University of Virginia Library

‘Survey,’ they said, ‘this world; a Paradise
Within an Eden, starry realm of space;
But greater far those things that are concealed:
Whence mind, and its dominion; . . and the law
That animates, and beats in every pulse
Of the all-teeming earth, which aye revolves
In ceaseless agony, producing aye.
And man is of these twain, and knowledge would
Of both, but can of neither, unless he
Become what he would know; and one is Life,
And one is Death; unique, or else impure.
'Tis in his will to choose, in Adam's was,
When God to him o'er earth dominion gave:
In sign whereof, two Trees he did appoint;
One called the Tree of Lives, the other named
Of Knowledge, and of Death; thus bidding him:
—Abstain from this, freely of that partake,
As he would live, and in God's love abide,
And knowing nought, know all. True wisdom this,
Not understood—till before human sight
God brought the Creatures; then Man felt the power
Whereof God spake, and gave them each a name,
According to its nature. Coupled they;
He was alone, and perfect in himself,
Awing the brute, yet awed himself of God.
They gambolled in the love-sport, like with like;
He held with a Superior high commune;
Not all unequal to such colloquy:
Or with himself discoursed, till thought grew big
For utterance, and wished companionship.
Then he discerned his insufficiency,
(Yet innocent, albeit deserving nought,
Having his being of Almighty grace;)
And what was good before became not good.
—These things return upon us as a dream,
As of the sleep he waked from, when thou, Eve,
Clad in thy beauty, burnedst on Adam's gaze.
He was not what he had been, yet was blest,
Beyond conception blest. What he desired
Had being, love-created, made for love.
‘Eve,’ he exclaimed, ‘flesh of my flesh thou art,
Bone of my bone.’ . . nor knew how he should quit
His heavenly Father, when he prophesied,
That therefore man should willingly forsake
Father, and mother, and his wife prefer,
More amiable, relation closer still.
—Her thus in virgin innocence he wooed—
‘Our proper bliss is to enjoy what God
Created, but enjoyment temperance needs,
Else none; and chief in kind, and in degree,
Moral delight; of sensual much eschew,
Evil, effect of sin, and cause of death.
For the capacity of sense hath bounds,
Being, as its object, finite; sated soon,
And lost all relish in excess. For this,
Test of our temperance, yon Tree hath God
Prohibited, of knowledge, and of death,
Of good and evil, . . evil the abuse.
But of our spiritual faculties
How infinite the scope, and only can
With what is infinite be satisfied;
Knowledge of God, to love whom is to know.’
—In such discourse, reposed they underneath
The Tree of Lives; whose umbrage broad, and cool,
Them there imparadised, and felt this truth—
To be is far more noble than to know.
Ah, all must be, what they would know aright;
And to know good, or evil is to be.
Whence sin, and whence redemption . . How redeemed?
By labour, and by death. For knowledge made
Man's nakedness ashamed of its own need,
Which hiding, from the Sacramental Tree
Its ample leaves they plucked. Aiming at what
Was His sole property who formed the heart,
They learned their wants, but not their remedy.
Discovery vain, till he, whose frown they feared,
Made manifest the love they dared to doubt,
As if the liberty of choice were not
Sufficient pledge of bounty. O forewent
Was reason then; false oracle believed,
Of knowledge without power; that God, and Man,
Made twain, until the Woman's Seed atone;
Better ambition justified, and man
With his celestial Father reconciled.
—Though as by fire; for who will not believe,
Must try experience, though it torture him.
Doubt if ye will, in order to believe,
But not to doubt; much less believe, to doubt;
But, and in faith, both doubt ye, and believe.
Men prove that fire will burn, by feeling it;
Yet he who feels to prove, must have believed,
That he should prove it, first, by feeling it.
—And why should Man doubt God, but to believe
The Adversary, false oracle, whose sense
Is double?’

There I answered; ‘True, my lord,
Of such false faith iniquity abounds.’
—Then spake again the Elder of the Three.
‘My Spirit shall not alway strive with Man,
For he of flesh as spirit is compact:
One hundred years, and twenty be his term.
His wickedness is great; and, in his heart,
Is each imagination of his thoughts
Evil unmixed, unchanged. Me it repents,
That I have made him; yea, it grieves my heart.
Whom I created, him will I destroy,
Even from the face of earth; both man, and beast,
And creeping thing, and fowl that wings the air.
That I have made them it repenteth me.
But in my eyes, thou, Noah, hast found grace:
Know, therefore, that the End of all flesh is
Come up before me; for the earth is filled
With violence through them: and lo, I will
Destroy them, with the earth. Make thee an Ark;
Of gopher wood, pitched inside, and without;
Three hundred cubits long, and fifty broad,
And thirty high; with rooms three stories up;
A window, and a door, set in the side.
For lo, I bring, even I, a Flood on earth
Of waters; for destruction of all flesh,
Wherein is breath of life, from under heaven:
And every thing that is in earth shall die.’
—So saying, they departed suddenly,
Or vanished; and we knew too late that we
Gods unawares, or angels entertained.’—