Untitled

Answerable Style: Essays on Paradise Lost - Questia Online Library  Annotated

• pastoral passage Bk IV (2/4)
  
   - post by singa1

call," could not be Adam's. It is her voice -- assumed, projected, and heightened by the tempter who is external, but who cannot effectively tempt except internally. The modest excitement of rhythm and verbal sensuousness in Eve's praise to Adam of the order of nature becomes here a celebration of the secret manhidden parts of nature. What was potential in the earlier passage, and strongly intimated by her abrupt and curious question, here becomes explicit -- an answer that emerges in distorting preoccupation, that breaks the order and the place of self in that order.

now is the pleasant time,

The cool, the silent, save where silence yields

To the night-warbling Bird, that now awake

Tunes sweetest his love-labor'd song; now reignes

Full Orb'd the Moon, and with more pleasing light

Shadowie sets off the face of things; in vain,

If none regard; Heav'n wakes with all his eyes,

Whom to behold but thee, Natures desire,

In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment

Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze. (V, 38ff)

In this invitation to the "walk by Moon" the solemn bird of night now sings a "love-labor'd song" -- as in the poetry of the fallen world. The light of the moon is now beautiful in a sophisticated way, setting off the face of things by shadow -- a notion more proper to a world where good is known by evil. It is related to the illusion that Mr. Eliot, also working from a concept of timeless order, in "Burnt Norton" ascribes to daylight:

Investing form with lucid stillness

Turning shadow into transient beauty

With slow rotation suggesting permanence.

The answer to the charming variety of moonlight is in the hymn of the next morning: "let your ceaseless change / Varie to our great Maker still new praise." But all of this is no more than the alluring threshold of temptation, the initial titillating satisfaction of sense that vaguely promises what the will perverting itself really wants. The answer to Eve's abrupt question about the beauty of night comes in the guise of an answer (an answer to the

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wills, Night bids us rest." What he bids, Eve"with perfet beauty adornd" obeys unargued, accepting God's law from him. She presents her own praise of the order of nature; it is a prettier poem than Adam's, more graceful and more sensuous, turning in lovely circle about Adam, who is the center giving the order its value:

With thee conversing I forget all time,

All seasons and thir change, all please alike.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun

When first on this delightful Land he spreads

His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour,

Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth

After soft showers; and sweet the coming on

Of grateful Eevning milde, then silent Night

With this her solemn Bird and this fair Moon,

And these the Gemms of Heav'n, her starrie train:

But neither breath of Morn when she ascends

With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun

On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure,

Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,

Nor grateful Eevning mild, nor silent Night,

With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon,

Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet.

(IV, 639ff)

Then she breaks off with a strangely dissonant abruptness:

But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom

This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?

(IV, 657f)

Adam lectures on order again, on the relationship between created and Creator. Man is not the center. His verse rises in pitch to praise, not the things, but their relationship to the Creator. Then they approach the described natural beauty of their "blissful Bower"; negative comparisons from myth ("though but feignd") and time apply their pressure to the moment, chief among them the lovely sad anticipation of Pandora. Finally they make their nocturnal devotions in praise of the Creator of nature.

The voice that Eve heard, of which she says, "I rose as at thy

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call," could not be Adam's. It is her voice -- assumed, projected, and heightened by the tempter who is external, but who cannot effectively tempt except internally. The modest excitement of rhythm and verbal sensuousness in Eve's praise to Adam of the order of nature becomes here a celebration of the secret manhidden parts of nature. What was potential in the earlier passage, and strongly intimated by her abrupt and curious question, here becomes explicit -- an answer that emerges in distorting preoccupation, that breaks the order and the place of self in that order.

now is the pleasant time,

The cool, the silent, save where silence yields

To the night-warbling Bird, that now awake

Tunes sweetest his love-labor'd song; now reignes

Full Orb'd the Moon, and with more pleasing light

Shadowie sets off the face of things; in vain,

If none regard; Heav'n wakes with all his eyes,

Whom to behold but thee, Natures desire,

In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment

Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze. (V, 38ff)

In this invitation to the "walk by Moon" the solemn bird of night now sings a "love-labor'd song" -- as in the poetry of the fallen world. The light of the moon is now beautiful in a sophisticated way, setting off the face of things by shadow -- a notion more proper to a world where good is known by evil. It is related to the illusion that Mr. Eliot, also working from a concept of timeless order, in "Burnt Norton" ascribes to daylight:

Investing form with lucid stillness

Turning shadow into transient beauty

With slow rotation suggesting permanence.

The answer to the charming variety of moonlight is in the hymn of the next morning: "let your ceaseless change / Varie to our great Maker still new praise." But all of this is no more than the alluring threshold of temptation, the initial titillating satisfaction of sense that vaguely promises what the will perverting itself really wants. The answer to Eve's abrupt question about the beauty of night comes in the guise of an answer (an answer to the

-87-

wills, Night bids us rest." What he bids, Eve"with perfet beauty adornd" obeys unargued, accepting God's law from him. She presents her own praise of the order of nature; it is a prettier poem than Adam's, more graceful and more sensuous, turning in lovely circle about Adam, who is the center giving the order its value:

With thee conversing I forget all time,

All seasons and thir change, all please alike.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun

When first on this delightful Land he spreads

His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour,

Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth

After soft showers; and sweet the coming on

Of grateful Eevning milde, then silent Night

With this her solemn Bird and this fair Moon,

And these the Gemms of Heav'n, her starrie train:

But neither breath of Morn when she ascends

With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun

On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure,

Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,

Nor grateful Eevning mild, nor silent Night,

With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon,

Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet.

(IV, 639ff)

Then she breaks off with a strangely dissonant abruptness:

But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom

This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?

(IV, 657f)

Adam lectures on order again, on the relationship between created and Creator. Man is not the center. His verse rises in pitch to praise, not the things, but their relationship to the Creator. Then they approach the described natural beauty of their "blissful Bower"; negative comparisons from myth ("though but feignd") and time apply their pressure to the moment, chief among them the lovely sad anticipation of Pandora. Finally they make their nocturnal devotions in praise of the Creator of nature.

The voice that Eve heard, of which she says, "I rose as at thy

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• pastoral passage Bk IV
  
   - post by singa1

question planted in the syntax -- "Whom to behold but thee"); it is an invitation to self-love presented more palatably as if from outside the self, in a voice she thinks is Adam's.

• Pastoral passage of Bk IV
  
   - post by singa1

call," could not be Adam's. It is her voice -- assumed, projected, and heightened by the tempter who is external, but who cannot effectively tempt except internally. The modest excitement of rhythm and verbal sensuousness in Eve's praise to Adam of the order of nature becomes here a celebration of the secret manhidden parts of nature. What was potential in the earlier passage, and strongly intimated by her abrupt and curious question, here becomes explicit -- an answer that emerges in distorting preoccupation, that breaks the order and the place of self in that order.

now is the pleasant time,

The cool, the silent, save where silence yields

To the night-warbling Bird, that now awake

Tunes sweetest his love-labor'd song; now reignes

Full Orb'd the Moon, and with more pleasing light

Shadowie sets off the face of things; in vain,

If none regard; Heav'n wakes with all his eyes,

Whom to behold but thee, Natures desire,

In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment

Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze. (V, 38ff)

In this invitation to the "walk by Moon" the solemn bird of night now sings a "love-labor'd song" -- as in the poetry of the fallen world. The light of the moon is now beautiful in a sophisticated way, setting off the face of things by shadow -- a notion more proper to a world where good is known by evil. It is related to the illusion that Mr. Eliot, also working from a concept of timeless order, in "Burnt Norton" ascribes to daylight:

Investing form with lucid stillness

Turning shadow into transient beauty

With slow rotation suggesting permanence.

The answer to the charming variety of moonlight is in the hymn of the next morning: "let your ceaseless change / Varie to our great Maker still new praise." But all of this is no more than the alluring threshold of temptation, the initial titillating satisfaction of sense that vaguely promises what the will perverting itself really wants. The answer to Eve's abrupt question about the beauty of night comes in the guise of an answer (an answer to the

-87-

• pastoral passage of Bk IV
  
   - post by singa1

Some of the lovely pastoral poetry of Book IV turns out to have had this cognitive purpose, which we may examine by looking at the section that celebrates the approach of evening and the preparation for sleep. First there is the pastoral description by the narrative voice of the poem:

Now came still Eevning on, and Twilight gray

Had in her sober Liverie all things clad;

Silence accompanied, for Beast and Bird,

They to thir grassie Couch, these to thir Nests

Were slunk, all but the wakeful Nightingale;

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleas'd: now glow'd the Firmament

With living Saphirs: Hesperus that led

The starrie Host, rode brightest, till the Moon

Rising in clouded Majestie at length

Apparent Queen unvaild her peerless light,

And o're the dark her Silver Mantle threw. (IV, 598ff)

There is unmistakable love expressed for the beauty of nature, but it is a calm and unromantic love, with no nervous quiver in the sensuousness; the beauty celebrated is firmly founded on order, here on the order of day and the order of rest. Adam's twilight recital, which follows, while not altogether unsensuous, dwells almost entirely on the beauty of the natural order as symbol for the human order:

Fair Consort, th' hour

Of night, and all things now retir'd to rest

Mind us of like repose, since God hath set

Labour and rest, as day and night to men

Successive, and the timely dew of sleep

Now falling with soft slumbrous weight inclines

Our eye-lids. (IV, 610ff)

The order of repose is a mark of man's dignity, for he labors in God's eye; the conclusion is practical: "Mean while, as Nature

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• pastoral passage Bk IV
  
   - post by singa1

Some of the lovely pastoral poetry of Book IV turns out to have had this cognitive purpose, which we may examine by looking at the section that celebrates the approach of evening and the preparation for sleep. First there is the pastoral description by the narrative voice of the poem:

Now came still Eevning on, and Twilight gray

Had in her sober Liverie all things clad;

Silence accompanied, for Beast and Bird,

They to thir grassie Couch, these to thir Nests

Were slunk, all but the wakeful Nightingale;

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleas'd: now glow'd the Firmament

With living Saphirs: Hesperus that led

The starrie Host, rode brightest, till the Moon

Rising in clouded Majestie at length

Apparent Queen unvaild her peerless light,

And o're the dark her Silver Mantle threw. (IV, 598ff)

There is unmistakable love expressed for the beauty of nature, but it is a calm and unromantic love, with no nervous quiver in the sensuousness; the beauty celebrated is firmly founded on order, here on the order of day and the order of rest. Adam's twilight recital, which follows, while not altogether unsensuous, dwells almost entirely on the beauty of the natural order as symbol for the human order:

Fair Consort, th' hour

Of night, and all things now retir'd to rest

Mind us of like repose, since God hath set

Labour and rest, as day and night to men

Successive, and the timely dew of sleep

Now falling with soft slumbrous weight inclines

Our eye-lids. (IV, 610ff)

The order of repose is a mark of man's dignity, for he labors in God's eye; the conclusion is practical: "Mean while, as Nature

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