No More Learning

_ Pausing a moment on this outer edge
Where the supernal sword-glare cuts in light
The dark exterior desert,--hast thou strength,
Beloved, to look behind us to the gate?

_Eve. _ Have I not strength to look up to thy face?

_Adam. _ We need be strong: yon spectacle of cloud
Which seals the gate up to the final doom,
Is God's seal manifest. There seem to lie
A hundred thunders in it, dark and dead;
The unmolten lightnings vein it motionless;
And, outward from its depth, the self-moved sword
Swings slow its awful gnomon of red fire
From side to side, in pendulous horror slow,
Across the stagnant ghastly glare thrown flat
On the intermediate ground from that to this.
The angelic hosts, the archangelic pomps,
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, rank on rank,
Rising sublimely to the feet of God,
On either side and overhead the gate,
Show like a glittering and sustained smoke
Drawn to an apex. That their faces shine
Betwixt the solemn clasping of their wings
Clasped high to a silver point above their heads,--
We only guess from hence, and not discern.

_Eve. _ Though we were near enough to see them shine,
The shadow on thy face were awfuller,
To me, at least,--to me--than all their light.

_Adam. _ What is this, Eve? thou droppest heavily
In a heap earthward, and thy body heaves
Under the golden floodings of thine hair!

_Eve. _ O Adam, Adam!
by that name of Eve--
Thine Eve, thy life--which suits me little now,
Seeing that I now confess myself thy death
And thine undoer, as the snake was mine,--
I do adjure thee, put me straight away,
Together with my name! Sweet, punish me!
O Love, be just! and, ere we pass beyond
The light cast outward by the fiery sword,
Into the dark which earth must be to us,
Bruise my head with thy foot,--as the curse said
My seed shall the first tempter's! strike with curse,
As God struck in the garden! and as HE,
Being satisfied with justice and with wrath,
Did roll his thunder gentler at the close,--
Thou, peradventure, mayst at last recoil
To some soft need of mercy. Strike, my lord!
_I_, also, after tempting, writhe on the ground,
And I would feed on ashes from thine hand,
As suits me, O my tempted!

_Adam. _ My beloved,
Mine Eve and life--I have no other name
For thee or for the sun than what ye are,
My utter life and light! If we have fallen,
It is that we have sinned,--we: God is just;
And, since his curse doth comprehend us both,
It must be that his balance holds the weights
Of first and last sin on a level. What!
Shall I who had not virtue to stand straight
Among the hills of Eden, here assume
To mend the justice of the perfect God,
By piling up a curse upon his curse,
Against thee--thee?

_Eve. _ For so, perchance, thy God,
Might take thee into grace for scorning me;
Thy wrath against the sinner giving proof
Of inward abrogation of the sin:
And so, the blessed angels might come down
And walk with thee as erst,--I think they would,--
Because I was not near to make them sad
Or soil the rustling of their innocence.

_Adam.