Used by the Tempter. On that prospect strange Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining For one forbidden tree a multitude Now risen, to work them further woe or shame; Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce, Though to delude them sent, could not abstain, But on they rolled in heaps, and, up the trees Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curled Megaera. Greedily they plucked The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed; This, more delusive, not the touch, but taste Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste With spattering noise rejected. Oft they assayed, Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft, With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws, With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell Into the same illusion, not as Man Whom they triumphed once lapsed. Thus were they plagued And worn with famine long, and ceaseless hiss, Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed; Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo