Lucifer. Thou'lt know here-and hereafter. Cain.

Be taught the mystery of my being.

Art thou that steppest between heart and heart? Cain. He is a god.

Adah.

Cain.

A god.

How know'st thou!

He speaks like

Adah. So did the Serpent, and it lied.

Lucifer. Thou errest, Adah!-was not the tree that Of knowledge?

Adah.

Ay-to our eternal sorrow.

Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge-so he

lied not:

And what is that?

And if he did betray you, 'twas with truth;

Let me but

And truth in its own essence cannot be

But good.

Adah. But all we know of it has gather'd Evil on ill: expulsion from our home,

And dread, and toil, and sweat, and heaviness;

Remorse of that which was-and hope of that

Which cometh not. Cain! walk not with this spirit.
Bear with what we have borne, and love me—
Love thee.

Lucifer. More than thy mother, and thy sire?
Adah. I do. Is that sin, too?
Lucifer.

It one day will be in your children.

Adah. What! Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch

No, not yet:

Yes;

Lucifer. Not as thou lovest Cain. Adah.

Oh my God!
Shall they not love, and bring forth things that love
Out of their love? have they not drawn their milk
Out of this bosom? was not he, their father,
Born of the same sole womb, in the same hour
With me? Did we not love each other? and
In multiplying our being multiply

Things which will love each other as we love
Them? And as I love thee, Cain, go not
Forth with this spirit; he is not of ours.

Lucifer. The sin I speak of is not of my making, And cannot be a sin in you--whate'er

It seems in those who will replace ye in
Mortality.
Adah.

What is the sin which is not

Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin
Or virtue?-if it doth, we are the slaves
Of

[higher

Ask Eve, your mother: bears she not the know-
Of good and evil?
Adah.

[ledge

Oh, my mother! thou
Hast pluck'd a fruit more fatal to thine offspring
Than to thyself; thou at the least hast pass'd
Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent

And happy intercourse with happy spirits:
But we, thy children, ignorant of Eden,
Are girt about by demons, who assume
The words of God, and tempt us with our own
Dissatisfied and curious thoughts-as thou
Wert work'd on by the snake, in thy most flush'd
And heedless, harmless wantonness of bliss.
I cannot answer this immortal thing
Which stands before me; I can not abhor him ;
I look upon him with a pleasing fear,
And yet I fly not from him in his eye
There is a fastening attraction which
Fixes my fluttering eyes on his; my heart

Beats quick; he awes me, and yet draws me near,
Nearer and nearer: - Cain-Cain-save me from
him!
[spirit.

Cain. What dreads my Adah? This is no ill Adah. He is not God-nor God's: I have beheld The cherubs and the seraphs; he looks not Like them.

The seraphs love most-cherubim know most;
And this should be a cherub, since he loves not.
Lucifer. And if the higher knowledge quenches
love,

What must he be you cannot love when known?
Since the all-knowing cherubim love least,
The seraphs' love can be but ignorance:
That they are not compatible, the doom
Of thy fond parents, for their daring, proves.
Choose betwixt love and knowledge-since there is
No other choice: your sire hath chosen already;
His worship is but fear.

Adan.
Oh, Cain! choose love.
Cain. For thee, my Adah-I choose not-it was
Born with me-but I love nought else.
Adah.
Cain. Did they love us when they snatch'd from
the tree

Our parents?

That which hath driven us all from Paradise?
Adah. We were not born then-and if we had been,
Should we not love them and our children, Cain?

Cain. My little Enoch! 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---

The cause of this all-spreading happiness
(Which you proclaim) of the all-great and good
Maker of life and living things; it is

His secret, and he keeps it. We must bear,
And some of us resist, and both in vain,
His seraphs say; but it is worth the trial,
Since better may not be without: there is
A wisdom in the spirit, which directs
To right, as in the dim blue air the eye
Of you, young mortals, lights at once upon
The star which watches, welcoming the morn.
Adah. It is a beautiful star; I love it for its beauty.
Lucifer. And why not adore?
Adah.

Adores the Invisible only.

Lucifer.

Our father

But the symbols

No

Adah. Save in my father, who is God's own image; Or in His angels, who are like to theeAnd brighter, yet less beautiful and powerful In seeming: as the silent sunny noon, All light they look upon us; but thou seem'st Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault With things that look as if they would be suns; So beautiful, unnumber'd, and endearing, Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them, They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou. Thou seem'st unhappy: do not make us so, And I will weep for thee.

The unpeopled earth-and the o'er-peopled hell, Of which thy bosom is the germ.

Adah.

This spirit curseth us. Cain.

Him will I follow.

Adah.

Lucifer.

O Cain !

Let him say on;

Whither?

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 destroyed in few?

Cain.

Adah.

Lead on.

Will he,

He shall.

In sooth, return within an hour?
Lucifer.

With us acts are exempt from time, and we
Can crowd eternity into an hour,

Or stretch an hour into eternity

We breathe not by a mortal measurement--
But 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
To make that silent and expectant world
As populous as this: at present there
Are few inhabitants.

Adah. By me?

ACT II.

SCENE 1.-The Abyss of Space.

Cain. I tread on air, and sink not; yet I fear To sink.

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! doubt-and 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 behold
The worlds beyond thy little world, nor be
Amerced for doubts beyond thy little life,
With torture of my dooming. There will come
An hour, when, toss'd upon some water-drops,
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,
Believe in me, as a conditional creed
To save thee; but fly with me o'er the gulf
Of space an equal flight, and I will show
What thou dar'st not deny-the history
Of past, and present, and of future worlds.
Cain. Oh, god, or demon, or whate'er thou art,
Is yon our earth?

Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be 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
No less than life; a heritage not happy.
If I may judge, till now. But, spirit: if
It be as thou hast said (and I within
Feel the prophetic torture of its truth),
Here let me die: for to give birth to those
Who can but suffer many years, and die,
Methinks is merely propagating death,
And multiplying murder.
Lucifer.

Thou canst not

All die-there is what must survive. Cain.

The Other

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
Sweep on in your unbounded revelry
Through an aërial universe of endless
Expansion-at which my soul aches to think-
Intoxicated with eternity?

O God! O Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are !
How beautiful ye are ! how beautiful
Your works, or accidents, or whatsoe'er

[hold!