11

As one who long in populous City pent, [ 445 ]

Where Houses thick and Sewers annoy the Aire,

Forth issuing on a Summers Morn to breathe

Among the pleasant Villages and Farmes

Adjoynd, from each thing met conceaves delight,

The smell of Grain, or tedded Grass, or Kine, [ 450 ]

Or Dairie, each rural sight, each rural sound;

If chance with Nymphlike step fair Virgin pass,

What pleasing seemd, for her now pleases more,

She most, and in her look summs all Delight.

Such Pleasure took the Serpent to behold [ 455 ]

This Flourie Plat, the sweet recess of Eve

Thus earlie, thus alone; her Heavnly forme

Angelic, but more soft, and Feminine,

Her graceful Innocence, her every Aire

Of gesture or lest action overawd [ 460 ]

His Malice, and with rapine sweet bereavd

His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought:

That space the Evil one abstracted stood

From his own evil, and for the time remaind

Stupidly good, of enmitie disarmd, [ 465 ]

Of guile, of hate, of envie, of revenge;

But the hot Hell that alwayes in him burnes,

Though in mid Heavn, soon ended his delight,

And tortures him now more, the more he sees

Of pleasure not for him ordaind: then soon [ 470 ]

Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts

Of mischief, gratulating, 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 [ 475 ]

Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste

Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy,

Save what is in destroying, other joy

To me is lost. Then let me not let pass

Occasion which now smiles, behold alone [ 480 ]

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 hautie, and of limb

Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould, [ 485 ]

Foe not informidable, exempt from wound,

I not; so much hath Hell debasd, and paine

Infeebld me, to what I was in Heavn.