original, With Heavenly spoils, our spoils. What he decreed He effected; Man he made, and for him built Magnificent this World, and Earth his seat, Him lord pronounced, and, O indignity! Subjected to his service Angel-wings, And flaming ministers to watch and tend Their earthy charge. Of these the vigilance I dread, and, to elude, thus wrapt in mist Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry In every bush and brake, where hap may find The serpent sleeping, in whose mazy folds To hide me, and the dark intent I bring. O foul descent! that I, who erst contended With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained Into a beast, and, mixed with bestial slime, This essence to incarnate and imbrute, That to the highth of deity aspired! But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he soared, obnoxious first or last To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils. Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed (Since higher I fall short) on him who next Provokes my envy, this new favourite Of Heaven, this man of clay, son of despite, Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker raised From dust: spite then with spite is best repaid.”
So saying, through each thicket, dank or dry, Like a black mist low-creeping, he held on His midnight search, where soonest he might find The serpent. Him fast sleeping soon he found, In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled, His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles: Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den, Nor nocent yet, but on the grassy herb, Fearless, unfeared, he slept. In at his mouth The Devil entered, and his brutal sense, In heart or head, possessing soon inspired With act intelligential; but his sleep Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn.
Now, whenas sacred light began to dawn In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed Their morning incense, when all things that breathe From the Earth’s great altar send up silent praise To the Creator, and his nostrils fill With grateful smell, forth came the human pair, And joined