This is what they had been provided
for an ideal.
It led one on from page to page,
from one exercise of intellect and creativity to another,
offered them passion, dreams,
unendurable pleasure (indefinitely prolonged),
spread an oasis like some divine tapestry
for their contemplation, a cornucopia,
then led them with eyes wide (but hyperopic) to the edge of a precipice,
exhibiting mountains as high as the moon.
And which one might, perhaps, climb.
It is that ascent which must have been contemplated,
but which, once commenced, could never be interrupted
if some horrific fall were to be avoided.
This was the real temptation
that that snake had to offer them.
But they took it nevertheless.