But if Death Bind us with after-bands, what profits then Our inward freedom?
In the day we eate Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die.

How dies the Serpent?
hee hath eat'n and lives, And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes, Irrational till then.

For us alone Was death invented?
or to us deni'd This intellectual food, for beasts reserv'd?
For Beasts it seems: yet that one Beast which first Hath tasted, envies not, but brings with joy The good befall'n him, Author unsuspect, Friendly to man, farr from deceit or guile.

What fear I then, rather what know to feare Under this ignorance of Good and Evil, Of God or Death, of Law or Penaltie?
Here grows the Cure of all, this Fruit Divine, Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste, Of vertue to make wise: what hinders then To reach, and feed at once both Bodie and Mind?
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat: 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 guiltie Serpent, and well might, for EVE Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd, In Fruit she never tasted, whether true Or fansied so, through expectation high Of knowledg, nor was God-head from her thought.