Feathered, and every race, or tame or wild,
Of beasts, and the sea’s race, and monsterforms
Shapeless of swimming things. But since so soon
90 The primal man by primal crime transgressed
The law, and left the mandates of the Lord
(Led by a wife who counselled all the ills),
By death he ’gan to perish. Woman ’twas
Who sin’s first ill committed, and (the law
95 Transgressed) deceived her husband. Eve, induced
By guile, the thresholds oped to death, and proved
To her own self, with her whole race as well,
A procreatrix of funereal woes.
Hence unanticipated wickedness,
100 Hence death, like seed, for aye, is scattered. Then
More frequent grew atrocious deed; and toil
More savage set the corrupt orb astir:
(This lure the crafty serpent spread, inspired
By envy’s self:) then peoples more invent
105 Practices of ill deeds; and by ill deeds
Gave birth to seeds of wickedness.
And so
The only Lord, whose is the power supreme.
Who o’er the heights the summits holds of heaven
Supreme, and in exalted regions dwells
110 In lofty light for ages, mindful too
Of present time, and of futurity
Prescient beforehand, keeps the progeny
Of ill-desert, and all the souls which move
By reason’s force much-erring man—nor less
115 Their tardy bodies governs He—against
The age decreed, so soon as, stretched in death,
Men lay aside their ponderous limbs, and light
As air, shall go, their earthly bonds undone,
And take in diverse parts their proper spheres
120 (But some He bids be forthwith by glad gales
Recalled to life, and be in secret kept
To wait the decreed law’s awards, until
Their bodies with resuscitated limbs
Revive.) Then shall men ’gin to weigh the awards
125 Of their first life, and on their crime and faults
To think, and keep them for their penalties
Which will be far from death; and mindful grow
Of pious duties, by God’s judgments taught;
To wait expectant for their penalty
130 And their descendants’, fruit of their own crime;