ADAH. In sooth return within an hour? LUCIFER. Will he He shall. With us acts are exempt from time, and we Or stretch an hour into eternity: We breathe not by a mortal measurement— Will he return? ADAH. LUCIFER. Ay, woman! he alone Of mortals from that place (the first and last Who shall return, save ONE)--shall come back to thee To make that silent and expectant world As populous as this: at present there Are few inhabitants. Thy God or Gods-there am I ; all things are If thou dost long for knowledge, I can satiate CAIN. Follow me. Spirit, I have said it. [Exeunt LUCIFER and CAIN. ADAH (follows, exclaiming) Cain my brother! Cain! ACT II. SCENE I. The Aby ss of Space. CAIN. I tread on air, and sink not; yet I fear To sink. LUCIFER. Have faith in me, and thou shalt be Borne on the air, of which I am the prince. CAIN. Can I do so without impiety? LUCIFER. Believe-and sink not! doubt-and perish! thus Who names me demon to his angels; they Which knowing nought beyond their shallow senses, The worlds beyond thy little world, nor be A man shall say to a man, And walk the waters ;" and the man shall walk To save thee; but fly with me o'er the gulf CAIN. Oh, god, or demon, or whate'er thou art, Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether, With an inferior circlet near it still, Which looks like that which lit our earthly night? Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls, Of Paradise. LUCIFER. Point me out the site CAIN. How should I? As we move Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller, And as it waxes little, and then less, Gathers a halo ronud it, like the light Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise: Methinks they both, as we recede from them, Which are around us; and, as we move on, LUCIFER. And if there should be Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited By greater things, and they themselves far more In number than the dust of thy dull earth, Though multiplied to animated atoms, All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched, What wouldst thou think? |