Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (61 page)

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 dalliance
¹⁰¹⁶
move.

   “Eve
¹⁰¹⁷
, now I see thou art exact of taste,

And elegant
¹⁰¹⁸
, 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 ten
¹⁰²⁵
.

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

As meet
¹⁰²⁸
is, after such delicious fare;

For never did thy beauty since the day
¹⁰²⁹

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 seized
¹⁰³⁷
, 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 seal
¹⁰⁴³
,

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 spirits
¹⁰⁴⁸
had played, and inmost powers

Made err, was now exhaled, and grosser sleep

Bred of unkindly
¹⁰⁵⁰
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: he
¹⁰⁵⁸
covered, but his robe

Uncovered more. So rose the Danite
¹⁰⁵⁹
strong,

Herculean
¹⁰⁶⁰
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 evil
¹⁰⁶⁷
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 store
¹⁰⁷⁸
;

Even shame, the last of evils
¹⁰⁷⁹
; 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 Earthly
¹⁰⁸³
, 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 umbrage
¹⁰⁸⁷
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 obnoxious
¹⁰⁹⁴
, 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 tree
¹¹⁰¹
, not that kind for fruit renowned,

But such as at this day to Indians known

In Malabar
¹¹⁰³
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 targe
¹¹¹¹
,

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 glory
¹¹¹⁵
. Such of late

Columbus
¹¹¹⁶
found th’ American so girt

With feathered cincture
¹¹¹⁷
, 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 altered 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 accusation
¹¹⁸⁷
spent

The fruitless hours
¹¹⁸⁸
, but neither self-condemning,

And of their vain contest appeared no end
¹¹⁸⁹
.

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.

320.
Less
: too little.

326.
still
: always.

335–36.
Cp.
Areop
(
MLM
939, 944).

341.
Eden were no Eden
: See 4.27–28n.

353.
still
: always.

363.
she
: reason.

367.
approve
: prove.

371.
securer
: more careless.

372.
Go; for thy stay
: The conjunction of
go
and
stay
prepares, well over 3,000 lines in advance, for a major poetic effect at the end of the poem (12.615–20n, 648–49n).

386.
light
: light-footed.

387.
Oread
: mountain nymph;
Dryad:
wood nymph;
Delia’s train:
the attendants of Diana, goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity.

393.
Pales
: the Roman goddess of flocks;
Pomona:
the goddess of fruit trees.

395.
Vertumnus
: a garden god who pursued Pomona.

396.
Yet virgin of Proserpina
: before she bore Proserpina, whose rape by Pluto anticipates Eve’s fall. See 4.268–72n.

404–11.
A rich apostrophe. The “Eve” in
deceived
and
event
, puns hitherto muted, erupts into full clarity. We first take
deceived
and
failing
in a general sense, announcing the whole process of her fall, but in the next lines must localize their reference to her failing, deceived presumption about her return. In this one mistake, however, lie all mistakes (Ricks 97). The loss of sound sleep and sweet repast recalls Shakespeare’s conscience-stricken Macbeth.

405.
Event perverse
: unforeseen outcome.

413.
Mere
: pure, unmixed.

431.
mindless
: heedless.

432.
See 4.269–71.

436.
voluble
: from the Latin
volubilis
, rolling.

438.
Imbordered
: planted as borders;
hand:
handiwork.

439–44.
The catalog of gardens less delicious than Eden begins with those of Adonis, which Spenser represented as a paradise (
FQ
3.6.39–42), and Alcinous, whose garden is visited by Odysseus (Homer,
Od
. 7.112–35). The last,
not mystic
(allegorical), is the garden where
sapient
Solomon entertained his wife, Pharaoh’s daughter (Song of Solomon 6.2).

446.
sewers annoy the air
: as they certainly annoyed the air of London; see John Evelyn,
Fumifugium: or, the Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated
(1661), who argued that smoke and odors had made the city into “the suburbs of Hell” (6).

450.
tedded
: mown and spread out to dry;
kine:
archaic plural of
cow

453.
for
: because of.

456.
plat
: plot of ground.

458.
more soft
: Cp. 4.479.

463.
That space
: for that space of time.

467.
Confirming lines 254–55, but ironically (the mind cannot make a Heaven of Hell).

472.
gratulating
: greeting;
excites:
stirs up (his thoughts, by addressing or greeting them).

480.
Occasion
: opportunity or falling together, from the Latin root
cadere
, “to fall.”

485.
mold
: material.

490–92.
“Beauty and love inspire awe, unless counteracted by a stronger hatred.” The spondee in the chiasmic
Hate strong makes
the point metrically.

496.
indented
: sliding back and forth, zigzagging.