Ministered naked, and their flowing cups

With pleasant liquours crowned: O innocence

Deserving Paradise! if ever, then,

Then had the sons of God excuse to have been

Enamoured at that sight; but in those hearts

Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy

Was understood, the injured lover’s hell.

Thus when with meats and drinks they had sufficed,

Not burdened nature, sudden mind arose

In Adam, not to let the occasion pass

Given him by this great conference to know

Of things above his world, and of their being

Who dwell in Heaven, whose excellence he saw

Transcend his own so far; whose radiant forms,

Divine effulgence, whose high power, so far

Exceeded human; and his wary speech

Thus to the empyreal minister he framed.

“Inhabitant with God, now know I well

Thy favour, in this honour done to Man;

Under whose lowly roof thou hast vouchsafed

To enter, and these earthly fruits to taste,

Food not of Angels, yet accepted so,

As that more willingly thou couldst not seem

At Heaven’s high feasts to have fed: yet what compare?”

To whom the winged Hierarch replied.

“O Adam, One Almighty is, from whom

All things proceed, and up to him return,

If not depraved from good, created all

Such to perfection, one first matter all,

Endued with various forms, various degrees

Of substance, and, in things that live, of life;

But more refined, more spiritous, and pure,

As nearer to him placed, or nearer tending

Each in their several active spheres assigned,

Till body up to spirit work, in bounds

Proportioned to each kind. So from the root

Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves

More airy, last the bright consummate flower

Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit,

Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,

To vital spirits aspire, to animal,

To intellectual; give both life and sense,

Fancy and understanding; whence the soul

Reason receives, and reason is her being,

Discursive, or intuitive; discourse

Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,

Differing but in degree, of kind the same.

Wonder not then, what God for you saw good

If I refuse not, but convert, as you

To proper substance. Time may come, when Men

With Angels may participate, and find

No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare;

And from these corporal nutriments perhaps

Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,

Improved by tract of time, and, winged, ascend

Ethereal, as we; or may, at choice,

Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell;

If ye be found obedient, and retain

Unalterably firm his love entire,

Whose progeny you are. Meanwhile enjoy

Your fill what happiness this happy state

Can comprehend, incapable of more.”

To whom the patriarch of mankind replied.

“O favourable Spirit, propitious guest,

Well hast thou taught the way that might direct

Our knowledge, and the scale of nature set

From center to circumference; whereon,

In contemplation of created things,

By steps we may ascend to God. But say,

What meant that caution joined, If ye be found