To whom the Father, without cloud, serene: “All thy request for Man, accepted Son, Obtain; all thy request was my decree. But longer in that Paradise to dwell The law I gave to Nature him forbids; Those pure immortal elements, that know No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul, Eject him, tainted now, and purge him off, As a distemper, gross, to air as gross, And mortal food, as may dispose him best For dissolution wrought by sin, that first Distempered all things, and of incorrupt Corrupted. I, at first, with two fair gifts Created him endowed—with happiness And immortality; that fondly lost, This other served but to eternize woe, Till I provided death: so death becomes His final remedy, and, after life Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined By faith and faithful works, to second life, Waked in the renovation of the just, Resigns him up with Heaven and Earth renewed. But let us call to Synod all the Blest Through Heaven’s wide bounds; from them I will not hide My judgments, how with Mankind I proceed, As how with peccant Angels late they saw, And in their state, though firm, stood more confirmed.”
He ended, and the Son gave signal high To the bright minister that watched. He blew His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps When God descended, and perhaps once more To sound at general doom. The angelic blast Filled all the regions: from their blissful bowers Of amarantine shade, fountain or spring, By the waters of life, where’er they sat In fellowships of joy, the Sons of Light Hasted, resorting to the summons high, And took their seats, till from his throne supreme The Almighty thus pronounced his sovereign will:
“O Sons, like one of us Man is become To know both good and evil, since his taste Of that defended fruit; but let him boast His knowledge of good lost and evil got, Happier had it sufficed him to have known Good by itself, and evil not at all. He sorrows now, repents, and prays contrite— My motions in him; longer than they move, His heart I know how variable and vain, Self-left. Lest, therefore, his now bolder hand Reach also of the Tree of Life, and eat, And live for ever—dream at least