16 October 2005

Here Milton describes how Satan felt and behaved when he first beheld Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is a wonderful description of softness and effect of softness. (Needs to be read aloud with dramatic intonation.)
Such pleasure took the serpent to behold
This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone; her heavenly form
Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought:
That space the evil one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge

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