Lucifer.

Consists in slavery—no.

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-since there is
No other choice: your sire hath chosen already;
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 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 (1) [MS." What can he be who places love in ignorance? "]

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

By ages! — and I must be sire of such things!
Thy beauty and thy love-my love and joy,
The rapturous moment and the placid hour, (1)
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,
Intercheck'd with an instant of brief pleasure,
To Death - the unknown! Methinks the tree of
knowledge

Hath not fulfill'd its promise:-if they sinn'd,
At least they ought to have known all things that are
Of knowledge—and the mystery of death.
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

Judge from what I have heard.

(1) [This" placid hour" of Cain is, we fear, from a source which it will do Lord B. no credit to name, the romance of "Faublas."- E.]

Lucifer.

And thou couldst not

Alone! Oh, my

God!

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

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 from

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, 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

We must bear,

His secret, and he keeps it.
And some of us resist, and both in vain,
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

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?

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,

No

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.(1)

(1) [In the drawing of Cain himself, there is much vigorous expression. It seems, however, as if, in the effort to give to Lucifer that "spiritual

The myriad myriads - the all-peopled earth

The unpeopled earth—and the o'er-peopled Hell, Of which thy bosom is the germ.

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?

And cannot I, who aided in this work,

Show in an hour what he hath made in many,
Or hath destroy'd in few?

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. Thus, in this dialogue with Adah, he comes forth to our view so qualified as to engage our sympathies. BRIT. CRIT.]