He but woke one I cannot answer.
Cain.

Space but I speak to thee of what thou know'st not, What is true knowledge.
With all thy tree of knowledge.
Cain.

But he is welcome, as they were: they deign'd

To be our guests-will he?

Cain, (to Lucifer.)

Lucifer.

Thee to be mine.

Wilt thou?

I ask

No, she must not.

Adah.

Who

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

It seem 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

Lucifer. Higher things than ye are slaves: and higher Than they or ye would be so, did they not

Prefer an independency of torture

To the smooth agonies of adulation

In hymns and harpings, and self-seeking prayers
To that which is omnipotent, because

It is omnipotent, and not from love,

But terror and self-hope.

Adah.

Must be all goodness.

Lucifer.

Omnipotence

Was it so in Eden?

Adah. Fiend! tempt me not with beauty; tnou ári

fairer

Hast pluck'd a fruit more fatal to thine offspring
Than to thyself; thou at the least hast past
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
Beloved Adah! Dissatisfied and curious thoughts-as thou
Wert work'd on by the snake, in thy most flush'
And heedless, harmless wantonness of bliss.
I cannot answer this immortal thing
Which stands before me; I cannot abhor him;
I look upon him with a pleasing fear,
And yet I fly not from him: in his eye

Lucifer. Thou errest, Adah!—was not the tree that Nearer and nearer:-Cain Cain-save me from num! Of knowledge?

Allah. Ay-to our eternal sorrow.

Cain. What dreads my Adah? This is no ili spirit
Adah. He is not God-nor God's: I have beheld

Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge-so he lied The cherubs and the seraphs; he looks not

not:

And if he did betray you, 't was with truth;

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-I
Love thee.

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

No, not yet;
What!
Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?
Lucifer. Not as thou lovest Cain.
Adah.
Oh, my God!
Shali they not love and bring forth things that love.

It one day will be in your children.
Adah.

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.

To Death-the unknown! Methinks the tree of know- They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou.

With us acts are exempt from time, and we

Lucifer. Ask of your sire, the exile fresh from Eden; Can crowd eternity into an hour,

Or of his first-born son; ask your own heart;

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.
Laucifer.

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!

ACT II.

SCENE I.-The Abyss of Space.

Can. 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?

Which knew such things.

Laucifer.

I should be proud of thought

But if that high though vere
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
Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be
As frail, and few so happy-
Cain.

Spirit! I
Know naught 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,

Lucifer. Believe-and sink not! doubt-and perish! And multiplying murder.

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 naught 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

Lucifer.

The Other

Thou canst not
All die-there is what must survive.
Cain.
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 show'st me things beyond my power,
Beyond all power of my born faculties,
Although inferior still to my desires
And my conceptions.

Laucifer.

What are they, which dwell
So humbly in their pride, as to sojourn
With worms in clay?

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-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.

Lucifer.

Cain. Show me.

Lucifer.

Cain.

But by whom or what?

Cain. Clay, spirit! What thou wilt, I can survey.
Lucifer. Away, then!

Cain.
And some till now grew larger as we approach'd,

But the lights fade from me fast

And wore the look of worlds.

Lucifer.

Cain. And Edens in them?

Laucifer.

Cain.

And such they are.

Lucifer. Yea, or things higher.

Cain.

Lucifer. Wouldst thou have men without them? must

no reptiles

Breathe, save the erect ones?

Cain.
Where fly we?
Lucifer.

How the lights recede!

To the world of phantoms, which
Are beings past, and shadows still to come.
Cain. But it grows dark, and dark-the stars are

gone!

Lucifer. And yet thou seest.

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
How know I what Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt
With luminous belts, and floating moons, which took
Like them the features of fair earth:-instead,
All here seems dark and dreadful.
Lucifer.

Dar'st thou behold?

Lucifer. No more than life is; and that was ere thou
Or I were, or the things which seem to us
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 mighter things have been extinct
To make way for much meaner than we can
Surmise; for moments only and the space
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.

Enormous vapours roll

Enter!

Can I return?

Lucifer. Return! be sure: how else should death be
peopled?

Its present realm is thin to what it will be,
Through thee and thine.

Cain.

And wider, and make
Lucifer. Advance!
Cain.
Lucifer.

The clouds still open wide widening circles round us.

And thou!

Fear not-without me thou

Couldst not have gone beyond thy world. On! on!
[They disappear through the clouds

SCENE II.-Hades.

Enter LUCIFER and CAIN

Cain. How silent and how vast are these dim worlds!
For they seem more than one, and yet more peopled
Than the huge brilliant luminous orbs which swung
So thickly in the upper air, that I

Had deem'd them rather the bright populace
Of some all unimaginable heaven
Than things to be inhabited themselves,
But that on drawing near them I beheld
Their swelling into palpable immensity

Of matter, which seem'd made for life to dwell on,