"Queen of the Universe! Do not believe Those rigid threats of death. Ye shall not die. How should ye? By the fruit? It gives you life To knowledge. By the Threatener? Look on me-- Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live And life more perfect have attained than Fate Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot. Shall that be shut to Man which to the Beast Is open? Or will God incense his ire For such a petty trespass?... God therefore cannot hurt ye and be just. Goddess humane, reach, then, and freely taste!" He ended; and his words replete with guile Into her heart too easy entrance won. Eve herself then took up the argument and repeated admiringly the Serpent's persuasions. "In the day we eat Of this fair fruit our doom is we shall die! How dies the Serpent? He hath eaten and lives, And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, Irrational till then. For us alone Was death invented? Or to us denied This intellectual food, for beasts reserved? Here grows the care of all, this fruit divine, Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, Of virtue to make wise. What hinders then To reach and feed at once both body and mind?" So saying, her rash hand in evil hour 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 guilty serpent. At first elated by the fruit, Eve presently began to reflect, excuse herself, and wonder what the effect would be on Adam.