John Milton, Paradise Lost

Tree of Life in Paradise Lost

The Tree of Life stands highest in the garden and bears ambrosial fruit described as vegetable gold. It offers the poem’s inhabitants a pledge of immortality within Eden. Satan sits there like a cormorant but attends neither to its virtue nor to life. He uses the height for a view from which to plan death for those below.

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In the sources

Principal account

Literary

The Tree of Life stands highest in the garden and bears ambrosial fruit described as vegetable gold. It offers the poem’s inhabitants a pledge of immortality within Eden.

[1]

Further detail

Literary

Satan sits there like a cormorant but attends neither to its virtue nor to life. He uses the height for a view from which to plan death for those below.

[2]

Reading the account

Interpretation

The tree becomes a concentrated image of perversion: a source of life is made to assist a purpose opposed to it.

[1][2]

Context & interpretation

This entry concerns the Eden tree in Milton’s poem. Its fruit and power are literary and scriptural images in this retelling, and the tree is not identified with a real plant having a demonstrated life-extending effect.

Original passages

Source 1

Paradise Lost: Illustrated by Gustave Doré

John Milton; illustrated by Gustave Doré; edited by Henry C. Walsh

The middle tree and highest there that grew

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Passage & edition details

Location recorded at citation review: Milton, Paradise Lost, active reader leaf 107

Exact passage checked against active scan text and original-leaf mapping; scan line breaks normalised.

Edition: IMJ-0115-E001
Reader page: IMJ-0115-E001-P0107
Original scan leaf: 108
Recorded leaf number: 108
Current Reader position: 103
Reader verification: Source-preserving update confirmed

Source 2

Paradise Lost: Illustrated by Gustave Doré

John Milton; illustrated by Gustave Doré; edited by Henry C. Walsh

but sat devising death

Open this page in the book

Passage & edition details

Location recorded at citation review: Milton, Paradise Lost, active reader leaf 107

Exact passage checked against active scan text and original-leaf mapping; scan line breaks normalised.

Edition: IMJ-0115-E001
Reader page: IMJ-0115-E001-P0107
Original scan leaf: 108
Recorded leaf number: 108
Current Reader position: 103
Reader verification: Source-preserving update confirmed

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Sacred Objects ↗

Shared source page

Tree of Knowledge in Paradise Lost

The tree beside life whose knowledge becomes inseparable from the cost of knowing evil.

Shared source page

Eden in Paradise Lost

The planted garden whose abundance becomes the setting for human intimacy and concealed danger.

Explore Doré’s illustrations for Paradise Lost ↗

Tree of Life in Paradise Lost

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In the sources

Principal account

Literary

The Tree of Life stands highest in the garden and bears ambrosial fruit described as vegetable gold. It offers the poem’s inhabitants a pledge of immortality within Eden.

[1]

Further detail

Literary

Satan sits there like a cormorant but attends neither to its virtue nor to life. He uses the height for a view from which to plan death for those below.

[2]