Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart, Living or dying from thee I will not hide What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen, Tending to some relief of our extremes, Or end, though sharp and sad, yet tolerable, As in our evils, and of easier choice. If care of our descent perplex us most, Which must be born to certain woe, devoured By Death at last (and miserable it is To be to others cause of misery, Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring Into this cursed World a woeful race, That after wretched life must be at last Food for so foul a monster), in thy power It lies, yet ere conception, to prevent The race unblest, to being yet unbegot. Childless thou art, childless remain; so Death Shall be deceived his glut, and with us two Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw. But if thou judge it hard and difficult, Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain From love’s due rites, nuptial embraces sweet, And with desire to languish without hope, Before the present object languishing With like desire, which would be misery And torment less than none of what we dread; Then, both our selves and seed at once to free From what we fear for both, let us make short, Let us seek Death, or, he not found, supply With our own hands his office on ourselves. Why stand we longer shivering under fears That show no end but death, and have the power, Of many ways to die the shortest choosing, Destruction with destruction to destroy?”
She ended here, or vehement despair Broke off the rest; so much of death her thoughts Had entertained as dyed her cheeks with pale. But Adam, with such counsel nothing swayed, To better hopes his more attentive mind Labouring had raised, and thus to Eve replied:
“Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent than what thy mind contemns; But self-destruction therefore sought refutes That excellence thought in thee, and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overloved. Or if thou covet death, as utmost end Of misery, so