From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.

Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed

Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm;

Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen,

Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers

Embordered on each bank, the hand of Eve:

Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned

Or of revived Adonis, or renowned

Alcinous, host of old Laertes’ son;

Or that, not mystick, 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;

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

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 remained

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 delight,

And tortures him now more, the more he sees

Of pleasure, not for him ordained: then soon

Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts

Of mischief, gratulating, 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

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

Enfeebled me, to what I was in Heaven.

She fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods!

Not terrible, though terrour be in love

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 spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed

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