Wherein true love consists not: love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges; hath his seat 590 By which to heavenly love thou may'st ascend, To whom thus half abash'd Adam reply'd. More grateful than harmonious sound to the ear. approve. 595 600 605 610 Approve the best, and follow what I 598 genial bed] Genialis Lectuli.' Arnob. lib. iv. c. 20. Apuleius de Asino. 'Fœdus thori genialis.' v. Orellium ad Arnob. vol. ii. p. 219. Express they? by looks only? or do they mix To whom the angel with a smile that glow'd 625 Answer'd. Let it suffice thee that thou know'st 620 Be strong, live happy, and love! but first of all 630 His great command; take heed lest passion sway Thy judgment to do aught, which else free will 636 Would not admit; thine and of all thy sons The weal or woe in thee is plac'd; beware! I in thy persevering shall rejoice, And all the blest: stand fast; to stand or fall 640 "Thrusts out the Cape of Fesse, the green Cape and the white.' 637 admit] Used in the Latin sense, as in Ter. Heaut. act v. sc. ii. "Quid ego tantum sceleris admisi miser?' Newton. Free in thine own arbitrement it lies; So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus So parted they, the angel up to heaven 641 Free] See Dante Il Purgat. c. xxvii. v. 127. 'Non aspettar mio dir più, nè mio cenno. Libero, dritto, e sano è tuo arbitrio ; E fallo fora non fare a suo senno.' 645 650 653 bower] Compare the parting of Jupiter and Thetis in Hom. Il. 1. 532. —ἡ μὲν ἔπειτα Εις άλα άλτο βαθεῖαν ἀπ' αἰγλήεντος 'Ολύμπου, Todd. SATAN having compassed the earth, with meditated guile returns as a mist by night into Paradise, and enters into the serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her found alone: Eve, loth to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength: Adam at last yields: the serpent finds her alone; his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking, with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech and such understanding not till now; the serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain tree in the garden he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the Tree of Knowledge forbidden; the serpent, now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces her at length to eat: she, pleased with the taste, deliberates a while whether to impart thereof to Adam, or not; at last brings him of the fruit, relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam at first amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehemence of love, to perish with her, and extenuating the trespass eats also of the fruit: the effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness: then fall to variance and accusation of one another. No more of talk where GoD or angel guest With man, as with his friend, familiar used To sit indulgent, and with him partake Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change And disobedience: on the part of heaven Of my celestial patroness, who deigns And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroic song Pleas'd me, long choosing and beginning late; 11 world] Atterbury proposed reading "That brought into this world (a world of woe),' but such is not Milton's manner. 11 a world of woe] See Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ii. 178. ed. 1826. 'a private hell, a very world of woe.' |