Lucifer.

Saidst thou not
Thou ne'er hadst bent to him who made thee?
Cuin.

Yes-
But Abel's earnest prayer has wrought upon me;
The offering is more his than mine- and Adah-
Lucifer. Why dost thou hesitate ?
Cain.
She is my sister,
Born on the same day, of the same womb; and
She wrung from me, with tears, this promise; and
Rather than see her weep, I would, methinks,
Bear all and worship aught.
Lucifer.
Cain. I will. 4

Then follow me!

Beloved Adah!

No, she must not.

Who

He speaks like

A god.

Adah. So did the serpent, and it lied. [that Lucifer. Thou errest, Adah!—was not the tree Of knowledge? Adah.

Ay-to our eternal sorrow. Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge—so he lied not:

And if he did betray you, 't was with truth;
And truth in its own essence cannot be
But good.

Adah. But all we know of it has gather'd
Evil on ill expulsion from our home,
And dread, and toil, and sweat, and heaviness;
Remorse of that which was-and hope of that
Which cometh not. Cain ! walk not with this spirit.
Bear with what we have borne, and love me - I
Love thee.

Lucifer. More than thy mother, and thy sire?

[The first interview of Lucifer with Cain is full of sublimity.- JEFFREY.]

2 [It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between many of these passages and others in Manfred.]

3 [Mr. Jeffrey's eulogium on this, perhaps the most Shak

Adah. I do. Is that a sin, too?
Lucifer.

It one day will be in your children.
Adah.

No, not yet:

What!
Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?
Lucifer. Not as thou lovest Cain.
Adah.
Oh, my God!
Shall they not love and bring forth things that love
Out of their love? have they not drawn their milk
Out of this bosom? was not he, their father,
Born of the same sole womb, in the same hour
With me? did we not love each other? and
In multiplying our being multiply

Things which will love each other as we love
Them? ― And as I love thee, my Cain! go not
Forth with this spirit; he is not of ours.

Lucifer. The sin I speak of is not of my making,

And cannot be a sin in you-whate'er

It seem in those who will replace ye in
Mortality. 2

Adah. What is the sin which is not
Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin
Or virtue ? if it doth, we are the slaves

Of

[higher

Lucifer. Higher things than ye are slaves: and Than them or ye would be so, did they not 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 pass'd 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 can not 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 !3

Cain. What dreads my Adah? This is no ill spirit. Adah. He is not God-nor God's: I have beheld

spearian speech in Lord Byron's tragedies, seems cold enough. He says, Adah, the wife of Cain, enters, and shrinks from the daring and blasphemous speech which is passing between him and the Spirit. Her account of the fascination which he exercises over her is magnificent."]

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 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! Methinks the tree of

Alas! no! and you

Adah.

Are you of heaven?
Lucifer.

If I am not, inquire
The cause of this all-spreading happiness
(Which you proclaim) of the all-great and good
Maker of life and living things; it is
His secret, and he keeps it. We must bear,
And some of us resist, and both in vain,
His scraphs say; but it is worth the trial,
Since better may not be without there is
A wisdom in the spirit, which directs
To right, as in the dim blue air the eye
Of you, young mortals, lights at once upon
The star which watches, welcoming the morn.
Adah. It is a beautiful star; I love it for
Its beauty.

Lucifer. And why not adore?
Adah.

Adores the Invisible only.
Lucifer.

But the symbols
Of the Invisible are the loveliest
Of what is visible; and yon bright star
Is leader of the host of heaven.
Adah.

Our father Saith that he has beheld the God himself Who made him and our mother.

Lucifer.

Adah. Yes-in his works.
Lucifer.

Aduh.

Our father

Hast thou seen him?

But in his being?

No

Save in my father, who is God's own image;
Or in his angels, who are like to thee-
And brighter, yet less beautiful and powerful
In seeming as the silent sunny noon,

All light they look upon us; but thou seem'st
Like an ethereal night, where long white clouds
Streak the deep purple, and unnumber'd stars
Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault
With things that look as if they would be suns;
So beautiful, unnumber'd, and endearing,
Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them,
They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou.
Thou seem'st unhappy: do not make us so,
And I will weep for thee. 3

which it will do Lord B. no credit to name,Faublas."]

3 [In the drawing of Cain himself, there is much vigorous

the romance of

Methinks they both, as we recede from them,
Appear to join the innumerable stars
Which are around us; and, as we move on,
Increase their myriads.

Lucifer.
And if there should be
Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited
By greater things, and they themselves far more
In number
the ust of thy dull earth,
Though multiplied to animated atoms,
All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched,
What wouldst thou think?

I should be proud of thought

Cain.
Which knew such things.
Lucifer.
But if that high thought were
Link'd to a servile mass of matter, and,
Knowing such things, aspiring to such things,
And science still beyond them, were chain'd down
To the most gross and petty paltry wants,
All foul and fulsome, and the very best

Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation,
A most enervating and filthy cheat

To lure thee on to the renewal of
Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be
As frail, and few so happy 1.

Cain.

Spirit! I Know nought of death, save as a dreadful thing Of which I have heard my parents speak, as of A hideous heritage I owe to them No less than life; a heritage not happy, If I may judge, till now. But, spirit! if It be as thou hast said (and I within Feel the prophetic torture of its truth), Here let me die: for to give birth to those Who can but suffer many years, and die, Methinks is merely propagating death, And multiplying murder.

Lucifer.
Thou canst not
All die-there is what must survive.
Cain.

Spake not of this unto my father, when
He shut him forth from Paradise, with death
Written upon his forehead. But at least
Let what is mortal of me perish, that
I may be in the rest as angels are.

Lucifer. I am angelic: wouldst thou be as I am?
Cain. I know not what thou art: I see thy power,
And see thou show'st me things beyond my power,
Beyond all power of my born faculties,
Although inferior still to my desires

The Other

And my conceptions.

Lucifer.

What are they which dwell So humbly in their pride, as to sojourn With worms in clay?

Cain.

And what art thou who dwellest

[It is nothing less than absurd to suppose, that Lucifer cannot well be expected to talk like an orthodox divine, and that the conversation of the first Rebel and the first Murderer was not likely to be very unexceptionable; or to plead the authority of Milton, or the authors of the old mysteries, for such offensive colloquies. The fact is, here the whole argument and a very elaborate and specious argument it is is directed against the goodness or the power of the Deity; and there is no answer so much as attempted to the offensive doctrines that are so strenuously inculcated. The Devil and his pupil have the field entirely to themselves, and are encountered with nothing but feeble obtestations and unreasoning horrors. Nor is this argumentative blasphemy a mere incidental deformity that arises in the course of an action directed to the common sympathies of our nature. It forms, on the contrary, the great staple of the piece, and occupies, we should think, not less than two thirds of it; so that it is really difficult to believe that it was written for any other

Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are !
How beautiful ye are how beautiful
Your works, or accidents, or whatsoe'er
They may be ! Let me die, as atoms die,
(If that they die) or know ye in your might
And knowledge! My thoughts are not in this hour
Unworthy what I see, though my dust is;
Spirit! let me expire, or see them nearer.

Lucifer. Art thou not nearer ? look back to thine

earth!

Cain. Where is it? I see nothing save a mass
Of most innumerable lights.
Lucifer.

Cain. I cannot see it.
Lucifer.

Yea.

Cain. That!-yonder! Lucifer. Cain. And wilt thou tell me so? Why, I have seen the fire-flies and fire-worms Sprinkle the dusky groves and the green banks In the dim twilight, brighter than yon world Which bears them.

Look there!

Yet it sparkles still.

Lucifer. Thou hast seen both worms and worlds, Each bright and sparkling-what dost think of them?

purpose than to inculcate these doctrines; or, at least, to discuss the question upon which they bear. Now, we can certainly have no objection to Lord Byron writing an essay on the origin of evil, and sifting the whole of that vast and perplexing subject, with the force and the freedom that would be expected and allowed in a fair philosophical discussion; but we do not think it fair thus to argue it partially and con amore, in the name of Lucifer and Cain, without the respons ibility or the liability to answer, that would attach to a philosophical disputant; and in a form which both doubles the danger, if the sentiments are pernicious, and almost precludes his opponents from the possibility of a reply.

JEFFREY." What does Jeffrey mean by elaborate? Why they were written as fast as I could put pen to paper, in the midst of evolutions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions of all who interested me in Italy."— Byron Letters.]

I dare behold? As yet, thou hast shown nought I dare not gaze on further.

Lucifer.
On, then, with me.
Wouldst thou behold things mortal or immortal?

Cain. Why, what are things?
Lucifer.

Sit next thy heart?

Cain. Lucifer.

How know I what

Both partly but what doth

The things I see.

But what

Sate nearest it!
Cain.
The things I have not scen,
Nor ever shall-the mysteries of death. [died,
Lucifer. What, if I show to thee things which have
As I have shown thee much which cannot die?

Cain. Do so.

Lucifer. Away, then! on our mighty wings. Cain. Oh! how we cleave the blue! The stars fade from us! The earth! where is my earth? Let me look on it, For I was made of it.

Lucifer. 'Tis now beyond thee, Less, in the universe, than thou in it; Yet deem not that thou canst escape it; thou Shalt soon return to earth, and all its dust: "T is part of thy eternity, and mine.

Cain. Where dost thou lead me ?

Lucifer.

Lucifer.

Cain. And Edens in them? Lucifer.

To what was before thee! The phantasm of the world; of which thy world Is but the wreck.

Cain.

What is it not then new ? Lucifer. No more than life is; and that was ere thou

Or I were, or the things which seem to us
Greater than either: many things will have
No end; and some, which would pretend to have
Had no beginning, have had one as mean
As thou; and mightier things have been extinct
To make way for much meaner than we can
Surmise; for moments only and the space
Have been and must be all unchangeable.
But changes make not death, except to clay;
But thou art clay,—and canst but comprehend
That which was clay, and such thou shalt behold.
Cain. Clay, spirit! what thou wilt, I can survey.
Lucifer. Away, then!
Cain.
But the lights fade from me fast
And some till now grew larger as we approach'd,
And wore the look of worlds.

And such they are.

It may be.

[It is not very easy to perceive what natural or rational object the Devil proposes to himself in carrying his disciple through the abyss of space, to show him that repository of which we remember hearing something in our infant days, "where the old moons are hung up to dry." To prove that there is a life beyond the grave, was surely no part of his business when he was engaged in fostering the indignation of one who repined at the necessity of dying. And, though it would seem, that entire Hades is, in Lord Byron's picture, a place of suffering, yet, when Lucifer himself had premised

And men?

Cain.
Lucifer. Yea, or things higher.
Cuin.
Ay? and serpents too?
Lucifer. Wouldst thou have men without them?
must no reptiles

Breathe save the erect ones?

Cain.

How the lights recede!

Where fly we ?
Lucifer. To the world of phantoms, which
Are beings past, and shadows still to come.

Cain. But it grows dark and dark — the stars are

gone!

Lucifer. And yet thou seest. Cain. 'Tis a fearful light! No sun, no moon, no lights innumerable. The very blue of the empurpled night Fades to a dreary twilight, yet I sce Huge dusky masses: but unlike the worlds We were approaching, which, begirt with light, Seem'd full of life even when their atmosphere Of light gave way, and show'd them taking shapes Unequal, of deep valleys and vast mountains ; And some emitting sparks, and some displaying Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt With luminous belts, and floating moons, which took, Like them, the features of fair earth : — - instead, All here seems dark and dreadful.

Lucifer.

But distinct. Thou seckest to behold death, and dead things? Cain. I seek it not; but as I know there are Such, and that my sire's sin makes him and me, And all that we inherit, liable

To such, I would behold at once, what I
Must one day see perforce.

Lucifer.

Cain.

Behold!

"T is darkness. Lucifer. And so it shall be ever; but we will Unfold its gates!

Enormous vapours roll

Cain.
Apart-what's this?

Lucifer.
Enter !
Cain.
Can I return?
Lucifer. Return! be sure how else should death
be peopled?

Its present realm is thin to what it will be.
Through thee and thine.

Cain.
The clouds still open wide
And wider, and make widening circles round us.
Lucifer. Advance !
Cain.

And thou!

Lucifer. Fear not-without me thou Couldst not have gone beyond thy world. On! on! [They disappear through the clouds.

SCENE IL

Hades. 1

Enter LUCIFER and CAIN.

Cain. How silent and how vast are these dim worlds!

that these sufferings were the lot of those spirits who had sided with him against Jehovah, is it likely that a more accurate knowledge of them would increase Cain's eagerness for the alliance, or that he would not rather have inquired whether a better fortune did not await the adherents of the triumphant side? At all events, the spectacle of many ruined worlds was more likely to awe a mortal into submission, than to rouse him to hopeless resistance; and, even if it made him a hater of God, had no natural tendency to render him furious against a brother who was to be his fellow-sufferer.-HEBER.]