Please direct comments regarding this piece to the author via the editor, Paul.Dyck@UAlberta.CA
Self-reference, Allusion, and Inversion in Paradise Lost:
A Matrix of Parallel Lines
Please direct comments regarding this piece to the author via the editor, Paul.Dyck@UAlberta.CA
Self-reference, Allusion, and Inversion in Paradise Lost:
A Matrix of Parallel Lines
by Carol Barton, Averett College
"This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie. . ."
—
George Herbert, "The H. Scriptures II"
In the context of her work on Milton’s polemics (Milton and the Revolutionary Reader), Sharon Achinstein has characterized Milton as "a writer compelled to show readers how to act by reading . . . the enemy argument properly," which is to say that, by cross-examining the opposition’s logic point by point and challenging his audience to do likewise, "he show[s the politically naive] how criticism ought to be conducted." If he is successful, the fit readers of Paradise Lost will come away from the text knowing not only what is wrong with the rationalizations offered by Satan, Adam, and Eve, and why (regardless of how seductively plausible it may seem to be at the outset) the reasoning of their exculpations is specious, "but also how to perform similar critical acts [themselves] in the future"(Achinstein, 146-7)—a crucial capability in a world in which even the most innocuous of truths could be no longer be relied upon as given, and in which all of the received epistemology (geocentrism, heavenly perfection, divine right kingship, the sacredness of the Bible, the infallibility of the Pope, etc.) had been refuted or cast seriously into doubt. Like Herbert, Milton was intimately familiar with the self-referentiality of the Bible, and conscious of the way in which, for example, the Old Testament Pascal lamb becomes the New Testament Agnus Dei, or the Lenten triumphs of One Just Man in the wilderness subsume, amplify, and supersede the trials and achievements of all of the solitary heroes (Noah, Moses, Abraham, Job) who have gone before, and he reverently appropriated such biblical techniques to justify the ways of God to men. As Fish suggests in "Driving from the Letter," Milton’s rhetorical strategy "involves encouraging the reader to a premature act of concluding or understanding which is then undone or upset by the introduction of a new and compelling perspective"; this "happens not once, but repeatedly" (243), so that, by means of his deft manipulation of language and imagery along the lines suggested by the matrix that follows, Milton induces the reader again and again to recapitulate Fish’s now-classic model, "Adam is wrong, no, he's right, but then of course, he is wrong, and so am I" (Fish, Surpris’d by Sin, 38-43). My intent in compiling this matrix of self-referential, allusive, and inverted lines and images in Paradise Lost is to demonstrate by means of tabulated comparison and contrast both the mechanics of the rhetorical and semiotic entrapment that I believe Milton is striving throughout the epic to teach us to avoid (demonstrating by object lesson how easy it is to fall victim to "words cloth’d in reason’s garb"), and to illuminate the tacit warnings he so subtly imbeds within the body of the epic itself, alerting those readers who are members of his "fit audience though few" to the fact that all is not as or what it seems, nor is it what it should be, no matter how often or how gloriously it may seduce us at first glance.
This matrix is the product of twenty five years of reading and re-reading Paradise Lost, a work that continues to awe me not only in terms of the magnitude and depth of its self-referentiality, but also by virtue of the skillfully subtle manner in which Milton purposefully subverts and deconstructs his own text to teach his readers how to perform such analytical tasks on their own. The richness of Milton’s self-allusion will not be surprising to the any of the scholars intimately familiar with the poem, though the variety of its subtleties may be, and these in turn may suggest other connections not dealt with here. As a reference tool to supplement other critical readings, the matrix should also prove valuable to any new reader struggling to comprehend the mechanism whereby the poet reassures us that Satan is not the hero of Paradise Lost, and attempts to justify the ways of God to men in an endeavor to teach himself and us what Christian heroism ought to be.
Works Cited
Sharon Achinstein, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.
Stanley Fish, "Driving from the Letter: Truth and Indeterminacy in Areopagitica," in May Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson, eds. Re-Membering Milton. NY: Methuen, 1987.
Stanley Fish, Surpris’d by Sin:
The Reader in Paradise Lost. New York: Macmillan, 1967
Bk |
Line/Reference |
Bk |
Line/Reference |
I |
(17-22) "And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer / Before all Temples th’upright heart and pure, / Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first / Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread / Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss / And mad’st it pregnant . . ." | X |
(282-5) "Then Both from out Hell Gates into the waste / Wide Anarchy of Chaos damp and dark / Flew diverse, and with Power (thir Power was great) / Hovering upon the Waters . . ." |
I |
(75) "O how unlike the place from whence they fell" | IX V XI |
(823) "O how unlike to that first naked
glory" (542-4) "O fall / From what high state of bliss into what woe!" (500-1) "O miserable Mankind, to what fall / Degraded, to what wretched state reserv’d! |
I |
(84-87) "If thou beest hee; But O how fall’n, how chang’d" | II II
II IV IV IV IV
IX
X
XI |
(689-90) "Art thou that Traitor Angel, art thou
hee, / Who first broke peace in Heav’n and Faith . . ." (740-5) ". . . till first I know of thee / What thing thou art, thus double-form’d, and why / In this infernal Vale first met thou call’st / Me Father, and that Phantasm call my Son?" (747) "Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem / Now in thine eye so foul, once deem’d so fair, / In Heav’n . . .?" (128-30) "[Uriel] saw him disfigur’d, more than could befall / Spirit of happy sort . . ." (823) "Which of those rebel spirits adjudg’d to Hell / Comst thou, escap’d thy prison, transform’d" (827-31) "Know ye not then said Satan full of scorn / Know ye not mee? . . ." (835-7) "Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same . . ." (846-51) ". . . abasht the Devil stood . . . chiefly to find here observ’d / His lustre visibly impair’d" (486-9) ". . . Foe not informidable, exempt from wound, / I not; so much hath Hell debas’d, and pain / Infeebl’d me, to what I was in Heav’n . . ." (449-52) "At last as from a Cloud his fulgent head / And shape Star-bright appear’d, or brighter, clad / With what permissive glory since his fall / Was left him, or false glitter . . ." (507-14) "Can thus th’Image of God in man created once / Sdo goodly and erect, though faulty since, / To such unsightly sufferings be debas’t / Under inhuman pains? Why should not man / Retaining still Divine similitude / In part, from such deformities be free, / And for his Maker’s Image sake exempt? |
I |
(91-3) "Exaltation" of Satan | I
II II II III V VI VI IX
IX
X |
(38-41) "by whose aid aspiring / To set himself
in Glory above his Peers, / He trusted to have equall’d the most high, / If he
oppos’d . . ." (5-6) "By merit rais’d / To that bad eminence" (21) ". . . achiev’d of merit" (864-9) "Exaltation" of Sin (305-312) Exaltation of Christ (664-5) "who could not bear / Through pride that sight, and thought himself impair’d . . ." (43) " . . . who by right of merit Reigns" (175-8) ". . . this new Favorite / Of Heav’n, this Man of Clay, Son of despite, / Whom us the more to spite his Maker rais’d / From dust . . ." (455-70) "That space the Evil one abstracted stood / From his own evil, and for the time remain’d / Stupidly good, of enmity disarm’d, / Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge; / But the hot Hell that always in him burns, / Though in mid Heav’n, soon ended his delight, / And tortures him now more, the more he sees / Of pleasure not for him ordain’d; then soon / Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts / Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites . . ." (372-6) "Thine now is all this World, thy virtue hath won / What thy hands builded not, thy Wisdom gain’d / With odds what War hath lost, and fully aveng’d / Our foil in Heav’n; here thou shalt Monarch reign, / There didst not . . ." |
I |
(111-16) "To bow and sue for grace / With suppliant knee, and deify his power / Who from the terror of this Arm so late / Doubted his Empire, that were low indeed, / That were an ignominy and shame beneath / This downfall . . ." | IV
V
V VI VI
IX |
(957-61) "And thou sly hypocrite,
who now wouldst seem / Patron of liberty, who more than thou / Once fawn’d and
cring’d and serviley ador’d / Heav’n’s awful Monarch? . . ." (782-4) " . . . knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile / Too much to one, but double how endur’d, / To one and to his image now proclaim’d . . ." (787-802) "Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend / The supple knee? ye will not, if I trust / To know ye right . . ." (169) ". . . servility with freedom to contend . . ." (178-81) "This is servitude, / To serve th’unwise, or him who hath rebell’d against his worthier, as thine now serve thee, / Thyself not free, but to thyself enthrall’d . . ." (140-2) ". . . since I in one Night freed / From servitude inglorious well nigh half / Th’Angelic name . . . " |
I |
(116-17) " . . . since by Fate the strength of Gods / And this Empyreal substance cannot fail . . ." | II II II II IV VII IX |
(197) " . . . fate inevitable" (231-3) " . . . when everlasting Fate shall yield" (393) ". . . in spite of Fate" (805-7) "but that he knows / His end with mine involv’d" (1007-9) ". . . what folly then / To boast what Arms can do, since thine no more / Than Heav’n permits, nor mine . . ." (173) ". . . what I will is Fate" (881-5) "Thou therefore also taste, that equal Lot / May join us, equal Joy, as equal Love; / Lest thou not tasting, different degree / Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce / Deity for thee, when Fate will not permit . . ." |
I |
(143-55) God’s future plans for the reprobate angels | II |
(142-225) Belial’s war counsel |
I |
(157) "Fall’n Cherub, to be weak is miserable / Doing or Suffering . . ." | II |
(199-200) "To suffer, as to do, / Our strength is equal . . ." |
I |
(209-13) "So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay / Chain’d on the burning Lake . . ." | X |
(850-2) ". . . On the ground / Outstretcht he lay, on the cold ground" |
I |
(250-63) "Hail horrors, hail / Infernal world" | I
X |
(84-87) "him, who in the happy Realms of Light
. . . didst outshine / Myriads though bright" (589-94) ". . . his form had not yet lost / All her Original brightness" (460-6) "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, / For in possession such, not only of right / I call ye and declare ye now, return’d / Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth / Triumphant out of this infernal Pit / Abominable, accurst, the house of woe / And Dungeon of our Tyrant . . ." |
I |
(258-63) "Better to reign in Hell. . ." | II II X |
(24-35) "but who here will envy / Whom the
highest place exposes / Foremost to stand against the Thunderer’s aim . . ." (255-7) "preferring / Hard liberty before the easy yoke / Of servile Pomp." (500-1) "A World who would not purchase with a bruise, / Or much more grievous pain?" |
I |
(599-612) Satan’s pity for his followers | X |
(817-24) Adam’s concern for his posterity |
I |
(619-21) "Thrice he assay’d, and thrice in spite of scorn, / Tears such as Angels weep, burst forth; at last / Words interwove with sighs found out their way . . ." | IV IV IV
IX |
(86-88) "Aye me, they little know / How dearly
I abide that boast so vain, / Under what torments I inwardly groan . . ." (373-5) ". . . yet no purpos’d foe / To you whom I could pity thus forlorn / Though I unpitied . . ." (388-92) "And should I at your harmless innocence / Melt, as I do, yet public reason just, / Honor and Empire with revenge enlarg’d, / By conquering this new World, compels me now / To do what else though damn’d I should abhor." (455-70) "That space the Evil one abstracted stood / From his own evil, and for the time remain’d / Stupidly good, of enmity disarm’d, / Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge . . ." |
I |
(631-4) The "resurrection" of Pandaemonium | XI |
(251-8) The redemption of Adam and Eve |
I |
(637-42) ". . . But he who reigns / Monarch in Heav’n . . . still his strength conceal’d / Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall." | IV
IX
IX
IX
IX X
X
X
X |
(58-63) "O had his powerful Destiny
ordain’d / Me some inferior Angel, I had stood / Then happy; no unbounded hope had
rais’d / Ambition . . ." (1134-9) "Would thou hadst heark’n’d to my words, and stay’d / With me, as I besought thee, when that strange / Desire of wand’ring this unhappy Morn, / I know not whence possess’d thee; we had then / Remain’d still happy, not as now, despoil’d / Of all our good, sham’d, naked, miserable." (1155-61) "Being as I am, why didst not thou the Head / Command me absolutely not to go, / Going into such danger as thou said’st? / Too facile then thou didst not much gainsay, / Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss. Hadst thou been firm and fixt in thy dissent, / Neither had I transgress’d, nor thou with mee." (1163-7) "Is this the Love, is this the recompense / Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve, express’t / Immutable when thou wert lost, not I, / Who might have lived and joy’d immortal bliss, / Yet willingly chose rather death with thee: / And am I now upbraided, as the cause / Of thy transgressing?" (1187-9) "Thus they in mutual accusation spent / The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning . . ." (137-142) "This Woman whom thou mad’st to be my help, / And gav’st me as thy perfet gift, so good / So fit, so acceptable, so Divine / That from her hand I could suspect no ill, / And what she did, whatever in itself, / Her doing seem’d to justify the deed; / Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eat." (743-8) "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 / Concurr’d not to my being, it were but right / And equal to reduce me to my dust." (873-6) "But for thee / I had persisted happy, had not thy pride / And wand’ring vanity, when least was safe, / Rejected my forewarning . . . (888-95) "O why did God, / Creator wise, that peopl’d highest Heav’n / 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 then befall’n . . ." |
I |
(650-4) Rumor about the creation of Eden | II |
(344-51) Rumor about the creation of Eden |
I |
(44-53) The actual fall of Satan | I |
(742-6) The devils’ version of the fall of Satan |
II |
(14-16) The infernal felix culpa | XII |
(469-77) The actual felix culpa |
II |
(92-101) Moloch’s counsel of despair (142-225) Belial’s counsel of despair |
X |
(986-1006) Eve’s counsel of despair |
II |
(110-11) "A fairer person lost not Heav’n . . ." | II |
(304-5) "And Princely counsel in his face yer shone, / Majestic though in ruin" |
II |
(96-8) "reduce to nothing this essential, happier far / Than miserable to have eternal being" | XII |
(585-7) "A paradise within thee, happier far" |
II |
(151-9) Belial’s doubt that God can destroy | III IX IX
X
X X XI |
(150-66) Christ’s argument against
destruction of Man (938-49) "Nor can I think that God, Creator wise, / Though threat’ning, will in earnest so destroy / Us his prime Creatures" (947-950) ". . . lest the Adversary / Triumph and say; Fickle their State whom God / Most Favors, who can please him long? . . ." (47-52) " . . . But fall’n he is, and now / What rests, but that the mortal Sentence pass / On his transgression. Death denounc’t that day, / Which he presumes already vain and void, / Because not yet inflicted, as he fear’d / By some immediate stroke; but soon shall find / Forbearance no acquittance ere day end . . ." (782-9) Adam’s doubt that God can destroy (209-11) "So judg’d he Man, both Judge and Saviour sent, / And th’instant stroke of Death denounc’t that day / Remov’d far off . . ." |
II |
(162-9) Belial’s acknowledgment of God’s mercy | X IX |
(1046-55) Adam’s acknowledgment of
God’s mercy (811-16) Eve’s belief that God doesn’t punish her because he hasn’t seen what she has done |
II |
(208-14) "This is now / Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear, / Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit / His anger, and perhaps thus far remov’d / Not mind us not offending . . ." | VI
IX
X
X
XI |
(841-3) ". . . Thrones and mighty Seraphim
prostrate / That wish’t the Mountains now might be again / Thrown on them as a
shelter from his ire . . . (811-16) "And I perhaps am secret; Heav’n is high, / High and remote to see from thence distinct / Each thing on Earth; and other care perhaps / May have diverted from continual watch / Our great Forbidder, safe with all his spies about him . . ." (5-14) ". . . for what can scape the Eye / Of God All-seeing, or deceive his Heart Omiscient, who in all things wise and just / Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind / Of Man, with strength entire, and free will arm’d / Complete to have discover’d and repulst / Whatever wiles of Foe or seeming Friend. / For still they knew, and ought to have still remember’d / The high Injunction not to taste that Fruit, whoever tempted . . ." (616-637) "See with what heat these Dogs of Hell advance / To waste and havoc yonder world . . . who impute / Folly to mee, so doth the Prince of Hell / And his Adherents, that with so much ease / I suffer them to enter and possess / A place so heav’nly, . . . as if transported with some fit / Of Passion, I to them had quitted all, / And random yielded up to their misrule . . ." (1016-24) ". . . 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 over-lov’d. Or if thou covet death, as utmost end, so thinking to evade / The penalty pronounc’t, doubt not but God has wiselier arm’d his vengeful ire / Than so to be forestall’d . . ." |
II |
(226-8) "Words cloth’d in reason’s garb" | II
V
IX
IX
IX |
(112-14) "But all was false and hollow; though
his Tongue / Dropt Manna, and could make the worse appear / The better reason . . ." (701-3) ". . . Tells the suggested cause, and casts between / Ambiguous words and jealousies, to sound / Or taint integrity" (709-10) " . . . with lies / Drew after him the third part of Heav’n’s Host" (632-3) Lead then, said Eve. Hee leading swiftly roll’d / In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, / To mischief swift . . . (736-8) " . . . in her ears the sound / Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregn’d / With reason, to her seeming, and with Truth . . ." (1127-31) "For Understanding rul’d not, and the Will / Heard not her lore, both in subjection now / To sensual Appetite, who from beneath / Usurping over sovran Reason claim’d / Superior sway . . ." |
II |
(188-93) God’s ability to frustrate the devils’ schemes | X |
(1020-8) God will not allow us to frustrate his plans |
II |
(243) "Forc’t Hallelujahs . . ." | VI |
(744) "Unfeigned Halleluiahs" |
II |
(323-28) "over Hell extend / His Empire, and with Iron Sceptre rule / Us here, as with his Golden those in Heav’n" | V |
(886-7) "That Golden Sceptre which thou didst reject / Is now an Iron Rod . . ." |
II |
(364-10) ". . . either with Hell fire / To waste his whole Creation . . . / Abolish his own works" | III IX |
(162-6) "or wilt thou thyself / Abolish thy
Creation . . . ?" (943-9) " . . . so God shall uncreate, / Be frustrate, do , undo, and labor lose . . . " |
II |
(402-5) Beelzebub’s plea for a redeemer | III |
(213-16) God’s solicitation of a Redeemer |
II |
(413-16) "for on whom we send, / The weight of all and our last hope relies" | III VIII XI |
(207-16) "Which of ye will be mortal to redeem
/ Man’s mortal crime, and just th’unjust to save . . .?" (637-8) ". . . thine and of all thy sons / The weal or woe in thee is plac’t; beware." (34-6) ". . . all his works on mee / Good or not good ingraft, my Merit those / Shall perfet, and for these my Death shall pay." |
II |
(417-21) "but all sat mute, / Pondering the danger with deep thoughts . . ." | III |
(217-21) "He ask’d, but all the Heav’nly Choir stood mute" |
II |
(444-50) Satan’s offer to redeem Pandaemonium | III |
(236-44) Christ’s offer to redeem Man |
II |
(466-73) "Thus saying rose / The Monarch, and prevented all reply . . ." | III |
(266-71) "His words here ended, but his meek aspect / Silent yet spake, and breath’d immortal love . . ." |
II |
(556-65) "Others apart sat on a Hill retir’d, / In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high / Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate, / Fixt Fate, Free will, Foreknowledge absolute, / And found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost . . ." | X IX |
(830) ". . . all my evasions vain, / And
reasonings, though through Mazes, lead me still / But to my own conviction . . ." (602-5) "Thenceforth to Speculations high or deep / I turn’d my thoughts, and with capacious mind / Consider’d all things visible in Heav’n / Or Earth, or Middle, all things fair and good . . ." |
II |
(648-73) The unholy trinity | II
X |
(722-30) "O Father, what intends thy hand, she
cri’d, / Against thine only Son? What fury, O Son, / Possesses thee to bend that
mortal Dart / Against thy Father’s head? . . ." (282-5) "Then Both from out Hell Gates into the waste / Wide Anarchy of Chaos damp and dark / Flew diverse, and with Power (thir Power was great) / Hovering upon the Waters . . ." |
II |
(686-7) "Retire or taste thy folly, and learn by proof / Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heav’n" | IV |
(827-831) "Know ye not mee? Ye knew me once no mate / For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar . . ." |
II |
(697-9) "And reckn’st thyself with Spirits of Heav’n, / Hell-doom’d, and breath’st defiance here and scorn . . .?" | IV |
(835-7) "Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape
the same, / Or undiminisht brightness, to be known / As when thou stoodst in Heav’n
upright and pure . . ." (917-23) "Hadst thou alleg’d / To thy deserted host this cause of flight / Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive" (956-61) "And thou sly hypocrite . . ." (947-950) "To say and straight unsay . . ." |
II |
(759) " . . . back they recoil’d afraid / At first, and call’d me Sin | IV VI IX |
(17) "And like a devilish Engine back recoils /
Upon himself . . ." (193-4) ". . . ten paces huge / He back recoil’d . . ." (171-2) "Revenge, at first though sweet, / Bitter ere long back on itself recoils . . ." |
II |
(864-70) "Thou art my Father, thou my Author , thou / My being gav’st me; whom should I obey / But thee, whom follow . . .?" | IV IV V VIII X |
(635-8) "My Author and Disposer, what thou
biddst / Unargu’d I obey . . ." (439-43) "My Guide / And Head . . ." (29) "My Glory, my Perfection . . ." (293-356) "First Father, call’d by thee I come thy Guide / To the Garden of bliss . . ." (145-56) "Was shee thy God, that thou her didst obey / Before his voice, or was she made thy guide . . ." |
II |
(868-70) " . . . where I shall Reign / At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems / Thy daughter, and thy darling, without end." | III V |
(62-4) "on his right / The radiant image of his
Glory sat, / His only Son . . ." (600-6) "This day I have begot whom I declare / My only Son . . . whom ye now behold / At my right hand" |
II |
(879-83) "on a sudden op’n fly / With impetuous recoil and jarring sound / Th’infernal doors, and on thir hinges grate / Harsh thunder . . ." | VII |
(205-8) "Heav’n op’n’d wide / Her ever-during Gates, Harmonious sound / On golden Hinges moving . . ." |
III |
(1-55) "Hail, holy light, offspring of Heav’n first-born . . ." | IV |
(28-113) ". . . to thee I call, but with no friendly voice" |
III |
(93-96) "For man will hearken to his glozing lies . . ." | IV |
(42-48) "Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down / Warring in Heav’n against Heav’n’s matchless King . . ." |
III |
(98-125) "I made him just and right, / Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. / Such I created all th’Ethereal Powers, / And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail’d; / Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell . . . I form’d them free, and free they must remain / Till they enthrall themselves . . ." | IV V V VI
IX
IX IX
IX IX
XI |
(520-34) "Go therefore, half this day as friend
with friend / Converse with Adam . . ." (538-540) "freely we serve, / Because we freely love, as in our will / To love or not; in this we stand or fall . . ." (548-9) "nor knew I not / To be both will and deed created free" (178-81) "This is servitude, / To serve th’unwise, or him who hath rebell’d against his worthier, as thine now serve thee, / Thyself not free, but to thyself enthrall’d . . ."" (322-6) "If this be our condition, thus to dwell / In narrow circuit strait’n’d by a Foe, / Subtle or violent, we not endu’d / Single with like defense, wherever met, / How are we happy, still in fear of harm?" (335-6) "And what is Faith, Love, Virtue unassay’d / Alone, without exterior help sustain’d?" (349-52) ". . . within himself / The danger lies, yet lies within his power: / Against his will he can receive no harm. / But God left free the Will, for what obeys / Reason is free, and Reason he made right . . ." (372-3) "Go, for thy stay, not free, absents thee more; / Go in thy native innocence . . ." (1171-4) "I warned thee, I admonish’d thee, foretold / The danger, and the lurking Enemy / That lay in wait; beyond this had been force, / And force upon free Will here hath no place." (83-101) "Since thy original lapse, true Liberty / Is lost, which always with right Reason dwells / Twinn’d, and from her hath dividual being: / Reason in man obscur’d, or not obey’d, / Immediately inordinate desires And upstart Passions catch the Government / From Reason, and to servitude reduce / Man till then free . . ." |
III |
(111-19) "They therefore as to right belong’d, / So were created, nor can justly accuse / Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate; /As if Predestination over-rul’d / Thir will dispos’d by absolute Decree / Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed / Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew, / Foreknowledge had no influence on thir fault, / Which had no less prov’d certain unforeknown." | I
IV X
XI |
(637-42) "But he who reigns / Monarch in
Heav’n . . . still his strength conceal’d / Which tempted our attempt, and
wrought our fall . . ." (58-71) "O had his powerful Destiny ordain’d / Me some inferior Angel, I had stood / Then happy . . ." (43-7) " . . . no Decree of mine / Concurring to necessitate his Fall, / Or touch with lightest moment of impulse / His free Will, to her own inclining left / Even in scale . . ." (770-6) "Let no man seek / Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall / Him or his Children, evil he may be sure / Which neither his foreknowing can prevent, And hee the future evil shall no less / In apprehension than in substance feel / Grievous to bear . . ." |
III |
(241-253) Christ’s conquest of Death | X |
(831-34) "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?" |
III |
(305) "Because thou hast . . . quitted all to save | I |
(93-103) "That fixt mind, / And high disdain, from sense of injur’d merit . . ." |
III |
(380) "Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear" | I
I |
(60-2) "A Dungeon horrible, on all sides round
/ As one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames / No light, but darkness visible
/ Serv’d only to discover sights of woe . . ." (180-2) "yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wild, / The seat of desolation, devoid of light, / Save what the glimmering of these livid flames / Casts pale and dreadful?" |
III |
(410-11) "O unexampl’d love, / Love nowhere to be found less than Divine!" | IX IX
X |
(961-2) "O glorious trial of exceeding Love, /
Illustrious evidence, example high!" (972-6) ". . . this fair Fruit, / Whose virtue, for of good still good proceeds, / Direct, or by occasion hath presented / This happy trial of thy Love, which else / So eminently never had been known." (384-93) "Fair Daughter, and thou Son and Grandchild both, / High proof ye now have giv’n to be the Race / Of Satan (for I glory in the name, / Antagonist of Heav’n’s Almighty King), / Amply have merited of me, of all / Th’Infernal Empire . . . " |
III |
(614-21) Satan’s appearance in Eden at noon | IV IX |
(29-30) Satan’s soliloquy to the sun;
incomplete repentance (739) Satan’s temptation of Eve at noon |
III |
(681-5) "So spake the false dissembler unperceiv’d; / For neither Man nor Angel can discern, / Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks / Invisible, except to God alone . . ." | III IV IX
IX IX
IX
X
X |
(688) "For goodness thinks no ill / Where no
ill seems (119-23) "Artificer of fraud . . . the first / That practis’d falsehood under saintly show, / Deep malice to conceal . . ." (762-6) "In the day we eat / Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die; / How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat’n and lives, / And knows, and speaks, and reasons, / Irrational till then . . . [and] brings with joy / The good befall’n him, Author unsuspect, Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile . . ." (886-7) "Thus Eve with Count’nance blithe her story told / But in her Cheek distemper flushing glow’d . . ." (1067-78) "O, Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear / To that false Worm, of whomsoever taught / To counterfeit Man’s voice, true in our Fall, / False in our promis’d Rising . . ." (1148-52) ". . . hadst thou been there, / Or here th’attempt, thou couldst not have discern’d / Fraud in the Serpent, speaking as he spake . . ." (867-73) "Out of my sight, thou Serpent, that name best / Befits thee with him leagu’d, thyself as false / And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape / Like his, and color Serpentine may show / Thy inward fraud, to warn all Creatures from thee / Henceforth . . ." (330-1) "Disguis’d he came, but those his Children dear / Thir Parent soon discern’d, though in disguise . . ." |
IV |
(18-27) Satan’s anguish on Niphates before the temptation | XII |
(Implicit in 393-435) Christ’s anguish at Gethsemane before the redemption |
IV |
(45-8) "nor was his service hard . . ." | IV IV V VIII
IX
IX XI |
(421) "This one, this easy charge . . ." (432-3) "Then let us not think hard / One easy prohibition . . ." (551-2) "and obey him whose command / Single is yet so just . . ." (323-33) "But of the Tree whose operation brings / Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set / The Pledge of thy Obedience and thy Faith, / Amid the Garden by the Tree of Life, / Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste, / And shun the bitter consequence: for know, / The day thou eat’st thereof, my sole command / Transgrest, inevitably thou shalt die . . ." (750-55) "Thy praise he also who forbids thy use, / Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree / Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; / Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding / Commends thee more, while it infers / The good by thee communicated, and our want . . . / In plain then, what forbids he but to know, / Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise? Such prohibitions bind not." (815-16) ". . . Our great Forbidder, safe with all his Spies about him . . ." (386-401) ". . . thy death’s wound: / Which hee, who comes thy Saviour, shall recure / Not by destroying Satan, but his works / In thee and in thy Seed; / Nor can this be, / But by fulfilling that which thou didst want, / Obedience to the Law of God . . ." |
IV |
(46-57) Satan’s recognition of his own ingratitude to God | III IX |
(97-99) ". . . ingrate, he had of mee / All he
could have" (1163-7) "Is this the Love, is this the recompense / Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve, express’t / Immutable when thou wert lost, not I, / Who might have lived and joy’d immortal bliss, / Yet willingly chose rather death with thee: / And am I now upbraided, as the cause / Of thy transgressing?" |
IV |
(63-65) "other Powers as great / Fell not, but stand unshak’n from within / Or from without, to all temptations arm’d" | I
IV IV V
V
V
VI VI
VI
VIII
VIII
IX
IX
IX
XI
XII |
(1-5) "Of Man’s First Disobedience, and
the Fruit / Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste / Brought Death into the World, and
all our woe . . ." (855-6) " . . . what the least can do / Single against thee wicked, and thence weak" (873) "Stand firm . . ." (538-543) "freely we serve, / Because we freely love, as in our will / To love or not; in this we stand or fall / And some are fall’n, to disobedience fall’n, / And so from Heav’n to deepest Hell. . ." (803-48) "Thus far his bold discourse without control / Had audience, when among the Seraphim / Abdiel, than whom none with more zeal ador’d / The Deity, and divine commands obey’d, / Stood up, and in a flame of zeal severe / The current of his fury thus oppos’d . . ." (896-903) "So spake the Seraph Abdiel faithful found, / Among the faithless, faithful only hee; / Among innumerable false, unmov’d, / Unshak’n, unseduc’d, unterrifi’d / His Loyalty he kept, his Love, his Zeal; / Nor number, nor example with him wrought / To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind, / Though single . . ." (29-37) ". . . for this was all thy care / To stand approv’d in the sight of God, though Worlds / Judg’d thee perverse . . ." (800-12) "Stand still in bright array ye Saints, here stand / . . . stand only and behold / God’s indignation on these Godless pour’d / By mee . . ." (909-12) "But list’n not to his Temptations, warn / Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have heard / By terrible Example the reward / Of disobedience; firm they might have stood, / Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress." (633-8) "Be strong, live happy, and love, but first of all / Him whom to love is to obey, and keep / His great command; take heed less Passion sway / Thy Judgment to do aught, which else free Will / Would not admit; thine and of all thy sons / The weal or woe in thee is plac’t; beware." (640-3) "I in thy persevering shall rejoice / And all the Blest; stand fast; to stand or fall / Free in thy own Arbitrement it lies, / Perfet within, no outward aid require; / And all temptation to transgress repel." (348-56) "within himself / The danger lies, yet lies within [Man’s] power: / Against his will he can receive no harm . . . / But bid [Reason] well beware, and still erect, / Lest by some fair appearing good surpris’d / She dictate false, and misinform the Will / To do what God expressly hath forbid." (750-55) "Thy praise he also who forbids thy use, / Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree / Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; / Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding / Commends thee more, while it infers / The good by thee communicated, and our want . . . / In plain then, what forbids he but to know, / Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?" (765-75) "For us alone was death invented? or to us deni’d / This intellectual food, for beasts reserv’d? . . . / What fear I then, rather what know to fear, / Under this ignorance of Good and Evil, Of God or Death, of Law or Penalty?" (530-7) ". . . if thou well observe / The rule of not too much, by temperance taught / In what thou eat’st and driink’st, seeking from thence / Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, / Till many years over thy head return: / So may’st thou live, till like ripe Fruit thou drop / Into thy Mother’s lap, or be with ease / Gather’d, not harshly pluckt, for death mature . . ." (527)". . . His living Temples, built by Faith to stand . . ." |
IV |
(73-81) "Me miserable! which way shall I fly / Infinite wrath and infinite despair . . ." | I VII IX
X
X
X |
(65-7) "Regions of sorrow, doleful shades,
where peace / And rest can never dwell, hope never comes / That comes to all . . ." (153-4) ". . . if such it be to lose / Self-lost . . ." (118-23) " . . . but I in none of these / Find place or refuge; and the more I see / Pleasures about me, so much more I feel / Torment within me, as from the hateful siege / Of contraries; all good to me becomes / Bane . . ." (837-41) "Thus what thou desir’st / And what thou fear’st, alike destroys all hope / Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable / Beyond all past example and future, / To Satan only like both crime and doom." (842-4) "O Conscience, into what Abyss of fears / And horrors thou hast driv’n me; out of which / I find no way, from deep to deeper plung’d!" (720-9) "O miserable of happy! is this the end / Of this new glorious World, and mee so late / The Glory of that Glory, who now become / Accurst of blessed . . ." |
IV |
(82-6) "and that word / Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame among the Spirits beneath . . ." | IV |
(388-92) "And should I at your harmless innocence / Melt, as I do, yet public reason just, / Honor and Empire with revenge enlarg’d, / By conquering this new World, compels me now / To do what else though damn’d I should abhor." |
IV |
(89-92) "While they adore me on the Throne of Hell, / With Diadem and Sceptre high advanc’d / The lower still I fall, only Supreme / In misery; such joy Ambition finds . . ." | III
IX |
(298-302) "So Heav’nly Love shall outdo
Hellish hate, / Giving to death, and dying to redeem / So dearly to redeem what Hellish
hate / So easily destroy’d, and still destroys / In those who, when they may, accept
not grace." (163-71) "O foul descent! that I who erst contended / With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrain’d / Into a Beast . . . that to the highth of Deity aspir’d; / But what will not Ambition and Revenge / Descend to? who aspires must down as low / As high he soar’d, obnoxious first or last / To basest things . . ." |
IV |
(93-104) "But say I could repent and could obtain / By Act of Grace my former state; how soon / Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay / What feign’d submission swore . . ." | III V
X
XI |
(198-202) The damnation of the reprobate (611-15) ". . . him who disobeys, / Mee disobeys, breaks union, and that day / Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls / Into utter darkness, deep ingulft, his place / Ordain’d without redemption, without end." (1097-1104) "So spake our Father penitent, nor Eve / Felt less remorse; they forthwith to the place / Repairing where he jud’gd them prostrate fell / Before him reverent, and both confess’d / Humbly thir faults, and pardon begg’d with tears / Watering the ground . . . sent from hearts contrite, in sign / Of sorrow unfeign’d, and humiliation meek." (90-94) "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 . . ." |
IV |
(114-17) "Thus while he spake, each passion dimm’d his face . . ." | IX X |
(886-7) "Thus Eve with Count’nance
blithe her story told / But in her Cheek distemper flushing glow’d . . ." (110-14 ) "discount’nanc’t both, and discompos’d; / Love was not in their looks, either to God / Or to each other, but apparent guilt, / And shame, and perturbation, and despair, / Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile." |
IV |
(129-30) ". . . then alone, / As he supposed, all unobserv’d, unseen" | IX |
(811-16) "And I perhaps am secret; Heav’n is high, / High and remote to see from thence distinct / Each thing on Earth . . ." |
IV |
(299) "Hee for God only, shee for God in him" | IV X |
(471-3) "Hee whose image thou art . . ." (927-31) "On me exercise not / Thy hatred for this misery befall’n, / On me already lost, mee than thyself / More miserable; both have sinn’d, but thou / Against God only, I against God and thee." |
IV |
(319-21) "So pass’d they naked on, nor shunn’d the sight / Of God or Angel, for they thought no ill . . ." | IX |
(116-17) "I heard thee in the Garden, and of thy voice / Afraid, being naked, hid myself." |
IV |
(322) "So hand in hand they pass’d . . ." | IV IV IV V VIII IX
IX IX
IX
IX IX X
XI
XI
XII
XII |
(488-9) "With that thy gentle hand /
Seiz’d mine . . ." (689) "Thus talking hand in hand alone they pass’d . . ." (739) "Handed they went . . ." (17) "Her hand soft touching . . ." (300) "So saying, by the hand he took me . . ." (243-5) "These paths and Bowers doubt not but our joint hands / Will keep from Wilderness with ease, as wide / As we need walk, till younger hands ere long / Assist us . . ." (385-6) "So saying, from her Husband’s hand her hand / Soft she withdrew . . ." (849-51) " . . . there he her met, / Scarce from the Tree returning; in her hand / A bough of fairest fruit that downy smil’d, / New gather’d . . ." (888-93) ". . . Adam, soon as he heard / The fatal Trespass done by Eve, amaz’d, / Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill / Ran through his veins, and all his joints relax’d: / From his slack hand the Garland wreathed for Eve / Down dropp’d, and all the faded Roses shed . . ." (996-7) "She gave him of that fair enticing Fruit / With liberal hand . . ." (1037) "Her hand he seiz’d . . ." (137-43) "This Woman whom thou mad’st to be my help, / And gav’st me as thy perfet gift, so good / So fit, so acceptable, so Divine, / That from her hand I could suspect no ill, . . . / Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eat." (371-3) "Ascend, I follow thee, safe Guide, the path / Thou lead’st me, and to the hand of Heav’n submit / However chast’ning . . ." (419-22) ". . . Adam now enforc’t to close his eyes, / Sunk down and all his Spirits became intranst: / But him the gentle Angel by the hand / Soon rais’d, and his attention thus recall’d." (637-8) "whereat / In either hand the hast’ning Angel caught / Our ling’ring Parents, and to th’Eastern Gate / Led them direct . . . (646-9) "The World was all before them, where to choose / Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide: / They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow / Through Eden took thir solitary way." |
IV |
(347-50) "close the Serpent sly / Insinuating wove with Gordian twine / His braided train, and of his fatal guile / Gave proof unheeded . . ." | VII IX |
(493-6) "nor unknown, / The Serpent
subtl’st Beast of all the field . . ." (560-1) "Thee, Serpent , subtlest beast of all the field / I knew . . ." |
IV |
(358-62) O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold, / In our room of bliss thus high advanc’t / . . . Not spirits, yet to Heav’nly Spirits bright / Little inferior . . . | IV
VII VII VIII
IX
IX |
(500-11) "Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus
these two / Imparadis’t in one another’s arms / The happier Eden shall
enjoy thir fill / Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust . . ." (188-90) ". . . Good out of evil to create, instead / Of Spirits malign a better race to bring / Into their vacant room . . ." (615-16) ". . . his evil / Thou usest, and from thence creat’st more good . . ." (99-102) "O Earth, how like to Heav’n, if not preferr’d / More justly, Seat worthier of Gods, as built / With second thoughts, reforming what was old! For what God after better worse would build?" (143-149) ". . . hee to be aveng’d, / And to repair his numbers thus impair’d, / Whether such virtue spent of old now fail’d / More Angels to Create, if they at least / Are his Created, or to spite us more / Determin’d to advance into our room / A Creature form’d of Earth . . . (175-8) ". . . this new Favorite / Of Heav’n, this Man of Clay, Son of despite, / Whom us the more to spite his Maker rais’d / From dust . . ." |
IV |
(385-94) "Yet public reason just . . ." | X |
(130-35) ". . . but strict necessity / Subdues me, and calamitous constraint, / Lest on my head both sin and punishment, / However insupportable, be all / Devolv’d . . ." |
IV |
(445-7) ". . . thee / Preeminent by so much odds, | VIII VIII VIII
VIII VIII
IX IX
IX
IX
X |
(489-91) ". . . I yielded, and from that time
see / How beauty is excell’d by manly grace / And wisdom, which alone is truly
fair" (48-57) ". . . Yet went she not, as not with such discourse / Delighted, or not capable her ear / Of what was high . . ." (383-92) "Among unequals what society / Can sort, what harmony or true delight? / Which must be mutual, in proportion due, / Giv’n and receiv’d . . ." (541-2) "For well I understand in the prime end / Of nature her th’inferior, in the mind / And inward faculties . . ." (549-53) " . . . what she wills to do or say / Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; / All higher knowledge in her presence falls / Degraded, Wisdom in discourse with her / Loses discount’nanc’t, and like folly shows . . ." (141-2) "And what she did, whatever in itself, / Her doing seem’d to justify the deed . . ." (816-825) ". . . shall I to him make known / As yet my change, and give him to partake / Full happiness with mee, or rather not, / But keep the odds of Knowledge in my power / Without Copartner? so add what wants / In Female Sex, the more to draw his Love, / And render me more equal, and perhaps, / A thing not undesirable, sometime / Superior: for inferior, who is free?" (896-9) "O fairest of Creation, last and best / Of all God’s Works, Creature in whom excell’d / Whatever can to sight or thought be form’d, / Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!" (1177-82) " . . . and perhaps / I also err’d in overmuch admiring / What seem’d in thee so perfet, that I thought / No evil durst attempt thee, but I rue / That error now, which is become my crime, and thou th’accuser" (877-80) ". . . longing to be seen / Though by the Devil himself, him overweening / To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting, / Fool’d and beguil’d . . ." |
IV |
(447-8) while thou / Like consort to thyself canst nowhere find" | VIII |
(363-8) "but with mee / I see not who partakes
. . ." (405-7) ". . . who am alone / From all eternity, for none I know, / Second to me or like, equal much less" |
IV |
(449-92) Eve’s recollection of her creation | II VIII |
(761-4) Sin’s recollection of her creation (253-82) Adam’s recollection of his creation |
IV |
(449-52) "much wondering where / And what I was, whence thither brought, and how (Eve’s first thoughts are of herself, not of her Creator) | VIII IX
IX |
(253-82) "Straight toward Heav’n my
wond’ring Eyes I turn’d(Adam’s first thoughts are of God) (795-807) "O Sovran, virtuous, precious of all Trees / In Paradise, of operation blest / To Sapience . . . henceforth my early care, / Not without Song, each morning, and due praise / Shall tend thee, and the fertile burden ease / Of thy full branches offer’d free to all; / Till dieted by thee I grow mature / In knowledge, as the Gods who all things know; / Though others envy what they cannot give; / For had the gift been theirs, it had not here / Thus grown . . ." (Eve’s worship of the Tree) (834-8) "So saying, from the Tree her step she turn’d, / But first low Reverence done, as to the power / That dwelt within, whose presence had infus’d / Into the Plant sciential sap, deriv’d / From Nectar, drink of Gods . . ." |
IV |
(474-5) "what could I do / But follow straight, invisibly thus led" | IV VIII IX X
XI
XII
XII |
(464-7) ". . . there I had fixt / Mine eyes
till now, and pin’d with vain desire / Had not a voice thus warn’d me . .
." (311-33) "Here had new begun / My wand’ring, had not hee who was my Guide / Up hither from among the Trees appear’d . . ." (807-10) "Experience, next to thee I owe, / Best Guide: not following thee, I had remain’d / In ignorance . . ." (265-72) ". . . Go wither Fate and inclination strong / Leads thee, I shall not lag behind, nor err the way / Thou leading, such a scent I draw of carnage / Prey innumerable. . ." (371-3) "Ascend, I follow thee, safe Guide, the path / Thou lead’st me, and to the hand of Heav’n submit / However chast’ning . . ." (614-619) ". . . but now lead on; / In mee is no delay; with thee to go / Is to stay here; without thee here to stay / Is to go hence unwilling; thou to mee / Art all things under Heav’n, all places thou, / Who for my willful crime art banisht hence . . ." (646-7) "The World was all before them, where to choose / Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide . . ." |
IV |
(477-80) "Till I espi’d thee, fair indeed and tall, / Under a Platan, yet methought less fair . . . / Than that smooth wat’ry image . . ." | VIII
X |
(540) "For well I understand in the prime end /
Of Nature her th’inferior, in the mind / And inward Faculties, which most excel, / In
outward also her resembling less / His image who made both . . ." (874-8) ". . . disdain’d / not to be trusted, longing to be seen / Though by the Devil himself . . ." |
IV |
(475-492) Eve’s recollection of her first encounter with Adam | VIII |
(500-08) Adam’s recollection of his first encounter with Eve |
IV |
(513-520) "all is not theirs it seems; / One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge call’d, / Forbidden them to taste . . ." | IV V VII
VII
VIII
VIII
VIII
VIII
IX IX XII
XII
XII |
(773-5) "Sleep on, / Blest pair; and O yet
happiest if ye seek / No happier state, and know to know no more." (57-62) ". . . is Knowledge so despis’d? . . ." (118-30) "such Commission from above / I have receiv’d, to answer thy desire / Of knowledge within bounds; beyond abstain / To ask, nor let thine own inventions hops / Things not reveal’d . . ." (537-47) "but of the Tree / Which tasted works knowledge of Good and Evil, / Thou mayst not; in the day thou eat’st, thou di’st; / Death is the penalty impos’d, beware . . . (66-75) "To ask or search I blame thee not, for Heav’n / Is as the Book of God before thee set, / Wherein to read his wond’rous Works, and learn / His Seasons, Hours, or Days, or Months, or Years . . ." (167-78) "Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, / Leave them to God above, him serve and fear . . . be lowly wise: / Think only what concerns thee and thy being" (185-97) "God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares, / And not molest us, unless we ourselves / Seek them with wand’ring thoughts, and notions vain . . ." (323-33) "But of the Tree whose operation brings / Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set / The Pledge of thy Obedience and thy Faith, / Amid the Garden by the Tree of Life, / Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste, / And shun the bitter consequence: for know, / The day thou eat’st thereof, my sole command / Transgrest, inevitably thou shalt die . . ." (69-70) "Forbidd’n here it seems as only fit / For Gods . . ." (703-30) "Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe, / Why but to keep ye low and ignorant, / His worshippers . . .?" (557-81) "Greatly instructed I shall hence depart, / Greatly in peace of thought, and have my fill / Of knowledge, what this Vessel can contain; / Beyond which was my folly to aspire. / Henceforth I learn that to obey is best, / And love with fear the only God, to walk / As in his presence, ever to observe / His providence, and on him sole depend . . . / That suffering for Truth’s sake / Is fortitude to highest Victory, / And to the faithful Death the Gate of Life . . ." (575-6) "This having learnt, thou hast attain’d the sum / Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the Stars / Thou knew’st by name . . . only add / Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith, / And Virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love / . . . then wilt thou not be loath / To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess / A paradise within thee, happier far." (597-9) ". . . thou at season fit / Let her partake what thou hast heard, / Chiefly what may concern her Faith to know . . ." |
IV |
(633) "Meanwhile, as Nature wills, Night bids us rest." | IV V
V V VII |
(735) ". . . thy gift of sleep." (38) "Why sleep’st thou Eve? now is the pleasant time, / The cool, the silent, save where silence yields / To the night-warbling Bird . . ." (672) "the dusky hour / Friendliest to sleep and silence . . ." (673) "Sleep’st thou, Companion dear . . ." (122-3) "Things not reveal’d, which th’invisible King / Only Omniscient, hath supprest in Night" |
IV |
(634-7) "My Author and Disposer, what thou bidd’st / Unargu’d I obey; so God ordains, / God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more / Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise. . ." | IX
IX |
(273-89) ". . . That such an Enemy we have, who
seeks / Our ruin, both by thee inform’d I learn, / And from the parting Angel
overhead . . . / But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt, / To God or thee,
because we have a foe / May tempt it, I expected not to hear . . ." (232-4) "for nothing lovelier can be found / In Woman than to study household good / And good works in her Husband to promote . . ." |
IV |
(888-899) Satan’s explanation for his escape from Hell | IV |
(902-923) Gabriel’s "translation" of Satan’s explanation for his escape from Hell |
V |
(3-5) "When Adam wak’t, so custom’d, for his sleep / Was Aery light, from pure digestion bred, / And temperate vapors bland . . ." | V IX |
(8-11) " . . . so much the more / His wonder was to find unwak’n’d Eve, / With tresses discompos’d, and glowing Cheek, / As through unquiet rest . . ." |
V |
(19) "Heav’n’s last best gift . . ." | V |
(95) "Best image of myself and dearer half . . ." |
V |
(35-47) Eve’s account of her dream seduction | IX IX |
(538-548) "Fairest resemblance of thy Maker
fair . . ." (608-12) "no Fair to thine / Equivalent or second . . ." |
V |
(65-6) " He pluck’t, hee tasted; mee damp horror chill’d / At such bold words, voucht with a deed so bold . . ." | VIII VIII IX IX X X
XI
XI |
(306-9) "Each Tree / Load’n with fairest
Fruit, that hung to the Eye / Tempting, stirr’d in me sudden appetite / To pluck and
eat . . . (321-2) " . . .Of every Tree that in the Garden grows / Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth . . ." (780-3) "So saying, her rash hand in evil hour / Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck’d, she eat . . ." (791-2) "Greedily she ingorg’d without restraint, / And knew not eating Death . . ." (560) ". . . greedily they pluck’d / The Fruitage fair to sight . . ." (877-80) ". . . longing to be seen / Though by the Devil himself, him overweening / To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting, / Fool’d and beguil’d . . ." (22-30) "See Father, what first fruits on Earth are sprung / From thy implanted Grace in Man, these Sighs / And Prayers . . . Fruits of more pleasing savor from thy seed / Sown with contrition in his heart, than those / Which his own hand manuring all the Trees / Of Paradise could have produc’d, ere fall’n / From innocence . . ." (38-44) ". . . let him live / Before thee reconcil’d, at least his days / Number’d, though sad, till Death, his doom (which I / To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse) / To better life shall yield him, where with mee / All my redeem’d may dwell in joy and bliss, / Made one with me as I with thee am one." |
V |
(67-73) " . . . good, the more / Communicated, more abundant grows, / The Author not impair’d, but honor’d more." | III
VII
VII
VIII
IX |
(694-6) "Fair Angel, thy desire which tends to
know / The works of God, thereby to glorify / The great Work-Master, leads to no excess /
That reaches blame, but rather merits praise / The more it seems excess . . ." (94-7) "If unforbid thou mayst unfold / What wee, not to explore the secrets ask / Of his Eternal Empire, but the more to magnify his works, the more we know" (111-18) ". . .Yet what thou canst attain, which best may serve / To glorify the Maker, and infer / Thee also happier, shall not be withheld / Thy hearing" (65-75) "To ask or search I blame thee not, for Heav’n / Is as the Book of God before thee set, / Wherein to read his wond’rous Works, and learn / His Seasons, Hours, or Days, or Months, or Years . . ." (697-9) " . . . knowledge of Good and Evil; / Of good, how just? of evil, if what is evil / Be real, why not known, since easier shunn’d? . . ." |
V |
(74-81) "Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods / Thyself a Goddess . . ." | IX IX IX
IX IX IX IX IX |
(523-4) "Hee bolder now, uncall’d before
her stood; / But as in gaze admiring . . ." (532-548 ) "sovran Mistress . . . sole Wonder . . . Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair . . . Celestial Beauty" (544-8) ". . . one man except, / Who sees thee? (and what is one?) who shouldst be seen / A Goddess among Gods, ador’d and serv’d / By Angels numberless, thy daily Train . . ." (568) "Empress of this fair World, resplendent Eve (612) "Sovran of Creatures, universal Dame" (626) "Empress . . ." (684) "Queen of this Universe . . ." (732) "Goddess humane . . ." |
V |
(86) "Forthwith up to the Clouds / With him I flew . . ." | X IX |
(243-5) "Methinks I feel new strength within me
rise / Wings growing, and Dominion giv’n me large / Beyond this deep . . ." (1009-10) " . . . and fancy that they feel / Divinity within them breeding wings / Wherewith to scorn the Earth . . ." |
V |
(91) "My Guide" | VIII
IX |
(311-33) "Here had new begun / My
wand’ring, had not hee who was my Guide / Up hither from among the Trees
appear’d . . ." (629-32) ". . . if thou accept / My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon. / Lead then, said Eve. Hee leading swiftly roll’d / In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, / To mischief swift . . . / and into fraud / Led Eve our credulous Mother, to the Tree / Of prohibition, root of all our woe; / Which when she saw, thus to her guide she spake . . . " |
V |
(493-505) ". . . time may come when men / With Angels may participate . . . / If ye be found obedient" | VII |
(157-161) ". . . till by degrees of merit rais’d / They open to themselves at length the way / Up hither, under long obedience tri’d, / And Earth be chang’d to Heav’n, and Heav’n to Earth, / One Kingdom, Joy, and Union without end.’ |
V |
(514-16) " . . . can we want obedience then / To him, or possibly his love desert / Who form’d us from the dust . . .?" | X
X
XI |
(743-8) "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 / Concurr’d not to my being, it were but right /
And equal to reduce me to my dust." (206-8) "Till thou return unto the ground, for thou / Out of the ground wast taken, know thy Birth, / For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return." (504-7) "Why is life giv’n / To be thus wrested from us? rather why / Obtruded on us thus? who if we knew / What we receive, would either not accept / Life offer’d, or soon beg to lay it down, / Glad to be so dismist in peace." |
V |
(574-6) "what if Earth / Be but the shadow of Heav’n, and things therein / Each to other like more than on Earth is thought?" | VI
VI |
(295) "They ended parle, and both
address’d for fight / Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue / Of angels, can
relate, or what things / Liken on Earth conspicuous that may lift / Human imagination to
such highth / Of God-like Power . . ." (893) "Thus measuring things in Heav’n by things on Earth . . ." |
V |
(756-62) "Satan to his Royal seat / High on a Hill, far blazing, as a Mount / Rais’d on a Mount, with Pyramids and Tow’rs from Diamond Quarries hewn, and Rocks of Gold, / the Palace of great Lucifer. . ." | I V |
(710-30) "Anon out of the earth a Fabric huge /
Rose like an exhalation . . . / Built like a Temple . . ." (764-5) "In imitation of that Mount whereon / Messiah was declared" |
V |
(794-802) "Who can in reason then or right assume / Monarchy over such as live by right / His equals . . .?" | V IX |
(831-45) "But to grant it thee unjust, / That
equal over equals Monarch Reign . . ." (816-25) "But to Adam in what sort / Shall I appear? shall I to him make known / As yet my change, and give him to partake / Full happiness with mee, or rather not, / But keep the odds of Knowledge in my power . . . ? |
V |
(822-5) "Shalt thou give Law to God, shalt thou dispute / With him the points of liberty, who made / Thee what thou art, and form’d the Pow’rs of Heav’n / Such as he pleas’d, and circumscrib’d thir being? | X
X |
(766-7) "God made thee of choice his own, and
of his own / To serve him, thy reward was of his grace, / Thy punishment then is justly at
his Will . . ." (1041-6) "No more be mention’d then of violence / Against ourselves, and wilful barrenness, / That cuts us off from hope, and savors only / Rancor and pride, impatience and despite, / Reluctance against God and his just yoke / Laid on our necks" |
V |
(856-869) "who saw / When this creation was? rememb’rst thou / Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being? / We know no time when we were not as now; / Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais’d / By our own quick’ning power . . ." | IV V VIII IX
IX
IX |
(43) "whom he created what I was . . ." (836-7) ". . . as by his Word the mighty Father made / All things, ev’n thee, and all the Spirits of Heav’n . . ." (250-1) "For Man to tell how human Life began / Is hard; for who himself beginning knew? (143-149) ". . . hee to be aveng’d, / And to repair his numbers thus impair’d, / Whether such virtue spent of old now fail’d / More Angels to Create, if they at least / Are his Created, or to spite us more / Determin’d to advance into our room / A Creature form’d of Earth . . . (717-22) "The Gods are first, and that advantage use / On our belief, that all from them proceeds; / I question it, for this fair Earth I see, / Warm’d by the Sun, producing every kind, / Them nothing: If they all things, who enclos’d / Knowledge of Good and Evil in this Tree, / That who so eats thereof, forthwith attains / Wisdom without their leave?" (795-807) "O Sovran, virtuous, precious of all Trees / In Paradise, of operation blest / To Sapience . . . henceforth my early care, / Not without Song, each morning, and due praise / Shall tend thee, and the fertile burden ease / Of thy full branches offer’d free to all; / Till dieted by thee I grow mature / In knowledge, as the Gods who all things know; / Though others envy what they cannot give; / For had the gift been theirs, it had not here / Thus grown . . ." |
V |
(877-88) "O alienate from God, O spirit accurst, / Forsaken of all good . . ." | II
III
VI V
IX |
(327-) "with Iron Sceptre rule / Us here, as
with his Golden those in Heav’n / . . . foil’d with loss / Irreparable . . .for
what peace will be giv’n / To us enslav’d, but custody severe, / And stripes,
and arbitrary punishment / Inflicted . . . ? (129-32) "The first sort by thir own suggestion fell, / Self-tempted, self-deprav’d: Man falls deceiv’d / By th’other first: Man therefore shall find grace / The other none . . ." (262-9) "Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt, / Unnam’d in Heav’n . . ." (611-18) ". . . him who disobeys / Mee disobeys, breaks union, and that day / Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls / Into utter darkness, deep ingulft, his place / Ordain’d without redemption, without end" (118-23) " . . . but I in none of these / Find place or refuge; and the more I see / Pleasures about me, so much more I feel / Torment within me, as from the hateful siege / Of contraries; all good to me becomes / Bane . . ." |
V |
(96-903) "So spake the Seraph Abdiel faithful found, / Among the faithless, faithful only hee; / Among innumerable false, unmov’d, / Unshak’n, unseduc’d, unterrifi’d / His Loyalty he kept, his Love, his Zeal; / Nor number, nor example with him wrought / To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind, / Though single . . ." | XI XI XI XI XI XI |
(664-709), Enoch, "the only righteous in
a World perverse . . ." (719-867), Noah, "the only Son of Light / In a dark age . . ." (890-95) "Such grace shall one just Man find in his sight / That he relents, not to blot out mankind . . ." (113-168) Abraham, "this Patriarch blest . . ." (170-309) Moses, "sent from God to claim / His people from enthralment . . ." (310-14) ". . . Joshua whom the Gentiles Jesus call, / . . . who shall quell / The adversary Serpent, and bring back / Through the world’s wilderness lon wander’d man / Safe to eternal Paradise of rest." |
VI |
(841-3) ". . . Thrones and mighty Seraphim prostrate / That wish’t the Mountains now might be again / Thrown on them as a shelter from his ire . . . | IX
IX |
(811-16) "And I perhaps am secret; Heav’n
is high, / High and remote to see from thence distinct / Each thing on Earth; and other
care perhaps / May have diverted from continual watch / Our great Forbidder, safe with all
his spies about him . . ." (1084-90) "O might I here / In solitude live savage, in some glade / Obscur’d, where highest Woods impenetrable / To Star or Sun-light, spread their umbrage broad, / And brown as Evening: Cover me ye Pines, / Ye Cedars, with innumerable boughs / Hide me, where I may never see them more." |
VI |
(909-12) "But list’n not to his Temptations, warn / Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have heard / By terrible Example the reward / Of disobedience; firm they might have stood, / Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress." | III
V
V VI VI
VIII
VIII
IX XI
XI
XI |
(150-3) "For should Man be lost, should Man /
Thy Creature late so lov’d, thy youngest Son / Fall circumvented thus by fraud, /
Though join’d / With his own folly?" (229-45) "Go therefore, half this day as friend with friend, / Converse with Adam, . . . and such discourse bring on, / As may advise him of his happy state, / Happiness in his power left free to will / Left to his own free Will, his Will though free, / Yet mutable; whence warn him to beware / He swerve not too secure . . . / Lest willfully transgressing he pretend / Surprisal, unadmonish’d, unforewarn’d." (520-43) "That thou art happy, owe to God; / That thou continu’st such, owe to thyself, / That is, to thy obedience . . ." (736-41) ". . . Whom to obey is happiness entire." (893-6) "Thus measuring things in Heav’n by things on Earth / At thy request, and that thou mayst beware / By what is past, to thee I have reveal’d / What might have else to human Race been hid . . ." (185-7) "God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares, / And not molest us, unless we ourselves / Seek them with wand’ring thoughts, and notions vain." (323-33) "But of the Tree whose operation brings / Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set / The Pledge of thy Obedience and thy Faith, / Amid the Garden by the Tree of Life, / Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste . . ." (1171-4) "I warned thee, I admonish’d thee, foretold / The danger, and the lurking Enemy / That lay in wait . . ." (287-9) "Lament not, Eve, but patiently resign / What justly thou hast lost; nor set thy heart / Thus over-fond, on that which is not thine . . ." (356-66) "Ere thou from hence depart, know I am sent / To show thee what shall come in future days / To thee and to thy Offspring; good with bad / Expect to hear, supernal Grace contending / With sinfulness of Men; thereby to learn / True patience, and to temper joy with fear / And pious sorrow , equally inur’d / By moderation either state to bear, / Prosperous or adverse: so shalt thou lead / Safest thy life, and best prepar’d endure / Thy mortal passage when it comes." (603-6) "Judge not what is best / By pleasure, though to Nature seeming meet, / Created, as thou art, to nobler end / Holy and pure, conformity divine . . ." |
VII |
(188-90) ". . . Good out of evil to create, instead / Of Spirits malign a better race to bring / Into their vacant room . . ." | I
VII
IX
IX
IX
XI
XI XI
XII |
(162-8) "If then his Providence / Out of our
evil seek to bring forth good, / Our labor must be to pervert that end, / And out of good
still to find means of evil . . ." (613-16) "Who seeks / To lessen thee, against his purpose serves / To manifest the more thy might: his evil / Thou usest, and from thence creat’st more good" (713-15) "So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off / Human, to put on Gods, death to be wisht, / Though threat’n’d, which no worse than this can bring." (750-55) "Thy praise he also who forbids thy use, / Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree / Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; / Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding / Commends thee more, while it infers / The good by thee communicated, and our want . . . / In plain then, what forbids he but to know, / Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?" (972-6) ". . . this fair Fruit, / Whose virtue, for of good still good proceeds, / Direct, or by occasion hath presented / This happy trial of thy Love, which else / So eminently never had been known." (22-30) "See Father, what first fruits on Earth are sprung / From thy implanted Grace in Man, these Sighs / And Prayers . . . Fruits of more pleasing savor from thy seed / Sown with contrition in his heart, than those / Which his own hand manuring all the Trees / Of Paradise could have produc’d, ere fall’n / From innocence . . ." (463-5) ". . . For then the Earth / Shall all be Paradise, far happier place / Than this of Eden, and far happier days . . ." (469-77) "O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this good of evil shall produce, / And evil turn to good . . ./ Full of doubt I stand, / Whether I should repent me now of sin / By mee done and occasion’d, or rejoice / Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring, / To God more glory, more good will to Men / From God, and over wrath grace shall abound." (575-6) "This having learnt, thou hast attain’d the sum / Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the Stars / Thou knew’st by name . . . only add / Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith, / And Virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love / . . . then wilt thou not be loath / To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess / A paradise within thee, happier far." |
VIII |
(400-3) "A nice and subtle happiness I see / Thou to thyself proposest, Adam, and wilt taste / No pleasure, though in pleasure, solitary." | IV VIII
VIII IX
IX
IX XII |
(471-3) " . . . hee/ Whose image thou art, him
thou shalt enjoy / Inseparably thine . . ." (444-8) "I, ere thou spak’st / Knew it not good for Man to be alone / And no such company as then thou saw’st / Intended thee, for trial only brought / To see how thou couldst judge of fit and meet . .. " (478-80) "Shee disappear’d, and left me dark, I wak’d / To find her, or for ever to deplore / Her loss . . ." (826-30) "This may be well: but what if God have seen, / And death ensue? Then I shall be no more, / And Adam wedded to another Eve, / Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; / A death to think . . ." (906-16) ". . . for with thee / Certain my resolution is to Die: / How can I live without thee, how forgo / Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly join’d / To live again in these wild Woods forlorn? / Should God create another Eve, and I / Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee / Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel / The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh, / Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State / Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe." (879-80) ". . . For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss, / Tedious, unshar’d with thee, and odious soon." (614-619) ". . . but now lead on; / In mee is no delay; with thee to go / Is to stay here; without thee here to stay / Is to go hence unwilling; thou to mee / Art all things under Heav’n, all places thou, / Who for my willful crime art banisht hence . . ." |
VIII |
(449-51) ". . .Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, / Thy wish, exactly to thy heart’s desire . . ." | VIII VIII VIII IX X
X
XI
XI
XII |
(537-9) " . . . at least on her bestow’d /
Too much of Ornament, in outward show / Elaborate, of inward less exact . . ." (548-53) " . . . that what she wills to do or say / Seems wisest, virtousest, discreetest, best . . ." (567-8) "For what admir’st thou, what transports thee so, / An outside?" (1020) ". . . I the praise / Yield thee, so well this day thou hast purvey’d." (137-142) "This Woman whom thou mad’st to be my help, / And gav’st me as thy perfet gift, so good / So fit, so acceptable, so Divine / That from her hand I could suspect no ill, / And what she did, whatever in itself, / Her doing seem’d to justify the deed; / Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eat." (145-56) "Was shee thy God, that thou her didst obey / Before his voice, or was she made thy guide, / Superior, or but equal, that to her / Thou didst resign thy Manhood, and the Place / Wherein God set thee above her made of thee . . .?" (163-9) "Ill worthy I such title should belong / To me transgressor, who for thee ordain’d / A help became thy snare; to mee reproach / Rather belongs, distrust and all dispraise; / But infinite pardon was my Judge, / That I who first brought death on all, am grac’t / The source of life . . ." (290-2) "Thy going is not lonely, with thee goes / Thy Husband, him to follow thou art bound; / Where he abides think there thy native soil . . ." (614-619) ". . . but now lead on; / In mee is no delay; with thee to go / Is to stay here; without thee here to stay / Is to go hence unwilling; thou to mee / Art all things under Heav’n, all places thou, / Who for my willful crime art banisht hence . . ." |
VIII |
(531-3) ". . . here passion first I felt . . ." | VIII
VIII IX
IX |
(567-8) "For what admir’st thou, what
transports thee so, / An outside? fair no doubt, and worthy well / Thy cherishing, thy
honoring, and thy love, / Not thy subjection . . . " (635-8) "Take heed less Passion sway / Thy Judgment to do aught, which else free Will / Would not admit . . ." (785-8) "Eve / Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else regarded, such delight till then, as seem’d / In Fruit she never tasted . . ." (997-9) ". . . he scrupl’d not to eat / Against his better knowledge, not deceiv’d, / But fondly overcome with Female charm." |
VIII |
(561-5) "Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part . . ." | IX |
(375) "For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine" |
IX |
(120-2) ". . . so much more I feel / Torment within me, as from the hateful siege of contraries; all good to me becomes bane" | I
IV IV
IX IX |
(158-62) ". . . but of this be sure, / To do
aught good never will be our task, / But ever to do ill our sole delight, / As being
contrary to his high will / Whom we resist . . ." (69-70) "Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate, / To me alike it deals eternal woe . . ." (108-11) "So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear, / Farewell Remorse; all Good to me is lost; / Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least / Divided Empire with Heav’n’s King I hold." (129-30) "For only in destroying I find ease / To my relentless thoughts . . ." (473-8) ". . . all pleasure to destroy, / Save what is in destroying, other joy / To me is lost . . ." |
IX |
(126-8) ". . . Nor hope I to be myself less miserable / By what I seek, but others to make such as I, though thereby worse to me redound . . . " | VI
IX
IX
IX
IX
|
(900-12) ". . . Satan, hee who envies
now thy state, / Who is now plotting how he may seduce / Thee also from obedience, that
with him / Bereav’d of happiness thou mayst partake / His punishment, Eternal misery
. . ." (816-825) "But to Adam in what sort / Shall I appear? shall I to him make known / As yet my change, and give him to partake / Full happiness with mee, or rather not, / But keep the odds of Knowledge in my power . . . ? (830-33) "Confirm’d then, I resolve, / Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe: / So dear I love him, that with him all deaths / I could endure, without him live no life . . ." (911-16) "Should God create another Eve, and I / Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee / Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel / The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh, / Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State / Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe." (881-5) "Thou therefore also taste, that equal Lot / May join us, equal Joy, as equal Love; / Lest thou not tasting, different degree / Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce / Deity for thee, when Fate will not permit . . ." |
IX |
(163-170) "O foul descent! that I who erst contended / With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrain’d / Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime . . . that to the highth of Deity aspir’d . . ." | I III IV IV IV |
(200-1) " . . . that Sea-beast / Leviathan" (430) "As when a Vultur on Imaus bred . . ." (196) "Sat like a Cormorant . . ." (800) "Squat like a Toad . . ." (858) "Like a proud Steed rein’d . . ." |
IX |
(214) "Let us divide our labors . . . " | IX
IX
XI |
(251-8) "But other doubt possesses me, lest
harm / Befall thee sever’d from me; for thou know’st / What hath been
warn’d us, what malicious Foe / . . . seeks to work us woe and shame / . . . with
greedy hope to find / His wish and best advantage, us asunder . . ." (423-33) ". . . Each Flow’r of tender stalk, whose head though gay / Hung drooping, them she upstays / Gently with Myrtle band, mindless the while, / Herself, though fairest unsupported Flow’r / From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh." (38-44) ". . . let him live / Before thee reconcil’d, at least his days / Number’d, though sad, till Death, his doom (which I / To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse) / To better life shall yield him, where with mee / All my redeem’d may dwell in joy and bliss, / Made one with me as I with thee am one." |
IX |
(267-9) "The Wife, where danger or dishonor lurks, / Safest and seemliest by her Husband stays, / Who guards her, or with her the worst endures." | IX
IX
IX
IX
X |
(856-61) " Hast thou not wonder’d, Adam,
at my stay? / Thee I have miss’t, and thought it long, depriv’d / Thy presence,
agony of love till now / Not felt, nor shall be twice, for never more / Mean I to try,
what rash untri’d I sought, / The pain of absence from thy sight . . ." (906-10) "for with thee / Certain my resolution is to Die; / How can I live without thee, how forgo / Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly join’d / To live again in these wild Woods forlorn?" (1134-9) "Would thou hadst heark’n’d to my words, and stay’d / With me, as I besought thee, when that strange / Desire of wand’ring this unhappy Morn, / I know not whence possess’d thee; we had then / Remain’d still happy, not as now, despoil’d / Of all our good, sham’d, naked, miserable." (1153-7) "Was I to have never to parted from thy side? / As good have grown there still a lifeless Rib. Being as I am, why didst not thou the Head / Command me absolutely not to go, / Going into such danger as thou said’st?" (195-6) " . . . and to thy Husband’s will / Thine shall submit, hee over thee shall rule." |
IX |
(303-5) ". . . which on us both at once / The Enemy, though bold, will hardly dare, / Or daring, first on mee th’assault shall light . . ." | IX
IX
IX
IX
IX IX |
(1144-8) "What words have past thy Lips, Adam
severe, / Imput’st thou that to my default, or will / Of wand’ring, as thou
call’st it, which who knows / But might as ill have happen’d thou being by, / Or
to thyself perhaps . . ." (322-6) "If this be our condition, thus to dwell / In narrow circuit strait’n’d by a Foe / Subtle or violent, we not endu’d / Single with like defense, wherever met, / How are we happy, still in fear of harm?" (337-40) "Let us not suspect our happy State / Left so imperfet by the Maker wise, / As not secure to single or combin’d / Frail is our happiness, if this be so." (378-84) "With thy permission then, and thus forewarn’d . . . / The willinger I go, nor much expect / A Foe so proud will first the weaker seek; the bent, the more shall shame his repulse." (430-1) "He sought them both, but wish’d his hap might find / Eve separate . . ." (479-93) "Then let me not pass / Occasion which now smiles, behold alone / The Woman, opportune to all attempts, / Her Husband, for I view far round, not nigh . . ." |
IX |
(335-6) "And what is Faith, Love, Virtue unassay’d / Alone, without exterior help sustain’d?" | IX
IX
IX X |
(366-9) "Trial will come unsought, / Wouldst
thou approve thy constancy, approve / First thy obedience; th’other who can know, /
Not seeing thee tempted, who attest?" (1140-2) "Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve / The Faith they owe; when earnestly they seek / Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail . . ." (1175-82) ". . . But confidence then bore thee on, secure / Either to meet no danger, or to find / Matter of glorious trial . . ." (877-80) ". . . longing to be seen / Though by the Devil himself, him overweening / To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting, / Fool’d and beguil’d . . ." |
IX |
(399-401) "Oft he his charge of quick return / Repeated, shee to him as oft engag’d / To be return’d by Noon amid the Bow’r . . . | IX IX |
(739) "Meanwhile the hour of Noon drew on, and
wak’d / An eager appetite . . ." (404-7) "O much deceiv’d, much failing, hapless Eve, / Of thy presum’d return! event perverse! / Thou never from that hour in Paradise / Found’st either sweet repast, or sound repose . . ." (856) " Hast thou not wonder’d, Adam, at my stay? / Thee I have miss’t, and thought it long, depriv’d / Thy presence, agony of love till now / Not felt . . ." |
IX |
(553-65) "What may this mean? Language of Man pronounc’t / By Tongue of Brute and human sense exprest? / The first of these at least I thought deni’d / To Beasts . . . / Redouble then this miracle, and say, / How cam’st thou speakable of mute, and how / To me so friendly grown above the rest / Of brutal kind . . .?" | IX IX
IX
IX
IX |
(615-16) "Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in
doubt / The virtue of that Fruit, in thee first prov’d." (664-7) " . . . now more bold / The Tempter, but with show of Zeal and Love to Man / And indignation at his wrong, / New part puts on, . . . . as to passion mov’d" (745-9) "Great are thy Virtues, doubtless, best of Fruits, / Though kept from Man, and worthy to be admir’d, / Whose taste, too long forborne, at first assay / Gave elocution to the mute, and taught / The Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise . . ." (762-6) "In the day we eat / Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die, / How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat’n and lives, / And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, / Irrational till then . . ." (863-72) "This Tree is not as we are told, a Tree / Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown / Op’ning the way, but of Divine effect / To open Eyes, and make them Gods who taste: / And hath been tasted such: the Serpent wise, / Or not restrain’d as wee, or not obeying, / Hath eat’n of the fruit, and is become, / Not dead, as we are threat’n’d, but henceorth / Endu’d with human voic and human sense, / Reasoning to admiration . . . " |
IX |
(590-1) "For high from ground the branches would require / Thy utmost reach or Adam’s . . ." | IX IX IX X |
(732) "Goddess humane, reach then, and freely
taste." (779-81) ". . . what hinders then / To reach, and feed at once both Body and Mind? / So saying, her rash hand in evil hour / Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck’d, she eat . . ." (877-80) ". . . longing to be seen / Though by the Devil himself, him overweening / To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting, / Fool’d and beguil’d . . ." |
IX |
(646-54) "Serpent, we might have spared our coming hither, / Fruitless to mee, though Fruit be here to excess, / . . . of this Tree we may not taste or touch; / God so commanded, and left that command / Sole Daughter of his voice . . ." | IX
IX
IX
IX
IX
IX
IX
X
X
XI |
(656-8) "Indeed? hath God then said that of the
Fruit / Of all these Garden Trees ye shall not eat, / Yet Lords declar’d of all in
Earth or Air? (659-662) "To whom thus Eve yet sinless. Of the Fruit / Of each Tree in the Garden we may eat, / But of this fair Tree amidst the Garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat / Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die." (684-709) "Queen of this Universe, do not believe / Those rigid threats of Death; ye shall not Die; / How should ye? by the Fruit? it gives you Life / To Knowledge: by the Threat’ner? look on mee, / Mee who have touch’d and tasted, yet both live, / And life more perfet have attain’d than Fate / Meant mee, by vent’ring higher than my lot . . ." (713-15) "So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off / Human, to put on Gods, death to be wisht, / Though threat’n’d, which no worse than this can bring" (762-6) "In the day we eat / Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die; / How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat’n and lives, / And knows, and speaks, and reasons, / Irrational till then . . . [and] brings with joy / The good befall’n him, Author unsuspect, Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile . . ."" (866-71) "the Serpent wise, or not restrain’d as wee, or not obeying, / Hath eat’n of the fruit, and is become, / Not dead, as we are threat’n’d, but henceforth /Endu’d with human voice and human sense (927-37) "Yet so perhaps thou shalt not Die, perhaps the Fact / Is not so heinous now, foretasted Fruit, / Profan’d first by the Serpent , by him first / Made common and unhallow’d ere thy taste; Nor yet on him found deadly, he yet lives, / Lives, as thou said’st, and gains to live as Man, / Higher degree of Life, inducement strong / To us, as likely tasting to attain / Proportional ascent, which cannot be / But to Gods, or Angels Demi-gods . . ." (47-52) " . . . But fall’n he is, and now / What rests, but that the mortal Sentence pass / On his transgression. Death denounc’t that day, / Which he presumes already vain and void, / Because not yet inflicted, as he fear’d / By some immediate stroke; but soon shall find / Forbearance no acquittance ere day end . . ." (1046-1055) "Remember with what mild / And gracious temper he both heard and judg’d / Without wrath or reviling; wee expected / Immediate dissolution, which we thought / Was meant by Death that day, when lo, to thee / Pains only in child-bearing were foretold . . . / with labor I must earn / My bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse . . ." (193-200) "O Eve, some furder change awaits us nigh/ Which Heav’n by these mute signs in Nature shows / Forerunners of his purpose, or to warn / Us haply too secure of our discharge / From penalty, because from death releast / Some days . . ." |
IX |
(782-4) "Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat / Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, / That all was lost . . ." | IX |
(1000-4) "Earth trembl’d from her entrails, as again / In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan, / Sky low’r’d, and muttering Thunder, some sad drops / Wept at completing of the mortal Sin / Original . . ." |
IX |
(838-42) "Adam the while / Waiting desirous her return, had wove / Of choicest Flow’rs a Garland to adorn / Her Tresses, and her rural labors crown / As Reapers oft are wont their Harvest Queen . . ." | IX
IX
IX |
(423-33) ". . . Each Flow’r of tender
stalk, whose head though gay / Hung drooping, them she upstays / Gently with Myrtle band,
mindless the while, / Herself, though fairest unsupported Flow’r / From her best prop
so far, and storm so nigh." (849-51) " . . . there he her met, / Scarce from the Tree returning; in her hand / A bough of fairest fruit that downy smil’d, / New gather’d . . ." (888-93) ". . . Adam, soon as he heard / The fatal Trespass done by Eve, amaz’d, / Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill / Ran through his veins, and all his joints relax’d: / From his slack hand the Garland wreathed for Eve / Down dropp’d, and all the faded Roses shed . . ." |
IX |
(816-825) ". . . shall I to him make known / As yet my change, and give him to partake / Full happiness with mee, or rather not, / But keep the odds of Knowledge in my power / Without Copartner? so add what wants / In Female Sex, the more to draw his Love, / And render me more equal, and perhaps, / A thing not undesirable, sometime / Superior: for inferior, who is free?" | IX
IX
IX IX |
(873-880) ". . . I / Have also tasted, and have
also found / Th’effects to correspond, opener mine Eyes, / Dim erst, dilated Spirits,
ampler Heart, / And growing up to Godhead; which for thee / Chiefly I sought, without thee
can despise. / For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss, / Tedious, unshar’d with
thee, and odious soon." (881-5) "Thou therefore also taste, that equal Lot / May join us, equal Joy, as equal Love; / Lest thou not tasting, different degree / Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce / Deity for thee, when Fate will not permit . . ." (926) "But past who can recall, or done undo?" (967-72) ". . . One Heart, one Soul in both: whereof good proof / This day affords, declaring thee resolv’d, / Rather than Death or aught than Death more dread / Shall separate us, linkt in Love so dear, / To undergo with mee one Guilt, one Crime / If any be, of tasting this fair Fruit . . ." |
IX |
(1022-26) "Much pleasure we have lost, while we abstain’d / From this delightful Fruit, nor known till now / True relish, tasting; if such pleasure be / In things to us forbidden, it might be wish’d / For this one Tree had been forbidden ten." | IX
XI
XI |
(1070-8) " . . . since our Eyes /
Op’n’d we find indeed, and find we know / Both Good and Evil, Good lost, and
Evil got, / Bad Fruit of Knowledge, if this be to know, / Which leaves us naked thus, of
Honor void, Of Innocence, of Faith, of Purity, / Our wonted ornaments now soil’d and
stain’d, / And in our Faces evident the signs / Of foul concupiscence . . ." (84-89) "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 suffic’d him to have known / Good by itself, and Evil not at all." (603-6) "Judge not what is best / By pleasure, though to Nature seeming meet, / Created, as thou art, to nobler end / Holy and pure, conformity divine . . ." |
IX |
(1110-14) ". . . Those Leaves / They gather’d, broad as Amazonian Targe, / And with what skill they had, together sew’d / To gird thir waist, vain Covering if to hide / Thir guilt and dreaded shame . . ." | X X |
(220-3) "Nor hee thir outward only with the
Skins / Of Beasts, but inward nakedness, much more / Opprobrious, with his Robe of
righteousness, / Arraying cover’d from his Father’s sight." (249-51) "Thou my Shade / Inseparable must with mee along: / For Death from Sin no power can separate." |
IX |
(1187-9) "Thus they in mutual accusation spent / The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning . . ." | XI |
(958-61) "But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame / Each other, blam’d enough elsewhere, but strive / In offices of Love, how we may light’n / Each other’s burden in our share of woe . . ." |
X |
(47-52) " . . . But fall’n he is, and now / What rests, but that the mortal Sentence pass / On his transgression. Death denounc’t that day, / Which he presumes already vain and void, / Because not yet inflicted, as he fear’d / By some immediate stroke; but soon shall find / Forbearance no acquittance ere day end . . ." | XI
XI |
(808-13) "But say / That Death be not one
stroke, as I suppos’d, / Bereaving sense, but endless misery / From this day onward,
which I feel begun / Both in me, and without me, and so last / To perpetuity . . ." (856-9) " Shall Truth fail to keep her word, / Justice Divine not hast’n to be just? / But Death comes not at call, Justice Divine mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries." |
X |
(55-62) "But whom send I to judge them? whom but thee / Viceregent Son, to thee I have transferr’d / All Judgment, whether in Heav’n, or Earth, or Hell. Easy it may be seen that I intend / Mercy colleague with Justice, sending thee / Man’s Friend, his Mediator, his design’d / Both Ransom and Redeemer voluntary, / And destin’d Man himself to judge Man fall’n." | X
X
XI
XI |
(209-11) "So judg’d he Man, both Judge and
Saviour sent, / And th’instant stroke of Death denounc’t that day / Remov’d
far off . . ." (403-9) "My Substitutes I send ye, and Create / Plenipotent on Earth, of matchless might / Issuing from mee: on your joint vigor now / My hold of this new Kingdom all depends, / Through Sin to Death expos’d by my exploit. / If your joint power prevail, th’affairs of Hell / No detriment need fear, go and be strong." (34-6) ". . . all his works on mee / Good or not good ingraft, my Merit those / Shall perfet, and for these my Death shall pay." (386-401) ". . . nor so is overcome / Satan, whose fall from Heav’n, a deadlier bruise, / Disabl’d not to give thee thy death’s wound: / Which hee, who comes thy Saviour, shall recure / Not by destroying Satan, but his works / In thee and in thy Seed; / Nor can this be, / But by fulfilling that which thou didst want, / Obedience to the Law of God . . ." |
X |
(124-43) "To whom thus Adam sore beset repli’d. / O Heav’n! in evil strait this day I stand / Before my Judge, either to undergo / Myself the total Crime, or to accuse / My other self, the partner of my life; / Whose failing, while her Faith to me remains, / I should conceal, and not expose to blame / By my complaint; but strict necessity / Subdues me, and calamitous constraint, / Lest on my head both sin and punishment, / However insupportable, be all / Devolv’d; though I should hold my peace, yet thou / Would easily detect what I conceal. / This Woman whom thou mad’st to be my help, / And gav’st me as thy perfet gift, so good / So fit, so acceptable, so Divine, / That from her hand I could suspect no ill, . . . / Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eat." | X
X
X
XI |
(159-62) "To whom sad Eve with shame
nigh overwhelm’d, / Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge / Bold or loquacious,
thus abash’t repli’d. / The Serpent me beguil’d and I did eat." (831-7) "First and last /On mee, mee only, as the source and spring / Of all corruption, all 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? . . ." (932-6) ". . . And to the place of judgment will return, / There with my cries importune Heav’n, that all / The sentence from thy head remov’d may light / On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe, / Mee mee only just object of his ire . . ." (952-7) "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 forgiv’n, / To me committed and by me expos’d." |
X |
(84) "Conviction to the Serpent none belongs." | X
X X
XI |
(171-81) ". . . yet God at last / To Satan
first in sin his doom appli’d, / Though in mysterious terms, jud’gd as then best
/ And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall. / Because thou hast done this, thou art
accurst / Above all Cattle, each Beast of the Field; / Upon thy belly groveling thou shalt
go, / And dust shalt eat all the days of thy Life. Between Thee and the Woman I will put /
Enmity, and between thine and her Seed; / Her Seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his
heel." (494-6) "True is, mee also he hath judg’d, or rather / Mee not, but the brute Serpent in whose shape / Man I deceiv’d . . ." (504-29) "So having said, a while he stood, expecting / Thir universal shout and high applause / To fill his ear, when contrary he hears / On all sides, from innumerable tongues, / A dismal universal hiss, the sound / Of public scorn . . .till supplanted down he fell / A monstrous Serpent on his Belly prone . . . punisht in the shape he sinned . . . Now Dragon grown . . ." (1032-5) ". . . 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 contriv’d / Against us this deceit . . ." |
X |
(178) "And dust shalt eat all the days of thy Life." | X |
(560-7) ". . . greedily they pluck’d / The Fruitage fair to sight, . . / [of which] not the touch, but taste / Deceiv’d; they fondly thinking to allay / Thir appetite with gust, instead of Fruit / Chew’d bitter ashes . . ." |
X |
(616-637) "See with what heat these Dogs of Hell advance / To waste and havoc yonder world . . . who impute / Folly to mee, so doth the Prince of Hell / And his Adherents, that with so much ease / I suffer them to enter and possess / A place so heav’nly, . . . as if transported with some fit / Of Passion, I to them had quitted all, / And random yielded up to their misrule . . ." | X |
(481-93) "The new created World, which fame in Heav’n / Long had foretold, a Fabric wonderful / Of absolute perfection, therein Man / Plac’t in a Paradise, by our exile / Made happy: Him by fraud I have seduc’d / From his Creator, and the more to increase / Your wonder, with an Apple; he thereat / Offended, with your laughter, hath giv’n up / Both his beloved Man and all his World, / To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us . . ." |
X |
(460-6) "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, / For in possession such, not only of right / I call ye and declare ye now, return’d / Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth / Triumphant out of this infernal Pit / Abominable, accurst, the house of woe / And Dungeon of our Tyrant . . ." | X |
(634-7) ". . . at one sling/ Of thy victorious Arm, well-pleasing Son, / Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave at last / Through Chaos hurl’d, obstruct the mouth of Hell / For ever, and seal up his ravenous Jaws . . ." |
X |
(774-89) "Why am I mock’t with death, and length’n’d out / To deathless pain? How gladly I would meet / Mortality my sentence, and be Earth / Insensible, how glad I would lay me down / As in my Mother’s lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure . . ." | X
XI
XI |
(206-8) "Till thou return unto the ground, for
thou / Out of the ground wast taken, know thy Birth, / For dust thou art, and shalt to
dust return." (500-7) "O miserable Mankind, to what fall / Degraded, to what wretched state reserv’d! Better end here unborn. Why is life giv’n / To be thus wrested from us? rather why / Obtruded on us thus? who if we knew / What we receive, would either not accept / Life offer’d, or soon beg to lay it down, / Glad to be so dismist in peace." (530-7) ". . . if thou well observe / The rule of not too much, by temperance taught / In what thou eat’st and driink’st, seeking from thence / Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, / Till many years over thy head return: / So may’st thou live, till like ripe Fruit thou drop / Into thy Mother’s lap, or be with ease / Gather’d, not harshly pluckt, for death mature . . ." |
X |
(1046-1055) "Remember with what mild / And gracious temper he both heard and judg’d / Without wrath or reviling; wee expected / Immediate dissolution, which we thought / Was meant by Death that day, when lo, to thee / Pains only in child-bearing were foretold . . . / with labor I must earn / My bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse . . ." | I XI
XI
XI
XI |
(153-5) "What can it then avail though yet we
feel / Strength undiminisht, or eternal being / To undergo eternal punishment?" (57-64) "I at first with two fair gifts / Created him endow’d, with Happiness / And Immortality: that fondly lost, / This other serv’d but to eternize woe; / Till I provided Death: so Death becomes / His final remedy, after Life / Tri’d in sharp tribulation, and refin’d / By Faith and faithful works, to second life . . ." (112-17) "If patiently thy bidding they obey, / Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveal / To Adam what shall come in future days, / As I thee shall enlighten, intermix / My Cov’nant with the woman’s seed renew’d; / So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace . . ." (251-8) "Heav’n’s high behest no Preface needs: / Sufficient that thy Prayers are heard, and Death / Then due by sentence when thou didst transgress, / Defeated of his seizure many days / Giv’n thee of Grace, wherein thou mayst repent / And one bad act with many deeds well done / May’st cover: well may then thy Lord appeas’d / Redeem thee quite from Death’s rapacious claim . . ." (426-7) "the benefit embrace / By Faith not void of works . . ." |
© 1998-, R.G. Siemens (Editor, EMLS).
(PD 25 February 1998)