th below my hell
Can be prepared: Then, Ill, be thou my good;
And, vast destruction, be my envy's food.
Thus I, with heaven, divided empire gain;
Seducing man, I make his project vain,
And in one hour destroy his six days pain.
They come again, I must retire.

_Enter_ ADAM _and_ EVE.

_Adam._ Thus shall we live in perfect bliss, and see,
Deathless ourselves, our numerous progeny.
Thou young and beauteous, my desires to bless;
I, still desiring, what I still possess.

_Eve._ Heaven, from whence love, our greatest blessing, came,
Can give no more, but still to be the same.
Thou more of pleasure may'st with me partake;
I, more of pride, because thy bliss I make.

_Adam._ When to my arms thou brought'st thy virgin love,
Fair angels sung our bridal hymn above:
The Eternal, nodding, shook the firmament,
And conscious nature gave her glad consent.
Roses unbid, and every fragrant flower,
Flew from their stalks, to strew thy nuptial bower:
The furred and feathered kind the triumph did pursue,
And fishes leaped above the streams, the passing pomp to view.

_Eve._ When your kind eyes looked languishing on mine,
And wreathing arms did soft embraces join,
A doubtful trembling seized me first all o'er;
Then, wishes; and a warmth, unknown before:
What followed was all ecstasy and trance;
Immortal pleasures round my swimming eyes did dance,
And speechless joys, in whose sweet tumult tost,
I thought my breath and my new being lost.

_Lucif._ O death to hear! and a worse hell on earth! [_Aside._
What mad profusion on this clod-born birth!
Abyss of joys, as if heaven meant to shew
What, in base matters, such a hand could do:
Or was his virtue spent, and he no more
With angels could supply the exhausted store,
Of which I swept the sky?
And wanting subjects to his haughty will,
On this mean work employed his trifling skill?

_Eve._ Blest in ourselves, all pleasures else abound;
Without our care behold the unlaboured ground
Bounteous of fruit; above our shady bowers
The creeping jessamin thrusts her fragrant flowers;
The myrtle, orange, and the blushing rose,
With bending heaps so nigh their blooms disclose,
Each seems to swell the flavour which the other blows:
By these the peach, the guava, and the pine,
And, creeping 'twixt them all, the mantling vine
Does round their trunks her purple clusters twine.

_Adam._ All these are ours, all nature's excellence,
Whose taste or smell can bless the feasted sense;
O