Offi. - thou hast no son. We must remove the body. Mar. Touch it not, dungeon miscreants! your base office Ends with his life, and goes not beyond murder, Offi. Doge. Inform the signory, from me, the Doge, Mar. And I must live! [Exit Officer. Your children live, Marina. Mar. My children! true - they live, and I must live To bring them up to serve the state, and die As died their father. Oh! what best of blessings Were barrenness in Venice! Would my mother Doge (throwing himself down by the body). Here! Ay, weep on! Mar. I thought you had no tears you hoarded them Until they are useless; but weep on! he never Shall weep more - never, never more. CAIN AND LUCIFER IN THE ABYSS OF SPACE. (CAIN, Act ii. Scene 1.) Cain. Oh, god, or demon, or whate'er thou art, Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether, With an inferior circlet near it still, Which looks like that which lit our earthly night? Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls, And they who guard them? Lucifer. Of Paradise. Cain. Point me out the site 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 Though multiplied to animated atoms, All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched, Cain. Which knew such things. Lucifer. I should be proud of thought But if that high thought were Link'd to a servile mass of matter, and, Knowing such things, aspiring to such things, All foul and fulsome, and the very best To lure thee on to the renewal of Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be Cain. Spirit! I Know not of death, save as a dreadful thing No less than life; a heritage not happy, Who can but suffer many years, and die, Lucifer. Thou canst not The Other All die - there is what must survive. Cain. 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 show'st me things beyond my power. Beyond all power of my born faculties, Although inferior still to my desires And my conceptions. 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 Lucifer. I seem that which I am; And therefore do I ask of thee, if thou Cain. Thou hast said, I must be Immortal in despite of me. I knew not This until lately-but since it must be, Lucifer. Thou didst before I came upon thee. Lucifer. By suffering. Cain. How? 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 Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen Expansion — at which my soul aches to think Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are ! 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 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 Of most innumerable lights. Lucifer. Look there! |