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. So did the Serpent, and it lied.
Lucifer. Thou errest, Adah!-was not the tree that Of knowledge?
Ay-to our eternal sorrow.
Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge-so he
And if he did betray you, 'twas with truth;
And truth in its own essence cannot be
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
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
Ask Eve, your mother: bears she not the know- 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 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
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.
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.
This spirit curseth us. Cain.
Him will I follow.
Whence he shall come back to thee in an hour: But in that hour see things of many days. Adah. How can that be?
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?
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.
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
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
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.
All die-there is what must survive. Cain.
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
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.
Greater than either: many things will have No end; and some, which would pretend to have Had no beginning, have had one as mean As thou; and mightier things have been extinct To make way for much meaner than we can
Lucifer. Art thou not nearer? Look back to thine Surmise; for moments only and the space earth !
Cain. Where is it? I see nothing save a mass Of most innumerable lights.
Cain. I cannot see it. Lucifer.
Cain. That!-yonder!
Cain. And wilt thou tell me so? Why, I have seen the fire-flies and fire-worms Sprinkle the dusky groves and the green banks In the dim twilight, brighter than yon world Which bears them.
Lucifer. Thou hast seen both worms and worlds, Each bright and sparkling-what dost think of them?
Cain. That they are beautiful in their own sphere, And that the night, which makes both beautiful, The little shining fire-fly in its flight,
And the immortal star in its great course, Must both be guided.
Have been and must be all unchangeable. But changes make not death, except to clay: But thou art clay, and canst but comprehend That which was clay; and such thou shalt behold. Cain. Clay, spirit! what thou wilt, I can survey. Lucifer. Away, then!
Lucifer. To the world of phantoms, which Are beings past, and shadows still to come. Cain. But it grows dark, and dark-the stars are Lucifer. And yet thou seest. [gone.
Cain. "Tis a fearful light! No sun, no moon, no lights innumerable. The very blue of the empurpled night Fades to a dreary twilight, yet I see Huge dusky masses: but unlike the worlds We were approaching, which, begirt with light, Seem'd full of life even when their atmosphere Of light gave way, and show'd them taking shapes Unequal, of deep valleys and vast mountains; And some emitting sparks, and some displaying Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt
With luminous belts, and floating moons, which
Like them, the features of fair earth:-instead, All here seems dark and dreadful. Lucifer. Thou seekest to behold death and dead things? Cain. I seek it not: but as I know there are Such, and that my sire's sin makes him and me, And all that we inherit, liable
To such, I would behold at once, what I Must one day see perforce.
Lucifer. And so it shall be ever; but we will Unfold its gates! Cain.
Lucifer. Return! be sure: how else should death
Its present realm is thin to what it will be, Through thee and thine.
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