No More Learning

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 410
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.

_Lucifer_. And still loftier than the archangels.

_Adah_. Aye--but not blessed.

_Lucifer_. If the blessedness
Consists in slavery--no.

_Adah_. I have heard it said, 420
The Seraphs _love most_--Cherubim _know most_[107]--
And 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? [ca]
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: 430
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 snatched 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 440
Through thrice a thousand generations! never
Shall men love the remembrance of the man
Who sowed the seed of evil and mankind
In the same hour! They plucked 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 unnumbered and innumerable
Multitudes, millions, myriads, which may be,
To inherit agonies accumulated
By ages! --and _I_ must be sire of such things! 450
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,
Interchecked with an instant of brief pleasure,
To Death--the unknown! Methinks the Tree of Knowledge
Hath not fulfilled its promise:--if they sinned,
At least they ought to have known all things that are
Of knowledge--and the mystery of Death[cb]. 460
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
I think I could be so, despite of Death,
Which, as I know it not, I dread not, though
It seems an awful shadow--if I may 470
Judge from what I have heard.

_Lucifer_. And thou couldst not
_Alone_, thou say'st, be happy?

_Adah_. Alone! Oh, my God!
Who could be happy and alone, or good?
To me my solitude seems sin; unless
When I think how soon I shall see my brother,
His brother, and our children, and our parents.

_Lucifer_. Yet thy God is alone; and is he happy?
Lonely, and good?

_Adah_. He is not so; he hath
The angels and the mortals to make happy,
And thus becomes so in diffusing joy. 480
What else can joy be, but the spreading joy? [cc]

_Lucifer_. Ask of your sire, the exile fresh from Eden;
Or of his first-born son: ask your own heart;
It is not tranquil.

_Adah_. Alas! no! and you--
Are you of Heaven?

_Lucifer_. If I am not, enquire
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, 490
His Seraphs 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_. Our father
Adores the Invisible only.

_Lucifer_. But the symbols
Of the Invisible are the loveliest 500
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_. Hast _thou_ seen him?

_Adah_. Yes--in his works.

_Lucifer_. But in his being?

_Adah_. 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 510
Like an ethereal night[108], where long white clouds
Streak the deep purple, and unnumbered stars
Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault
With things that look as if they would be suns;
So beautiful, unnumbered, 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.

_Lucifer_. Alas! those tears!
Couldst thou but know what oceans will be shed---- 520

_Adah_. By me?

_Lucifer_. By all.

_Adah_. What all?

_Lucifer_. The million millions--
The myriad myriads--the all-peopled earth--
The unpeopled earth--and the o'er-peopled Hell,
Of which thy bosom is the germ.

_Adah_. O Cain!
This spirit curseth us.

_Cain_. Let him say on;
Him will I follow.

_Adah_. Whither?

_Lucifer_. To a place
_Whence_ he shall come back to thee in an hour;
But in that hour see things of many days.

_Adah_. How can that be?

_Lucifer_. Did not your Maker make
Out of old worlds this new one in few days? 530
And cannot I, who aided in this work,
Show in an hour what he hath made in many,
Or hath destroyed in few?

_Cain_. Lead on.

_Adah_. Will he,
In sooth, return within an hour?

_Lucifer_. He shall.
With us acts are exempt from time, and we
Can crowd eternity into an hour,
Or stretch an hour into eternity:
We breathe not by a mortal measurement--
But that's a mystery. Cain, come on with me.

_Adah_. Will he return?

_Lucifer_. Aye, woman! he alone 540
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.

_Adah_. Where dwellest thou?

_Lucifer_. Throughout all space. Where should I dwell? Where are
Thy God or Gods--there am I: all things are
Divided with me: Life and Death--and Time--
Eternity--and heaven and earth--and that
Which is not heaven nor earth, but peopled with 550
Those who once peopled or shall people both--
These are my realms! so that I do divide
_His_, and possess a kingdom which is not
_His_[109]. If I were not that which I have said,
Could I stand here? His angels are within
Your vision.

_Adah_. So they were when the fair Serpent
Spoke with our mother first.

_Lucifer_. Cain! thou hast heard.
If thou dost long for knowledge, I can satiate
That thirst; nor ask thee to partake of fruits
Which shall deprive thee of a single good 560
The Conqueror has left thee. Follow me.

_Cain_. Spirit, I have said it.
[_Exeunt_ LUCIFER _and_ CAIN.

_Adah_ (_follows exclaiming_). Cain! my brother! Cain!




ACT II.


SCENE I. --_The Abyss 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[110], of which I am the Prince.

_Cain_. Can I do so without impiety?

_Lucifer_. Believe--and sink not! doubt--and perish! thus
Would run the edict of the other God,
Who names me Demon to his angels; they
Echo the sound to miserable things,
Which, knowing nought beyond their shallow senses,
Worship the _word_ which strikes their ear, and deem 10
Evil or good what is proclaimed to them
In their abasement. I will have none such:
Worship or worship not, thou shalt behold
The worlds beyond thy little world, nor be
Amerced for doubts beyond thy little life,
With torture of _my_ dooming. There will come
An hour, when, tossed upon some water-drops[cd],
A man shall say to a man, "Believe in me,
And walk the waters;" and the man shall walk
The billows and be safe. _I_ will not say, 20
Believe in _me_, as a conditional creed
To save thee; but fly with me o'er the gulf
Of space an equal flight, and I will show
What thou dar'st not deny,--the history
Of past--and present, and of future worlds.

_Cain_. Oh God! or Demon! or whate'er thou art,
Is yon our earth?

_Lucifer_. Dost thou not recognise
The dust which formed your father?

_Cain_. Can it be?
Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether[ce],
With an inferior circlet purpler it still[111], 30
Which looks like that which lit our earthly night?
Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls,
And they who guard them?

_Lucifer_. Point me out the site
Of Paradise.

_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 round 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, 40
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 than the dust of thy dull earth,
Though multiplied to animated atoms,
All living--and all doomed to death--and wretched,
What wouldst thou think?

_Cain_. I should be proud of thought
Which knew such things.

_Lucifer_. But if that high thought were 50
Linked to a servile mass of matter--and,
Knowing such things, aspiring to such things,
And science still beyond them, were chained 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[112], all foredoomed to be
As frail, and few so happy----

_Cain_. Spirit! I 60
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, 70
And multiplying murder.

_Lucifer_. Thou canst not
_All_ die--there is what must survive.

_Cain_. The Other
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, 80
Beyond all power of my born faculties,
Although inferior still to my desires
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
So haughtily in spirit, and canst range
Nature and immortality--and yet
Seem'st sorrowful?

_Lucifer_. I seem that which I am;
And therefore do I ask of thee, if thou
Wouldst be immortal?

_Cain_. Thou hast said, I must be 90
Immortal in despite of me. I knew not
This until lately--but since it must be,
Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn
To anticipate my immortality.

_Lucifer_. Thou didst before I came upon thee.

_Cain_. How?

_Lucifer_. By suffering.

_Cain_. And must torture be immortal?

_Lucifer_. We and thy sons will try. But now, behold!
Is it not glorious?

_Cain_. Oh thou beautiful
And unimaginable ether! and
Ye multiplying masses of increased 100
And still-increasing lights! what are ye? what
Is this blue wilderness of interminable
Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen
The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden?
Is your course measured for ye? Or do ye
Sweep on in your unbounded revelry
Through an aerial universe of endless
Expansion--at which my soul aches to think--
Intoxicated with eternity[113]?
Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are! 110
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_. Look there! 120

_Cain_. I cannot see it.

_Lucifer_. Yet it sparkles still.

_Cain_. That! --yonder!

_Lucifer_. Yea.

_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.

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

_Cain_. That they are beautiful in their own sphere,
And that the night, which makes both beautiful,
The little shining fire-fly in its flight, 130
And the immortal star in its great course,
Must both be guided.

_Lucifer_. But by whom or what?

_Cain_. Show me.

_Lucifer_. Dar'st thou behold?

_Cain_. How know I what
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_. _Both_ partly: but what doth
Sit next thy heart?

_Cain_. The things I see.

_Lucifer_. But what
_Sate_ nearest it?

_Cain_. The things I have not seen,
Nor ever shall--the mysteries of Death. 140

_Lucifer_. What, if I show to thee things which have died,
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:
'Tis part of thy eternity, and mine. 150

_Cain_. Where dost thou lead me?

_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 160
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 shall 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 approached,
And wore the look of worlds.

_Lucifer_. And such they are.

_Cain_. And Edens in them?

_Lucifer_. It may be.

_Cain_. And men? 170

_Lucifer_. Yea, or things higher.

_Cain_. Aye! and serpents too? [cf]

_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 see 180
Huge dusky masses; but unlike the worlds
We were approaching, which, begirt with light,
Seemed full of life even when their atmosphere
Of light gave way, and showed 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. 190
Thou seekest 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_. Behold!

_Cain_. 'Tis darkness!

_Lucifer_. And so it shall be ever--but we will
Unfold its gates!

_Cain_. Enormous vapours roll
Apart--what's this?

_Lucifer_. Enter!

_Cain_. Can I return?

_Lucifer_. Return! be sure: how else should Death be peopled? 200
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 II. --_Hades_.


_Enter_ LUCIFER _and_ CAIN.

_Cain_. How silent and how vast are these dim worlds!
For they seem more than one, and yet more peopled
Than the huge brilliant luminous orbs which swung
So thickly in the upper air, that I
Had deemed them rather the bright populace
Of some all unimaginable Heaven,
Than things to be inhabited themselves,[cg]
But that on drawing near them I beheld
Their swelling into palpable immensity
Of matter, which seemed made for life to dwell on, 10
Rather than life itself. But here, all is
So shadowy, and so full of twilight, that
It speaks of a day past.

_Lucifer_. It is the realm
Of Death. --Wouldst have it present?

_Cain_. Till I know
That which it really is, I cannot answer.
But if it be as I have heard my father
Deal out in his long homilies, 'tis a thing--
Oh God! I dare not think on't! Cursed be
He who invented Life that leads to Death!
Or the dull mass of life, that, being life, 20
Could not retain, but needs must forfeit it--
Even for the innocent!

_Lucifer_. Dost thou curse thy father?

_Cain_. Cursed he not me in giving me my birth?
Cursed he not me before my birth, in daring
To pluck the fruit forbidden?

_Lucifer_. Thou say'st well:
The curse is mutual 'twixt thy sire and thee--
But for thy sons and brother?

_Cain_. Let them share it
With me, their sire and brother!