by Lord Byron
Which are so beautiful: shall they, too, die?
Lucifer. Perhaps — but long outlive both thine and thee.
Cain. I’m glad of that: I would not have them die —
They are so lovely. What is Death? I fear,
I feel, it is a dreadful thing; but what,
I cannot compass: ‘tis denounced against us,
Both them who sinned and sinned not, as an ill —
What ill?
Lucifer. To be resolved into the earth.
Cain. But shall I know it?
Lucifer. As I know not death,
I cannot answer.
Cain. Were I quiet earth, 290
That were no evil: would I ne’er had been
Aught else but dust!
Lucifer. That is a grovelling wish,
Less than thy father’s — for he wished to know!
Cain. But not to live — or wherefore plucked he not
The Life-tree?
Lucifer. He was hindered.
Cain. Deadly error!
Not to snatch first that fruit: — but ere he plucked
The knowledge, he was ignorant of Death.
Alas! I scarcely now know what it is,
And yet I fear it — fear I know not what!
Lucifer. And I, who know all things, fear nothing; see 300
What is true knowledge.
Cain. Wilt thou teach me all?
Lucifer. Aye, upon one condition.
Cain. Name it.
Lucifer. That
Thou dost fall down and worship me — thy Lord.
Cain. Thou art not the Lord my father worships.
Lucifer. No.
Cain. His equal?
Lucifer. No; — I have nought in common with him!
Nor would: I would be aught above — beneath —
Aught save a sharer or a servant of
His power. I dwell apart; but I am great: —
Many there are who worship me, and more
Who shall — be thou amongst the first.
Cain. I never 310
As yet have bowed unto my father’s God.
Although my brother Abel oft implores
That I would join with him in sacrifice: —
Why should I bow to thee?
Lucifer. Hast thou ne’er bowed
To him?
Cain. Have I not said it? — need I say it?
Could not thy mighty knowledge teach thee that?
Lucifer. He who bows not to him has bowed to me.
Cain. But I will bend to neither.
Lucifer. Ne’er the less,
Thou art my worshipper; not worshipping
Him makes thee mine the same.
Cain. And what is that? 320
Lucifer. Thou’lt know here — and hereafter.
Cain. Let me but
Be taught the mystery of my being.
Lucifer. Follow
Where I will lead thee.
Cain. But I must retire
To till the earth — for I had promised — —
Lucifer. What?
Cain. To cull some first-fruits.
Lucifer. Why?
Cain. To offer up
With Abel on an altar.
Lucifer. Said’st thou not
Thou ne’er hadst bent to him who made thee?
Cain. Yes —
But Abel’s earnest prayer has wrought upon me;
The offering is more his than mine — and Adah — —
Lucifer. Why dost thou hesitate?
Cain. She is my sister, 330
Born on the same day, of the same womb; and
She wrung from me, with tears, this promise; and
Rather than see her weep, I would, methinks,
Bear all — and worship aught.
Lucifer. Then follow me!
Cain. I will.
Enter Adah.
Adah. My brother, I have come for thee;
It is our hour of rest and joy — and we
Have less without thee. Thou hast laboured not
This morn; but I have done thy task: the fruits
Are ripe, and glowing as the light which ripens:
Come away.
Cain. Seest thou not?
Adah. I see an angel; 340
We have seen many: will he share our hour
Of rest? — he is welcome.
Cain. But he is not like
The angels we have seen.
Adah. Are there, then, others?
But he is welcome, as they were: they deigned
To be our guests — will he?
Cain (to Lucifer).Wilt thou?
Lucifer. I ask
Thee to be mine.
Cain. I must away with him.
Adah. And leave us?
Cain. Aye.
Adah. And me?
Cain. Belovéd Adah!
Adah. Let me go with thee.
Lucifer. No, she must not.
Adah. Who
Art thou that steppest between heart and heart?
Cain. He is a God.
Adah. How know’st thou?
Cain. He speaks like
A God.
Adah. So did the Serpent, and it lied. 410
Lucifer. Thou errest, Adah! — was not the Tree that
Of Knowledge?
Adah. Aye — to our eternal sorrow.
Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge — so he lied not:
And if he did betray you, ‘twas with Truth;
And Truth in its own essence cannot be
But good.
Adah. But all we know of it has gathered
Evil on ill; expulsion from our home,
And dread, and toil, and sweat, and heaviness;
Remorse of that which was — and hope of that 360
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;
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, 370
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, my 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 seem in those who will replace ye in
Mortality.
Adah. What is the sin which is not 380
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 them 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. Omnipotence 390
Must be all goodness.
Lucifer. Was it so in Eden?
Adah. Fiend! tempt me not with beauty; thou art fairer
Than was the Serpent, and as false.
&nbs
p; Lucifer. As true.
Ask Eve, your mother: bears she not the knowledge
Of good and evil?
Adah. Oh, my mother! thou
Hast plucked a fruit more fatal to thine offspring
Than to thyself; thou at the least hast passed
Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent
And happy intercourse with happy spirits:
But we, thy children, ignorant of Eden, 400
Are girt about by demons, who assume
The words of God, and tempt us with our own
Dissatisfied and curious thoughts — as thou
Wert worked on by the snake, in thy most flushed
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
There is a fastening attraction which 410
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!
Cain. What dreads my Adah? This is no ill spirit.
Adah. He is not God — nor God’s: I have beheld
The Cherubs and the Seraphs; he looks not
Like them.
Cain. But there are spirits loftier still —
The archangels.
Lucifer. And still loftier than the archangels.
Adah. Aye — but not blesséd.
Lucifer. If the blessedness
Consists in slavery — no.
Adah. I have heard it said, 420
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: 430
His worship is but fear.
Adah. Oh, Cain! choose Love.
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 snatched 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 440
Through thrice a thousand generations! never
Shall men love the remembrance of the man
Who sowed the seed of evil and mankind
In the same hour! They plucked 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 unnumbered and innumerable
Multitudes, millions, myriads, which may be,
To inherit agonies accumulated
By ages! — and I must be sire of such things! 450
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,
Interchecked with an instant of brief pleasure,
To Death — the unknown! Methinks the Tree of Knowledge
Hath not fulfilled its promise: — if they sinned,
At least they ought to have known all things that are
Of knowledge — and the mystery of Death. 460
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 470
Judge from what I have heard.
Lucifer. And thou couldst not
Alone, thou say’st, 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.
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. 480
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;
It is not tranquil.
Adah. Alas! no! and you —
Are you of Heaven?
Lucifer. If I am not, enquire
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, 490
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. Our father
Adores the Invisible only.
Lucifer. But the symbols
Of the Invisible are the loveliest 500
Of what is visible; and yon bright star
Is leader of the host of Heaven.
Adah. Our father
Saith that he has beheld the God himself
Who made him and our mother.
Lucifer. Hast thou seen him?
Adah. Yes — in his works.
Lucifer. But in his being?
Adah. No —
Save in my father, who is God’s own image;
Or in his angels, who are like to thee —
And brighter, yet less beautiful and powerful
In seeming: as the silent sunny noon,
All light, they look upon us; but thou seem’st 510
Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds
Streak the deep purple, and unnumbered stars
Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault
With things that look as if they would be suns;
So beautiful, unnumbered, 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.
Lucifer. Alas! those tears!
Couldst thou but know what oceans will be shed — — 520
Adah. By me?
Lucifer. By all.
Adah. What all?
Lucifer. The million millions —
The myriad myriads — the all-peopled earth —
The unpeopled earth — and the o’er-peopled Hell,
Of which thy bosom is the germ.
Adah. O 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? 530
And cannot I, who aided in this work,
Show in an hour what he hath made in many,
Or hath destroyed in few?
Cain. Lead on.
Adah. Will he,
In sooth, return within an hour?
Lucifer. He shall.
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. Aye, woman! he alone 540
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 550
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 560
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.
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?