And on thy breast shalt drag thy footless form The remnant of thy days, and long as life And breath remain-just meed of this great crime, 1120 Thy malice hath inspired. "And there shall burn Within the Woman's breast, a mortal Hate "Now dost thou know 1130 Thy doom, fell Scourge of Man, and canst discern The future of thy life." To Eve in anger spake : The Holy God "Take thyself hence Far from these scenes of joy. From this day forth The error of thy deeds, humbled and vext By keen remorse, till Death ensue. Meanwhile, Then to the Man 1140 The Eternal King, Lord of the Light of Life, Announced His dire decree : "Now must thou seek Another home, a realm more joyless far, And into exile go, in nakedness 1150 And want, shorn of the bliss which thou hast known In Paradise. And since with evil mind Thou didst commit this crime, I do decree That Death, at last, shall break the golden bond By sweat of brow so long as thou dost live, 1160 Thou didst partake in the forbidden fruit die." Then shalt thou Thus did our writ of Evil take its rise In righteous wrath, entailing World-wide woe. In goodly raiment robed the guilty pair Behind them closed The glistening gates of their once joyous home, Thenceforth no traitorous or crime-guilty man Nor even then, would mighty God, at once E'en though His presence He had now withdrawn ; But for their comfort, still he let shine forth The vault of heaven adorned with radiant stars, And of the treasures of the Earth, He gave With open hand; and for their use He bade And multiply, and trees bring forth their fruit. Sin-stained, they thenceforth sojourned in a land More barren far of every earthly Good Than were those blissful Seats from which alas 1170 1180 1190 NOTES. NOTE A. How much valuable literature has been lost to the world by war, by vandalism, by accident, and by ignorance, will, of course, never be known; but we have historical data sufficient to show that treasures almost innumerable have disappeared from the face of the earth beyond reasonable hope of recovery. It is well known, as shown by Mr. William Shepard in a recent article, that "the dramatic literature of Greece was one of its greatest glories. At the time of Aristophanes it is estimated that fully two thousand dramas had been produced only forty-two have come down to us. From Æschylus we have only seven, out of a total of seventy; seven also of Sophocles, out of a hundred or more; and nineteen of Euripides, out of a possible ninety-two. The comic writers have suffered the most, and of the greatest of them, Menander, hardly a vestige remains. Goethe said that he would gladly have given onehalf of Roman poetry for a single play of that master. In the few lines that have come down to us he recognized the touch of a supreme genius. "But this is not the worst. The greatest lyric poetess of all times was Sappho. Only two odes and a few fragmentary lines are left to tantalize us with a sense of our loss. From Pindar we have some odes, indeed, but not the hymns and dirges and dithyrambs which the ancient critics considered his real masterpieces. "Many of these treasures perished in the invasions of the Goths and Vandals, many were destroyed by the ignorant or the superstitious in the Dark Ages. |