Envious commands, invented with design

To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt
Equal with gods: aspiring to be such,

1

They taste, and die! what likelier can ensue?
"But first, with narrow search, I must walk round
This garden, and no corner leave unspied;

66

A chance, but chance ! may lead where I may meet

"Some wandering spirit of heaven, by fountain-side
"Or in thick shade retir'd, from him to draw

"What further would be learn'd. Live while ye may,
"Yet happy pair! enjoy, till I return,

"Short pleasures; for long woes are to succeed."

So saying, his proud step he scornful turn'd,

But with sly circumspection, and began

Through wood, through waste, o'er hill, o'er dale, his roam.
Meanwhile, in utmost longitude, where heaven

3

With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun

Slowly descended, and, with right aspect,

542 Against the eastern gate of Paradise

< Salan, with great judgment, is represented here as artfully perverting a fact, as if useful knowledge was denied to them.—(N.)

Forte forluna are often used together in Latin. Todd quotes a similar jingle from Fairy Queen, 111. vii. 3 :—

Her force, at last, perforce adowne did lie."

3 At the farthest distance. See note on iii. 555.

As in fact the sun passes equal spaces in equal times, and as (353) it is represented as hasting down, some commentators propose to read here "lowly descended." Pearce thinks that Milton wrote "slowly," because Uriel, its angel, came on a sunbeam to Paradise, and was to return on the same beam, which he could not have well done if the sun moved with its usual rapidity. I think this interpretation rather strained, and that (353,) Milton spoke philosophically true; whereas here he speaks with poetic license to describe a long, and as if slow evening; the sun appearing not, from its elevated position, to shoot rapidly down, but, from its apparent position parallel with the earth, to sink slowly and gradually into the bed of the ocean.

563

1

Levell'd his evening rays: it was a rock 1
Of alabaster, pil'd up to the clouds,
Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent
Accessible from earth, one entrance high:
The rest was craggy cliff, that overhung
Still as it rose, impossible to climb.
Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,s
Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night;
About him exercis'd heroic games 3

The unarmed youth of heaven; but nigh at hand
Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears,
Hung high, with diamond flaming, and with gold.
Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even
On a sunbeam; swift as a shooting star 5

In autumn thwaFts the night, when vapours fir'd
Impress the air, and show the mariner

From what point of his compass to beware
Impetuous winds: he thus began in haste.

66

66

6
Gabriel! to thee thy course by lot hath given
Charge and strict watch, that to this happy place
"No evil thing approach, or enter in.7

"This day, at height of noon, came to my sphere
"A spirit, zealous, as he secm'd, to know

66

64

More of the Almighty's works, and chiefly man,
God's latest image: I describ'd his way,

"Bent all on speed, and mark'd his aery gait;

66

But, in the mount that lies from Eden north

1 /. e. The pillars: the gate itself was of ivory (778).

* See Daniel vii. and ix; Luke i.—(H.)

8 See note on ii. 528.

I. e. through that part of the hemisphere where it was then evening. So, 791," th« sun's decline." So Virgil, Georg. iv. 59, poetically describes a swarm of bees sailing through the glowing summer :—

"Nare per æslalem liquidam suspexeris agmen."—(P., A.)

Homer in like manner, compares the descent of Minerva to a shooting star, sent as a sign to mariners; II. iv. 74:

Βη δε κατ' ευλυμποιο καρήνων αΐξασα,

Οιον δ' αστερα ηκε Κρόνου παις αγκυλομήτεω,

Η ναυτησί τέρας, με στρατῳ ευρεϊ λαων

Λαμπρον του δε τε πολλοι απο σπινθήρες ενται.

The fall of Phaeton (Ov. Met. ii. 320) is illustrated by the appearance of a falling star. These phenomena are most common in autumn after the heat of summer, and are mentioned by Virgil (Georg. i. 365) as portending tempestuous weather, to which Milton alludes here.

"Sæpe etiam Stellas, rento impendeote. rldebls

Præcipltes cœlo labi, noctlsque per umbram.
Flammarnm limbos a lergo albeseere tractus."—(N.)

e He speaks in reference to the Jewish priests, who performed their several duties in the temple, in particular courses, by lot. Se 1 Chron. xxiv.; Luke 1. 8.—(N., C.) 7I.e. to approach, or at least to enter in.—(P.)

1

"Where he first lighted, soon discern'd his looks
"Alien from heaven, with passions foul obscur'd :
"Mine eye pursued him still, but under shade
"Lost sight of him. One of the banish'd crew,
"I fear, hath ventur'd from the deep to raise
"New troubles him thy care must be to find."
To whom the winged warrior thus return'd.
"Uriel! no wonder if thy perfect sight,
"Amid the sun's bright circle where thou sitt'st,
"See far and wide. In at this gate none pass
"The vigilance here plac'd, but such as come
"Well known from heaven; and since meridian hour
"No creature thence: if spirit of other sort
"So minded,2 have o'erleap'd these earthy bounds
"On purpose; hard thou know'st it to exclude

598

66

Spiritual substance with corporeal bar.

"But if within the circuit of these walks,

"In whatsoever shape, he lurk of whom
"Thou tell'st, by morrow dawning I shall know."
So promis'd he; and Uriel to his charge

Return'd on that bright beam, whose point now rais'd
Bore him slope downward to the sun, now fallen
Beneath the Azores; whether the prime orb,
Incredible how swift, had thither roll'd
Diurnal; or this less voluble earth,

By shorter flight to the East, had left him there,3
Arraying with reflected purple, and gold,

The clouds that on his western throne attend.

Now came still evening on,* and twilight gray

< The abruptness and brevity of this lamentable announcement are very judicious. The main facts are stated, and no more. It is in Homer's style. The death of Patroclus is announced to Achilles in three short sentences: "Patroclus is fallen! They are fighting round his naked corpse. Hector has his arms."

Being so disposed; a translation of the occasional meaning or animates.

The sunbeam when he came upon it was level (see 541—543); but, as the sun sank during his discourse, it sloped downwards from the hill of Paradise.—"Azores," (a trisyllable, a cluster of nine islands, commonly called Terceras, in the Atlantic.-"Whether;" he will not determine whether the sun rolled thither from east to west with incredible swift motion in the space of a day, or the earth with shorter flight by rolling east left him there; it being a less motion for the earth to move from west to east on its own axis, according to Ihe system of Copernicus, than for the sun and heavenly bodies to move from east to west, according to Ihe system of Ptolemy. So, iii. 575, he does not determine whether Ihe sun was the centre of the world.—"Voluble," with the second syllable long, as in Latin; though, ix. 436, the word has the second syllable short. In the first edition whither was improperly printed for." whether."—(B., H., «., N.)

This is the first evening in the poem; and to this description of it I know nothing parallel or comparable in the treasures of ancient or modern poetry. I can only recollect one description to be mentioned after this, a moonshiny night in Homer (11. viii. 551), where Mr. Pope has taken pains to make the translation as excellent as the original:

Ns oo ot' eu oupœuiy xotpx pasivyo appı tekkımı

624

Had in her sober livery all things clad ;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests.
Were slunk ;—all but the wakeful nightingale;
She, all night long, her amorous' descant sung;
Silence was pleas'd now glow'd the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light.
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

When Adam thus to Eve: "Fair consort! the hour

Of night, and all things now retir'd to rest,
"Mind us of like repose; since God hath set
"Labour and rest, as day and night, to men
66 Successive; and the timely dew of sleep,
"Now falling with soft slumbrous weight, inclines
"Our eye-lids. Other creatures all day long
"Rove idle, unemploy'd, and less need rest:
"Man hath his daily work of body, or mind,
Appointed, which declares his dignity,

66

3

And the regard of Heaven on all his ways;
"While other animals unactive range,
"And of their doings God takes no account.

To-morrow, ere fresh morning streak the East
"With first approach of light, we must be risen,

Φαίνετ' αριπρεπέα, ότε τ' επίετο νηνεμος αιθήρ,
Εκ τ' ερανόν πάσαι σκοπιαι, και πρωινές ακρο
Και ναπαι ουρανόθεν δ' αρ' υπερβαγη ασπετος αιθερι
Παντα δε τ' ειδεται αστρα· γεγηθε δε τε φρενα ποιμήν,

Milton leaves off where Homer begins.—(N.)

Showing affection, in allusion to her lamenlalion for her lost young. Virg. Gcorg. iv. 514:

So Comus, 234:

"Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integral."

---"When the lore-lorn nightingale Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well."

Todd says that the voice of the nightingale is termed by Euripides moλvxopPOTKIN, having the greatest number of strings or notes; hence the propriety of the word "descant," which means a song with various notes.

S Fairy Queen, i. 36:—

"The drooping night thus creepeth on them fast,

And the sad humour loading their eyelids,

As messengers or Morpheus, on them cast

Sweet slumbering dew, Ihe which to sleep them bids."—(Th.)

"Inclines." In the occasional sense of inclinare, actively, to bend or weigh down; declinare is sometimes used thus :—" dulci declinat lumina somno." (Virg. £n. iv. 185.)

656

"And at our pleasant labour, to reform

Yon flowery arbours, yonder alleys green,
"Our walk at noon, with branches overgrown,
"That mock our scant manuring,1 and require
"More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth:
"Those blossoms also, and those dropping gums,
"That lie bestrewn, unsightly and unsmooth,
"Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease.
Meanwhile, as nature wills, night bids us rest."
To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorn'd.
"My author, and disposer! what thou bidd'st
"Unargued I obey: so God ordains.

46

"God is thy law, thou mine to know no more
"Is woman's happiest knowledge, and her praise.
"With thee conversing I forget all time;

19

3

"All seasons, and their change—all please alike.
"Sweet is the breath of morn; her rising sweet,
"With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun,
"When lirst on this delightful land he spreads
"His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
"Glistering with dew fragrant the fertile earth
"After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
"Of grateful evening mild; then silent night,
"With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
"And these the gems of heaven, her starry train :
"But neither breath of morn, when she ascends
"With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
"On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
"For grateful evening mild; nor silent night,
"With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
"Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet."

66

1 "Manuring," used here in its original sense from the French manautre, to signify, manual labour. The next line shows this.—(R.)

* "Seasons" here does not mean the seasons of the year strictly speaking, but the different changes and periods of the day. So viii. 69; ix. 200.—(N.)

3 This passage is famous in our language, not merely as a description, but as a specimen also of turns of words, from the variety of images, and the recapitulation of each image with a little varying of the expression. The following passage from the Danae of Euripides is quoted by Hurd as somewhat parallel to this, though immeasurably infe

rior:

φίλον μεν φέγγος ηλιου τους,

Καλον δε ποντου χευμ' εδειν εύήνεμον,

Γη τ' ηρινον θάλλουσα, πλούσιον δ' υδωρ :
Πολλων τ' επαινον εστι μοι λέξαι καλων
Αλλ' ουδέν οντω λαμπρον, ουδ ιδειν καλον,
Ως, τας απέχισε και παθω δεδηγμενοις
Παίδων νεογνών εν δόμοις ιδειν φαος.

See also the eighth Idyllium of Theocritus: «dec' x ?uv«, etc.