The Vision of Human History — Paradise Lost

Adam and Eve stand repentant; prevenient grace softens stony hearts, and sighs the Spirit wings to Heaven faster than oratory while their petition reaches the golden altar mixed with incense. The Son presents their prayers as first-fruits sweeter than Eden's unfallen trees, offers himself as advocate and propitiation, and wins acceptance: Man may live reconciled, though not forever in Paradise, until death yields a better life through faith and faithful works. The Father calls synod, decrees expulsion before Man reaches the tree of life, and sends Michael with Cherubim to drive the pair out without terror if they obey, revealing future days, intermixing covenant in the Woman's seed renewed, and posting sword-flame at the east gate lest foul spirits steal the tree of life.

Michael descends at dawn in human form, purple-clad and kingly; birds and beasts run east as Nature eclipses. He tells Adam exile is fixed, death delayed for repentance, and Eve laments flowers and the nuptial bower she will never tend, though the Angel says her native soil is wherever Adam abides. Adam submits but grieves losing visible presence and sacred places he hoped to mark with grassy altars; Michael teaches that God fills land, sea, and air, not Eden alone, that the earth remains his gift, and that signs of paternal love will follow them wherever they dwell. Eve sleeps while Adam ascends the highest hill, eyes purged with euphrasy and rue and drops from the well of life, for visions of what offspring will do.

Adam sees Cain kill Abel over accepted sacrifice, then a hospital of diseases born from appetite; Michael warns that image forsaken becomes brutish vice and that temperance may grant ripe old age. He sees tents where sons of God fall to fair atheists who sing and dance, giants born of ill-matched marriages, war and robbery on the plain, Enoch rapt while violence rules, then luxury, Noah building the ark, and the flood drowning a world Adam mourns as if his own children died, wishing he had never known the future and begging Michael to unfold why peace corrupts no less than war.

The waters fall; Noah's dove returns with olive leaf; the ancient sire descends with uplifted hands as God sets the rainbow as covenant never to destroy earth by flood again, though fire will purge all things new at last. Adam rejoices that one just man preserves seed and that wrath can relent, asking what the coloured streaks mean; Michael explains the bow as memorial of seed-time, harvest, and seasons held until the just dwell renewed. Mortal sight fails before Babel and Messiah are shown; Book XII will continue the pageant while Paradise prepares to close.