Appendix
“Grow, for the times to come, with manifold
Increase, that with your seed the pole and earth
Be filled; and, as Mine heirs, the varied fruits
Pluck ye, which groves and champaigns render you,
From their rich turf.” Thus after He discoursed,
In gladsome court a paradise is strewn,
And looks towards the rays of th’ early sun.
These joys among, a tree with deadly fruits,
Breeding, conjoined, the taste of life and death,
Arises. In the midst of the demesne
Flows with pure tide a stream, which irrigates
Fair offsprings from its liquid waves, and cuts
Quadrified paths from out its bubbling fount
Here wealthy Phison, with auriferous waves,
Swells, and with hoarse tide wears conspicuous gems,
This prasinus, that glowing carbuncle,
By name; and raves, transparent in its shoals,
The margin of the land of Havilath.
Next Gihon, gliding by the Æthiops,
Enriches them. The Tigris is the third,
Adjoined to fair Euphrates, furrowing
Disjunctively with rapid flood the land
Of Asshur. Adam, with his faithful wife,
Placed here as guard and workman, is informed
By such the Thunderer’s speech: “Tremble ye not
To pluck together the permitted fruits
Which, with its leafy bough, the unshorn grove
Hath furnished; anxious only lest perchance
Ye cull the hurtful apple, which is green
With a twin juice for functions several.”
And, no less blind meantime than Night herself,
Deep night ’gan hold them, nor had e’en a robe
Covered their new-formed limbs.
Amid these haunts, And on mild berries reared, a foamy snake,
Surpassing living things in sense astute,
Was creeping silently with chilly coils.
He, brooding over envious lies instinct
With gnawing sense, tempts the soft heart beneath
The woman’s breast: “Tell me, why shouldst thou dread
The apple’s happy seeds? Why, hath not
All known fruits hallowed? Whence if thou be prompt
To cull the honeyed fruits, the golden world
Will on its starry pole return.” But she
Refuses, and the boughs forbidden fears
To touch. But yet her breast ’gins be o’er come
With sense infirm. Straightway, as she at length
With snowy tooth the dainty morsels bit,
Stained with no cloud the sky serene up-lit!
Then taste, instilling lure in honeyed jaws,
To her yet uninitiated lord
Constrained her to present the gift; which he
No sooner took, then—night effaced!:—their eyes
Shone out serene in the resplendent world.
When, then, they each their body bare espied,
And when their shameful parts they see, with leaves
Of fig they shadow them. By chance, beneath
The sun’s now setting light, they recognise
The sound of the Lord’s voice, and, trembling, haste
To bypaths. Then the Lord of heaven accosts
The mournful Adam: “Say, where now thou art.”
Who suppliant thus answers: “Thine address,
O Lord, O Mighty One, I tremble at,
Beneath my fearful heart; and, being bare,
I faint with chilly dread.” Then said the Lord:
“Who hath the hurtful fruits, then, given you?”
“This woman, while she tells me how her eyes
With brilliant day promptly perfused were,
And on her dawned the liquid sky serene,
And heaven’s sun and stars, o’ergave them me!”
Forthwith God’s anger frights perturbed Eve,
While the Most High inquires the authorship
Of the forbidden act. Hereon she opes
Her tale: “The speaking serpent’s suasive words
I harboured, while the guile and bland request
Misled me: for, with venoms viperous
His words inweaving, stories told he me
Of those delights which should all fruits excel.”
Straightway the Omnipotent the dragon’s deeds
Condemns, and bids him be to all a sight
Unsightly, monstrous; bids him presently
With grovelling beast to crawl; and then to bite
And chew the soil; while war should to all time
’Twixt human senses and his tottering self
Be waged, that he might creep, crestfallen, prone,
Behind the legs of men, —that while he glides
Close on their heels they may down-trample him.
The woman, sadly caught by guileful words,
Is bidden yield her fruit with struggle hard,
And bear her husband’s yoke with patient zeal.
“But thou, to whom the sentence of the wife
(Who, vanquished, to the dragon pitiless
Yielded) seemed true, shalt through long times deplore
Thy labour sad; for thou shalt see, instead
Of wheaten harvest’s seed, the thistle rise,
And the thorn plenteously with pointed spines:
So that, with weary heart and mournful breast,
Full many sighs shall furnish anxious food;
Till, in the setting hour of coming death,
To level earth, whence thou thy body draw’st,
Thou be restored.” This done, the Lord bestows
Upon the trembling pair a tedious life;
And from the sacred gardens far removes
Them downcast, and locates them opposite,
And from the threshold bars them by mid fire,
Wherein from out the swift heat is evolved
A cherubim, while fierce the hot point glows,
And rolls enfolding flames. And lest their limbs
With sluggish cold should be benumbed, the Lord
Hides flayed from cattle’s flesh together sews,
With vestures warm their bare limbs covering.
When, therefore, Adam—now believing—felt
(By wedlock taught) his manhood, he confers
On his loved wife the mother’s name; and, made
Successively by scions twain a sire,
Gives names to stocks diverse: Caïn the first
Hath for his name, to whom is Abel joined.
The latter’s care tended the harmless sheep;
The other turned the earth with curved plough.
These, when in course of time they brought their gifts
To Him who thunders, offered—as their sense
Prompted them—fruits unlike. The elder one
Offered the first-fruits of the fertile glebes:
The other pays his vows with gentle lamb,
Bearing in hand the entrails pure, and fat
Snow-white; and to the Lord, who pious vows
Beholds, is instantly acceptable.
Wherefore with anger cold did Cain glow;
With whom God deigns to talk, and thus begins:
“Tell Me, if thou live rightly, and discern
Things hurtful, couldst thou not then pass thine age
Pure from contracted guilt? Cease to essay
With gnawing sense thy brother’s ruin, who,
Subject to thee as lord, his neck shall yield.”
Not e’en thus softened, he unto the fields
Conducts his brother; whom when overta’en
In lonely mead he saw, with his twin palms
Bruising his pious throat, he crushed life out.
Which deed the Lord espying from high heaven,
Straitly demands “where Abel is on earth? ”
He says “he will not as his brother’s guard
Be set.” Then God outspeaks to him again:
“Doth not the sound of his blood’s voice, sent up
To Me, ascend unto heaven’s lofty pole?
Learn, therefore, for so great a crime what doom
Shall wait thee. Earth, which with thy kinsman’s blood
Hath reeked but now, shall to thy hateful hand
Refuse to render back the cursed seeds
Entrusted her; nor shall, if set with herbs,
Produce her fruit: that, torpid, thou shalt dash
Thy limbs against each other with much fear.”……
4. A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord.
Who will for me in fitting strain adapt
Field-haunting muses? and with flowers will grace
The spring-tide’s rosy gales? And who will give
The summer harvest’s heavy stalks mature?
And to the autumn’s vines their swollen grapes?
Or who in winter’s honour will commend
The olives, ever-peaceful? and will ope
Waters renewed, even at their fountainheads?
And cut from waving grass the leafy flowers?
Forthwith the breezes of celestial light
I will attune. Now be it granted me
To meet the lightsome muses! to disclose
The secret rivers on the fluvial top
Of Helicon, and gladsome woods that grow
’Neath other star. And simultaneously
I will attune in song the eternal flames;
Whence the sea fluctuates with wave immense:
What power moves the solid lands to quake;
And whence the golden light first shot its rays
On the new world; or who from gladsome clay
Could man have moulded; whence in empty world
Our race could have upgrown; and what the greed
Of living which each people so inspires;
What things for ill created are; or what
Death’s propagation; whence have rosy wreaths
Sweet smell and ruddy hue; what makes the vine
Ferment in gladsome grapes away; and makes
Full granaries by fruit of slender stalks
distended be; or makes the tree grow ripe
’Mid ice, with olives black; who gives to seeds
Their increments of vigour various;
And with her young’s soft shadowings protects
The mother. Good it is all things to know
Which wondrous are in nature, that it may
Be granted us to recognise through all
The true Lord, who light, seas, sky, earth prepared,
And decked with varied star the new-made world;
And first bade beasts and birds to issue forth;
And gave the ocean’s waters to be stocked
With fish; and gathered in a mass the sands,
With living creatures fertilized. Such strains
With stately muses will I spin, and waves
Healthful will from their fountainheads disclose:
And may this strain of mine the gladsome shower
Catch, which from placid clouds doth come, and flows
Deeply and all unsought into men’s souls,
And guide it into our new-fumed lands
In copious rills. Now come: if any one
Still ignorant of God, and knowing naught
Of life to come, would fain attain to touch
The care-effacing living nymph, and through
The swift waves’ virtue his lost life repair,
And ’scape the penalties of flame eterne,
And rather win the guerdons of the life
To come, let such remember God is One,
Alone the object of our prayers; who ’neath
His threshold hath the whole world poised; Himself
Eternally abiding, and to be
Alway for aye; holding the ages all;
Alone, before all ages; unbegotten,
Limitless God; who holds alone His seat
Supernal; supereminent alone
Above high heavens; omnipotent alone;
Whom all things do obey; who for Himself
Formed, when it pleased Him, man for aye; and gave
Him to be pastor of beasts tame, and lord
Of wild; who by a word could stretch forth heaven;
And with a word could solid earth suspend;