Eve. Heaven, from whence love, our greatest blessing, came,
Can give no more, but still to be the same.
Thou more of pleasure may'st with me partake;
I, more of pride, because thy bliss I make.
Adam. When to my arms thou brought'st thy virgin love,
Fair angels sung our bridal hymn above:
The Eternal, nodding, shook the firmament,
And conscious nature gave her glad consent.
Roses unbid, and every fragrant flower,
Flew from their stalks, to strew thy nuptial bower:
The furred and feathered kind the triumph did pursue,
And fishes leaped above the streams, the passing pomp to view.
Eve. When your kind eyes looked languishing on mine,
And wreathing arms did soft embraces join,
A doubtful trembling seized me first all o'er;
Then, wishes; and a warmth, unknown before:
What followed was all ecstasy and trance;
Immortal pleasures round my swimming eyes did dance,
And speechless joys, in whose sweet tumult tost,
I thought my breath and my new being lost.
Lucif. O death to hear! and a worse hell on earth! [Aside.
What mad profusion on this clod-born birth!
Abyss of joys, as if heaven meant to shew
What, in base matters, such a hand could do:
Or was his virtue spent, and he no more
With angels could supply the exhausted store,
Of which I swept the sky?
And wanting subjects to his haughty will,
On this mean work employed his trifling skill?
Eve. Blest in ourselves, all pleasures else abound;
Without our care behold the unlaboured ground
Bounteous of fruit; above our shady bowers
The creeping jessamin thrusts her fragrant flowers;
The myrtle, orange, and the blushing rose,
With bending heaps so nigh their blooms disclose,
Each seems to swell the flavour which the other blows:
By these the peach, the guava, and the pine,
And, creeping 'twixt them all, the mantling vine
Does round their trunks her purple clusters twine.
Adam. All these are ours, all nature's excellence,
Whose taste or smell can bless the feasted sense;
One only fruit, in the mid garden placed,—
The Tree of Knowledge,—is denied our taste;
(Our proof of duty to our Maker's will:)
Of disobedience, death's the threatened ill.
Eve. Death is some harm, which, though we know not yet,
Since threatened, we must needs imagine great:
And sure he merits it, who disobeys
That one command, and one of so much ease.
Lucif. Must they then die, if they attempt to know?
He sees they would rebel, and keeps them low.
On this foundation I their ruin lay,
Hope to know more shall tempt to disobey.
I fell by this, and, since their strength is less,
Why should not equal means give like success?
Adam. Come, my fair love, our morning's task we lose;
Some labour even the easiest life would chuse:
Ours is not great: the dangling boughs to crop,
Whose too luxuriant growth our alleys stop,
And choke the paths: This our delight requires,
And heaven no more of daily work desires.
Eve. With thee to live, is paradise alone:
Without the pleasure of thy sight, is none.
I fear small progress will be made this day;
So much our kisses will our task delay.[Exeunt.