No More Learning

How shall I behold the face
Henceforth of God or Angel, erst with joy
And rapture so oft beheld? Those Heavenly shapes
Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze
Insufferably bright. Oh, might I here
In solitude live savage, in some glade
Obscured, where highest winds, impenetrable
To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad,
And brown as evening! Cover me, ye pines!
Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs
Hide me, where I may never see them more! "

Then they cower in the woods, and clothe themselves with leaves.

Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind
They sat them down to weep.

But passion also took possession of them, and they began to taunt each
other with recriminations. Adam, with estranged look, exclaimed:

"Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and stayed
With me, as I besought thee, when that strange
Desire of wandering, this unhappy morn,
I know not whence possessed thee! We had then
Remained still happy! "

Eve retorts:

"Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent,
Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me. "

Then Adam:

"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. "

Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning;
And of their vain contest appeared no end.


_X.
--Sin and Death Triumph_

The Angels left on guard now slowly return from Paradise to Heaven
to report their failure, but are reminded by God that it was
ordained; and the Son is sent down to judge the guilty pair, after
hearing their excuses, and to punish them with the curses of toil
and death. Meantime Sin and Death "snuff the smell of mortal change"
on Earth, and leaving Hell-gate "belching outrageous flame," erect
a broad road from Hell to Earth through Chaos, and as they come in
sight of the World meet Satan steering his way back as an angel,
"between the Centaur and the Scorpion. " He makes Sin and Death his
plenipotentiaries on Earth, adjuring them first to make man their
thrall, and lastly kill; and as they pass to the evil work "the
blasted stars look wan. " The return to Hell is received with loud
acclaim, which comes in the form of a hiss, and Satan and all his
hosts are turned into grovelling snakes. Adam, now in his repentance,
is sternly resentful against Eve, who becomes submissive, and both
pass from remorse to "sorrow unfeigned and humiliation meek. "


_XI. --Repentance and the Doom_

The repentance of the pair is accepted by God, who sends down the
Archangel Michael, with a cohort of cherubim, to announce that death
will not come until time has been given for repentance, but Paradise
can no longer be their home. Whereupon Eve laments.

"O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? Thus leave
Thee, native soil? These happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of gods, where I had hoped to spend
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both? O flowers,
That never will in any other climate grow,
My early visitation and my last
At even, which I tied up with tender hand
From the first opening bud and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the Sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
. . .