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BOOK X.-996-1031]

In offices of love, how we may lighten

Each other's burden, in our share of woe,

Since this day's death denounced, if aught I see,

Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil—

Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil—

A long day's dying to augment our pain,

And to our seed (O hapless seed!) derived.

To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, replied:-Adam, by sad experiment I know How little weight my words with thee can find, Found so erroneous, thence by just event Found so unfortunate: nevertheless, Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart, Living or dying, from thee I will not hide What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen, Tending to some relief of our extremes, Or end; though sharp and sad, yet tolerable, As in our evils, and of easier choice. If care of our descent perplex us most, Which must be born to certain woe, devoured By death at last—and miserable it is To be to others cause of misery, Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring Into this cursed world a woeful race, That, after wretched life, must be at last Food for so foul a monster—in thy power It lies yet, ere conception, to prevent The race unblest, to being yet unbegot. Childless thou art, childless remain; so Death Shall be deceived his glut, and with us two Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw. But if thou judge it hard and difficult, Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain From love's due rights, nuptial embraces sweet, And, with desire, to languish without hope,

Before the present object languishing

With like desire, which would be misery

And torment less than none of what we dread,

Then, both ourselves and seed at once to free

From what we fear for both, let us make short,

Let us seek Death; or, he not found, supply

With our own hands his office on ourselves.

Why stand we longer shivering under fears

That show no end but Death; and have the power,

Of many ways to die, the shortest choosing,

Destruction with destruction to destroy?

PARADISE LOST.

She ended here, or vehement despair

Broke off the rest; so much of Death her thoughts

Had entertained, as dyed her cheeks with pale.

But Adam, with such counsel nothing swayed,

To better hopes his more attentive mind

Labouring had raised; and thus to Eve replied:

Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent than what thy mind contemns; But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes That excellence thought in thee; and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overloved. Or if thou covet death, as utmost end Of misery, so thinking to evade The penalty pronounced, doubt not but God Hath wiselier armed his vengeful ire, than so To be forestalled; much more I fear lest death, So snatched, will not exempt us from the pain We are by doom to pay; rather, such acts Of contumacy will provoke the Highest To make death in us live. Then let us seek Some safer resolution, which methinks I have in view, calling to mind with heed Part of our sentence, that thy seed shall bruise