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Воок Х.—780-815]

To mould me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me, or here place In this delicious garden? As my will Concurred not to my being, it were but right And equal to reduce me to my dust; Desirous to resign, and render back, All I received; unable to perform Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold The good I sought not. To the loss of that, Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added The sense of endless woes? Inexplicable Thy justice seems. Yet, to say truth, too late I thus contest; then should have been refused Those terms, whatever, when they were proposed. Thou didst accept them: wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? and, though God Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son Prove disobedient; and, reproved, retort, Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not. Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? Yet him, not thy election, By natural necessity, begot. God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him; thy reward was of his grace; Thy punishment, then, justly is at his will. Be it so, for I submit; his doom is fair, That dust I am, and shall to dust return. Oh, welcome hour whenever! Why delays His hand to execute what his decree Fixed on this day? Why do I overlive? Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet Mortality, my sentence, and be earth Insensible! How glad would lay me down, As in my mother's lap! There I should rest, And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more

Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse To me, and to my offspring, would torment me With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die; Lest that pure breath of life—the spirit of Man Which God inspired, cannot together perish With this corporeal clod; then, in the grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living death? Oh thought Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath Of life that sinned. What dies but what had life And sin? The body properly hath neither. All of me, then, shall die: let this appease The doubt, since human reach no farther knows: For though the Lord of all be infinite, Is his wrath also? Be it, man is not so, But mortal doomed. How can he exercise Wrath without end on man, whom death must end? Can he make deathless death? That were to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself Impossible is held, as argument Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out, For anger's sake, finite to infinite In punished man, to satisfy his rigour, Satisfied never? That were to extend His sentence beyond dust and nature's law, By which all causes else, according still To the reception of their matter, act, Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward-which I feel begun Both in me, and without me-and so last To perpetuity: ah, me! that fear Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head. Both death and I

PARADISE LOST.