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 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 CAIN. And what is that? LUCIFER. Souls who dare use their immortality— As he saith-which I know not, nor believe- 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, By the unbounded sympathy of all With all! But He! so wretched in his height, 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 A watching shepherd boy, who offers up The firstlings of the flock to him who bids. LUCIFER. And hadst thou not been fit by thine own soul CAIN. Ah! didst thou tempt my mother? LUCIFER. I tempt none, Save with the truth was not the tree, the tree 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 |