_Asm._ Meantime the youth of hell strict guard may keep, And set their centries to the utmost deep, That no etherial parasite may come To spy our ills, and tell glad tales at home. _Lucif._ Before yon brimstone lake thrice ebb and flow, (Alas, that we must measure time by woe!) I shall return, (my mind presages well) And outward lead the colonies of hell. Your care I much approve; what time remains, Seek to forget, at least divert your pains With sports and music, in the vales and fields, And whate'erjoy so sad a climate yields. _Betwixt the first Act and the second, while the Chiefs sit in the palace, may be expressed the sports of the Devils; as flights, and dancing in grotesque figures: And a song, expressing the change of their condition; what they enjoyed before, and how they fell bravely in battle, having deserved victory by their valour, and what they would have done if they had conquered._ ACT II. SCENE 1.--_A Champaign Country._ ADAM, _as newly created, laid on a bed of moss and flowers, by a rock._ _Adam._ What am I? or from whence? For that I am [_Rising._ I know, because I think; but whence I came, Or how this frame of mine began to be, What other being can disclose to me? I move, I see, I speak, discourse, and know; Though now I am, I was not always so. Then that, from which I was, must be before, Whom, as my spring of being, I adore. How full of ornament is all I view, In all its parts! and seems as beautiful as new: O goodly-ordered work! O Power Divine, Of thee I am, and what I am is thine! RAPHAEL _descends to_ ADAM, _in a cloud._ _Raphael._ First of mankind, made o'er the world to reign, Whose fruitful loins an unborn kind contain, Well hast thou reasoned: Of himself is none But that Eternal Infinite and One, Who never did begin, who ne'er can end; On Him all beings, as their source, depend. We first, who of his image most partake, Whom he all spirit, immortal, pure, did make; Man next; whose race, exalted, must supply The place of those, who, falling, lost the sky. _Adam._ Bright minister of heaven, sent here below To me, who but begin to think and know; If such could fall from bliss, who knew and saw, By near admission, their creator's law, What hopes have I, from heaven remote so far, To keep those laws, unknowing when I err? _Raphael._ Right reason's law to every human heart The Eternal, as his image, will impart: This teaches to adore heaven's Majesty; In prayer and praise does all devotion lie: So doing, thou and all thy race are blest. _Adam._ Of every creeping thing, of bird, and beast, I see the kinds: In pairs distinct they go; The males their loves, their lovers females know: Thou nam'st a race which must proceed from me, Yet my whole species in myself I see: A barren sex, and single, of no use, But full of forms which I can ne'er produce.