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Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark, A lazar-house it seemed, wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased; all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs, Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,2 Marasmus,3 and wide-wasting pestilence, Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums, Dire was the tossing, deep the groans. Despair Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch; And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked With vows, as their chief good, and final hope. Sight so deform what heart of rock could long Dry-eyed behold? Adam could not, but wept, Though not of woman born; compassion quelled His best of man, and gave him up to tears A space, till firmer thoughts restrained excess; And, scarce recovering words, his plaint renewed:

O miserable mankind, to what fall

Degraded, to what wretched state reserved!

Better end here unborn. Why is life given

To be thus wrested from us? Rather why

Obtruded on us thus? who, if we knew

What we receive, would either not accept

Life offered, or soon beg to lay it down,

Glad to be so dismissed in peace. Can thus

The image of God in man, created once

So goodly and erect, though faulty since,

To such unsightly sufferings be debased

Under inhuman pains? Why should not man,

A lazar-house, - A hospital.

Retaining still Divine similitude

In part, from such deformities be free,

And, for his Maker's image sake, exempt.

PARADISE LOST.

Their Maker's image, answered Michael, then

Forsook them, when themselves they vilified

To serve ungoverned appetite, and took

His image whom they served, a brutish vice,

Inductive mainly to the sin of Eve.

Therefore so abject is their punishment,

Disfiguring not God's likeness, but their own;

Or, if His likeness, by themselves defaced;

While they pervert pure nature's healthful rules

To loathsome sickness; worthily, since they

God's image did not reverence in themselves.

I yield it just, said Adam, and submit:

But is there yet no other way, besides

These painful passages, how we may come

To death, and mix with our connatural dust?

There is, said Michael, if thou well observe The rule of: Not too much—by temperance taught, In what thou eat'st and drink'st; seeking from thence Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight. Till many years over thy head return, So mayst thou live, till, like ripe fruit, thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature. This is old age; but, then, thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty; which will change To withered, weak, and gray; thy senses then, Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forego, To what thou hast; and for the air of youth, Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign A melancholy damp of cold and dry, To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume The balm of life. To whom our ancestor:

Henceforth I fly not Death, nor would prolong

^&lt;sup>3</sup> Atrophy (ἀτροφια). — When a body wastes away from disease in the digestive organs.

³ Marasmus (μαρασμός). — Consumption.