250 PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX. Such prohibitions bind not.-But if Death 760 Bind us with after-bands, what profits then Our inward freedom ? In the day we eat Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we (hail die.- How dies the ferpent ? he bath eat'n and lives, And knows, and tpeaks, and reafons, and difcerns; 765 Irrational till then. For us alone Was death invented ? or to us deny'd This intelle&ual food, for beafts referv'd ? For beafts it kerns : yet that one beafl which firit Bath tailed, envies not, but brings with joy 770 The good befall'n him, author uninfpea, Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. What fear I then, rather what know to fear Under this ignorance of Good and Evil, Of God or Death, of law or penalty ? 775 Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine ! Fair to the eye, inviting to the tafle, Of virtue to make wife! What hinders then To reach, and feed at once both body and mind ? So laying, her roll hand in evil hour 78o Forth-reaching to the fruit, the pluck'd, the eat I Earth felt the wound ; and Nature from her feat, Sighing through al her works, gave fign of woe That all was loft. Back to the thicket flunk The guilty ferpent ; and well might : for Eve 785 Intent now wholly on her tafte, nought elfe Regarded ; fuch delight till then, as fecm'd, In fruit the never tailed, whether true, Or fancy'd fo, through expe1ation high Of knowledge ; nor was God-head from her thought. Greedily the ingorg'd without reflraint, 791 And knew not eating Death. Satiate at length, And heighteu'd as with wine, jocund and boon Thus to her felf the pleafingly began. 0
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