“Adam and Eve” by George Frederick Watts
From the Book of Genesis
16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
“[3:15] I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
[3:16] To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
[3:17] And to the man he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
[3:18] thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
[3:19] By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
[3:20] The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
[3:21] And the LORD God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.
[3:22] Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”–
[3:23] therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.
[3:24] He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.”
“Midsummer Eve” by Edward Robert Hughes
From A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue.”
