Adah.

If the blessedness

I have heard it said,
The seraphs love most-cherubim know most—
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 ? 1
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
No other choice: your sire hath chosen already;
His worship is but fear.
Adah.

— since there is

Oh, Cain choose love.

Cain. For thee, my Adah, I choose not—it was Born with me- but I love nought else. Aduh.

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

Which, as I know it not, I dread not, though
It seems an awful shadow.
if I may
Judge from what I have heard.
Lucifer.

Alone, thou say'st, be happy?
Adah.

And thou couldst not

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?
What else can joy be, but the spreading joy?
Lucifer. Ask of your sire, the exile fresh froin

Eden;

Or of his first-born son: ask your own heart; It is not tranquil.

Adah.

Are you of heaven?

Lucifer.

Alas! no! and you

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.

Our father

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.

Adah.

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

He shall.

In sooth, return within an hour?
Lucifer.

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.

Ay, woman! he alone
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.

ACT II.

SCENE I.

The Abyss of Space. 2

Cuin. 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, of which I am the prince.
Cuin. Can I do so without impiety?
Lucifer. Believe - and sink not! doubt.
perish thus

Would run the edict of the other God,
Who names me demon to his angels; they
Echo the sound to miserable things,

and

Which, knowing nought beyond their shallow senses,
Worship the word which strikes their ear, and deem
Evil or good what is proclaim'd 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, toss'd upon some water-drops, 3
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,
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,
Dost thou not recognise
The dust which form'd your father?

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
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. 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.

expression. It seems, however, as if, in the effort to give to Lucifer that "spiritual politeness" which the poet professes to have in view, he has reduced him rather below the standard of diabolic dignity, which was necessary to his dramatic interest. He has scarcely "given the devil his due." We thought Lord Byron knew better. Milton's Satan, with his faded majesty, and blasted but not obliterated glory, holds us suspended between terror and amazement, with something like awe of his spiritual essence and lost estate; but Lord Byron has introduced him to us as elegant, pensive, and beautiful, with an air of sadness and suffering that ranks him with the oppressed, and bespeaks our pity. - Brit. Crit.]

Lucifer.

[The act concludes with the departure of Cain, under the guidance of his new monitor, to see the place of departed spirits. Their flight, in the next, across the abyss of space, and amid the unnumbered suns and systems which it comprises, is very fine. - HEDER.]

[In the second act, the demon carries his disciple through all the limits of space, and expounds to him, in very lofty and obscure terms, the destinies of past and future worlds. They have a great deal of exceptionable talk. JEFFREY.]

3 ["An hour, when, walking on a petty lake, A man shall say, &c."- - MS.]

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.

The Other

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 And my conceptions.

Lucifer.

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

[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, that here the whole argument and a very elaborate and specious argument it isis 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. 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

It

And unimaginable ether! and

Ye multiplying masses of increased

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 aërial universe of endless
Expansion at which my soul aches to think
Intoxicated with eternity?

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?

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 responsibility 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.]

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.

[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?

Ay? and serpents too?

Lucifer. Yea, or things higher.

Cain.

Lucifer. Wouldst thou have men without them?

must no reptiles

Breathe save the erect ones?

Cain.
Where fly we ?

Lucifer.

How the lights recede!

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
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 seekest to behold death, and dead things?
Cain. I seck 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!

'Tis darkness.

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.]