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Cain. Why, what are things? Lucifer. Both partly: but what doth Sit next thy heart?

Cain. The things I see.
Lucifer. But what

Sate nearest it?

Cain. The things I have not seen, Nor ever shall-the mysteries of death. Lucifer. What, if I show to thee things which have died,

Cain. But it grows dark, and dark-the stars are gone!

Lucifer. And yet thon 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,

As I have shown thee much which cannot die? Seem'd full of life even when their atmoCain. Do so.

Lucifer. Away, then! on our mighty wings. Cain. Oh! how we cleave the blue! The stars fade from us!

sphere

Of light gave way, and show'd them taking shapes

Unequal, of deep valleys and vast mountains;

The earth! where is my earth? let me look | And some emitting sparks, and some dis

on it,

For I was made of it.

Lucifer. 'Tis now beyond thee,

Less in the universe, than thou in it:

playing

Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt With luminous belts, and floating moons, which took

instead,

Yet deem not that thou canst escape it; thou Like them the features of fair earth:— Shalt soon return to earth, and all its dust; 'Tis part of thy eternity, and mine.

Cain. Where dost thou lead me? Lucifer. To what was before thee! The phantasm of the world; of which thy world

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can survey.

Lucifer. Away, then!

Cain. But the lights fade from me fast, And some till now grew larger as we approach'd,

And wore the look of worlds.

Lucifer. And such they are.
Cain. And Edens in them?

Lucifer. It may be.

Cain. And men?

Lucifer. Yea, or things higher.
Cain. Ay? and serpents too?

Lucifer. Wouldst thou have men without them? must no reptiles Breathe, save the erect ones?

Cain. How the lights recede! Where fly we?

Lucifer. To the world of phantoms, which Are beings past, and shadows still to come.

All here seems dark and dreadful.
Lucifer. But distinct.

Thou seekest to behold death, and dead things?

Cain. I seek it not; but as I know there are Such, and that my sire's sin makes him and me,

And all that we inherit, liable
To such, I would behold at once, what I
Must one day see perforce.
Lucifer. Behold!

Cain. "Tis darkness.

Lucifer. And so it shall be ever; but we will

Unfold its gates!

Cain. Enormous vapours roll
Apart- what's this?
Lucifer. Enter!

Cain. 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. The clouds still open wide And wider, and make widening circles round us. Lucifer. Advance! Cain. And thou!

Lucifer. 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 | If not the last, rose higher than the first;

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,

Rather than life itself. But here, all is
So shadowy and so full of twilight, that
It speaks of a day past.

Lucifer. It is the realm

Of death.-Wouldst have it present?
Cain. Till I know

That which it really is, I cannot answer.
But if it be as I have heard my father
Deal out in his long homilies, 'tis a thing-
Oh God! I dare not think on't! Cursed be
He who invented life that leads to death!
Or the dull mass of life, that being life
Could not retain, but needs must forfeit it—
Even for the innocent!

Lucifer. Dost thou curse thy father? Cain. Cursed he not me in giving me my

birth?

Cursed he not me before my birth, in daring

To pluck the fruit forbidden?

Lucifer. Thou sayst well:

Haughty, and high, and beautiful, and full Of seeming strength, but of inexplicable Shape; for I never saw such. They bear not The wing of seraph, nor the face of man, Nor form of mightiest brute, nor aught that is

Now breathing; mighty yet and beautiful
As the most beautiful and mighty which
Live, and yet so unlike them, that I scarce
Can call them living.

Lucifer. Yet they lived.
Cain. Where?

Lucifer. Where

Thou livest.

Cain. When?

Lucifer. On what thou callest earth They did inhabit.

Cain. Adam is the first.

Lucifer. Of thine, I grant thee—but too mean to be

The last of these.

Cain. And what are they?
Lucifer. That which

Thou shalt be.

Cain. But what were they?
Lucifer. Living, high,

The curse is mutual 'twixt thy sire and thee Intelligent, good, great, and glorious things, But for thy sons and brother!

Cain. Let them share it

With me, their sire and brother! What else is Bequeath'd to me? I leave them my inheritance.

Oh ye interminable gloomy realms
Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes,
Some fully shown, some indistinct, and all
Mighty and melancholy--what are ye?
Live ye, or have ye lived?

Lucifer. Somewhat of both.
Cain. Then what is death?

Lucifer. What? Hath not he who made ye Said 'tis another life?

Cain. Till now he hath

Said nothing, save that all shall die.
Lucifer. Perhaps

He one day will unfold that further secret.
Cain. Happy the day!

Lucifer. Yes, happy! when unfolded Through agonies unspeakable, and clogg'd With agonies eternal, to innumerable Yet unborn myriads of unconscious atoms, All to be animated for this only!

Cain. What are these mighty phantoms which I see

Floating around me?-they wear not the form

As much superior unto all thy sire,
Adam, could e'er have been in Eden, as
The sixty-thousandth generation shall be,
In its dull damp degeneracy, to
Thee and thy son;-and how weak they are,
judge

By thy own flesh.

Cain. Ah me! and did they perish? Lucifer. Yes, from their earth, as thou wilt fade from thine.

Cain. But was mine theirs?
Lucifer. It was.

Cain. But not as now.

It is too little and too lowly to
Sustain such creatures.

Lucifer, True, it was more glorious.
Cain. And wherefore did it fall?
Lucifer. Ask him who fells.
Cain. But how?

Lucifer. By a most crushing and inexorable

Destruction and disorder of the elements, Which struck a world to chaos, as a chaos Subsiding has struck out a world: such things,

Though rare in time, are frequent in eternity.

Pass on, and gaze upon the past.
Cain. 'Tis awful!

Lucifer. And true. Behold these phantoms! they were once

Of the intelligences I have seen
Round our regretted and unenter'd Eden,
Nor wear the form of man as I have view'd it
In Adam's, and in Abel's, and in mine,
Nor in my sister-bride's,nor in my children's:
And yet they have an aspect, which, though | Like them?

not

Of men nor angels, looks like something, which,

Material as thou art.

Cain. And must I be

Lucifer. Let Him who made thee answer that.

I show thee what thy predecessors are,

And what they were thou feelest, in degree | Roar nightly in the forest, but ten-fold
Inferior, as thy petty feelings and
Thy pettier portion of the immortal part
Of high intelligence and earthly strength.
What ye in common have with what they had
Is life, and what ye shall have-death; the

In magnitude and terror; taller than
The cherub-guarded walls of Eden, with
Eyes flashing like the fiery swords which
fence them,

rest

Of your poor attributes is such as suits Reptiles engender'd out of the subsiding Slime of a mighty universe, crush'd into A scarcely-yet shaped planet, peopled with Things whose enjoyment was to be in blindness

A Paradise of Ignorance, from which
Knowledge was barr'd as poison. But behold
What these superior beings are or were;
Or, if it irk thee, turn thee back and till
The earth, thy task-I'll waft thee there
in safety.

Cain. No: I'll stay here.
Lucifer. How long?
Cain. For ever! Since

I must one day return here from the earth,
I rather would remain; I am sick of all
That dust has shown me- let me dwell i
shadows.

Lucifer. It cannot be: thou now beholdest as

A vision that which is reality.

To make thyself fit for this dwelling, thou Must pass through what the things thou seest have pass'd

The gates of death.

Cain. By what gate have we enter'd Even now?

Lucifer. By mine! But, plighted to return, My spirit buoys thee up to breathe in regions Where all is breathless save thyself. Gaze on; But do not think to dwell here till thine hour

ls come.

Cain. And these,too; can they ne'er repass To earth again?

And tusks projecting like the trees stripp'd of
Their bark and branches-what were they?
Lucifer. That which

The Mammoth is in thy world; but these lie
By myriads underneath its surface.
Cain. But
None on it?

Lucifer. No: for thy frail race to war With them would render the curse on it useless

"Twould be destroy'd so early. Cain. But why war?

Lucifer. You have forgotten the denunciation

Which drove your race from Eden war with all things,

And death to all things, and disease to most things,

And pangs, and bitterness; these were the fruits

Of the forbidden tree.

Cain. But animalsDid they too eat of it, that they must die? Lucifer. Your Maker told ye, they were made for you,

As you for him.-You would not have their doom

Superior to your own? Had Adam not
Fallen, all had stood.

Cain. Alas! the hopeless wretches! They too must share my sire's fate, like his sons;

Like them, too, without having shared the apple;

Like them, too, without the so dear-bought knowledge!

It was a lying tree-for we know nothing. At least it promised knowledge at the price death-but knowledge still: but what

Lucifer. Their earth is gone for ever-Of
So changed by its convulsion, they would not
Be conscious to a single present spot
Of its new scarcely harden'd surface 'twas
Oh, what a beautiful world it was!
Cain. And is.

It is not with the earth, though I must till it,
I feel at war, but that I may not profit
By what it bears of beautiful untoiling,
Nor gratify my thousand swelling thoughts
With knowledge, nor allay my thousand
fears

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knows man?

Lucifer. It may be death leads to the highest knowledge;

And being of all things the sole thing certain,

| At least leads to the surest science: therefore The tree was true, though deadly.

Cain. These dim realms!

I see them, but I know them not.
Lucifer. Because

Thy hour is yet afar, and matter cannot Comprehend spirit wholly-but 'tis something

To know there are such realms.
Cain. We knew already
That there was death.

Lucifer. But not what was beyond it.
Cain. Nor know I now.

Lucifer. Thou knowst that there is
A state, and many states beyond thine own--
And this thou knewest not this morn.

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And those inordinate creatures sporting o'er Its shining surface?

Lucifer. Are its habitants,

The past leviathans.

Cain. And yon immense

Serpent, which rears his dripping mane and vasty

Head ten times higher than the haughtiest cedar

Forth from the abyss, looking as he could coil

Himself around the orbs we lately look'd onIs he not of the kind which bask'd beneath The tree in Eden?

Lucifer. Eve, thy mother, best Can tell what shape of serpent tempted her. Cain. This seems too terrible. No doubt the other

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Thy world and thou are still too young!
Thou thinkest

Thyself most wicked and unhappy: is it
Not so?

Cain. For crime I know not; but for pain, I have felt much.

Lucifer. First-born of the first man! Thy present state of sin-and thou art evil, Of sorrow and thou sufferest, are both Eden In all its innocence compared to what Thou shortly mayst be; and that state again,

In its redoubled wretchedness, a Paradise
To what thy sons' sons' sons, accumulating
In generations like to dust (which they
In fact but add to), shall endure and do.-
Now let us back to earth!

Cain. And wherefore didst thou
Lead me here only to inform me this?
Lucifer. Was not thy quest for knowledge?
Cain. Yes: as being

The road to happiness.

Lucifer. If truth be so, Thou hast it.

Cain. Then my father's God did well When he prohibited the fatal tree.

Lucifer. But had done better in not
planting it.

But ignorance of evil doth not save
From evil; it must still roll on the same,
A part of all things.

Cain. Not of all things. No:

I'll not believe it-for I thirst for good. Lucifer. And who and what doth not? Who covets evil

For its own bitter sake? None-nothing! 'tis The leaven of all life and lifelessness.

Cain. Within those glorious orbs which

we behold

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Why art thou wretched? why are all Will cease, like any other appetite.

things so?

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Its deadly opposite. I lately saw

A lamb stung by a reptile: the poor suckling Lay foaming on the earth, beneath the vain And piteous bleating of its restless dam: My father pluck'd some herbs, and laid them to

The wound; and by degrees the helpless wretch

Resumed its careless life, and rose to drain
The mother's milk, who o'er it tremulous
Stood licking its reviving limbs with joy.
Behold, my son! said Adam, how from evil
Springs good!

Lucifer. What didst thou answer?
Cain. Nothing; for

He is my father: but I thought, that 'twere
A better portion for the animal

Never to have been stung at all, than to
Purchase renewal of its little life
With agonies unutterable, though
Dispell'd by antidotes.

Lucifer. But as thou saidst

Of all beloved things thou lovest her

Who shared thy mother's milk, and giveth

hers

Unto thy children -

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Cain. Cease to be beautiful! how can that be?

Lucifer. With time..

Cain. But time has past, and hitherto Even Adam and my mother both are fair: Not fair like Adah and the seraphim— But very fair.

Lucifer. All that must pass away In them and her.

Cain. I'm sorry for it; but Cannot conceive my love for her the less. And when her beauty disappears, methinks He who creates all beauty will lose more Than I in seeing perish such a work. Lucifer. I pity thee who lovest what must perish.

Cain. And I thee who lov'st nothing. < Lucifer. And thy brotherSits he not near thy heart?

Cain, Why should he not? Lucifer. Thy father loves him well-so does thy God.

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