The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.
Michael has shown Adam the future of humanity from Cain and Abel to Christ. Now Adam and Eve must leave Eden. They weep, but also look forward. They leave hand in hand, together, into the wide world — the first human pilgrims.
The last four lines of Paradise Lost — among the most moving in English poetry. The expulsion is simultaneously loss and beginning, ending and origin. Every human journey starts from this departure.