Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/259

 BOOK TENTH

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��Of ugly serpents ! Horror on them fell, And horrid sympathy; for what they saw They felt themselves now changing. Down

their arms, 541

Down fell both spear and shield; dosvii

they as fast,

And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form Catched by contagion, like in punishment As in their crime. Thus was the applause

they meant

Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame Cast on themselves from their own mouths.

There stood A grove hard by, sprung up with this their

change,

His will who reigns above, to aggravate Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like

that 550

Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve Used by the Tempter. On that prospect

strange

Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining For one x ? orbidden tree a multitude Now risen, to work them furder woe or

shame; Yet, parched with scalding thirst and

hunger fierce,

Though to delude them sent, could not ab- stain, But on they rowled in heaps, and, up the

trees

Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curled Megsera. Greedily they plucked The fruitage fair to sight, like that which

grew 561

Near that bituminous lake where Sodom

flamed ; This, more delusive, not the touch, but

taste

Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended

taste With spattering noise rejected. Oft they

assayed, Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged

as oft,

With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws With soot and cinders filled ; so oft they

fell 570

Into the same illusion, not as Man Whom they triumphed' once lapsed. Thus

were they plagued, And, worn with famine, long and ceaseless

hiss,

��Till their lost shape, permitted, they re- sumed

Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo This annual humbling certain numbered

days,

To dash their pride, and joy for Man se- duced.

However, some tradition they dispersed Among the Heathen of their purchase got, And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called 580

Ophion, with Eurynome (the wide- Eiicroachiug Eve perhaps), had first the rule Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven And Ops, ere yet Dictsean Jove was born. Meanwhile in Paradise the Hellish pair Too soon arrived Sin, there in power be- fore

Once actual, now in body, and to dwell Habitual habitant; behind her Death, Close following pace for pace, not mounted

yet

On his pale horse; to whom Sin thus be- gan: 59 o " Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering

Death ! What think'st thou of our empire now ?

though earned

With travail difficult, not better far Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have

sat watch,

Unnamed, uudreaded, and thyself half- starved ? "

Whom thus the Sin-born Monster an- swered soon :

" To me, who with eternal famine pine, Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven There best where most with ravin I may

meet:

Which here, though plenteous, all too little

seems 600

To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound

corpse."

To whom the incestuous Mother thus re- plied : " Thou, therefore, on these herbs, and

fruits, and flowers, Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and

fowl

Xo homely morsels ; and whatever thing The scythe of Time mows down devour

unspared ;

Till I, in Man residing through the race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect,

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