Eve. Must we this blissful paradise forego?

Raph. Your lot must be where thorns and thistles grow,
Unhid, as balm and spices did at first;
For man, the earth, of which he was, is cursed. 
By thy own toil procured, thou food shalt eat; [To ADAM. 
And know no plenty, but from painful sweat. 
She, by a curse, of future wives abhorred,
Shall pay obedience to her lawful lord;
And he shall rule, and she in thraldom live,
Desiring more of love than man can give.

Adam. Heaven is all mercy; labour I would chuse;
And could sustain this paradise to lose: 
The bliss, but not the place:  Here, could I say,
Heaven’s winged messenger did pass the day;
Under this pine the glorious angel staid: 
Then, show my wondering progeny the shade. 
In woods and lawns, where-e’er thou didst appear,
Each place some monument of thee should bear. 
I, with green turfs, would grateful altars raise,
And heaven, with gums, and offered incense, praise.

Raph. Where-e’er thou art, He is; the Eternal Mind
Acts through all places; is to none confined: 
Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above,
And through the universal mass does move. 
Thou canst be no where distant:  Yet this place
Had been thy kingly seat, and here thy race,
From all the ends of peopled earth had come
To reverence thee, and see their native home. 
Immortal, then; now sickness, care, and age,
And war, and luxury’s more direful rage,
Thy crimes have brought, to shorten mortal breath,
With all the numerous family of death.

Eve. My spirits faint, while I these ills foreknow,
And find myself the sad occasion too. 
But what is death?

Raph. In vision thou shalt see his griesly face,
The king of terrors, raging in thy face. 
That, while in future fate thou shar’st thy part,
A kind remorse, for sin, may seize thy heart.

  The SCENE shifts, and discovers deaths of several sorts.  A Battle
  at Land, and a Naval Fight.

Adam. O wretched offspring!  O unhappy state
Of all mankind, by me betrayed to fate! 
Born, through my crime, to be offenders first;
And, for those sins they could not shun, accurst.

Eve. Why is life forced on man, who, might he chuse,
Would not accept what he with pain must lose? 
Unknowing, he receives it; and when, known,
He thinks it his, and values it, ’tis gone.

Raph. Behold of every age; ripe manhood see,
Decrepid years, and helpless infancy: 
Those who, by lingering sickness, lose their breath;
And those who, by despair, suborn their death: 
See yon mad fools, who for some trivial right,
For love, or for mistaken honour, fight: 
See those, more mad, who throw their lives away
In needless wars; the stakes which monarchs lay,
When for each other’s provinces they play. 
Then, as if earth too narrow were for fate,
On open seas their quarrels they debate: 
In hollow wood they floating armies bear;
And force imprisoned winds to bring them near.