No More Learning

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! "
He ended; and his words replete with guile
Into her heart too easy entrance won.

Eve herself then took up the argument and repeated admiringly the
Serpent's persuasions.

"In the day we eat
Of this fair fruit our doom is we shall die!
How dies the Serpent? He hath eaten and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns,
Irrational till then. For us alone
Was death invented? Or to us denied
This intellectual food, for beasts reserved?
Here grows the care of all, this fruit divine,
Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,
Of virtue to make wise. What hinders then
To reach and feed at once both body and mind? "
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth-reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate.