Cain. For thee, my Adah, I choose not

it was

Born with me- but I love nought else.
Adah. Our parents?

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;

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
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

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

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
As populous as this: at present there
Are few inhabitants.

Adah. Where dwellest thou?
Lucifer. Throughout all space. Where

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
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?

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,
All foul and fulsome, and the very best
Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation,
A most enervating and filthy cheat
To lure thee on to the renewal of

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

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

Spake not of this unto my father, when
He shut him forth from Paradise, with death
Written upon his forehead. But at least
Let what is mortal of me perish, that

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,
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 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
Of most innumerable lights.
Lucifer. Look there!

Cain. I cannot see it.
Lucifer. Yet it sparkles still.
Cain. What, yonder!
Lucifer. Yea.

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,

think of them?

what dost

Cain. That they are beautiful in their