62 T/ie Poets and Nature. 



"Lead, then," says Eve ; and the serpent willingly starts off. 



" He leading swiftly rolled 

 In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, . 

 To mischief swift." 



His crest flashes with hope, and like an ignis fatuus 

 " glistered the dire snake " as he led Eve, 



' ' Our credulous mother, to the tree 

 Of prohibition, root of all our woes." 



She sees, is tempted, and falls. 



1 ' 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," 



and thereafter disappears from Eden. The curse is pro- 

 nounced, and Satan, reaching his own dominions, seats 

 himself upon his throne, and addressing the assembly of 

 fallen angels, " Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, 

 powers," boasts of what he has done, and then pauses for 

 " their universal shout and high applause to fill his ear." 

 Instead of that 



' ' he hears 



On all sides, from innumerable tongues, 

 A dismal universal hiss ; " 



and then Satan begins to feel himself turning into a snake. 

 " His arms clung to his ribs, his legs intwining each other," 

 till he falls off his throne "a monstrous serpent, on his belly 

 prone." In vain he attempts to address his captains, for he 

 can only hiss; and then issuing from the hall the rout of 

 " complicated monsters " swarm into the open air, where all 

 the fallen host are awaiting their appearance, and, instead 

 of their chiefs, see "a crowd of ugly serpents." At the 

 sight, horror seizes them and they begin to change too, 

 "the dire form catched by contagion," until the whole of 

 Satan's followers are turned to hissing snakes. And lo ! by 



