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 pluck'd too soon; and all the fruit is death!
Luc. 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!

Luc. 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 more?

No less! and why

Luc. It may be thou shalt be as we.

Cain. And ye?

Luc.

Are everlasting.

Cain.

Are ye happy?

Luc. We are mighty.

Cain.

Are ye happy?

Luc.

No: art thou?

Cain. How should I be so? Look on me!
Luc.

Poor clay !

And thou pretendest to be wretched? Thou! Cain. I am: and thou, with all thy might, what art thou?

Luc. One who aspired to be what made thee, and Would not have made thee what thou art.

Cain.

Ah!

I am none :

And having fail'd to be one, would be nought
Save what I am. He conquer'd; let him reign!
Cain. Who?

Luc.
Cain.

Thy sire's Maker, and the earth's.
And heaven's

And all that in them is. So I have heard

His seraphs sing;

and so my father saith. Luc. They say what they must sing and

pain

Of being that which I am-and thou art-
Of spirits and of men.

Cain.

say, on

And what is that?

Luc. 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,
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!

Let nim 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

With all! But He! so wretched in his height,

So restless in his wretchedness, must still

Create and recreate

Cain. Thou speak'st to me of things which long have swur

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, 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 beloved, she too understands not
The mind which overwhelms me: never till
Now met I aught to sympathise with me.
'Tis well: I rather would consort with spirits.
Luc. And hadst thou not been fit by thine own sou
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?
Luc
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

I tempt none,

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.

Luc.

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.

The fruits, or neither!

Luc.

Would they had snatch'd bott

One is yours already,

The other may be still.

How so?

Cain.

Luc.

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.

Luc.

But didst thou tempt my parents?

I?

Poor clay what should I tempt them for, or how? Cain. They say the serpent was a spirit.

Luc.

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

Whe

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?

He but woke one

Luc.
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 roll'd 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 listen'd 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 knowst 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

Cain.

Be it proved.

He has not yet

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 her eyes to the earth,
And sighs a prayer; and Adah looks on me,
And speaks not.

Luc.

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.
Luc. It has no shape; but will absorb all things
That bear the form of earth-born being.

Cain.

I thought it was a being: who could do
Such evil things to beings save a being?
Luc. Ask the Destroyer?

Cain.

Luc.

Who?

Ah!

The Maker: call him

Which name thou wilt; he makes but to destroy.

Cain. 1 knew not that, yet thought it, since I heard

Of death: although I know not what it is,
Yet it seems horrible. I have look'd out
In the vast desolate night in search of him;
And when I saw gigantic shadows in