Adah. Who Adah. Omnipotence Art thou that steppest between heart and Must be all goodness. heart? Of knowledge? Adah. Ay-to our eternal sorrow. Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge-so he lied not: Lucifer. Was it so in Eden? Adah. Fiend! tempt me not with beauty; Than was the serpent, and as false. Ask Eve, your mother; bears she not the Of good and evil? Adah. Oh, my mother! thou Hast pluck'd a fruit more fatal to thine offspring Than to thyself; thou at the least hast past And if he did betray you, 'twas with truth ; | Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent But good. Adah. But all we know of it has gather'd And happy intercourse with happy spirits; And heedless, harmless wantonness of bliss. Bear with what we have borne,and love me_I│I cannot answer this immortal thing Lucifer. More than thy mother and thy Adah. I do. Is that a sin, too? It one day will be in your children. Must not my daughter love her brother Lucifer. Not as thou lovest Cain! Shall they not love and bring forth things that love Out of their love? have they not drawn Out of this bosom? was not he, their father, Things which will love each other as we love And cannot be a sin in you—whate’er Adah. What is the sin which is not Which stands before me; I cannot abhor him; known? Since the all-knowing cherubim love least, No other choice: your sire hath chosen His worship is but fear. Adah. Oh, Cain! choose love. Cain. For thee, my Adah, I choose not it was Born with me- but I love nought else. Cain. Did they love us when they snatch'd from the tree That which hath driven us all from Paradise? Adah. We were not born then-and if we had been, Lucifer. Yet thy God is alone; and is he happy? Lonely and good? Adah. He is not so; he hath The angels and the mortals to make happy, And thus becomes so in diffusing joy: What else can joy be but the spreading joy? Lucifer. Ask of your sire, the exile fresh from Eden; Or of his first-born son ; ask your own heart; Should we not love them and our children, It is not tranquil. Cain? Cain, My littleEnoch!and his lisping sister! Could I but deem them happy, I would half Forget-but it can never be forgotten Through thrice a thousand generations! never Shall men love the remembrance of the man Who sow'd the seed of evil and mankind In the same hour! They pluck'd the tree of science And sin-and not content with their own sorrow, Begot me thee-and all the few that are, And all the unnumber'd and innumerable Multitudes,millions,myriads, which may be, To inherit agonies accumulated By ages! And I must be sire of such things! Thy beauty and thy love - my love and joy, The rapturous moment and the placid hour, All we love in our children and each other, But lead them and ourselves through many years Of sin and pain- or few, but still of sorrow Intercheck'd with an instant of brief pleasure, ·To Death—the unknown! Methinks the tree of knowledge Hath not fulfill'd its promise: If they sinn'd, At least they ought to have known all things that are Of knowledge- and the mystery of death. What do they know?-that they are miserable. What need of snakes and fruits to teach us that? Adah. I am not wretched, Cain, and if thou Wert happy Cain. Be thou happy then alone I will have nought to do with happiness, Which humbles me and mine. Adah. Alone I could not, Nor would be happy:but with those around us, I think I could be so, despite of death, Which, as I know it not, I dread not, though It seems an awful shadow-if I may Judge from what I have heard. Lucifer. And thou couldst not Alone, thou sayst, be happy? Adah. Alone! Oh, my God! Who could be happy and alone, or good? To me my solitude seems sin; unless When I think how soon I shall see my brother, His brother, and our children, and our parents. Adah. Alas! no; and youAre you of heaven? Lucifer. If I am not, inquire The cause of this all-spreading happiness, (Which you proclaim) of the all-great and good Maker of life and living things; it is The unpeopled earth—and the o'er-peopled To sink. Of which thy bosom is the germ. Adah. Oh Cain, This spirit curseth us. Cain. Let him say on; Him will I follow. Adah. Whither? Lucifer. To a place Whence he shall come back to thee in an hour, But in that hour see things of many days. Adah. How can that be? Lucifer. Did not your Maker make Out of old worlds this new one in few days? And cannot I, who aided in this work, Show in an hour what he hath made in many, Or hath destroy'd in few? Cain. Lead on. Adah. Will he In sooth return within an hour? Lucifer. He shall. Lucifer. Have faith in me, and thou shalt be Borne on the air, of which I am the prince. Cain. Can I do so without impiety? Lucifer. Believe- and sink not! doubtand perish! thus Would run the edict of the other God, Who names me demon to his angels; they Echo the sound to miserable things, Which knowing nought beyond their shallow senses, Worship the word which strikes their ear, and deem Evil or good what is proclaim'd to them In their abasement. I will have none such: Worship or worship not, thou shalt hehold The worlds beyond thy little world, nor be Amerced, for doubts beyond thy little life, With torture of my dooming. There will come With us acts are exempt from time, and we An hour, when toss'd upon some water-drops, Can crowd eternity into an hour. Or stretch an hour into eternity: We breathe not by a mortal measurementBut that's a mystery. Cain, come on with me. Adah. Will he return? Lucifer. Ay, woman! he alone Of mortals from that place (the first and last Who shall return, save ONE)—shall come back to thee To make that silent and expectant world Adah. Where dwellest thou? should I dwell? Where are Thy God or Gods - there am I ; all things are Divided with me; life and death-and time- | Eternity and heaven and earth- and that Which is not heaven nor earth, but peopled with Those who once peopled or shall people both These are my realms! So that I do divide His, and possess a kingdom which is not His. If I were not that which I have said, Could I stand here? His angels are within Your vision. Adah. So they were when the fair serpent Spoke with our mother first. Lucifer. Cain! thou hast heard.' If thou dost long for knowledge, I can satiate That thirst: nor ask thee to partake of fruits Which shall deprive thee of a single good The conqueror has left thee. Follow me. Cain. Spirit, I have said it. [Exeunt Lucifer and Cain. Adah (follows, exclaiming) Cain! my brother! Cain! A man shall say to a man," Believe in me, And walk the waters;" and the man shall walk The billows and be safe. I will not say Is yon our earth? Lucifer. Dost thou not recognize The dust which form'd your father? Cain. Can it be? Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether, With an inferior circlet near it still, Which looks like that which lit our earthly night? It this our Paradise? Where are its walls, And they who guard them? Lucifer. Point me out the site Of Paradise. Cain. How should I? As we move Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller, And as it waxes little, and then less, Gathers a halo round it, like the light Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise: Methinks they both, as we recede from them, Appear to join the innumerable stars Which are around us; and, as we move on, Increase their myriads. Lucifer. And if there should be Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited By greater things, and they themselves far more In number than the dust of thy dull earth, Though multiplied to animated atoms, All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched, What wouldst thou think? Cain. I should be proud of thought Which knew such things. Lucifer. But if that high thought were Link'd to a servile mass of matter, and, Knowing such things,aspiring to such things, And science still beyond them, were chain'd down To the most gross and petty paltry wants, Lucifer. Thou didst before I came upon thee. Cain. How? Lucifer. By suffering. Cain. And must torture be immortal? Lucifer. We and thy sons will try. But now, behold! Is it not glorious? Cain. Oh, thou beautiful And unimaginable ether! and Ye multiplying masses of increased And still-increasing lights! what are ye? what Is this blue wilderness of interminable Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden? Is your course measured for ye? Or do ye Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be Sweep on in your unbounded revelry As frail, and few so happy Cain. Spirit! I Know nought of death, save as a dreadful thing Of which I have heard my parents speak, as of A hideous heritage I owe to them Lucifer. Thou canst not All die-there is what must survive. Spake not of this unto my father, when I may be in the rest as angels are. Lucifer. I am angelic: wouldst thou be as I am? Cain. I know not what thou art: I see thy power, And see thou showst me things beyond my power, Beyond all power of my born faculties, Lucifer. What are they, which dwell So humbly in their pride, as to sojourn With worms in clay? Cain. And what art thou, who dwellest So haughtily in spirit, and canst range Nature and immortality—and yet Seemst sorrowful? Lucifer. I seem that which I am; And therefore do I ask of thee, if thou Wouldst be immortal? Cain. Thou hast said, I must be Immortal in despite of me. I knew not This until lately-but since it must be, Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn To anticipate my immortality. Through an aerial universe of endless Expansion, at which my soul aches to think, Intoxicated with eternity? Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are! How beautiful ye are! how beautiful Your works, or accidents, or whatsoe'er They may be! Let me die, as atoms die, (If that they die) or know ye in your might And knowledge! My thoughts are not in this hour Unworthy what I see, though my dust is; Spirit! let me expire, or see them nearer. Lucifer. Art thou not nearer? look back to thine earth! Cain. Where is it? I see nothing save a mass Cain. I cannot see it. Cain. And wilt thou tell me so? In the dim twilight, brighter than yon world Which bears them. Lucifer. Thou hast seen both worms and worlds, Each bright and sparkling, think of them? what dost Cain. That they are beautiful in their Cain. Why, what are things? Lucifer. Both partly: but what doth Cain. The things I see. Cain. The things I have not seen, Cain. But it grows dark, and dark— the Lucifer. And yet thou seest. No sun, no moon, no lights innumerable. As I have shown thee much which cannot die? Seem'd full of life even when their atmo- Lucifer. Away, then! on our mighty wings. Cain. Oh! how we cleave the blue! The stars fade from us! sphere Of light gave way, and show'd them taking shapes Unequal, of deep valleys and vast mountains; The earth! where is my earth? let me look And some emitting sparks, and some dison it, For I was made of it. Lucifer. 'Tis now beyond thee, Less in the universe, than thou in it: playing Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt With luminous belts, and floating moons, which took Yet deem not that thou canst escape it; thou Like them the features of fair earth: Shalt soon return to earth, and all its dust; Tis part of thy eternity, and mine. instead, |