In this delicious garden? As my will

Concurred not to my being, it were but right

And equal to reduce me to my dust;

Desirous to resign and render back

All I received; unable to perform

Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold

The good I sought not. To the loss of that,

Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added

The sense of endless woes? Inexplicable

Thy justice seems; yet to say truth, too late

I thus contest; then should have been refused

Those terms whatever, when they were proposed:

Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good,

Then cavil the conditions? And, though God

Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son

Prove disobedient, and reproved, retort,

‘Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not!’

Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee

That proud excuse? yet him not thy election,

But natural necessity begot.

God made thee of choice his own, and of his own

To serve him; thy reward was of his grace;

Thy punishment then, justly is at his will.

Be it so, for I submit; his doom is fair,

That dust I am, and shall to dust return.

O welcome hour whenever! Why delays

His hand to execute what his decree

Fixed on this day? Why do I overlive,

Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out

To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet

Mortality my sentence, and be earth

Insensible! How glad would lay me down

As in my mother’s lap! There I should rest,

And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more

Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse

To me, and to my offspring, would torment me

With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt

Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die;

Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man

Which God inspired, cannot together perish

With this corporeal clod; then, in the grave,

Or in some other dismal place, who knows

But I shall die a living death? O thought

Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath

Of life that sinned; what dies but what had life

And sin? The body properly had neither,

All of me then shall die: let this appease

The doubt, since human reach no further knows.

For though the Lord of all be infinite,

Is his wrath also? Be it, Man is not so,

But mortal doomed. How can he exercise

Wrath without end on Man, whom death must end?

Can he make deathless death? That were to make

Strange contradiction, which to God himself

Impossible is held; as argument

Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out,

For anger’s sake, finite to infinite,

In punished Man, to satisfy his rigour,

Satisfied never? That were to extend

His sentence beyond dust and Nature’s law;

By which all causes else, according still

To the reception of their matter, act;

Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say