[Paradise Regained][AB]
I.—The Forty Days
I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung By one man's disobedience lost, now sing Recovered Paradise to all mankind, By one man's firm obedience fully tried Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.
Having thus introduced his subject, the poet describes, on Scriptural lines, the baptism of John, seen by Satan, "when roving still about the world." The Fiend then "flies to his place" and "summons all his mighty peers"—a gloomy consistory—warning them that the time seems approaching when they "must bide the stroke of that long-threatened wound," when "the woman's Seed shall bruise the serpent's head." They agree that Satan shall return to earth and act as Tempter. In Heaven, meantime, God tells the assembly of angels, addressing Gabriel, that He will expose His Son to Satan, in order that the Son may "show him worthy of His birth divine and high prediction." And the angelic choir sings "Victory and triumph to the Son of God."
So they in Heaven their odes and vigils tuned. Meanwhile the Son of God ...
Musing and much revolving in his breast How best the mighty work he might begin Of Saviour to mankind, and which way first Publish his God-like office now mature, One day forth walked alone, the Spirit leading, And his deep thoughts, the better to converse With solitude, till, far from track of men, Thought following thought, and step by step led on, He entered now the bordering desert wild.
Christ then, in meditation, tells reminiscently the story of His life.
Full forty days He passed ... Nor tasted human food, nor hunger felt, Till those days ended; hungered then at last Among wild beasts. They at His sight grew mild, Nor sleeping Him nor waking harmed; His walk The fiery serpent fled and noxious worm; The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof. But now an aged man in rural weeds, Following, as seemed, the quest of some stray ewe, Or withered sticks to gather, which might serve Against a winter's day, when winds blow keen, To warm him wet returned from field at eve, He saw approach.
This is Satan, and, entering into conversation adjures the Son—