No More Learning

Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Found'st either sweet repast or sound repose.

The Fiend, questing through the garden, finds her

Veiled in a cloud of fragrance where she stood
Half-spied, so thick the roses bushing round
About her glowed. . . . Them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.

Seeing her, Satan "much the place admired, the person more. "

As one who, long in populous city pent,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight--
The smell of grain, of tedded grass, of kine,
Of dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound--
If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,
She most, and in her look seems all delight.
Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold
This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone.

The original serpent did not creep on the ground, but was a handsome
creature.

With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape
And lovely.

Appearing before Eve with an air of worshipful admiration, and
speaking in human language, the arch-deceiver gains her ear with
flattery. "Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve. " She asks how
it is that man's language is pronounced by "tongue of brute.
" The
reply is that the power came through eating the fruit of a certain
tree, which gave him reason, and also constrained him to worship her
as "sovran of creatures. " Asked to show her the tree, he leads her
swiftly to the Tree of Prohibition, and replying to her scruples and
fears, declares--

"Queen of the Universe! Do not believe
Those rigid threats of death. Ye shall not die.
How should ye? By the fruit? It gives you life
To knowledge. By the Threatener? Look on me--
Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live
And life more perfect have attained than Fate
Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot.
Shall that be shut to Man which to the Beast
Is open? Or will God incense his ire
For such a petty trespass? . . .
God therefore cannot hurt ye and be just.
Goddess humane, reach, then, and freely taste!