Him, whom to love is to obey, and keep His great command; take heed lest passion sway And all the Blest: stand fast; to stand or fall So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus Thy condescension, and shall be honour'd ever END OF BOOK VIII. THE ARGUMENT. Satan, having compassed the Earth, with meditated guile returns, as a mist, by night into Paradise; enters into the Serpent sleep. ing. 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 ap proach, 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. PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX. No more of talk where God or Angel guest Venial discourse unblam'd. I now must change And disobedience: on the part of Heaven Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires Since first this subject for heroic song Pleas'd me, long choosing, and beginning late; Wars, hitherto the only argument That name, unless an age too late, or cold "Twixt day and night, and now from end to end Night's hemisphere had veil'd the' horizon round: When Satan, who late fled before the threats Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improv'd On man's destruction, maugre what might hap |