第 30 页

Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me Man? did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me, or here place

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

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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

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

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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

That death be not one stroke, as I supposed,

Bereaving sense, but endless misery

From this day onward; which I feel begun

Both in me, and without me; and so last

To perpetuity;—Ay me!that fear

Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution

On my defenceless head; both Death and I

Am found eternal, and incorporate both;

Nor I on my part single; in me all

Posterity stands cursed: Fair patrimony

That I must leave ye, Sons! O, were I able

To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!

So disinherited, how would you bless

Me, now your curse! Ah, why should all mankind,

For one man’s fault, thus guiltless be condemned,

It guiltless? But from me what can proceed,

But all corrupt; both mind and will depraved

Not to do only, but to will the same

With me? How can they then acquitted stand

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In sight of God? Him, after all disputes,

Forced I absolve: all my evasions vain,

And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still

But to my own conviction: first and last

On me, me only, as the source and spring

Of all corruption, all the blame lights due;

So might the wrath! Fond wish!couldst thou support

That burden, heavier than the earth to bear;

Than all the world much heavier, though divided

With that bad Woman? Thus, what thou desirest,

And what thou fearest, alike destroys all hope

Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable

Beyond all past example and future;

To Satan only like both crime and doom.

O Conscience! into what abyss of fears

And horrours hast thou driven me; out of which

I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged!

Thus Adam to himself lamented loud,

Through the still night; not now, as ere Man fell,

Wholesome, and cool, and mild, but with black air

Accompanied; with damps, and dreadful gloom;

Which to his evil conscience represented

All things with double terrour: On the ground

Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground; and oft

Cursed his creation; Death as oft accused

Of tardy execution, since denounced

The day of his offence. Why comes not Death,

Said he, with one thrice-acceptable stroke

To end me? Shall Truth fail to keep her word,

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Justice Divine not hasten to be just?

But Death comes not at call; Justice Divine

Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries,

O woods, O fountains, hillocks, dales, and bowers!

With other echo late I taught your shades

To answer, and resound far other song.—

Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld,

Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh,

Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed:

But her with stern regard he thus repelled.

Out of my sight, thou Serpent! That name best

Befits thee with him leagued, thyself as false

And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape,

Like his, and colour serpentine, may show

Thy inward fraud; to warn all creatures from thee

Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended

To hellish falshood, snare them! But for thee

I had persisted happy; had not thy pride

And wandering vanity, when least was safe,

Rejected my forewarning, and disdained

Not to be trusted; longing to be seen,

Though by the Devil himself; him overweening

To over-reach; but, with the serpent meeting,

Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by thee

To trust thee from my side; imagined wise,

Constant, mature, proof against all assaults;

And understood not all was but a show,

Rather than solid virtue; all but a rib

Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears,

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More to the part sinister, from me drawn;

Well if thrown out, as supernumerary

To my just number found. O! why did God,

Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven

With Spirits masculine, create at last

This novelty on earth, this fair defect

Of nature, and not fill the world at once

With Men, as Angels, without feminine;

Or find some other way to generate

Mankind? This mischief had not been befallen,

And more that shall befall; innumerable

Disturbances on earth through female snares,

And strait conjunction with this sex: for either

He never shall find out fit mate, but such

As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;

Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain

Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained

By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld

By parents; or his happiest choice too late

Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound

To a fell adversary, his hate or shame:

Which infinite calamity shall cause

To human life, and houshold peace confound.

He added not, and from her turned; but Eve,

Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing

And tresses all disordered, at his feet

Fell humble; and, embracing them, besought

His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint.

Forsake me not thus, Adam! witness Heaven

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What love sincere, and reverence in my heart

I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,

Unhappily deceived! Thy suppliant

I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not,

Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,

Thy counsel, in this uttermost distress,

My only strength and stay: Forlorn of thee,

Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?

While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,

Between us two let there be peace; both joining,

As joined in injuries, one enmity

Against a foe by doom express assigned us,

That cruel Serpent: On me exercise not

Thy hatred for this misery befallen;

On me already lost, me than thyself

More miserable! Both have sinned;but thou

Against God only; I against God and thee;

And to the place of judgement will return,

There with my cries importune Heaven; that all

The sentence, from thy head removed, may light

On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe;

Me, me only, just object of his ire!

She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,

Immoveable, till peace obtained from fault

Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought

Commiseration: Soon his heart relented

Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight,

Now at his feet submissive in distress;

Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,

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His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid:

As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,

And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon.

Unwary, and too desirous, as before,

So now of what thou knowest not, who desirest

The punishment all on thyself; alas!

Bear thine own first, ill able to sustain

His full wrath, whose thou feelest as yet least part,

And my displeasure bearest so ill. If prayers

Could alter high decrees, I to that place

Would speed before thee, and be louder heard,

That on my head all might be visited;

Thy frailty and infirmer sex forgiven,

To me committed, and by me exposed.

But rise;—let us no more contend, nor blame

Each other, blamed enough elsewhere; but strive

In offices of love, how we may lighten

Each other’s burden, in our share of woe;

Since this day’s death denounced, if aught I see,

Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil;

A long day’s dying, to augment our pain;

And to our seed (O hapless seed!) derived.

To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, replied.

Adam, by sad experiment I know

How little weight my words with thee can find,

Found so erroneous; thence by just event

Found so unfortunate: Nevertheless,

Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place

Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain

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Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart

Living or dying, from thee I will not hide

What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen,

Tending to some relief of our extremes,

Or end; though sharp and sad, yet tolerable,

As in our evils, and of easier choice.

If care of our descent perplex us most,

Which must be born to certain woe, devoured

By Death at last; and miserable it is

To be to others cause of misery,

Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring

Into this cursed world a woeful race,

That after wretched life must be at last

Food for so foul a monster; in thy power

It lies, yet ere conception to prevent

The race unblest, to being yet unbegot.

Childless thou art, childless remain: so Death

Shall be deceived his glut, and with us two

Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw.

But if thou judge it hard and difficult,

Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain

From love’s due rights, nuptial embraces sweet;

And with desire to languish without hope,

Before the present object languishing

With like desire; which would be misery

And torment less than none of what we dread;

Then, both ourselves and seed at once to free

From what we fear for both, let us make short, —

Let us seek Death; — or, he not found, supply

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With our own hands his office on ourselves:

Why stand we longer shivering under fears,

That show no end but death, and have the power,

Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,

Destruction with destruction to destroy? —

She ended here, or vehement despair

Broke off the rest: so much of death her thoughts

Had entertained, as dyed her cheeks with pale.

But Adam, with such counsel nothing swayed,

To better hopes his more attentive mind

Labouring had raised; and thus to Eve replied.

Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems

To argue in thee something more sublime

And excellent, than what thy mind contemns;

But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes

That excellence thought in thee; and implies,

Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret

For loss of life and pleasure overloved.

Or if thou covet death, as utmost end

Of misery, so thinking to evade

The penalty pronounced; doubt not but God

Hath wiselier armed his vengeful ire, than so

To be forestalled; much more I fear lest death,

So snatched, will not exempt us from the pain

We are by doom to pay; rather, such acts

Of contumacy will provoke the Highest

To make death in us live: Then let us seek

Some safer resolution, which methinks

I have in view, calling to mind with heed

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Part of our sentence, that thy seed shall bruise

The Serpent’s head; piteous amends! unless

Be meant, whom I conjecture, our grand foe,

Satan; who, in the serpent, hath contrived

Against us this deceit: To crush his head

Would be revenge indeed! which will be lost

By death brought on ourselves, or childless days

Resolved, as thou proposest; so our foe

Shal ‘scape his punishment ordained, and we

Instead shall double ours upon our heads.

No more be mentioned then of violence

Against ourselves; and wilful barrenness,

That cuts us off from hope; and savours only

Rancour and pride, impatience and despite,

Reluctance against God and his just yoke

Laid on our necks. Remember with what mild

And gracious temper he both heard, and judged,

Without wrath or reviling; we expected

Immediate dissolution, which we thought

Was meant by death that day; when lo!to thee

Pains only in child-bearing were foretold,

And bringing forth; soon recompensed with joy,

Fruit of thy womb: On me the curse aslope

Glanced on the ground; with labour I must earn

My bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse;

My labour will sustain me; and, lest cold

Or heat should injure us, his timely care

Hath, unbesought, provided; and his hands

Clothed us unworthy, pitying while he judged;

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How much more, if we pray him, will his ear

Be open, and his heart to pity incline,