ITH dispatchful looks in haste

WITH

She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent, What choice to choose for delicacy best, What order, so contrived as not to mix Tastes, not well join'd, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change : Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields In India, East or West, or middle shore In Pontus or the Punic coast, or where Alcinöus reign'd, fruit of all kinds, in coat Rough or smooth rined, or bearded husk, or shell, She gathers, tribute large, and on the board Heaps with unsparing hand. For drink the grape She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths

From many a berry, and from sweet kernels press'd She tempers dulcet creams; nor these to hold Wants her fit vessels pure; then strews the ground With rose and odours from the shrub unfumed.

Raised of grassy turf Their table was, and mossy seats had round, And on her ample square from side to side All autumn piled, though spring and autumn here Danced hand in hand.

PARADISE LOST, Book V.

he to shade

SIX wings be wote, divine. the pair that clad

Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair

Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold
And colours dipt in heaven; the third his feet
Shadow'd from either heel with feather'd mail,
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance fill'd
The circuit wide.

PARADISE LOST, Book V.

EVE

Stood to entertain her guest from Heaven

On whom the Angel “Hail!”

Bestow'd, the holy salutation used

Long after to blest Mary, second Eve:

"Hail! Mother of Mankind, whose fruitful womb Shall fill the world more numerous with thy sons

Than with these various fruits the trees of God

Have heap'd this table!"

PARADISE LOST, Book V.

RAPHAEL,

The affable Archangel, had forewarn'd
Adam by dire example to beware,
Apostasy, by what befell in Heaven
To those apostates, lest the like befall
In Paradise to Adam or his race,

Charged not to touch the interdicted Tree.

He with his consorted Eve

The story heard attentive, and was fill'd
With admiration and deep muse, to hear

Of things so high and strange, things to their thought
So unimaginable as hate in Heaven,

And war so near the peace of God in bliss,
With such confusion; but the evil, soon
Driven back, redounded as a flood on those
From whom it sprung, impossible to mix
With blessedness.

PARADISE LOST, Book VII.

SAT

ATAN, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
The tempter ere the accuser of mankind.

Horror and doubt distract

His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place.

"Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good: by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven's King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As Man ere long and this new World shall know."

Το

PARADISE LOST, Book IV.

"O be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering.

PARADISE LOST, Book I.

S one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight, The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound; If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass, What pleasing seem'd, for her now pleases more, She most, and in her look seems all delight: Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve Thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form Angelic, but more soft and feminine, Her graceful innocence, her every air Of gesture or least action, overawed His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought: That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remain'd Stupidly good, of enmity disarm'd,

Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.

PARADISE LOST, Book IX.