The generous soil, with a luxuriant hand, Offer'd the various produce of the year, And everything most perfect in its kind. Blessed! thrice-blessed days!--But ah, how short! Blest as the pleasing dreams of holy men; But fugitive like those, and quickly gone. O slippery state of things!--What sudden turns! 560 What strange vicissitudes in the first leaf Of man's sad history!--To-day most happy, And ere to-morrow's sun has set, most abject! How scant the space between these vast extremes! Thus fared it with our sire:--not long he enjoy'd His paradise.--Scarce had the happy tenant Of the fair spot due time to prove its sweets, Or sum them up, when straight he must be gone, Ne'er to return again.--And must he go? Can nought compound for the first dire offence 570 Of erring man? Like one that is condemn'd, Fain would he trifle time with idle talk, And parley with his fate. But 'tis in vain; Not all the lavish odours of the place, Offer'd in incense, can procure his pardon, Or mitigate his doom. A mighty angel, With flaming sword, forbids his longer stay, And drives the loiterer forth; nor must he take One last and farewell round. At once he lost His glory and his God. If mortal now, 580 And sorely maim'd, no wonder!--Man has sinn'd. Sick of his bliss, and bent on new adventures, Evil he needs would try: nor tried in vain. (Dreadful experiment! destructive measure! Where the worst thing could happen is success.) Alas! too well he sped:--the good he scorn'd Stalk'd off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost, Not to return; or if it did, its visits, Like those of angels, short and far between: Whilst the black Demon, with his hell-scaped train, 590 Admitted once into its better room, Grew loud and mutinous, nor would be gone; Lording it o'er the man: who now too late Saw the rash error which he could not mend: An error fatal not to him alone, But to his future sons, his fortune's heirs. Inglorious bondage! Human nature groans Beneath a vassalage so vile and cruel, And its vast body bleeds through every vein. What havoc hast thou made, foul monster, Sin! 600 Greatest and first of ills: the fruitful parent Of woes of all dimensions: but for thee Sorrow had never been,--All-noxious thing, Of vilest nature! Other sorts of evils Are kindly circumscribed, and have their bounds. The fierce volcano, from his burning entrails That belches molten stone and globes of fire, Involved in pitchy clouds of smoke and stench, Mars the adjacent fields for some leagues round, And there it stops. The big-swoln inundation, 610 Of mischief more diffusive, raving loud, Buries whole tracts of country, threatening more; But that too has its shore it cannot pass. More dreadful far than these! Sin has laid waste, Not here and there a country, but a world: Despatching, at a wide-extended blow,