Cain, a Drama

Front matter

CAIN

CAIN A DRAMA

BY GEORGE CABOT LODGE

Chapter II

16. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Chapter III

1. Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

22. And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Chapter IV

1. And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

2. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

A vast, naked plain. Mountains in the remote background. In the foreground a rude tent of skins. The dark twilight of the first flush of dawn. No sound or motion is anywhere in the world.

Time: early spring; the twenty-eighth year since the birth of Cain.

Eve appears at the door of the tent and looks forth toward the sunrise.

EVE

The rapt silence! The dark twilight!—It dawns! The multitude of the ineffable stars That lamped the viewless parapets of heaven, Melt in the light like pearls in golden wine; The void globe of the calm firmament Glows; the immemorable ecstasy Thrills in the vital fabric of creation, And—hark!—a bird wakes somewhere in the world! Somewhere a burst seed splits the naked sod, Somewhere a flower folded at evening Petal by petal bares its inmost heart In perfect trust and drinks the dewfall!—Life, O Life, imperishable and resistless! Life, Fragile as joy and free as destiny! O breath of life tender and passionate, Sweet breath of sap and imminent foliage Blown thro' the level ether and low light!—

The voice of ADAM

Give me the fruit! How fair it is! It seems As it were a globe of light—give me the fruit! His eyes are strange and glad and perilous!— Eve, hast thou wondered how his eyes are strange?— Nay then—my soul is strong and I will eat! Give me the fruit, give me the heritage!— Yea! I will wander in the sky-gardens And meet with level eyes the vision of God! Give me the fruit!

EVE

Adam!

The voice of ADAM

—the deed is done! Silence! Silence! The deathless deed is done! See how he stares!—His coils are flecked with flame, His eyes challenge!—O God! what comes to pass?— A wind of flight stirs in the wings of Peace And peril haunts the glades of Paradise—

A pause. EVE listens intently.

The voice of ADAM

My soul cowers!—What have I done?—Crouch low, Woman, crouch low! Pray God the night will suddenly Cover us from his ken! Eve! Eve!—His voice, The voice of God!—Justice, Omnipotent, Justice! The guilt is alien to my soul— I say not mine, not mine the sin, Lord God! The woman tempted me and I did eat!

EVE

O vain repentance!

ADAM Staggering forth, still unawakened, from the tent.

—Eve!—Utterly lost! His hand has loosed the four relentless winds Against this delicate toy of His creation, And lifted out of Chaos the elder night, And set against the paths to Paradise Seraphim and the sword of circling flame! And we—we go beyond! O night and death!— O woman, woman, woman,—where is Eden?

The light—the life—Eve!

EVE

Adam—

ADAM

Art thou there?—

EVE

Take both my hands—

ADAM

—the dream!—

EVE

Ghosts! Ghosts!

ADAM

—the dream! Visions! Visions!—O shield me, take my hands! Let my face lie against thy breast a while— I dreamed of Paradise and God—no more, No more! I am too shaken utterly! Vague am I, vague and desolate as mist! My soul suffers—O heart, how sad it is! Life is too tragic of its memories— Hold me—I need thy tenderness, I need Thy calm and pitiful hands to comfort me.

EVE

Be still a little, all will be well I know.

ADAM

Say nothing more, for naught avails me now! There is no other balm but silence. Mine Are woes too real for words, too wild for tears.

EVE

See out of heaven how there is shed upon thee The light of dawn—

ADAM

All other light is lost— The light of God, the light of happiness!— O memories, dreams!—

EVE

Vain agonies!

ADAM

Vain joys, Vain life, vain death,—what is not vain and void? The soul dries up with fear to think of it! God knows my dreams are very terrible! God knows there is no laughter in my life, And in my slumbers no forgetfulness!

EVE

I say, vain agonies! Life cannot be Itself a glad or sad thing; grief and joy Are mere interpretations of the soul, Brief and changeable gloom or splendour shed Down the wide ways of Life's eternal sea! Joy is the temper of heroic minds—

ADAM

Grief is the stern acknowledgment of truth!— Hadst thou my dreams!—O where is Paradise?—

EVE

Peace, peace, distracted soul!—

ADAM

No more! No more!— No more the inviolable peace of God, The tideless seas of bright beatitude Spread like the aura of His steadfast soul! No more the innocent communion With Him whose voice pealed thro' the formless void Till star by star the infinite creation Woke like bright echoes on the vacant night! No more the voice of cherubim that seemed A pulse of light in the celestial dome! No more, against the flashing slopes of heaven, Seraphim poised on pinions blind with gold!— Eden no more, the perfect glades no more!

EVE

I know full well there can be nevermore The joy that was—to-morrow and to-day Cannot be nourished with past happiness, For past is past.—Not life alone is changed: We are such men and women as we are, Not as we were beneath God's tutelage, When Paradise was a delicate play-garden Where, in contentment of fair things, we lived So childish-glad of his beneficence. Now are we not withholden by God's grace From all mortality; we know at last How we are fashioned of the selfsame clay Whence his creative hands divinely shaped Behemoth and the bird of paradise. On the bare uplands of reality Our feet walk level with the whole of life! Therefore the tender and impermanent joys, The warm, frail happiness of mortal things Are ours at last, our earned inheritance.

ADAM

They are not mine!—I know not what you mean! I am one man to-day and yesterday: I am that Adam of God's handiwork Who, perfect thro' the paths of Paradise, Walked hand in hand with happiness a while,— Who now is haunted of shrill memories And anxious dreams!—

EVE

Adam—be resolute! I too have dreamed, I too have memories Of joy and violence and tragedy! Your past is mine, we share to-day. Say this: What was has never been, there yet can be No less than is, nor more than is to come; And life at last, at least is ours!

ADAM

Is life This desolate sentience, this distressful toil, This pain, this pitiful treasure of mean days? Is life indeed this scant monotony Of being,—this heart of violent agonies And scared impermanent felicity, This body of labor and lust and terrible tears, This brain where everlasting memory beats Dull as the pulse of a sick artery?— Then were it altogether a happy thing If this magnificence of stainless light Were quenched and night were set insuperable Over this theatre of our desolation And life so disinherited of delight Abolished from this perishable dust! If this be life what lovelier word befits The clear and innocent ecstasies of Eden, The candid rapture roused in body and soul When dawn with lifted, fiery finger-tips Kindled the dark and dreamless void of sleep, And once again the vision of Paradise, The endless melody of shallow waters, Perfumes of foliage wet with silver light, The sound of dewfall thro' the fragrant gloom Of windless forests and the cries of birds Scattered upon the spiritual silence Like stars or dewdrops on the twilight—all The miracle of God's sublime creation Returned to consciousness!

EVE

Ask me no more! Ask me no more!—such tears of mine are fallen On the wild harp of memory that now The strings are lax and faint,—they sing no more! Well do I know the past was otherwise And more—yet also haply something less! Thought wearies of the eternal task!—at least The austere and passionate life of liberty—

ADAM

Is strange to God's beneficent intent And steadfast will!

EVE

Yet is it come to pass!— The core of truth is darkness to the soul.— I cannot tell—I suffer of such things As swell beyond the shape of any words. Only in silence can we bear with fate, And find the joy to live not pitiably Nor infidel—lest all were lost in vain!

ADAM

In vain! In vain!—the word rings void as life! In vain the irremediable woe, In vain the exile from God's father-house, In vain the lamentable days and nights Of terrible remembrance and tense dreams!— Vain hopes, vain tears, vain agonies!—

EVE

Be still!— The dream has robbed thy soul of fortitude, Swelled thy remorseful heart with futile tears, And crazed thy brain with vain imaginings. I know too well the face of thy despair, Too well!—therefore be still that I may live! I too have felt the intolerable scorn And borne the task that seemed unbearable.

ADAM

The scorn of labour and the task of tears, The scorn of memory and the task of life, The scorn of hope, the task of patience—Eve, I wait:—the end is silence. Look beyond!— Death even shall haply ease the exhausted flesh And pour perpetual oblivion, Shadow and senseless silence on the soul!

EVE

Shadow and silence and oblivion— Is death indeed so absolute a term? Is death a magic of such sovereign cure? Is death a silence so eventual?— It cannot be! If life must find a term Vain is the passionate utterance of life, Vain the sore travail in which my womb conceived The stalwart children of thy generation!— It cannot be! What tho' the hand of death Shall smite my mouth with silence utterly And feed spring flowers of my carrion?— Yet is eternity within me!—Hark! Whispers, whispers of immortality! As it were a shell found inland, so is life Fulfilled with murmurs of an infinite sea! Soul is the Pilgrim of Eternity, And Life and Death in long processional Chequer the pathways of its endless march Like day and night: a strife and then a sleep, Darkness and light, a song, a silence—so They pass: the Pilgrim and the Path endure! Adam! Adam!—I say thou canst as well Measure the soul in terms of life and death As lay a foot-rule to infinity!

ADAM

Be still! Here in the vigour of my days I search the paths of time with sleepless eyes: The void prospect of eternity Glitters with ghosts of lunacy and fear! My soul shudders!—I find no goal of light, No guerdon of great deeds nor any hope Save of the ambushed death that chokes with dust The wolves of memory at the heels of life! Death is the almshouse for the wayfarer, The prize, the goal, the journey's end, the sleep!

EVE

Perchance—perchance—where's truth? the absolute Is never learned yet faith is justified, The faith of life that is and is to be. Soul wanders blindly in a labyrinth, Grasping for guidance one by one the threads, Sombre or splendid, that at last combine To weave the cosmic tapestry of truth. Perfection lies beyond!—yet momently Visions dawn, vistas of infinite light Open—and close, yet leave their afterglow To guide the wandering of the errant feet Of the earth-children!

ADAM

Heart, O Heart of passion! O Heart of tears!—canst thou console thy sorrow With such vain raptures of imagination, And make with fevers of a mind diseased Roseate the unrelenting face of truth?— Thy faith is pitiful!

EVE

Not mine alone!— I learn my secret from the lips of life: Words of my gospel are bird-melodies, Pale lotos ripening in the pond-waters, The hollow murmur of the winds of spring Thro' forests soft with imminent foliage, Rose hyacinth and white anemone And golden crocus, songs and perfumes shed Thro' twilight, and the rush of plunging streams, And sea-storms, and the native, violent lust Of mating animals;—yea, from all acts of life Transpire the faith, the measureless love, the clear Simplicity of all heroic deeds!— Sing, Spirit Divine! O lips of Life Thrilled with immortal whispers, heart, O heart Of Life, sing on!—my soul shall hear thy voice, Shall sing thy song, O heart of Life! O lips Of Life! and say—The crown, the prize, the pæan Dull the magnificence of noble deeds! Recompense is the measure of mean aims And small achievements: toil may earn a wage And strife a slumber, but the act of life, Like all heroic deeds and spiritual, Is wrought and tested in eternity! Its parturitions prove too pure a faith To ask a goal or seek a prize beyond!

ADAM

Poor Soul!—misery and sin have crazed thy brain! Life is no other than a senseless lust: What can the grosser nature signify? Knowledge is God's alone; by His sole grace We read the legend of unchanging truth: Hope in His favour; for the rest, despair!

EVE

Hope in God's favour—hope of Paradise— Hope of what was, of what no more shall be?—

ADAM

—Lost, lost beyond recall!

EVE

—beyond recall!— Therefore not lost in vain! The soul inures To new desires, new hope, new powers, new truth! O hope no more what was or what shall be!— Lost is God's favour, lost is Paradise, Lost the desire and hope of what has been, And lost is even the blackness of despair Whereof His wrath fulfilled me!

ADAM

Eve—

EVE

I say We knew despair how dire an agony It is, that night beneath the starless shroud Of dark and thunder and whirlwind and shrill cries, Whereunder earth seemed as a shattered ship Derelict on the seas of dissolution!—

ADAM

When by his wrath was loosed against creation The violence of elemental things!— Woe beyond utterance!

EVE

Hear me!—suddenly Forth from the pits of palpable blackness sprang The dawn, and tore apart with hands of flame Night's cere-cloth on its brows!—delirious, Terrified, fallen,—free! I glimpsed again The clear skies fresh and spiritual as song, The life-beneficent and tender light, The earth, this earth of graves and growing flowers! Breathless and dumb, with eyes thirsty of vision, I saw the impenetrable dome of night, The walls of dark that seemed immutable, Flicker to flame, while from their ruins fell Embers of twilight thro' the storm-tossed airs! And then, Adam, O then the gates of light— Then, as I stared—sprang wide within me: Dawn Broke in my soul! I was ineffably Glad of unutterable things!—it seemed Triumph was won, a miracle was wrought, A deed of love and passionate liberty Accomplished! Scornful of my night's despair, Against the deep skies of eternity The stars of life shone steadfast and the stars Of faith,—the faith of life! And then, and then— Sun rose resplendent, witness to the truth! I knew in that surpassing hour, since day And dark were faithful in their periods, That life and death could not be less nor fail Their full return!

ADAM

Then life's return is pain!— For all my days are very lamentable, And all my nights that should be smooth and void Are fevered with intolerable visions, And all my dreams of death are dark and dumb, As of a peril and a mystery.— Yet am I nowise cringed before my woes! Nay!—tho my life is bruised with sore affliction And dire repentance blasts my happiness, Tho' in remembrance Paradise forever Blooms with fresh light and flowers ineffable, Clear pieties and peaceful innocence, Against the gloom of this grieved sentience Of violence and starvation, yet I bear, Scornful of tears, the grief and scorn of life! Faith is the stern, austere acknowledgment And dumb obedience to the will of God: Such faith my soul has kept inviolable! What tho' He crush me, is He not the Lord! Therefore my hands have torn the thrifty sod And lured to fruitfulness the fragile seed. I serve and wait; but nowise shall my soul Yield to the lure of perishable joys Nor scarf the eyes of Truth with gossamer Of delicate hope or fond imaginings. Never within my heart shall cowardice Whore with imagination to achieve A false and unsubstantial happiness.

I will be stern and just and absolute: Thus only can the soul of man preserve What shreds are left of calm and dignity. Therefore, Woman, I say forbear thy speech!— And Thou, O Lord of Life, Magnificent God, Craftsman of miracles whose labour caused Mighty establishment of heaven and earth, Whose hand shaped chaos and tamed rebellious suns And wrought the hosts of heaven to harmony, Grooved perilous pitfalls for the unresting seas, Lifted these naked uplands of the world, Pillared on high the sapphire dome of heaven And gave fair ordinance to the wayward hours— Grant me, O God, to say—"Thy will be done!" With level lips, obedient to the last!

CAIN

Father!—what say'st thou?—Have I heard aright?— Obedient?—

EVE

Cain!—

ADAM

His will be done!

ABEL

Amen!

EVE

Cain! Cain!

CAIN

His will and mine and thine be done!— Amen!—'t is well! His will and mine are twain, Yet each may still be free and absolute. Is my life less because you live? am I Weak by your strength, by your hope hopeless?—Nay! A myriad lives cannot diminish me, A myriad hearts distrain no love from mine,— My will alone fashions my destinies! Why say'st thou, then, obedient?—God is God, And Man is Man.—Why chains when all is free?

ADAM

Thy dark thought stumbles in impiety. Art thou so blinded from enlightenment? God rules! knowest thou not His secret laws Thro' life and death dispose immutably The minnow and Leviathan, the pale Glow-worm and Gold Arcturus with his sons? Child, we are dust once lifeless, soon to die, Sentient and lonely creatures of his will Cast in the mould of his divinity.

CAIN

Father! father!—What say'st thou?—Can it be That we are creatures of an alien will, The fashioned puppets of a craftsman's hands, The structured dolls of God's imagining? Creatures—How then?—is liberty a lie? Are we so basely cheated and contemned?— Then are we pitiful spectres of a dream; Then is this azure overarch of heaven Lifted on ghostly wings of phantasy; Then is the day-spring's fire-flushed flood that pours Up the star-shingled beaches of the sky A bright delusion; then beneath the sun Are void phantoms; then is life itself, This passionate life, this imminent creation, Mere vapor on the immeasurable heaven Where dawns the eternal morning of the soul! Nay!—since we are not men but slaves, and thus Even the high task and ecstasy of love, The austere endurance of great wrongs are vain, And vain all tenderness and sacrifice That swell the soul's horizons,—then the Soul Itself is naught—a cause denies the Soul! O father, seest thou not how much is lost?— How by God's will all fades to nothingness? What cause is needed why the splendid sun, The delicate moon and all the faultless stars Minister to the world delicious light? What cause is needed why the crusted sod Gives punctual utterance to so fragile flowers? What cause is needed why within me stirs The haughty power and longing of creation, Or thought or spiritual serenity?— What cause is needed, what is justified? If cause there be then are we all betrayed, Then may we well despair of life and death!

ADAM

I hear thy words—madness and blasphemy! God pity me!—for I thought his justice slept, His vengeance drowsed, with misery satiated. I was the more deceived!—The poison works: Thou art the child of Woman, the son of sin. Thy crazed words witness:—Eve, thy womb is cursed, Hark to thy son!

EVE In a low voice

Mine! Mine!

ADAM

Methinks I hear That voice that said "Thou shalt be even as is Almighty God, knowing both Good and Evil!"

EVE

—that voice of passionate poems and grave joys— Even so—

ADAM

—it spake as thou, my eldest son!

CAIN

What have I uttered more or less than truth? Why are your words so strange, your eyes so sad, And sudden panic fallen upon your thoughts?— For love, for justice, simply, as I speak, Deal with me! Judge me not, tho' ignorance Cheats my impetuous soul:—are we not all Like lonely voyagers on uncharted seas Who signal each to each when thro' the gloom Flashes a beacon, or a distant roar Warns where some coast confronts the sombre flood, Perchance the haven of our guideless quest, Perchance a peril and a sepulchre? O you, forbear!—even tho', lost and blind, I, from the sluggish rear of circumstance, Signal a rushlight for a guiding star To you who lead the intrepid van of hope, Let not your hearts condemn me utterly! Whatever leagues divide us man from man Seem in the endless journey of the soul So brief a distance! Rather, tenderly, Lead me to stand one day where now you stand, To glimpse the light that proves me wrong to-day!

ADAM

The light is God! Within the soul there dwells Reflected splendour!—He, the Sun of Heaven, Gives light to all. The dream of liberty Shadows the glass, where God's magnificence Alone should glow, with darkness utterly. When, from the sapphire pinnacles of heaven, Spangled with stars, where sing to pleasure Him Grave angels and the clear-voiced Sons of Song, His eyes look forth, we seem as flickering motes Caught in the stream of his effulgence!

CAIN

Nay! No height whence the supernal vision falls Can shrink us to a less reality Than what we are, being no less than men!

EVE

Spirit of Life! Thrilled Heart!—Nay, words are vain!— The worst shall come inevitably I know. My heart is keen with direful prophecy— Cain, Cain, my heart aches of your destinies! Clasp me, dear son, in both your arms!—O God! What shall I say?

CAIN

I ask no eminence, No power, no more than truth!—in very deed What less thing can a man desire than truth?

EVE

What more thing?

ADAM

Since the truth is God!—

CAIN

The truth Is mine and yours in measure of our will!

ABEL

Yours?—Mine?—

CAIN

How not, if there is truth at all? The ways are barred to no adventurer, The seas bear up whatever onward keel!

ABEL

Where? To what end? Lacking God's guidance, where Shall stray such blind and errant enterprise?

CAIN

Haply thro' all sweet vistas and sublime The ecstatic soul at last goes home to light!

ABEL

But you?—

CAIN

I walk level with what I am, Negligent of a goal. My feet no less Are stablished where they tread than spreads my soul Her irised wings and lifts her breast of faith Against the eternal skies and shoreless seas, The infinite, fresh, immortal, strange Beyond! So poised, I may be master of no thing That is at all and will be slave to none! If God—you say—assume to tutor me, How shall He ask a less thing than I crave In native aspiration? Rather shall He Lift up his light beyond the utmost stars Fading along the verge of consciousness!— Rather than bind me in obedience He shall loose freedom from the parapets Of heaven and spur my soul to range beyond!— So, haply, after long discoveries, To walk at last his comrade, hand in hand, And share with Him the infinite vision of truth!

ADAM

O mortal pride! O madness worse than sin!— Pitiful child! Derisive, trifling worm God's foot would crush didst thou deserve so much,— Be silent! lest perchance thy noisy babble Might vex his calm divinity!—

EVE

—Hush!—Hush!— I know the worst must come—nothing avails, For him my heart foretold catastrophe When, as I watched last night beside his sleep, His brows grew bent in great resolve, his lips Muttered as tho' within his sightless eyes Sate perilous visions or his soul endured Strange visitation of fantastic dreams!— Cain!—O my child, I love you utterly! What urge compels you? What magnificence Lifts in your life? What sense of combat swells Your soul with truth, your heart with liberty?

CAIN

How shall I say?—within me all is flowing And vague and boundless and unutterable. Within me joy, heart-deep, heart-warm, and love And power of life are measureless; within Light beats and swells!—I dwell within the soul's Rose-irised mist of everlasting wonder Where life assails me with resistless love! I share with all— and all results for me! For me the day-spring and the dawn of moon, For me the elate, innumerable stars, For me strong seas, for me this earth of graves— O earth of tireless conception!—and For me these plains and desolate mountain-peaks, This glad and faithful fellowship of life!— These all, all are my passionate lovers! All They seize my sense, they take their will of me, They task me with delicious ecstasies! On towers of naked rock, in deep defiles, Beneath the glitter of tree-leaves wet with light, By streams singing their journey thro' the world, In rainfall, by the roar of distant seas On beach and cliff, by cloud and cataract, I feel a presence and a mystery, A summons of incomparable love, Great indications of eternity, Miracles, vistas, portents, lifted veils, Breathless discoveries and revelations, The lure of open arms, tho' doors ajar, Glimpses beyond, voices of grave surmise,— These all I feel within me and around Breathe of immortal secrets!—More, too deep, Too delicate for words, heaves in my breast, Burns in my sense and swells my soul with light!

EVE

O God, how all my wounded heart resounds!— Hush, lest I yield!—No more!—No more!—thy words Are wonderful and strange as happiness! The gates spring wide asunder!—Hush!—No more! Thy dreams, God knows, were otherwise,—thy dreams Were gaunt with pride and prophecy and pain!—

CAIN

Then were my dreams beyond my conscious scope. The spread of earth, the circling deeps of heaven, The interminable sea, resistless love, The passion and miracle of life and death, The immortal whispers from within the soul— My knowledge finds horizon in these things.

ADAM

So far, so pitiably art thou strayed from truth, Thou blind and boastful fool! learn this at least: The true horizon of the soul is God! And thou, Eve, Woman, most perilously wandered In weak delusion, now I charge thee speak, Lest thou should'st fall again in deathless sin, Of God and man,—God's all, man's nothingness!

EVE

Dear son, we are God's creatures every one—

CAIN

Mother!

EVE

I'll speak no more!—

ABEL

Haply it is That God inspires his handiwork and sets The pulse of life in cadence with his heart. Haply, dear Cain, the joy, the infinite love, The fire and perfume of divinity, The rapture of concealed infinities Thy soul has garnered round thee and within, Are but the harvest of his seed of grace Sown broadcast over all his huge creation.—

CAIN

Then am I cheated of my heritage! Then all's a dream, a web of foolish lies! Then is the faith that fills the fragile nest And exquisitely brings frail flowers to bud A pitiful derision; then is life A monstrous farce and death a fruitless pang!— Then are my manhood and my liberty, My will, my thoughts, the life-sap of my loins, The unborn sons and daughters of my blood Vain hopes and pitiable deceptions, lies Of sense and soul,—Aye! then is God himself The showman of a stupid mummery—

EVE

Cain!—Cain!—forbear!

CAIN

Hast thou forgot thy pangs That prove this life was thine that now is mine?— Not God's life, thine and mine!—Yea! face to face And heart to heart, with deep and fearless eyes, So it is mete that I should speak with God Who speak with no thing on less perfect terms! My life, my love, my cherished liberty, Are mine because whatever is at all Shares in their dispensation.—I will take No joy but all participate, no pang But all endure, no power, no attribute But all possess or shall possess in turn!— So is my right inviolable to stand Where now I stand and ask my leave of none!—

ADAM

Enough!—O God, be just yet merciful! Witless he is and sinful—yet my son! Punish his sin, yet I beseech thee stay The full and righteous measure of thy wrath!— And thou—answer no more!—I'll hear no more! Thou art my son, living in God's defiance, To add a grief more grievous than the rest To all the misery my harsh days must bear!— And thou, whose weakness set the term to joy, Thou, by whose sin the worst has come to pass, Beware of what more dire events may chance! And now—Go forth each one. The daylight lifts— Somewhere your labour waits you in the world!