Prefer an independency of torture

To the smooth agonies of adulation

In hymns and harpings, and self-seeking prayers To that which is omnipotent, because

It is omnipotent, and not from love,

But terror and self-hope.

ADAH.

Omnipotence

Must be all goodness.

LUCIFER.

Was it so in Eden?

ADAH.

Fiend! tempt me not with beauty; thou art fairer Than was the serpent, and as false.

LUCIFER.

As true.

Ask Eve, your mother; bears she not the knowledge

Of good and evil?

ADAH.

Oh, my mother! thou

Hast pluck'd a fruit more fatal to thine offspring Than to thyself; thou at the least hast past

Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent

And happy intercourse with happy spirits;

But we, thy children, ignorant of Eden,
Are girt about by demons, who assume

The words of God, and tempt us with our own
Dissatisfied and curious thoughts—as thou

Wert work'd on by the snake, in thy most flush'd And heedless, harmless wantonness of bliss.

I cannot answer this immortal thing

Which stands before me; I cannot abhor him ;

I look upon him with a pleasing fear,
And yet I fly not from him: in his eye
There is a fastening attraction which

Fixes my fluttering eyes on his; my heart

Beats quick; he awes me, and yet draws me near, Nearer and nearer: Cain-Cain-save me from him!

CAIN.

What dreads my Adah? This is no ill spirit.

ADAH.

He is not God-nor God's: I have beheld

The cherubs and the seraphs; he looks not
Like them.

CAIN.

But there are spirits loftier still

The archangels.

The seraphs love most-cherubim know mostAnd this should be a cherub-since he loves not.

LUCIFER.

And if the higher knowledge quenches love,
What must he be you cannot love when known?
Since the all-knowing cherubim love least,
The seraphs' love can be but ignorance :
That they are not compatible, the doom

Of thy fond parents, for their daring, proves
Choose betwixt love and knowledge-since there is
No other choice: your sire hath chosen already;
His worship is but fear.

ADAH.

Oh, Cain! choose love.

CAIN.

For thee, my Adah, I choose not-it was
Born with me but I love nought else.

ADAH.

Our parents?

CAIN.

Did they love us when they snatch'd from the tree That which hath driven us all from Paradise?

ADAH.

We were not born then-and if we had been,

Should we not love them and our children, Cain?

CAIN.

My little Enoch! and his lisping sister!
Could I but deem them happy, I would half
Forget--but it can never be forgotten
Through thrice a thousand generations! never
Shall men love the remembrance of the man
Who sow'd the seed of evil and mankind

In the same hour! They pluck'd the tree of science
And sin-and not content with their own sorrow,
Begot me-thee-and all the few that are,

And all the unnumber'd and innumerable
Multitudes, millions, myriads, which may be,

To inherit agonies accumulated

By ages! And I must be sire of such things!
Thy beauty and thy love-my love and joy,
The rapturous moment and the placid hour,
All we love in our children and each other,
But lead them and ourselves through many years
Of sin and pain-or few, but still of sorrow,
Intercheck'd with an instant of brief pleasure,
To Death-the unknown!

knowledge

Methinks the tree of

Hath not fulfill'd its promise :-if they sinn'd,
At least they ought to have known all things that are
Of knowledge-and the mystery of death.

What do they know?—that they are miserable.
What need of snakes and fruits to teach us that?

ADAH.

I am not wretched, Cain, and if thou

Wert happy

CAIN.

Be thou happy then alone

I will have nought to do with happiness,

Which humbles me and mine.

ADAH

Alone I could not,

Nor would be happy: but with those around us,