Satan in Eden, Adam and Eve

Satan lands on Mount Niphates above Eden and stops. The sight of paradise produces the most psychologically exposed passage in the poem. He admits, alone, what he cannot admit in council: God created him perfect, the rebellion was his own act, he could repent and will not. "Me miserable! which way shall I fly / Infinite wrath and infinite despair? / Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell." Hell is internal. He is carrying it. He weeps, he hardens, he goes on. The decision to harden is the moment Milton's case against him fully closes.

He leaps the wall of Eden — Milton's first sustained description of paradise, lush and exact. He sees Adam and Eve for the first time, walking together. Eve, in one of the loveliest passages in the poem, recounts to Adam how she first woke by a pool, in love with her own reflection, until God's voice called her away and turned her toward him. Adam answers in matching tenderness. Satan watches. He understands what he is looking at — two creatures in an order of love he has placed himself outside of forever — and the watching costs him.

That night, in the form of a toad, he crouches at Eve's ear and whispers a dream into her sleep — a dream of being lifted into the air by a beautiful figure who tells her to eat the fruit. The angelic guard, led by Gabriel, finds him at the edge of paradise. There is a tense confrontation; Satan swells to enormous size, ready to fight. God hangs golden scales in heaven and weighs the outcomes — Satan's scale flies up. He understands the verdict and flees. Eve, in the morning, will tell Adam the dream over breakfast; he will comfort her; the temptation has begun.