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Or of revived Adonis,1 or renowned Alcinous,2 host of old Laertes' son, Or that, not mystic,3 where the sapient king Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. Much he the place admired, the person more: As one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick, and sewers, annoy the air, 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, or tedded grass4 or kine, Or 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 sums all delight. Such pleasure took the serpent to behold This flowry plat, the sweet recess of Eve Thus early, thus alone; her heavenly form Angelic, but more soft, and feminine, Her graceful innocence, her every air Of gesture, or least action, overawed His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought. That space the evil one abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained Stupidly good; of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge. But the hot hell that always in him burns, Though in mid heaven, soon ended his delight, And tortures him now more, the more he sees Of pleasure, not for him ordained: then soon Fierce hate he recollects,5 and all his thoughts

\ Fierce hate he recollects. - Recalls, rallies.

BOOK IX.-472-505] Thoughts, whither have ye led me! With what sweet Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites: Compulsion thus transported, to forget What hither brought us? Hate, not love; nor hope Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, Save what is in destroying; other joy To me is lost. Then let me not let pass Occasion which now smiles; behold alone The woman, opportune to all attempts, Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh, Whose higher intellectual more I shun, And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould; Foe not informidable, exempt from wound, I not; so much hath hell debased, and pain Enfeebled me, to what I was in heaven. She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods! Not terrible, though terror be in love And beauty, not approached by stronger hate, Hate stronger, under show of love well feigned, The way which to her ruin now I tend.

So spake the enemy of mankind enclosed In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve Addressed his way: not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; .With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape, And lovely; never since of serpent-kind Lovelier; not those that in Illyria changed

Adons.—Tradition made Adonis to delight in a beautiful garden. Alcinous.—Alcinous was a son of Neptune, happy in his rule over a portion of the island of Scheria.

Not mystic.—This reference shows the solution of the island of Scheria.

Not mystic.—This reference shows the sense in which Milton understood the Song of Solomon.

Tedded grass.—Grass cost of \ Tedded grass. - Grass cast about newly cut.

^· Gratulating.—Rejoicing in.