O madness to think use of strongest wines And strongest drinks our chief support of health, When God with these forbidden made choice to rear His mighty champion, strong above compare, Whose drink was only from the liquid brook.
How oft, in nations gone corrupt, And by their own devices brought down to servitude, That man chooses bondage before liberty. Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.
But when Lust By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish arts of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being.
Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.
For contemplation he and valour formed; / For softness she and sweet attractive grace, / He for God only, she for God in him: / His fair large front and eye sublime declared / Absolute rule.
If the will, which in the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness,--a horrid thought!
How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled!