| |
HE ended, and his words replete with guile | |
| Into her heart too easy entrance won: | |
| Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold | |
| Might tempt alone, and in her ears the sound | |
| Yet rung of persuasive words, impregned | 5 |
| With reason, to her seeming, and with truth: | |
| Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on, and waked | |
| An eager appetite, raised by the smell | |
| So savory of that fruit, which with desire, | |
| Inclinable now grown to touch or taste, | 10 |
| Solicited her longing eye; yet first | |
| Pausing awhile, thus to herself she mused. | |
| “Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits, | |
| Though kept from man, and worthy to be admired, | |
| Whose taste, too long forborne, at first assay | 15 |
| Gave elocution to the mute, and taught | |
| The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise: | |
| Thy praise he also who forbids thy use | |
| Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree | |
| Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; | 20 |
| Forbids us then to taste! but his forbidding | |
| Commends thee more, while it infers the good | |
| By thee communicated, and our want: | |
| For good unknown sure is not had, or had | |
| And yet unknown is as not had at all. | 25 |
| In plain then, what forbids he but to know, | |
| Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise? | |
| Such prohibitions bind not. But if death | |
| Bind us with after-bands, what profits then | |
| Our inward freedom? In the day we eat | 30 |
| Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die. | |
| How dies the serpent? he hath eaten and lives, | |
| And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, | |
| Irrational till then. For us alone | |
| Was death invented? or to us denied | 35 |
| This intellectual food, for beasts reserved? | |
| For beasts it seems: yet that one beast which first | |
| Hath tasted envies not, but brings with joy | |
| The good befallen him, author unsuspect, | |
| Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. | 40 |
| What fear I then? rather what know to fear | |
| Under this ignorance of good and evil, | |
| Of God or death, of law or penalty? | |
| Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine, | |
| Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, | 45 |
| Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then | |
| To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?” | |
| So saying, her rash hand in evil hour | |
| Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat: | |
| Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat | 50 |
| Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, | |
| That all was lost. Back to the thicket slunk | |
| The guilty serpent, and well might, for Eve | |
| Intent now wholly on her taste nought else | |
| Regarded, such delight till then, as seemed, | 55 |
| In fruit she never tasted, whether true | |
| Or fancied so, through expectation high | |
| Of knowledge: nor was Godhead from her thought. | |
| Greedily she ingorged without restraint, | |
| And knew not eating death. | 60 |
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