Paradise Lost

by John Milton

  And fear of death deliver to the winds.”

  So saying, she embraced him, and for joy

  Tenderly wept, much won that he his love

  Had so ennobled, as of choice to incur

  Divine displeasure for her sake, or death.

  In recompense (for such compliance bad

  Such recompense best merits) from the bough

  She gave him of that fair enticing fruit

  With liberal hand: he scrupled not to eat

  Against his better knowledge, not deceived998,

  But fondly999 overcome with female charm.

  Earth trembled from her entrails, as again

  In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;

  Sky loured, and muttering Thunder, some sad drops

  Wept at completing of the mortal sin1003

  Original1003; while Adam took no thought,

  Eating his fill, nor Eve to iterate

  Her former trespass feared, the more to soothe

  Him with her loved society, that now

  As with new wine intoxicated both

  They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel

  Divinity within them breeding wings

  Wherewith to scorn the earth: but that false fruit

  Far other operation first displayed,

  Carnal desire inflaming; he on Eve

  Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him

  As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn:

  Till Adam thus gan Eve to dalliance1016 move.

  “Eve1017, now I see thou art exact of taste,

  And elegant1018, of sapience no small part,

  Since to each meaning savor we apply,

  And palate call judicious; I the praise

  Yield thee, so well this day thou hast purveyed.

  Much pleasure we have lost, while we abstained

  From this delightful fruit, nor known till now

  True relish, tasting; if such pleasure be

  In things to us forbidden, it might be wished, For this one tree had been forbidden ten1025.

  But come, so well refreshed, now let us play,

  As meet1028 is, after such delicious fare;

  For never did thy beauty since the day1029

  I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorned

  With all perfections, so inflame my sense

  With ardor to enjoy thee, fairer now

  Than ever, bounty of this virtuous Tree.”

  So said he, and forbore not glance or toy

  Of amorous intent, well understood

  Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire.

  Her hand he seized1037, and to a shady bank,

  Thick overhead with verdant roof embow’red

  He led her nothing loath; flow’rs were the couch,

  Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,

  And hyacinth, earth’s freshest softest lap.

  There they their fill of love and love’s disport

  Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal1043,

  The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep

  Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play.

  Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit,

  That with exhilarating vapor bland

  About their spirits1048 had played, and inmost powers

  Made err, was now exhaled, and grosser sleep

  Bred of unkindly1050 fumes, with conscious dreams

  Encumbered, now had left them, up they rose

  As from unrest, and each the other viewing,

  Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds

  How darkened; innocence, that as a veil

  Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone,

  Just confidence, and native righteousness

  And honor from about them, naked left

  To guilty Shame: he1058 covered, but his robe

  Uncovered more. So rose the Danite1059 strong,

  Herculean1060 Samson, from the harlot-lap

  Of Philistean Dalila, and waked

  Shorn of his strength, they destitute and bare

  Of all their virtue: silent, and in face

  Confounded long they sat, as stricken mute,

  Till Adam, though not less than Eve abashed,

  At length gave utterance to these words constrained.

  “O Eve, in evil1067 hour thou didst give ear

  To that false worm, of whomsoever taught

  To counterfeit man’s voice, true in our fall,

  False in our promised rising; since our eyes

  Opened 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 soiled and stained,

  And in our faces evident the signs

  Of foul concupiscence; whence evil store1078;

  Even shame, the last of evils1079; of the first

  Be sure then. How shall I behold the face

  Henceforth of God or angel, erst with joy

  And rapture so oft beheld? Those Heav’nly shapes

  Will dazzle now this Earthly1083, with their blaze

  Insufferably bright. O might I here

  In solitude live savage, in some glade

  Obscured, where highest woods impenetrable

  To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage1087 broad

  And brown as evening: cover me ye pines,

  Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs

  Hide me, where I may never see them more.

  But let us now, as in bad plight, devise

  What best may for the present serve to hide

  The parts of each from other, that seem most

  To shame obnoxious1094, and unseemliest seen,

  Some tree whose broad smooth leaves together sewed,

  And girded on our loins, may cover round

  Those middle parts, that this newcomer, Shame,

  There sit not, and reproach us as unclean.”

  So counseled he, and both together went

  Into the thickest wood; there soon they chose

  The fig tree1101, not that kind for fruit renowned,

  But such as at this day to Indians known

  In Malabar1103 or Deccan spreads her arms

  Branching so broad and long, that in the ground

  The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow

  About the mother tree, a pillared shade

  High overarched, and echoing walks between;

  There oft the Indian herdsman shunning heat

  Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds

  At loopholes cut through thickest shade: those leaves

  They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe1111,

  And with what skill they had, together sewed,

  To gird their waist, vain covering if to hide

  Their guilt and dreaded shame; O how unlike

  To that first naked glory1115. Such of late

  Columbus1116 found th’ American so girt

  With feathered cincture1117, naked else and wild

  Among the trees on isles and woody shores.

  Thus fenced, and as they thought, their shame in part

  Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind,

  They sat them down to weep, nor only tears

  Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within

  Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate,

  Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook sore

  Their inward state of mind, calm region once

  And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent:

  For understanding ruled not, and the will

  Heard not her lore, both in subjection now

  To sensual appetite, who from beneath

  Usurping over sov’reign reason claimed

  Superior sway: from thus distempered breast,

  Adam, estranged in look and altere
d style,

  Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed.1133

  “Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and stayed

  With me, as I besought thee, when that strange

  Desire of wand’ring this unhappy morn.

  I know not whence possessed thee; we had then

  Remained still happy, not as now, despoiled

  Of all our good, shamed, naked, miserable.

  Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve

  The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek

  Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail.”

  To whom soon moved with touch of blame thus Eve.

  “What words have passed 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 happened thou being by,

  Or to thyself perhaps: hadst thou been there,

  Or here th’ attempt, thou couldst not have discerned

  Fraud in the serpent, speaking as he spake;

  No ground of enmity between us known,

  Why he should mean me ill, or seek to harm.

  Was I to have never 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 saidst?

  Too facile then thou didst not much gainsay,

  Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss.

  Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent,

  Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me.”

  To whom then first incensed Adam replied.

  “Is this the love, is this the recompense

  Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve, expressed

  Immutable when thou wert lost, not I,

  Who might have lived and joyed immortal bliss,

  Yet willingly chose rather death with thee:

  And am I now upbraided, as the cause

  Of thy transgressing? Not enough severe,

  It seems, in thy restraint: what could I more?

  I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold

  The danger, and the lurking enemy

  That lay in wait; beyond this had been force,

  And force upon free will hath here no place.

  But confidence then bore thee on, secure

  Either to meet no danger, or to find

  Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps

  I also erred in overmuch admiring

  What seemed in thee so perfect, that I thought

  No evil durst attempt thee, but I rue

  That error now, which is become my crime,

  And thou th’ accuser. Thus it shall befall

  Him who to worth in women overtrusting

  Lets her will rule; restraint she will not brook,

  And left to herself, if evil thence ensue,

  She first his weak indulgence will accuse.”

  Thus they in mutual accusation1187 spent

  The fruitless hours1188, but neither self-condemning,

  And of their vain contest appeared no end1189.

  1. No more: No/know and more have earlier appeared in memorable formulations about the limits of knowledge that Adam and Eve must observe (4.637, 775; 8.194); now, at the beginning of the book in which those limits will be violated, Milton reconfigures these words to announce a fundamental break with unfallen existence. God or angel: Adam spoke with God (8.295–451), and Books 5–8 have chronicled the friendly visit of Raphael to Paradise.

  2. familiar: in a familial manner, intimate.

  5. Venial: innocent; unblamed: unblamable.

  13. sad task: Raphael used the same phrase (5.564) in introducing his narrative of the fall of the rebel angels.

  13–19. yet … son: Milton compares his argument or subject matter to earlier accounts of wrath in the epic tradition, Homer on Achilles’ defeat of Hector (Il. 22), Vergil on the bellicose rage of Turnus (Aen. 7), Homer on Neptune’s grudge against Odysseus, and Vergil on Juno’s grudge against Aeneas, Cytherea’s (Venus’) son. The point is that the wrath in Milton’s story, the wrath of the Christian God against human sin, is just, not capricious.

  19. Perplexed: tormented.

  20. answerable: commensurate (with his more heroic subject).

  22. unimplored: Oddly, Milton in fact “implores” his muse at 7.38.

  24. unpremeditated: Cp. the morning prayers of 5.149; in Eikonoklastes, Milton argues that prayers should not be imprisoned “in a pinfold of set words” (Yale 3:505).

  27. indite: compose.

  34. tilting furniture: jousting equipment, which Milton proceeds to list: shields emblazoned with impresses quaint (clever emblems), caparisons and bases (equestrian trappings).

  37–38. then marshalled feast … seneschals: The feast is marshalled, full of elaborate arrangements and displays. Sewers, supervised by their chief, the seneschal, seated the guests and served the meal. Milton’s disdain for the ritual civility of the feast may in part be motivated by the primal bad feast he is soon to narrate.

  39. office: position, duty. Romance is rejected as a poetry devoted to the superficial artifice of noble manners and amusements.

  44. That name: the heroic name of line 40; an age too late: sometimes explained as universal decay, a theory Milton opposed in Naturam non pati senium. He might have felt that England, after the Restoration, had proved itself unworthy of a divinely inspired epic. He stated in RCG that the creation of ambitious Christian art might depend on the “fate of this age” (MLM 841).

  44–45. unless … wing: Milton feared that Aristotle was right in declaring that a cold climate such as England’s (at least in comparison with the Mediterranean climates that spawned Homer and Vergil) might leave the mind unripe. See Fink.

  45. or years: Milton was almost sixty when his epic was published; George Herbert’s “The Forerunners,” written in his thirties, anticipates senility. damp: discourage (OED 3).

  46. Depressed: brought down. Psychological failure is here expressed in the metaphor of failed flight, lower than what Milton intends. Cp. the metaphor of winged flight at 3.13 and 7.4.

  49. Hesperus: Venus, the evening star.

  56. maugre: despite.

  58–69. By night … way: Satan keeps to the darkness for an entire week to evade detection by Uriel. For three days he remains on the equator, flying ahead of the advance of sunlight. He spends the other four days compassing the Earth from north to south, traversing each colure—a reference to two great circles that intersect at right angles on the earth’s poles. “He crosses the world, but not in benediction” (Evans in Broadbent edition).

  67. coast averse: the north side of Eden, which is averse (turned away from) the eastern entrance, where cherubim keep watch.

  77–82. From Eden … Indus: Satan spans the globe in search of his fit vessel (l. 89) in the animal kingdom. He journeys north from Paradise, to the Pontus (Black Sea), the pool Maeotis (Sea of Azov), and the Ob (a river in Siberia), then down the other side of the earth to Antarctica, and west to the Orontes (a river in Syria), to Darien (Panama), to the Ganges in India, and finally to the Indus, a river near Eden.

  89. fittest imp: An imp is a graft or shoot; Satan’s graft of fraud will be fittest, most likely to thrive, on the snake.

  93. native subtlety: See Gen. 3.1.

  103–105. Adam suffered from the same misapprehension about the heavens (8.273–74n) and was corrected by Raphael (8.85–90n).

  113. growth, sense, reason: progressing from vegetable (growth) to animal (sense) to rational (reason).

  121–22. hateful siege/Of contraries: Here as elsewhere, Satan recoils from the beautiful, the pleasing, and the good. Cp. the “grateful vicissitude” of 6.8.

  142. name: race, stock.

  144. to repair his numbers: not, according to 3.289, God’s original motive for the Creation, but a motive
(7.152–53).

  166. This essence: Satan’s angelic matter, earlier said to be uncompounded or undifferentiated with regard to human fixities such as body parts (1.423–31). incarnate: Satan’s parody of the Incarnation is undertaken with high-minded disdain, not love.

  170. obnoxious: exposed.

  171. Revenge, at first though sweet: repudiating the proverb “Revenge is sweet” (Tilley R90).

  172. on itself recoils: The metaphor of cannon, Satan’s self-defining invention (cp. 4.17), continues in the gunnery language of lines 173–74.

  174. higher: when aiming higher.

  176. son of despite: son of scorn, with the added suggestion that man was created to spite Satan; on Satan’s spite, see 2.384–85.

  186. Nor nocent: not harmful. Milton’s unusual phrase signifies “innocence” but suggests its opposite.

  191. close: in hiding.

  205. still: continually. For the first time, Eve initiates a conversation.

  213. hear: 1667; 1674 reads “bear.”

  215–17. to wind … to climb: Both ivy and woodbine are in need of a prop, as Eve soon will be (ll. 431–33).

  218. spring: thicket.

  219. redress: put upright.

  240. of love the food: For Ovid hope is the food of love (Met. 9.749); for Shakespeare’s Orsino music is the food of love (TN 1.1.1); for Adam smiles are the food of love—and smiles, we know, lead to kisses (4.499–502).

  247–48. but … yield: Having dismissed the idea that Eden cannot be sufficiently tamed through their current work habits, Adam speculates that Eve has had enough converse (conversation).

  249. Cp. Masque 375–80.

  265. Or: whether.

  270. virgin majesty: Technically, Eve is not a virgin. But virgo in Latin and virginale in Italian can sometimes denote “beauty,” “freshness,” “sweetness,” “modesty” (Todd), or simply “woman” (Hume). In English, virgin can mean “chaste” (OED 1) and hence be applied to married women, as Puritans especially stressed.

  272. sweet austere composure: The adjectives verge on oxymoron.

  276. parting angel overheard: It is likely that Eve overheard 8.630–43, which begins with Raphael taking the “parting sun” to be his signal to “depart.”

  292. entire: unblemished.

  293. diffident: mistrustful.

  296–301. For he … found: Adam seems to be falsely denying that he had entertained the thought (at ll. 265–69) that Eve, if apart from him, might fall. He temporarily projects that thought onto Satan, who does indeed have it.

  310. Access: increase.

  314. raised unite: unite all his strengths in a state of generally heightened vigor.