Page:Paradise lost by Milton, John.djvu/347

Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame,
Cast on themselves from their own mouths.—There stood
A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change,
His will who reigns above, to aggravate
Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that550
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
Used by the Tempter. On that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining
For one forbidden tree a multitude
Now risen, to work them further woe or shame;
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain;
But on they rolled in heaps, and up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curled Megæra. Greedily they plucked560
The fruitage, fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed;
This, more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceived. They, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected. Oft they assayed,
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft,
With hatefulest disrelish, writhed their jaws
With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell570
Into the same illusion, not as Man