To make thyself fit for this dwelling, thou Must pass through what the things thou see'st have pass'd

The gates of death.

CAIN.

By what gate have we enter'd

Even now?

LUCIFER.

By mine! But, plighted to return,

My spirit buoys thee up to breathe in regions
Where all is breathless save thyself. Gaze on;
But do not think to dwell here till thine hour
Is come.

CAIN.

And these, too; can they ne'er repass

To earth again?

LUCIFER.

Their earth is gone for ever

So changed by its convulsion, they would not
Be conscious to a single present spot

Of its new scarcely harden'd surface-'twas-
Oh, what a beautiful world it was!

CAIN.

And is.

It is not with the earth, though I must till it,
I feel at war, but that I may not profit
By what it bears of beautiful untoiling,
Nor gratify my thousand swelling thoughts
With knowledge, nor allay my thousand fears
Of death and life.

LUCIFER.

What thy world is thou see'st,

But canst not comprehend the shadow of

That which it was.

CAIN.

And those enormous creatures,

Phantoms inferior in intelligence

(At least so seeming) to the things we have pass'd, Resembling somewhat the wild habitants

Of the deep woods of earth, the hugest which
Roar nightly in the forest, but ten-fold

In magnitude and terror; taller than

The cherub-guarded walls of Eden, with

Eyes flashing like the fiery swords which fence

them,

And tusks projecting like the trees stripp'd of

Their bark and branches-what were they?

LUCIFER.

That which

The Mammoth is in thy world ;—but these lie
By myriads underneath its surface.

None on it?

CAIN.

But

LUCIFER.

No: for thy frail race to war

With them would render the curse on it useless

'Twould be destroy'd so early.

CAIN.

But why war?

LUCIFER.

You have forgotten the denunciation

Which drove your race from Eden-war with all

things,

And death to all things, and disease to most things, And pangs, and bitterness; these were the fruits Of the forbidden tree.

CAIN.

But animals

Did they too eat of it, that they must die?

LUCIFER.

Your Maker told ye, they were made for you,

As you for him.-You would not have their doom Superior to your own? Had Adam not

Fallen, all had stood.

CAIN.

Alas! the hopeless wretches! They too must share my sire's fate, like his sons; Like them, too, without having shared the apple; Like them, too, without the so dear-bought knowledge!

It was a lying tree-for we know nothing.

At least it promised knowledge at the price

Of death-but knowledge still: but what knows man?

LUCIFER.

It may be death leads to the highest knowledge;
And being of all things the sole thing certain,
At least leads to the surest science: therefore
The tree was true, though deadly.

CAIN.

These dim realms!

I see them, but I know them not.

LUCIFER.

Because

Thy hour is yet afar, and matter cannot
Comprehend spirit wholly-but 'tis something

To know there are such realms.

CAIN.

We knew already

That there was death.

LUCIFER.

But not what was beyond it.

CAIN.

Nor know I now.

LUCIFER.

Thou know'st that there is

A state, and many states beyond thine own—
And this thou knewest not this morn.