Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude.
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground.
Morn, Wak’d by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarr’d the gates of light.
All seemed well pleased, all seemed, but were not all.
Have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea.
And the earth self-balanced on her centre hung.
Those graceful acts, those thousand decencies, that daily flow from all her words and actions, mixed with love and sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned union of mind, or in us both one soul.
Who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers?
Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?
What am I pondering, you ask? So help me God, immortality.
And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.
Vanity is definitely my favorite sin.
Part of my soul I seek thee, and claim thee my other half.
Farewell happy fields, Where joy forever dwells: Hail, horrors, hail.
Should God create another Eve, and I Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no, I feel The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh, Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
Then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier far.
So shall the world go on, To good malignant, to bad men benign, Under her own weight groaning.
Ah, why should all mankind For one man’s fault, be condemned, If guiltless?
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair that ever since in love’s embraces met – Adam, the goodliest man of men since born his sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.
And, when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.