Unskilful with what words to pray, let me

Interpret for him; me, his advocate

And propitiation; all his works on me,

Good, or not good, ingraft; my merit those

Shall perfect, and for these my death shall pay.

Accept me; and, in me, from these receive

The smell of peace toward mankind: let him live

Before thee reconciled, at least his days

Numbered, though sad; till death, his doom, (which I

To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse,)

To better life shall yield him: where with me

All my redeemed may dwell in joy and bliss;

Made one with me, as I with thee am one.”

To whom the Father, without cloud, serene.

“All thy request for Man, accepted Son,

Obtain; all thy request was my decree:

But, longer in that Paradise to dwell,

The law I gave to Nature him forbids:

Those pure immortal elements, that know,

No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul,

Eject him, tainted now; and purge him off,

As a distemper, gross, to air as gross,

And mortal food; as may dispose him best

For dissolution wrought by sin, that first

Distempered all things, and of incorrupt

Corrupted. I, at first, with two fair gifts

Created him endowed; with happiness,

And immortality: that fondly lost,

This other served but to eternize woe;

Till I provided death: so death becomes

His final remedy; and, after life,

Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined

By faith and faithful works, to second life,

Waked in the renovation of the just,

Resigns him up with Heaven and Earth renewed.

But let us call to synod all the Blest,

Through Heaven’s wide bounds: from them I will not hide

My judgements; how with mankind I proceed,

As how with peccant Angels late they saw,

And in their state, though firm, stood more confirmed.”

He ended, and the Son gave signal high

To the bright minister that watched; he blew

His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps

When God descended, and perhaps once more

To sound at general doom. The angelic blast

Filled all the regions: from their blisful bowers

Of amarantine shade, fountain or spring,

By the waters of life, where’er they sat

In fellowships of joy, the sons of light

Hasted, resorting to the summons high;

And took their seats; till from his throne supreme

The Almighty thus pronounced his sovran will.

“O Sons, like one of us Man is become

To know both good and evil, since his taste

Of that defended fruit; but let him boast

His knowledge of good lost, and evil got;

Happier! had it sufficed him to have known

Good by itself, and evil not at all.

He sorrows now, repents, and prays contrite,

My motions in him; longer than they move,

His heart I know, how variable and vain,

Self-left. Lest therefore his now bolder hand

Reach also of the tree of life, and eat,

And live for ever, dream at least to live

For ever, to remove him I decree,