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.

LUCIFER.

Then who was the demon? He

Who would not let ye live, or he who would ye live for ever in the joy

Have made

And power of knowledge?

CAIN.

Would they had snatch'd both

The fruits, or neither!

LUCIFER.

One is yours already,

The other may be still.

CAIN.

How so?

LUCIFER.

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.

But didst thou tempt my parents?

LUCIFER.

I?

Poor clay! what should I tempt them for, or how?

CAIN.

They say the serpent was a spirit.

LUCIFER.

Who

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
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?

LUCIFER.

He but woke one

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 know'st

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

Weeps when he's named; and Abel lifts his eyes
To heaven, and Zillah casts hers to the earth,
And sighs a prayer; and Adah looks on me,
And speaks not.

LUCIFER.

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.

LUCIFER.

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?

Ask the Destroyer.

LUCIFER.

CAIN.

Who?

LUCIFER.

Ah!

The Maker-call him

Which name thou wilt; he makes but to destroy.

CAIN.

I knew not that, yet thought it, since I heard

Of death: although I know not what it is,