Chapter 19 18
Great are thy Vertues, doubtless, best of Fruits. [745]
Though kept from Man, and worthy to be admired,
Whose taste, too long for born, at first assay
Gave elocution to the mute, and taught
The Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise:
Thy praise hee also who forbids thy use, [ 750 ]
Conceales not from us, naming thee the Tree
Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil;
Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it inferrs the good
By thee communicated, and we want: [ 755 ]
For good unknown, sure is not had, or had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.
In plain then, what forbids he but to know,
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?
Such prohibitions binde 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 shall die.
How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, [ 765 ]
Irrational till then. For us alone
Was death invented? or to us denid
This intellectual food, for beasts reserve?
For Beasts it seems: yet that one Beast which first
Hath tasted, envies not, but brings with joy [ 770 ]
The good befalln him, Author unsuspect,
Friendly to man, farr 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 Penaltie? [775]
Here grows the Cure of all, this Fruit Divine,
Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste,
Of vertue to make wise: what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both Bodie and Mind?
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour [ 780 ]
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she plucked, she ate:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. Back to the Thicket slunk
The guiltie Serpent, and well might, for Eve [ 785 ]
Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else
Regarded, such delight till then, as seemsd,
In Fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fansied so, through expectation high
Of knowledge, nor was God-head from her thought. [790]