Adam tells his own story

Adam, full of what he has just heard, asks the kind of question only a newly created man with full-strength curiosity could think of. Why, he wants to know, is the Earth so small and the heavens so large? Raphael's reply is one of the strangest passages in the poem — Milton gives him both the Ptolemaic and Copernican possibilities, treats them as both still open, and then warns Adam off too much speculation. "Be lowly wise; / Think only what concerns thee, and thy being." The warning is Milton's, too: this is not the Galileo-vs-Pope poem he could have written.

Adam accepts the rebuke and tells Raphael his own story — what he can remember of his first hours of consciousness. He woke on the grass, "as new from sleep," learning his own body. He met God; was shown the garden; was given the warning about the tree. He named the animals. He realized he was alone and asked God for a partner. The conversation that followed is the most surprising in the poem: God argues back, asks why Adam wants company when he has the unmediated company of God himself, tests Adam's reasons. Adam holds his ground. God says he was testing him, and grants the request.

Adam describes the long sleep, the rib taken from his side, and waking to find Eve standing over him — "Grace was in all her steps, Heav'n in her eye, / In every gesture dignity and love." He describes their first meeting, the small reluctance in her, the love that followed. Raphael, listening, gently warns him not to make Eve the foundation of his being — "weigh with her thyself; / Then value." He is the only one in the poem who tells Adam this. Then the angel rises, blesses him, and flies up. The warning has been delivered in full.