No More Learning

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! What else is
Bequeathed to me? I leave them my inheritance!
Oh, ye interminable gloomy realms 30
Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes,
Some fully shown, some indistinct, and all
Mighty and melancholy--what are ye?
Live ye, or have ye lived?

_Lucifer_. Somewhat of both.

_Cain_. Then what is Death?

_Lucifer_. What? Hath not he who made ye
Said 'tis another life?

_Cain_. Till now he hath
Said nothing, save that all shall die.

_Lucifer_. Perhaps
He one day will unfold that further secret.

_Cain_. Happy the day!

_Lucifer_. Yes; happy! when unfolded,
Through agonies unspeakable, and clogged 40
With agonies eternal, to innumerable
Yet unborn myriads of unconscious atoms,
All to be animated for this only!

_Cain_. What are these mighty phantoms which I see
Floating around me? --They wear not the form
Of the Intelligences I have seen
Round our regretted and unentered Eden;
Nor wear the form of man as I have viewed it
In Adam's and in Abel's, and in mine,
Nor in my sister-bride's, nor in my children's: 50
And yet they have an aspect, which, though not
Of men nor angels, looks like something, which,
If not the last, rose higher than the first,
Haughty, and high, and beautiful, and full
Of seeming strength, but of inexplicable
Shape; for I never saw such. They bear not
The wing of Seraph, nor the face of man,
Nor form of mightiest brute, nor aught that is
Now breathing; mighty yet and beautiful
As the most beautiful and mighty which 60
Live, and yet so unlike them, that I scarce
Can call them living. [114]

_Lucifer_. Yet they lived.

_Cain_. Where?

_Lucifer_. Where
Thou livest.

_Cain_. When?

_Lucifer_. On what thou callest earth
They did inhabit.

_Cain_. Adam is the first.

_Lucifer_. Of thine, I grant thee--but too mean to be
The last of these.

_Cain_. And what are they?

_Lucifer_. That which
Thou shalt be.

_Cain_. But what _were_ they?

_Lucifer_. Living, high,
Intelligent, good, great, and glorious things,
As much superior unto all thy sire
Adam could e'er have been in Eden, as 70
The sixty-thousandth generation shall be,
In its dull damp degeneracy, to
Thee and thy son;--and how weak they are, judge
By thy own flesh.

_Cain_. Ah me! and did _they_ perish?

_Lucifer_. Yes, from their earth, as thou wilt fade from thine.

_Cain_. But was _mine_ theirs?

_Lucifer_. It was.

_Cain_. But not as now.
It is too little and too lowly to
Sustain such creatures.

_Lucifer_. True, it was more glorious.

_Cain_. And wherefore did it fall?

_Lucifer_. Ask him who fells. [115]

_Cain_. But how?

_Lucifer_. By a most crushing and inexorable 80
Destruction and disorder of the elements,
Which struck a world to chaos, as a chaos
Subsiding has struck out a world: such things,
Though rare in time, are frequent in eternity. --
Pass on, and gaze upon the past.

_Cain_. 'Tis awful!

_Lucifer_. And true. Behold these phantoms! they were once
Material as thou art.

_Cain_. And must I be
Like them?

_Lucifer_. Let He[116] who made thee answer that.
I show thee what thy predecessors are,
And what they _were_ thou feelest, in degree 90
Inferior as thy petty feelings and
Thy pettier portion of the immortal part
Of high intelligence and earthly strength.
What ye in common have with what they had
Is Life, and what ye _shall_ have--Death: the rest
Of your poor attributes is such as suits
Reptiles engendered out of the subsiding
Slime of a mighty universe, crushed into
A scarcely-yet shaped planet, peopled with
Things whose enjoyment was to be in blindness-- 100
A Paradise of Ignorance, from which
Knowledge was barred as poison. But behold
What these superior beings are or were;
Or, if it irk thee, turn thee back and till
The earth, thy task--I'll waft thee there in safety.

_Cain_. No: I'll stay here.

_Lucifer_. How long?

_Cain_. For ever! Since
I must one day return here from the earth,
I rather would remain; I am sick of all
That dust has shown me--let me dwell in shadows.

_Lucifer_. It cannot be: thou now beholdest as 110
A vision that which is reality.
To make thyself fit for this dwelling, thou
Must pass through what the things thou seest have passed--
The gates of Death.

_Cain_. By what gate have we entered
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-- 120
So changed by its convulsion, they would not
Be conscious to a single present spot
Of its new scarcely hardened 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, 130
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 passed,
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-- 140
And tusks projecting like the trees stripped 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.

_Cain_. But
None on it?

_Lucifer_.
No: for thy frail race to war
With them would render the curse on it useless--
'Twould be destroyed 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, 150
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_! 160
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,[ch]
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 170
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 knowest that there is
A state, and many states beyond thine own--
And this thou knewest not this morn.

_Cain_. But all
Seems dim and shadowy.

_Lucifer_. Be content; it will
Seem clearer to thine immortality.

_Cain_. And yon immeasurable liquid space
Of glorious azure which floats on beyond us,
Which looks like water, and which I should deem[ci] 180
The river which flows out of Paradise
Past my own dwelling, but that it is bankless
And boundless, and of an ethereal hue--
What is it?

_Lucifer_. There is still some such on earth,
Although inferior, and thy children shall
Dwell near it--'tis the phantasm of an Ocean.

_Cain_. 'Tis like another world; a liquid sun--
And those inordinate creatures sporting o'er
Its shining surface?

_Lucifer_. Are its inhabitants,
The past Leviathans.

_Cain_. And yon immense 190
Serpent, which rears his dripping mane and vasty
Head, ten times higher than the haughtiest cedar,
Forth from the abyss, looking as he could coil
Himself around the orbs we lately looked on--
Is he not of the kind which basked beneath
The Tree in Eden?

_Lucifer_. Eve, thy mother, best
Can tell what shape of serpent tempted her.

_Cain_. This seems too terrible. No doubt the other
Had more of beauty.

_Lucifer_. Hast thou ne'er beheld him?

_Cain_. Many of the same kind (at least so called) 200
But never that precisely, which persuaded
The fatal fruit, nor even of the same aspect.

_Lucifer_. Your father saw him not?

_Cain_. No: 'twas my mother
Who tempted him--she tempted by the serpent.

_Lucifer_. Good man! whene'er thy wife, or thy sons' wives,
Tempt thee or them to aught that's new or strange,
Be sure thou seest first who hath tempted _them_!

_Cain_. Thy precept comes too late: there is no more
For serpents to tempt woman to.

_Lucifer_. But there
Are some things still which woman may tempt man to, 210
And man tempt woman:--let thy sons look to it!
My counsel is a kind one; for 'tis even
Given chiefly at my own expense; 'tis true,
'Twill not be followed, so there's little lost. [117]

_Cain_. I understand not this.

_Lucifer_. The happier thou! --
Thy world and thou are still too young! Thou thinkest
Thyself most wicked and unhappy--is it
Not so?

_Cain_. For crime, I know not; but for pain,
I have felt much.

_Lucifer_. First-born of the first man!
Thy present state of sin--and thou art evil, 220
Of sorrow--and thou sufferest, are both Eden
In all its innocence compared to what
_Thou_ shortly may'st be; and that state again,
In its redoubled wretchedness, a Paradise
To what thy sons' sons' sons, accumulating
In generations like to dust (which they
In fact but add to), shall endure and do. --
Now let us back to earth!

_Cain_. And wherefore didst thou
Lead me here only to inform me this?

_Lucifer_. Was not thy quest for knowledge?

_Cain_. Yes--as being 230
The road to happiness!

_Lucifer_. If truth be so,
Thou hast it.

_Cain_. Then my father's God did well
When he prohibited the fatal Tree.

_Lucifer_. But had done better in not planting it.
But ignorance of evil doth not save
From evil; it must still roll on the same,
A part of all things.

_Cain_. Not of all things. No--
I'll not believe it--for I thirst for good.

_Lucifer_. And who and what doth not? _Who_ covets evil
For its own bitter sake? --_None_--nothing! 'tis 240
The leaven of all life, and lifelessness.

_Cain_. Within those glorious orbs which we behold,
Distant, and dazzling, and innumerable,
Ere we came down into this phantom realm,
Ill cannot come: they are too beautiful.

_Lucifer_. Thou hast seen them from afar.

_Cain_. And what of that?
Distance can but diminish glory--they,
When nearer, must be more ineffable.

_Lucifer_. Approach the things of earth most beautiful,
And judge their beauty near.

_Cain_. I have done this-- 250
The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest.

_Lucifer_. Then there must be delusion. --What is that
Which being nearest to thine eyes is still
More beautiful than beauteous things remote?

_Cain_. My sister Adah. --All the stars of heaven,
The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world--
The hues of twilight--the Sun's gorgeous coming--
His setting indescribable, which fills
My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold 260
Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him
Along that western paradise of clouds--
The forest shade, the green bough, the bird's voice--
The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love,
And mingles with the song of Cherubim,
As the day closes over Eden's walls;--
All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart,
Like Adah's face: I turn from earth and heaven
To gaze on it.

_Lucifer_. 'Tis fair as frail mortality,
In the first dawn and bloom of young creation, 270
And earliest embraces of earth's parents,
Can make its offspring; still it is delusion.

_Cain_. You think so, being not her brother.

_Lucifer_. Mortal!
My brotherhood's with those who have no children.

_Cain_. Then thou canst have no fellowship with us.

_Lucifer_. It may be that thine own shall be for me.
But if thou dost possess a beautiful
Being beyond all beauty in thine eyes,
Why art thou wretched?

_Cain_. Why do I exist?
Why art _thou_ wretched? why are all things so? 280
Ev'n he who made us must be, as the maker
Of things unhappy! To produce destruction
Can surely never be the task of joy,
And yet my sire says he's omnipotent:
Then why is Evil--he being Good? I asked
This question of my father; and he said,
Because this Evil only was the path
To Good. Strange Good, that must arise from out
Its deadly opposite. I lately saw
A lamb stung by a reptile: the poor suckling 290
Lay foaming on the earth, beneath the vain
And piteous bleating of its restless dam;
My father plucked some herbs, and laid them to
The wound; and by degrees the helpless wretch
Resumed its careless life, and rose to drain
The mother's milk, who o'er it tremulous
Stood licking its reviving limbs with joy.
Behold, my son! said Adam, how from Evil
Springs Good! [118]

_Lucifer_. What didst thou answer?

_Cain_. Nothing; for
He is my father: but I thought, that 'twere 300
A better portion for the animal
Never to have been _stung at all_, than to
Purchase renewal of its little life
With agonies unutterable, though
Dispelled by antidotes.

_Lucifer_. But as thou saidst
Of all beloved things thou lovest her
Who shared thy mother's milk, and giveth hers
Unto thy children----

_Cain_. Most assuredly:
What should I be without her?

_Lucifer_. What am I?

_Cain_. Dost thou love nothing?

_Lucifer_. What does thy God love? 310

_Cain_. All things, my father says; but I confess
I see it not in their allotment here.

_Lucifer_. And, therefore, thou canst not see if _I_ love
Or no--except some vast and general purpose,
To which particular things must melt like snows.

_Cain_. Snows! what are they?

_Lucifer_. Be happier in not knowing
What thy remoter offspring must encounter;
But bask beneath the clime which knows no winter.

_Cain_. But dost thou not love something like thyself?

_Lucifer_. And dost thou love _thyself_?

_Cain_. Yes, but love more 320
What makes my feelings more endurable,
And is more than myself, because I love it!

_Lucifer_. Thou lovest it, because 'tis beautiful,
As was the apple in thy mother's eye;
And when it ceases to be so, thy love
Will cease, like any other appetite. [119]

_Cain_. Cease to be beautiful! how can that be?

_Lucifer_. With time.

_Cain_. But time has passed, and hitherto
Even Adam and my mother both are fair:
Not fair like Adah and the Seraphim-- 330
But very fair.

_Lucifer_. All that must pass away
In them and her.

_Cain_. I'm sorry for it; but
Cannot conceive my love for her the less:
And when her beauty disappears, methinks
He who creates all beauty will lose more
Than me in seeing perish such a work.

_Lucifer_. I pity thee who lovest what must perish.

_Cain_. And I thee who lov'st nothing.

_Lucifer_. And thy brother--
Sits he not near thy heart?

_Cain_. Why should he not?

_Lucifer_. Thy father loves him well--so does thy God. 340

_Cain_. And so do I.

_Lucifer_. 'Tis well and meekly done.

_Cain_. Meekly!

_Lucifer_. He is the second born of flesh,
And is his mother's favourite.

_Cain_. Let him keep
Her favour, since the Serpent was the first
To win it.