Eliot's note for line 98

Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 140.

Commentator's note

The lines around verse 140 are:

• So on he fares, and to the border comes
• Of EDEN, where delicious Paradise,
• Now nearer, Crowns with her enclosure green,
• As with a rural mound the champain head
• Of a steep wilderness, whose hairie sides
• With thicket overgrown, grottesque and wilde,
• Access deni'd; and over head up grew
• Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
• Cedar, and Pine, and Firr, and branching Palm,
• A Silvan Scene, and as the ranks ascend
• Shade above shade, a woodie Theatre
• Of stateliest view. Yet higher then thir tops
• The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung:
• Which to our general Sire gave prospect large
• Into his neather Empire neighbouring round.