by Lord Byron
I ought to add, that there is a “tramelogedia” of Alfieri, called “Abele.” I have never read that, nor any other of the posthumous works of the writer, except his Life.
Ravenna, Sept. 20, 1821.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
MEN.
Adam.
Cain.
Abel.
SPIRITS.
Angel of the Lord.
Lucifer.
WOMEN.
Eve.
Adah.
Zillah.
CAIN: A MYSTERY
ACT I
Scene I. — The Land without Paradise. — Time, Sunrise.
Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Adah, Zillah, offering a Sacrifice.
Adam. God, the Eternal! Infinite! All-wise! —
Who out of darkness on the deep didst make
Light on the waters with a word — All Hail!
Jehovah! with returning light — All Hail!
Eve. God! who didst name the day, and separate
Morning from night, till then divided never —
Who didst divide the wave from wave, and call
Part of thy work the firmament — All Hail!
Abel. God! who didst call the elements into
Earth, ocean, air and fire — and with the day 10
And night, and worlds which these illuminate,
Or shadow, madest beings to enjoy them,
And love both them and thee — All Hail! All Hail!
Adah. God! the Eternal parent of all things!
Who didst create these best and beauteous beings,
To be belovéd, more than all, save thee —
Let me love thee and them: — All Hail! All Hail!
Zillah. Oh, God! who loving, making, blessing all,
Yet didst permit the Serpent to creep in,
And drive my father forth from Paradise, 330
Keep us from further evil: — Hail! All Hail!
Adam. Son Cain! my first-born — wherefore art thou silent?
Cain. Why should I speak?
Adam. To pray.
Cain. Have ye not prayed?
Adam. We have, most fervently.
Cain. And loudly: I
Have heard you.
Adam. So will God, I trust.
Abel. Amen!
Adam. But thou my eldest born? art silent still?
Cain. ‘Tis better I should be so.
Adam. Wherefore so?
Cain. I have nought to ask.
Adam. Nor aught to thank for?
Cain. No.
Adam. Dost thou not live?
Cain. Must I not die?
Eve. Alas!
The fruit of our forbidden tree begins 30
To fall.
Adam. And we must gather it again.
Oh God! why didst thou plant the tree of knowledge?
Cain. And wherefore plucked ye not the tree of life?
Ye might have then defied him.
Adam. Oh! my son,
Blaspheme not: these are Serpent’s words.
Cain. Why not?
The snake spoke truth; it was the Tree of Knowledge;
It was the Tree of Life: knowledge is good,
And Life is good; and how can both be evil?
Eve. My boy! thou speakest as I spoke in sin,
Before thy birth: let me not see renewed 40
My misery in thine. I have repented.
Let me not see my offspring fall into
The snares beyond the walls of Paradise,
Which even in Paradise destroyed his parents.
Content thee with what is. Had we been so,
Thou now hadst been contented. — Oh, my son!
Adam. Our orisons completed, let us hence,
Each to his task of toil — not heavy, though
Needful: the earth is young, and yields us kindly
Her fruits with little labour.
Eve. Cain — my son — 50
Behold thy father cheerful and resigned —
And do as he doth.[Exeunt Adam and Eve.
Zillah. Wilt thou not, my brother?
Abel. Why wilt thou wear this gloom upon thy brow,
Which can avail thee nothing, save to rouse
The Eternal anger?
Adah. My belovéd Cain
Wilt thou frown even on me?
Cain. No, Adah! no;
I fain would be alone a little while.
Abel, I’m sick at heart; but it will pass;
Precede me, brother — I will follow shortly.
And you, too, sisters, tarry not behind; 60
Your gentleness must not be harshly met:
I’ll follow you anon.
Adah. If not, I will
Return to seek you here.
Abel. The peace of God
Be on your spirit, brother!
[Exeunt Abel, Zillah, and Adah.
Cain (solus).And this is
Life? — Toil! and wherefore should I toil? — because
My father could not keep his place in Eden?
What had I done in this? — I was unborn:
I sought not to be born; nor love the state
To which that birth has brought me. Why did he
Yield to the Serpent and the woman? or 70
Yielding — why suffer? What was there in this?
The tree was planted, and why not for him?
If not, why place him near it, where it grew
The fairest in the centre? They have but
One answer to all questions, “‘Twas his will,
And he is good.” How know I that? Because
He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow?
I judge but by the fruits — and they are bitter —
Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.
Whom have we here? — A shape like to the angels 80
Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect
Of spiritual essence: why do I quake?
Why should I fear him more than other spirits,
Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords
Before the gates round which I linger oft,
In Twilight’s hour, to catch a glimpse of those
Gardens which are my just inheritance,
Ere the night closes o’er the inhibited walls
And the immortal trees which overtop
The Cherubim-defended battlements? 90
If I shrink not from these, the fire-armed angels,
Why should I quail from him who now approaches?
Yet — he seems mightier far than them, nor less
Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful
As he hath been, and might be: sorrow seems
Half of his immortality. And is it
So? and can aught grieve save Humanity?
He cometh.
Enter Lucifer.
Lucifer. Mortal!
Cain. Spirit, who art thou?
Lucifer. Master of spirits.
Cain. And being so, canst thou
Leave them, and walk with dust?
Lucifer. I know the thoughts 100
Of dust, and feel for it, and with you.
Cain. How!
You know my thoughts?
Lucifer. They are the thoughts of all
Worthy of thought; — ‘tis your immortal part
Which speaks within you.
Cain. What immortal part?
This has not been revealed: the Tree of Life
Was withheld from us by my father’s folly,
While that of Knowledge, by my mother’s haste,
Was plucked too soon; and all the fruit is Death!
Lucifer. They have deceived thee; thou shalt live.
Cain. I live,
But live to die; and, living, see no thing 110
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A lo
athsome, and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome —
And so I live. Would I had never lived!
Lucifer. Thou livest — and must live for ever. Think not
The Earth, which is thine outward cov’ring, is
Existence — it will cease — and thou wilt be —
No less than thou art now.
Cain. No less! and why
No more?
Lucifer. It may be thou shalt be as we. 120
Cain. And ye?
Lucifer. Are everlasting.
Cain. Are ye happy?
Lucifer. We are mighty.
Cain. Are ye happy?
Lucifer. No: art thou?
Cain. How should I be so? Look on me!
Lucifer. Poor clay!
And thou pretendest to be wretched! Thou!
Cain. I am: — and thou, with all thy might, what art thou?
Lucifer. One who aspired to be what made thee, and
Would not have made thee what thou art.
Cain. Ah!
Thou look’st almost a god; and — —
Lucifer. I am none:
And having failed to be one, would be nought
Save what I am. He conquered; let him reign! 130
Cain. Who?
Lucifer. Thy Sire’s maker — and the Earth’s.
Cain. And Heaven’s,
And all that in them is. So I have heard
His Seraphs sing; and so my father saith.
Lucifer. They say — what they must sing and say, on pain
Of being that which I am, — and thou art —
Of spirits and of men.
Cain. And what is that?
Lucifer. Souls who dare use their immortality —
Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in
His everlasting face, and tell him that
His evil is not good! If he has made, 140
As he saith — which I know not, nor believe —
But, if he made us — he cannot unmake:
We are immortal! — nay, he’d have us so,
That he may torture: — let him! He is great —
But, in his greatness, is no happier than
We in our conflict! Goodness would not make
Evil; and what else hath he made? But let him
Sit on his vast and solitary throne —
Creating worlds, to make eternity
Less burthensome to his immense existence 150
And unparticipated solitude;
Let him crowd orb on orb: he is alone
Indefinite, Indissoluble Tyrant;
Could he but crush himself, ‘twere the best boon
He ever granted: but let him reign on!
And multiply himself in misery!
Spirits and Men, at least we sympathise —
And, suffering in concert, make our pangs
Innumerable, more endurable,
By the unbounded sympathy of all 160
With all! But He! so wretched in his height,
So restless in his wretchedness, must still
Create, and re-create — perhaps he’ll make
One day a Son unto himself — as he
Gave you a father — and if he so doth,
Mark me! that Son will be a sacrifice!
Cain. Thou speak’st to me of things which long have swum
In visions through my thought: I never could
Reconcile what I saw with what I heard.
My father and my mother talk to me 170
Of serpents, and of fruits and trees: I see
The gates of what they call their Paradise
Guarded by fiery-sworded Cherubim,
Which shut them out — and me: I feel the weight
Of daily toil, and constant thought: I look
Around a world where I seem nothing, with
Thoughts which arise within me, as if they
Could master all things — but I thought alone
This misery was mine. My father is
Tamed down; my mother has forgot the mind 180
Which made her thirst for knowledge at the risk
Of an eternal curse; my brother is
A watching shepherd boy, who offers up
The firstlings of the flock to him who bids
The earth yield nothing to us without sweat;
My sister Zillah sings an earlier hymn
Than the birds’ matins; and my Adah — my
Own and belovéd — she, too, understands not
The mind which overwhelms me: never till
Now met I aught to sympathise with me. 190
‘Tis well — I rather would consort with spirits.
Lucifer. And hadst thou not been fit by thine own soul
For such companionship, I would not now
Have stood before thee as I am: a serpent
Had been enough to charm ye, as before.
Cain. Ah! didst thou tempt my mother?
Lucifer. I tempt none,
Save with the truth: was not the Tree, the Tree
Of Knowledge? and was not the Tree of Life
Still fruitful? Did I bid her pluck them not?
Did I plant things prohibited within 200
The reach of beings innocent, and curious
By their own innocence? I would have made ye
Gods; and even He who thrust ye forth, so thrust ye
Because “ye should not eat the fruits of life,
And become gods as we.” Were those his words?
Cain. They were, as I have heard from those who heard them,
In thunder.
Lucifer. Then who was the Demon? He
Who would not let ye live, or he who would
Have made ye live for ever, in the joy
And power of Knowledge?
Cain. Would they had snatched both 210
The fruits, or neither!
Lucifer. One is yours already,
The other may be still.
Cain. How so?
Lucifer. By being
Yourselves, in your resistance. Nothing can
Quench the mind, if the mind will be itself
And centre of surrounding things — ‘tis made
To sway.
Cain. But didst thou tempt my parents?
Lucifer. I?
Poor clay — what should I tempt them for, or how?
Cain. They say the Serpent was a spirit.
Lucifer. Who
Saith that? It is not written so on high:
The proud One will not so far falsify, 220
Though man’s vast fears and little vanity
Would make him cast upon the spiritual nature
His own low failing. The snake was the snake —
No more; and yet not less than those he tempted,
In nature being earth also — more in wisdom,
Since he could overcome them, and foreknew
The knowledge fatal to their narrow joys.
Think’st thou I’d take the shape of things that die?
Cain. But the thing had a demon?
Lucifer. He but woke one
In those he spake to with his forky tongue. 230
I tell thee that the Serpent was no more
Than a mere serpent: ask the Cherubim
Who guard the tempting tree. When thousand ages
Have rolled o’er your dead ashes, and your seed’s,
The seed of the then world may thus array
Their earliest fault in fable, and attribute
To me a shape I scorn, as I scorn all
That bows to him, who made things but to bend
Before his sullen, sole eternity;
But we, who see the truth, must speak it. Thy 240
Fond parents listened to a creeping thing,
And fell. For what should spirits tempt them? What
Was there to envy in the narrow bounds
Of Paradise, that spirits who pervade
Space — — but I speak to thee of what thou know’st not,
With all thy Tree of Knowledge.
Cain. But thou canst not
Speak aught of Knowledge which I would not know,
And do not thirst to know, and bear a mind
To know.
Lucifer. And heart to look on?
Cain. Be it proved.
Lucifer. Darest thou look on Death?
Cain. He has not yet 250
Been seen.
Lucifer. But must be undergone.
Cain. My father
Says he is something dreadful, and my mother
Weeps when he’s named; and Abel lifts his eyes
To Heaven, and Zillah casts hers to the earth,
And sighs a prayer; and Adah looks on me,
And speaks not.
Lucifer. And thou?
Cain. Thoughts unspeakable
Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear
Of this almighty Death, who is, it seems,
Inevitable. Could I wrestle with him?
I wrestled with the lion, when a boy, 260
In play, till he ran roaring from my gripe.
Lucifer. It has no shape; but will absorb all things
That bear the form of earth-born being.
Cain. Ah!
I thought it was a being: who could do
Such evil things to beings save a being?
Lucifer. Ask the Destroyer.
Cain. Who?
Lucifer. The Maker — Call him
Which name thou wilt: he makes but to destroy.
Cain. I knew not that, yet thought it, since I heard
Of Death: although I know not what it is —
Yet it seems horrible. I have looked out 270
In the vast desolate night in search of him;
And when I saw gigantic shadows in
The umbrage of the walls of Eden, chequered
By the far-flashing of the Cherubs’ swords,
I watched for what I thought his coming; for
With fear rose longing in my heart to know
What ‘twas which shook us all — but nothing came.
And then I turned my weary eyes from off
Our native and forbidden Paradise,
Up to the lights above us, in the azure, 280