Existence-it will cease, and thou wilt be

No less than thou art now.

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.

Thou look'st almost a god; and

LUCIFER.

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?

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,

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 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,
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-

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, 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.

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.

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