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, 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 awhile 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
Perplex'd 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 deem'd; chief mastery to dissect,
With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights,
In battles feign'd; the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazon'd shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshall'd feast
Served up in hall with sewers and seneschals;
The skill of artifice or office mean,

Not that which justly gives heroic name

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To person or to poem. Me, of these
Nor skill'd 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
Depress'd; and much they may, if all be my,
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 veil'd 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 return'd.
By night he fled, and at midnight return'd
From compassing the earth; cautious of day,
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried
His entrance, and forewarn'd the cherubim

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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 cross'd the car of night
From pole to pole, travérsing each colure;
On the eighth return'd, 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,

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Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought
Where to lie hid; sea he had search'd, 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 barr'd
At Darien ; thence to the land where flow
Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roam'd
With narrow search; and with inspection deep,
Consider'd 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,

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 pour'd:

"O earth, how like to heaven, if not preferr'd
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,