Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/300

By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore, 540
With ravishment beheld, there best beheld
Where universally admired. But here,
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern
Half what in thee is fair, one man except
Who sees thee?—and what is one?—who shouldst be seen
A Goddess among Gods, adored and served
By Angels numberless, thy daily train."
So glozed the Tempter, and his proem tuned:
Into the heart of Eve his words made way, 550
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamazed, she thus in answer spake:
"What may this mean? language of Man pronounced
By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed!
The first at least of these I thought denied
To beasts, whom God on their creation-day,
Created mute to all articulate sound;
The latter I demur, for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.
Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field 560
I knew, but not with human voice endued.
Redouble then this miracle, and say,
How camest thou speakable of mute, and how
To me so friendly grown above the rest
Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight;