Cain: A Mystery (Act 1)

The Land Without Paradise

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
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,[214]
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
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
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,[215]
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—
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;
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
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[216]
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?
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.[97] 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
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[98][217]
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
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome, 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.
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[218]
Save what I am. He conquered; let him reign!
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
And unparticipated solitude;[99]
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[219]
Innumerable, more endurable,
By the unbounded sympathy of all
With all! But He! so wretched in his height,
So restless in his wretchedness, must still
Create, and re-create—perhaps he'll make[100]
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
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
Which made her thirst for knowledge at the risk
Of an eternal curse; my brother is
A watching shepherd boy,[101] who offers up
The firstlings of the flock to him who bids
The earth yield nothing to us without sweat;[by]
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[220]
Now met I aught to sympathise with me.
'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.[bz]
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
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
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[221]
Saith that? It is not written so on high:
The proud One will not so far falsify,
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;[102] 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.
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
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
Been seen.
Lucifer. But must be undergone.
Cain.‍My father[222]
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,
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
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,
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,[223]
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.[103]
Cain.‍Were I quiet earth,
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
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.[224]
Cain.‍I never
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.[104]
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?
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,[225]
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;
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.[226]
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
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,
Born of the same sole womb,[105] 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[227]
Mortality[106].
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 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
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.
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,
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[228]
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,
The Seraphs love most—Cherubim know most[107]—
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?[ca]
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.
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?[229]
Cain. My little Enoch! 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 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!
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[cb].
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 say'st, be happy?
Adah.‍Alone! Oh, my God![230]
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.
What else can joy be, but the spreading joy?[cc]
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,
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
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?[231]
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
Like an ethereal night[108], 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——
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?
And cannot I, who aided in this work,[232]
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
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[109]. 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 good560[233]
The Conqueror has left thee. Follow me.
Cain. Spirit, I have said it.
[Exeunt Lucifer and Cain.
Adah (follows exclaiming). Cain! my brother! Cain!