Of him so lately promised to thy aid, The Woman's Seed, obscurely then foretold; Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy Lord: In glory of the Father, to dissolve He ended; and thus Adam last reply'd: 545 550 How soon hath thy prediction, Seer blest, Measured this transient world, the race of time, 555 560 And to the faithful, death the gate of life: To whom thus also th' Angel last reply'd: 546. To dissolve Satan, &c.: This verb more appropriately applies to world than to Satan, and must be taken in a stricter sense in its application to the former than to the latter. The expression is derived from 2 Pet. iii. 11, 12, "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved," &c. 574. Last replied: This is the last speech of the angel, as the foregoing This having learn'd, thou hast attain'd the sum 575 580 Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath 585 To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee happier far. Let us descend now therefore from this top Exacts our parting hence: and see the guards, 590 595 Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard, The great deliv'rance by her seed to come 600 (For by the Woman's seed) on all mankind: That ye may live, which will be many days, Both in one faith unanimous, though sad, With cause, for evils past; yet much more cheer'd 605 He ended, and they both descend the hill; Descended, Adam to the bower, where Eve one is the last speech of Adam; and they are both introduced in the same manner. 588. Top of speculation: High eminence commanding a most extensive prospect. It may further have reference to the visions and predictions there offered to Adam. Lay sleeping, ran before; but found her waked; : 615 Whence thou returns't, and whither went'st, I know: 610 I carry hence though all by me is lost, 620 So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard Well pleased, but answer'd not; for now too nigh Th' Arch-Angel stood, and from the other hill 625 608. Found her wak'd: Newton notices an inconsistency with the Argument, which relates that Adam wakens Eve; but may he not have waked her by his running to the bower where she lay sleeping. 609. The poem ends very nobly. The last speeches of Adam and the archangel are full of moral and instructive sentiments. The sleep that fell upon Eve, and the effects it had in quieting the disorders of her mind, produce the same kind of consolation in the reader, who cannot peruse this last beautiful speech which is ascribed to the mother of mankind, without a secret pleasure and satisfaction.-A. 611. Advise: Admonish, give information, Numb. xii. 6. Adam had a vision, and Eve a dream; and God was concerned in both. 616. Is to stay here, &c.: She is now come to that temper of mind in which she thinks it Paradise wherever her husband is, as the angel had taught her before, XI. 290. So that the author makes woman's Paradise to be in company with her husband, but man's to be in himself, 587.-N. 624-34. Heliodorus, in his Æthiopics, acquaints us, that the motion of the gods differs from that of mortals, as the former do not stir their feet, nor proceed step by step, but slide over the surface of the earth by a uniform swimming of the whole body. The same kind of motion is here poetically attributed to the angels who were to take possession of Paradise.-A. To their fix'd station, all in bright array Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel 630 635 640 Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon: 645 The world was all before them where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. 630. Marish: Marsh, from the French marais, or the Latin mariscus, rushes commonly growing in such a situation. The word occurs in 1 Maccab. ix. 42, 45; also in Shakspeare, Henry VI. Act. 1. 635. Adust: Scorched, fiery. 637-41. An allusion is here made to the incident of Lot and his family being conducted by the angel from the doomed Sodom, Gen. xix. 15-26. 643. Flaming brand: Milton had called it a sword before, XI. 120, “and of a sword the flame;" and XII. 633, and brand here does not signify what we commonly mean by it, but a sword, as it is used in the Faery Queen of Spenser: "Which steely brand . . . . . that all other swords excelled;" and also in other more recent authors. Brando, in Italian, signifies a sword; so called, as Junius thinks, because men fought with burnt stakes and firebrands before arms were invented.-N. 647. Providence their guide: As Michael, who had hitherto conducted them by the hand was departed from them, they had no guide to their steps but the general guidance of Providence to keep them safe and unhurt.-P. |