The cause of this all-spreading happiness His secret, and he keeps it. We must hear, Lucifer. And why not adore? Adores the Invisible only. Lucifer. In sooth, return within an hour? Lucifer. Will he, He shall. With us acts are exempt from time, and we Or stretch an hour into eternity: Our father But the symbols Ay, woman! he alone Of mortals from that place (the first and last Who shall return, save ONE) shall come back to To make that silent and expectant world [thee, Of the Invisible are the loveliest Saith that he has beheld the God himself Lucifer. Adah. Yes-in his works. Lucifer. Where dwellest thou? Hast thou seen him? Lucifer. Throughout all space. Where should! But in his being? No Adah. Save in my father, who is God's own image; Or in his angels, who are like to theeAnd 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, where long white clouds Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault With things that look as if they would be suns: So beautiful, unnumber'd, 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. dwell? Where are Thy God or Gods-there am I : all things are Adah. So they were when the fair serpent 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. 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? Would run the edict of the other God, senses, and deem Worship the word which strikes their ear, And walk the waters ;" and the man shall walk To save thee; but fly with me o'er the gulf Which knew such things. Lucifer. But if that high thought were Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be Cain. Oh, god, or demon, or whate'er thou art, As frail, and few so happy (2)Is yon our earth? Lucifer. Dost thou not recognise Spirit! I Cain. If I may judge, till now. But, spirit! if Which looks like that which lit our earthly night? It be as thou hast said (and I within (1) In the MS. "An hour, when, walking on a petty lake."-E. (2) "It is nothing less than absurd to suppose, that Lucifer cannot well be expected to talk like an orthodox divine, and that the conversation of the first rebel and the first murderer was not likely to be very unexceptionabie; or to plead the authority of Milton, or the authors of the old mysteries, for such offensive colloquies. The fact is, that here the whole argument—and a very elaborate and specious argument it is-is directed against the goodness or the power of the Deity; and there is no answer so much as attempted to the offensive doctrines that are so stre nuously inculcated. The Devil and his pupil have the field entirely to themselves, and are encountered with nothing but feeble obtestations and unreasoning horrors. Nor is this argumentative blasphemy a mere incidental deformity that arises in the course of an action directed to the common sympathies of our nature. It forms, on the contrary, the great staple of the piece, and occupies, we should think, not less than two thirds of it; so that it is really difficult to believe that it was written for any other purpose than to inculcate these doctrines; or, at least, to discuss the question upon which they bear. Now, we can certainly have no objection to Lord Byron writing an essay on the origin of evil, and sifting the whole of that vast and perplexing subject, with the force and the freedom that would be expected and al What does Jeffrey mean by claborate? Why, they were written as fast as I could put pen to paper, in the midst of evolu-lowed in a fair philosophical discussion; but we do not think it tions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions of all who interested me in Italy. They said the same of Lara, which 1 wrote while undressing, after coming home from balls and masquerades. Of all I have ever written, they are perhaps the most carelessly composed; and their fanits, whatever they may be, are those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a merit, but it is a fact." B. Letters.-E. fair thus to argue it partially and con amore, in the name of Lucifer and Cain, without the responsibility or the liability to answer, that would attach to an philosophical disputant; and in a form which both doubles the danger, if the sentiments are pernicious, and almost precludes his opponents from the possibility of a reply." Jeffrey. Spake not of this unto my father, when Lucifer. I am angelic; wouldst thou be as I am? Lucifer. What are they which dwell So humbly in their pride, as to sojourn With worms in clay? Cuin. Unworthy what I see, though my dust is; Cain. Where is it? I see nothing save a mass Lucifer. Cain. I cannot see it. Lucifer. Cain. That!-yonder! Lucifer. Cain. Look there! Yet it sparkles still. Yea. 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, And what art thou, who dwellest Must both be guided. So haughtily in spirit, and canst range Lucifer. But by whom or what? Darest thou behold? How know I what Sit next thy heart? The things I see. How? But what Lucifer. By suffering. Sate nearest it? Cain. But now, [behold! And unimaginable ether! and Ye multiplying masses of increased And still increasing lights! what are ye? what Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are! (If that they die) or know ye in your might The things I have not seen, Nor ever shall-the mysteries of death. Lucifer. What if I show to thee things which have Lucifer. No more than life is; and that was ere thou Or I were, or the things which seem to us No end; and some, which would pretend to have Cain. Cain. How the lights recede ! Are beings past, and shadows still to come. Cain. But it grows dark, and dark-the stars are gone! Lucifer. And yet thou see'st. Cain. SCENE II. Hades. (1) Enter LUCIFER and CAIN. Cain. How silent and how vast are these dim worlds! 'Tis a fearful light! For they seem more than one, and yet more peopled Than the huge brilliant luminous orbs which swung No sun, no moon, no lights innumerable. The very blue of the empurpled night 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, With luminous belts, and floating moons, which It speaks of a day past. took, Like them, the features of fair earth:—instead, All here seems dark and dreadful. (1) "It is not very easy to perceive what natural or rational object the Devil proposes to himself in carrying his disciple through the abyss of space, to show him that repository of which we remember hearing something in our infant days, where the old moons are hung up to dry.' To prove that there is a life beyond the grave, was surely no part of his business when he was engaged in fostering the indignation of one who repined at the necessity of dying. And, though it would seem, that entire Hades is, in Lord Byron's picture, a place of suffering, yet, when Lucifer himself had premised that these sufferings were the lot of those spirits who had sided with him against Jehovah, is it likely that a more accurate knowledge of them would inorease Cain's eagerness for the alliance, or that he would not rather have inquired whether a better fortune did not await the adherents of the triumphant side? At all events, the spectacle of many ruined worlds was more likely to awe a mortal into submission, than to rouse him to hopeless resistance; and, even if it made him a hater of God, had no natural tendency to render him furious against a brother who was to be his fellow-sufferer." Heber.-E. That which it really is, I cannot answer. Lucifer. To pluck the fruit forbidden? Lucifer. But for thy sons and brother? Cain. Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes, Live ye, or have ye lived? Floating around me ?—They wear not the form Round our regretted and unenter'd Eden, Thou livest. Yet they lived. Where? Where Lucifer. Cain. Lucifer. What! Hath not he who made ye Yes; happy! when unfolded, Living, high, Said 't is another life? Cain. Said nothing, save that all shall die. (1) He one day will unfold that further secret. Through agonies unspeakable, and clogg'd Yet unborn myriads of unconscious atoms, All to be animated for this only! Lucifer. Of thine, I grant thee-but too mean to Cain. Lucifer. Intelligent, good, great, and glorious things, Cain. What are these mighty phantoms which I see In its dull damp degeneracy, to (1) "Death, the last and most dreadful of all evils, is so far from being one, that it is the infallible cure for all others. For, abstracted from the sickness and sufferings usually attending It, it is no more than the expiration of that term of life God was pleased to bestow on us, without any claim or merit on our part. But was it an evil ever so great, it could not be remedied but by one much greater, which is by living ever; by which means our wickedness, unrestrained by the prospect of a future state, would grow so unsupportable, our sufferings so intolerable by perseverance, and our pleasures so tiresome by repetition, that no being in the universe could be so completely miserable as a species of immortal men. We have no reason, therefore, to look upon death as an evil, or to fear it as a punishment, even without any supposition of a future life: but if we consider it as a passage to a more perfect state, or a remove only in an eternal succession of still improving states (for which we have the strongest reasons), it will then appear a new favour from the divine munificence; and a man must be as absurd to repine at dying, as a traveller would be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour through various unknown countries, to lament that he cannot take up his residence at the first dirty inn which he baits at on the road.-The instability of human life, or of the changes of its successive periods, of which we so frequently complain, are no more than the necessary progress of it to this necessary conclusion; and are so far from being evils deserving these complaints, that they are the source of our greatest pleasures, as they are the source of all novelty, from which our greatest pleasures are ever derived. The continual succession of seasons in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes, render it agreeable, and, like those of the year, afford us delights by their change, which the choicest of them could not give us by their continuance. In the spring of life, the gilding of the sunshine, the verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, are so exquisite in the eyes of infants at their first looking abroad into a new world, as nothing perhaps afterwards can equal. The heat and vigour of the succeeding summer of youth ripens for us new pleasures, the blooming maid, the nightly revel, and the jovial chase: the serene autumn of complete Manhood feasts us with the golden harvest of our worldly pursuits: nor is the hoary winter of old age destitute of its peculiar comforts and enjoyments, of which the recollection and relation of those past are perhaps none of the least; and at last death opens to us a new prospect, from whence we shall probably look back upon the diversions and occupations of this world with the same contempt we do now on our tops and hobby-horses, and with the same surprise that they could ever so much entertain or engage us." Jenyns. |