No More Learning

_Adam_. Nor aught to thank for?

_Cain_. No.

_Adam_. Dost thou not _live_?

_Cain_. Must I not die?

_Eve_. Alas!
The fruit of our forbidden tree begins 30
To fall.

_Adam_. And we must gather it again.
Oh God! why didst thou plant the tree of knowledge?

_Cain_. And wherefore plucked ye not the tree of life?
Ye might have then defied him.

_Adam_. Oh! my son,
Blaspheme not: these are Serpent's words.

_Cain_. Why not?
The snake spoke _truth_; it _was_ the Tree of Knowledge;
It _was_ the Tree of Life: knowledge is good,
And Life is good; and how can both be evil?

_Eve_. My boy! thou speakest as I spoke in sin,
Before thy birth: let me not see renewed 40
My misery in thine. I have repented.
Let me not see my offspring fall into
The snares beyond the walls of Paradise,
Which even in Paradise destroyed his parents.
Content thee with what _is_. Had we been so,
Thou now hadst been contented. --Oh, my son!

_Adam_. Our orisons completed, let us hence,
Each to his task of toil--not heavy, though
Needful: the earth is young, and yields us kindly
Her fruits with little labour.

_Eve_. Cain--my son-- 50
Behold thy father cheerful and resigned--
And do as he doth. [_Exeunt_ ADAM _and_ EVE.

_Zillah_. Wilt thou not, my brother?

_Abel_. Why wilt thou wear this gloom upon thy brow,
Which can avail thee nothing, save to rouse
The Eternal anger?

_Adah_. My beloved Cain
Wilt thou frown even on me?

_Cain_. No, Adah! no;
I fain would be alone a little while.
Abel, I'm sick at heart; but it will pass;
Precede me, brother--I will follow shortly.
And you, too, sisters, tarry not behind; 60
Your gentleness must not be harshly met:
I'll follow you anon.

_Adah_. If not, I will
Return to seek you here.

_Abel_. The peace of God
Be on your spirit, brother!
[_Exeunt_ ABEL, ZILLAH, _and_ ADAH.

_Cain_ (_solus_). And this is
Life? --Toil! and wherefore should I toil? --because
My father could not keep his place in Eden?
What had _I_ done in this? --I was unborn:
I sought not to be born; nor love the state
To which that birth has brought me. Why did he
Yield to the Serpent and the woman? or 70
Yielding--why suffer? What was there in this?
The tree was planted, and why not for him?
If not, why place him near it, where it grew
The fairest in the centre? They have but
One answer to all questions, "'Twas _his_ will,
And _he_ is good. " How know I that? Because
He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow?
I judge but by the fruits--and they are bitter--
Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.
Whom have we here? --A shape like to the angels 80
Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect
Of spiritual essence: why do I quake?
Why should I fear him more than other spirits,
Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords
Before the gates round which I linger oft,
In Twilight's hour, to catch a glimpse of those
Gardens which are my just inheritance,
Ere the night closes o'er the inhibited walls
And the immortal trees which overtop
The Cherubim-defended battlements? 90
If I shrink not from these, the fire-armed angels,
Why should I quail from him who now approaches?
Yet--he seems mightier far than them, nor less
Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful
As he hath been, and might be: sorrow seems
Half of his immortality. [97] And is it
So? and can aught grieve save Humanity?
He cometh.

_Enter_ LUCIFER.

_Lucifer_. Mortal!

_Cain_. Spirit, who art thou?

_Lucifer_. Master of spirits.

_Cain_. And being so, canst thou
Leave them, and walk with dust?

_Lucifer_. I know the thoughts 100
Of dust, and feel for it, and with you.

_Cain_. How!
You know my thoughts?

_Lucifer_. They are the thoughts of all
Worthy of thought;--'tis your immortal part[98]
Which speaks within you.

_Cain_. What immortal part?
This has not been revealed: the Tree of Life
Was withheld from us by my father's folly,
While that of Knowledge, by my mother's haste,
Was plucked too soon; and all the fruit is Death!

_Lucifer_. They have deceived thee; thou shalt live.

_Cain_. I live,
But live to die; and, living, see no thing 110
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome, and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome--
And so I live. Would I had never lived!

_Lucifer_. Thou livest--and must live for ever. Think not
The Earth, which is thine outward cov'ring, is
Existence--it will cease--and thou wilt be--
No less than thou art now.

_Cain_. No _less_! and why
No more?

_Lucifer_. It may be thou shalt be as we. 120

_Cain_. And ye?

_Lucifer_. Are everlasting.

_Cain_. Are ye happy?

_Lucifer_. We are mighty.

_Cain_. Are ye happy?

_Lucifer_. No: art thou?

_Cain_. How should I be so? Look on me!

_Lucifer_. Poor clay!
And thou pretendest to be wretched! Thou!

_Cain_. I am:--and thou, with all thy might, what art thou?

_Lucifer_. One who aspired to be what made thee, and
Would not have made thee what thou art.

_Cain_. Ah!
Thou look'st almost a god; and----

_Lucifer_. I am none:
And having failed to be one, would be nought
Save what I am. He conquered; let him reign! 130

_Cain_. Who?

_Lucifer_. Thy Sire's maker--and the Earth's.

_Cain_. And Heaven's,
And all that in them is. So I have heard
His Seraphs sing; and so my father saith.

_Lucifer_. They say--what they must sing and say, on pain
Of being that which I am,--and thou art--
Of spirits and of men.

_Cain_. And what is that?

_Lucifer_. Souls who dare use their immortality--
Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in
His everlasting face, and tell him that
His evil is not good! If he has made, 140
As he saith--which I know not, nor believe--
But, if he made us--he cannot unmake:
We are immortal! --nay, he'd _have_ us so,
That he may torture:--let him! He is great--
But, in his greatness, is no happier than
We in our conflict! Goodness would not make
Evil; and what else hath he made? But let him
Sit on his vast and solitary throne--
Creating worlds, to make eternity
Less burthensome to his immense existence 150
And unparticipated solitude;[99]
Let him crowd orb on orb: he is alone
Indefinite, Indissoluble Tyrant;
Could he but crush himself, 'twere the best boon
He ever granted: but let him reign on!
And multiply himself in misery!
Spirits and Men, at least we sympathise--
And, suffering in concert, make our pangs
Innumerable, more endurable,
By the unbounded sympathy of all 160
With all! But _He_! so wretched in his height,
So restless in his wretchedness, must still
Create, and re-create--perhaps he'll make[100]
One day a Son unto himself--as he
Gave you a father--and if he so doth,
Mark me! that Son will be a sacrifice!

_Cain_. Thou speak'st to me of things which long have swum
In visions through my thought: I never could
Reconcile what I saw with what I heard.
My father and my mother talk to me 170
Of serpents, and of fruits and trees: I see
The gates of what they call their Paradise
Guarded by fiery-sworded Cherubim,
Which shut them out--and me: I feel the weight
Of daily toil, and constant thought: I look
Around a world where I seem nothing, with
Thoughts which arise within me, as if they
Could master all things--but I thought alone
This misery was _mine_. My father is
Tamed down; my mother has forgot the mind 180
Which made her thirst for knowledge at the risk
Of an eternal curse; my brother is
A watching shepherd boy,[101] who offers up
The firstlings of the flock to him who bids
The earth yield nothing to us without sweat;[by]
My sister Zillah sings an earlier hymn
Than the birds' matins; and my Adah--my
Own and beloved--she, too, understands not
The mind which overwhelms me: never till
Now met I aught to sympathise with me. 190
'Tis well--I rather would consort with spirits.

_Lucifer_. And hadst thou not been fit by thine own soul
For such companionship, I would not now
Have stood before thee as I am: a serpent
Had been enough to charm ye, as before. [bz]

_Cain_. Ah! didst _thou_ tempt my mother?

_Lucifer_. I tempt none,
Save with the truth: was not the Tree, the Tree
Of Knowledge? and was not the Tree of Life
Still fruitful? Did _I_ bid her pluck them not?
Did I plant things prohibited within 200
The reach of beings innocent, and curious
By their own innocence? I would have made ye
Gods; and even He who thrust ye forth, so thrust ye
Because "ye should not eat the fruits of life,
And become gods as we. " Were those his words?

_Cain_. They were, as I have heard from those who heard them,
In thunder.

_Lucifer_. Then who was the Demon? He
Who would not let ye live, or he who would
Have made ye live for ever, in the joy
And power of Knowledge?

_Cain_. Would they had snatched both 210
The fruits, or neither!

_Lucifer_. One is yours already,
The other may be still.

_Cain_. How so?

_Lucifer_. By being
Yourselves, in your resistance. Nothing can
Quench the mind, if the mind will be itself
And centre of surrounding things--'tis made
To sway.

_Cain_. But didst thou tempt my parents?

_Lucifer_. I?
Poor clay--what should I tempt them for, or how?

_Cain_. They say the Serpent was a spirit.

_Lucifer_. Who
Saith that?
It is not written so on high:
The proud One will not so far falsify, 220
Though man's vast fears and little vanity
Would make him cast upon the spiritual nature
His own low failing. The snake _was_ the snake--
No more;[102] and yet not less than those he tempted,
In nature being earth also--_more_ in _wisdom_,
Since he could overcome them, and foreknew
The knowledge fatal to their narrow joys.
Think'st thou I'd take the shape of things that die?

_Cain_. But the thing had a demon?

_Lucifer_. He but woke one
In those he spake to with his forky tongue. 230
I tell thee that the Serpent was no more
Than a mere serpent: ask the Cherubim
Who guard the tempting tree. When thousand ages
Have rolled o'er your dead ashes, and your seed's,
The seed of the then world may thus array
Their earliest fault in fable, and attribute
To me a shape I scorn, as I scorn all
That bows to him, who made things but to bend
Before his sullen, sole eternity;
But we, who see the truth, must speak it. Thy 240
Fond parents listened to a creeping thing,
And fell. For what should spirits tempt them? What
Was there to envy in the narrow bounds
Of Paradise, that spirits who pervade
Space----but I speak to thee of what thou know'st not,
With all thy Tree of Knowledge.

_Cain_. But thou canst not
Speak aught of Knowledge which I would not know,
And do not thirst to know, and bear a mind
To know.

_Lucifer_. And heart to look on?

_Cain_. Be it proved.

_Lucifer_. Darest thou look on Death?

_Cain_. He has not yet 250
Been seen.

_Lucifer_. But must be undergone.

_Cain_. My father
Says he is something dreadful, and my mother
Weeps when he's named; and Abel lifts his eyes
To Heaven, and Zillah casts hers to the earth,
And sighs a prayer; and Adah looks on me,
And speaks not.

_Lucifer_. And thou?

_Cain_. Thoughts unspeakable
Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear
Of this almighty Death, who is, it seems,
Inevitable. Could I wrestle with him?
I wrestled with the lion, when a boy, 260
In play, till he ran roaring from my gripe.

_Lucifer_. It has no shape; but will absorb all things
That bear the form of earth-born being.

_Cain_. Ah!
I thought it was a being: who could do
Such evil things to beings save a being?

_Lucifer_. Ask the Destroyer.

_Cain_. Who?

_Lucifer_. The Maker--Call him
Which name thou wilt: he makes but to destroy.

_Cain_. I knew not that, yet thought it, since I heard
Of Death: although I know not what it is--
Yet it seems horrible. I have looked out 270
In the vast desolate night in search of him;
And when I saw gigantic shadows in
The umbrage of the walls of Eden, chequered
By the far-flashing of the Cherubs' swords,
I watched for what I thought his coming; for
With fear rose longing in my heart to know
What 'twas which shook us all--but nothing came.
And then I turned my weary eyes from off
Our native and forbidden Paradise,
Up to the lights above us, in the azure, 280
Which are so beautiful: shall they, too, die?

_Lucifer_. Perhaps--but long outlive both thine and thee.

_Cain_. I'm glad of that: I would not have them die--
They are so lovely. What is Death? I fear,
I feel, it is a dreadful thing; but what,
I cannot compass: 'tis denounced against us,
Both them who sinned and sinned not, as an ill--
What ill?

_Lucifer_. To be resolved into the earth.

_Cain_. But shall I know it?

_Lucifer_. As I know not death,
I cannot answer. [103]

_Cain_. Were I quiet earth, 290
That were no evil: would I ne'er had been
Aught else but dust!

_Lucifer_. That is a _grovelling_ wish,
Less than thy father's--for he wished to know!

_Cain_. But not to live--or wherefore plucked he not
The Life-tree?

_Lucifer_. He was hindered.

_Cain_. Deadly error!
Not to snatch first that fruit:--but ere he plucked
The knowledge, he was ignorant of Death.
Alas! I scarcely now know what it is,
And yet I fear it--fear I know not what!

_Lucifer_. And I, who know all things, fear nothing; see 300
What is true knowledge.

_Cain_. Wilt thou teach me all?

_Lucifer_. Aye, upon one condition.

_Cain_. Name it.

_Lucifer_. That
Thou dost fall down and worship me--thy Lord.

_Cain_. Thou art not the Lord my father worships.

_Lucifer_. No.

_Cain_. His equal?

_Lucifer_. No;--I have nought in common with him!
Nor would: I would be aught above--beneath--
Aught save a sharer or a servant of
His power. I dwell apart; but I am great:--
Many there are who worship me, and more
Who shall--be thou amongst the first.

_Cain_. I never 310
As yet have bowed unto my father's God.
Although my brother Abel oft implores
That I would join with him in sacrifice:--
Why should I bow to thee?

_Lucifer_. Hast thou ne'er bowed
To him?

_Cain_. Have I not said it? --need I say it?
Could not thy mighty knowledge teach thee that?

_Lucifer_. He who bows not to him has bowed to me. [104]

_Cain_. But I will bend to neither.

_Lucifer_. Ne'er the less,
Thou art my worshipper; not worshipping
Him makes thee mine the same.

_Cain_. And what is that? 320

_Lucifer_. Thou'lt know here--and hereafter.

_Cain_. Let me but
Be taught the mystery of my being.

_Lucifer_. Follow
Where I will lead thee.

_Cain_. But I must retire
To till the earth--for I had promised----

_Lucifer_. What?

_Cain_. To cull some first-fruits.

_Lucifer_. Why?

_Cain_. To offer up
With Abel on an altar.

_Lucifer_. Said'st thou not
Thou ne'er hadst bent to him who made thee?

_Cain_. 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, 330
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_. Then follow me!

_Cain_. I will.

_Enter_ ADAH.

_Adah_. My brother, I have come for thee;
It is our hour of rest and joy--and we
Have less without thee. Thou hast laboured not
This morn; but I have done thy task: the fruits
Are ripe, and glowing as the light which ripens:
Come away.

_Cain_. Seest thou not?

_Adah_. I see an angel; 340
We have seen many: will he share our hour
Of rest? --he is welcome.

_Cain_. But he is not like
The angels we have seen.

_Adah_. Are there, then, others?
But he is welcome, as they were: they deigned
To be our guests--will he?

_Cain_ (_to Lucifer_). Wilt thou?

_Lucifer_. I ask
Thee to be mine.

_Cain_. I must away with him.

_Adah_. And leave us?

_Cain_. Aye.

_Adah_. And _me_?

_Cain_. Beloved Adah!

_Adah_. Let me go with thee.

_Lucifer_. No, she must not.

_Adah_. Who
Art thou that steppest between heart and heart?

_Cain_. He is a God.

_Adah_. How know'st thou?

_Cain_. He speaks like 350
A God.

_Adah_. So did the Serpent, and it lied.

_Lucifer_. Thou errest, Adah! --was not the Tree that
Of Knowledge?

_Adah_. Aye--to our eternal sorrow.

_Lucifer_. And yet that grief is knowledge--so he lied not:
And if he did betray you, 'twas with Truth;
And Truth in its own essence cannot be
But good.

_Adah_. But all we know of it has gathered
Evil on ill; expulsion from our home,
And dread, and toil, and sweat, and heaviness;
Remorse of that which was--and hope of that 360
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?

_Adah_. I do. Is that a sin, too?

_Lucifer_. No, not yet;
It one day will be in your children.

_Adah_. What!
Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?

_Lucifer_. Not as thou lovest Cain.