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Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo

This annual humbling, certain numbered days,

To dash their pride, and joy for man seduced.

However, some tradition they dispersed

Among the heathen, of their purchase got,

And fabled how the serpent, whom they called

Ophion, with Eurynome, the wideEncroaching Eve, perhaps, had first the rule

Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven

And Ops, ere yet Dictæan Jove was born.

Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair

Too soon arrived; Sin, there in power before,

Once actual; now in body, and to dwell

Habitual habitant; behind her, Death,

Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet

On his pale horse: to whom Sin thus began:

Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death!

What thinkest thou of our empire now, though earned

With travail difficult? Not better far

Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have sat watch,

Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved?

Whom thus the sin-born monster answered soon:

To me, who with eternal famine pine,

Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven;

There best, where most with ravine I may meet,

Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems

To stuff this maw, this vast un-hide-bound corpse.

To whom the incestuous mother thus replied:

Thou, therefore, on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers,

Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl,

No homely morsels; and whatever thing

The scythe of Time mows down, devour unspared,

Till I, in man residing, through the race,

\* Un-hide-bound. - A body hanging loose, wanting filling up.

^'Ophion in Greek signifies a serpent, and Milton supposes the old Serpent may have been worshipped under that name. The reference to Eurynome and Eve is obscure, but it points, beyond doubt, to the element of ambition in Eve's fall.