From his Creator; and, the more to increase

Your wonder, with an apple; he, thereat

Offended, worth your laughter! hath given up

Both his beloved Man, and all his world,

To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us,

Without our hazard, labour, or alarm;

To range in, and to dwell, and over Man

To rule, as over all he should have ruled.

True is, me also he hath judged, or rather

Me not, but the brute serpent in whose shape

Man I deceived: that which to me belongs,

Is enmity which he will put between

Me and mankind; I am to bruise his heel;

His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:

A world who would not purchase with a bruise,

Or much more grievous pain?—Ye have the account

Of my performance: What remains, ye Gods,

But up, and enter now into full bliss?”

So having said, a while he stood, expecting

Their universal shout, and high applause,

To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears

On all sides, from innumerable tongues,

A dismal universal hiss, the sound

Of public scorn; he wondered, but not long

Had leisure, wondering at himself now more,

His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare;

His arms clung to his ribs; his legs entwining

Each other, till supplanted down he fell

A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,

Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power

Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,

According to his doom: he would have spoke,

But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue

To forked tongue; for now were all transformed

Alike, to serpents all, as accessories

To his bold riot: Dreadful was the din

Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now

With complicated monsters head and tail,

Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire,

Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear,

And Dipsas; (not so thick swarmed once the soil

Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle

Ophiusa,) but still greatest he the midst,

Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun

Engendered in the Pythian vale or slime,

Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed

Above the rest still to retain; they all

Him followed, issuing forth to the open field,

Where all yet left of that revolted rout,

Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just array;

Sublime with expectation when to see

In triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief;

They saw, but other sight instead! a crowd

Of ugly serpents; horror on them fell,

And horrid sympathy; for, what they saw,

They felt themselves, now changing; down their arms,

Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast;

And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form

Catched, by contagion; like in punishment,

As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant,

Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame

Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood

A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change,

His will who reigns above, to aggravate