Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/242

 PARADISE LOST

��Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian

spouse. Much he the place admired, the person

more.

As one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the

air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to

breathe

Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives

delight 449

The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural

sound If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin

pass, What pleasing seemed for her now pleases

more,

She most, and in her look sums all delight: Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve Thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form Angelic, but more soft and feminine, Her graceful innocence, her every air Of gesture or least action, overawed 460 His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought. That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time re- mained

Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge. But the hot hell that always in him burns, Though in mid Heaven, soon ended his de- light, And tortures him now more, the more he

sees Of pleasure not for him ordained. Then

soon 470

Fierce hate he recollects, and all his

thoughts

Of mischief, gratulatiug, thus excites: " Thoughts, whither have ye led me ?

with what sweet

Compulsion thus transported to forget What hither brought us ? hate, not love,

nor hope

Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, Save what is in destroying; other joy 478 To me is lost. Then let me not let pass Occasion which now smiles. Behold alone The Woman, opportune to all attempts

��Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh, Whose higher intellectual more I shun, And strength, of courage haughty, and of

limb

Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould; Foe not informidable, exempt from

wound

I not; so much hath Hell debased, and pain Infeebled me, to what I was in Heaven. She fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods, Not terrible, though terror be in love, 49 o And beauty, not approached by stronger

hate, Hate stronger under show of love well

feigned

The way which to her ruin now I tend." So sp.ake the Enemy of Mankind, en- closed

In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve Addressed his way not with indented

wave, Prone on the ground, as since, but on his

rear,

Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze, his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; 500 With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape And lovely; never since of serpent kind Lovelier not those that in Illyria changed Hermione and Cadmus, or the God In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline, was seen, He with Olympias, this with her who bore Scipio, the highth of Rome. With tract

oblique 5 10

At first, as one who sought access but

feared

To interrupt, sidelong he works his way. As when a ship, by skilful steersman

wrought Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the

wind Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her

sail,

So varied he, and of his tortuous train Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of

Eve, To lure her eye. She, busied, heard the

sound

Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used To such disport before her through the

field 520

From every beast, more duteous at her call

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