The Works of Lord Byron Volume V Part 57

_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 G.o.d; 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 unpartic.i.p.ated 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 companions.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.ds; and even He who thrust ye forth, so thrust ye Because "ye should not eat the fruits of life, And become G.o.ds 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.p.a.ce----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.