Poem 9

Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned Or of revived Adonis, or renowned Alcinous, host of old Laertes’ son, Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. Much he the place admired, the person more. As 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 Adjoined, 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 seemed, for her now pleases more, She most, and in her look sums 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 remained Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.