Act III, Scene I — The Earth, near Eden, as in Act I…

Act III, Scene I — The Earth, near Eden, as in Act I

Enter CAIN and ADAH.

Adah. Hush! tread softly, Cain!

Cain. I will--but wherefore?

Adah. Our little Enoch sleeps upon yon bed Of leaves, beneath the cypress.

Cain. Cypress! 'tis A gloomy tree, which looks as if it mourned O'er what it shadows; wherefore didst thou choose it For our child's canopy?

Adah. Because its branches Shut out the sun like night, and therefore seemed Fitting to shadow slumber.

Cain. Aye, the last-- And longest; but no matter--lead me to him. [They go up to the child. How lovely he appears! his little cheeks, 10 In their pure incarnation,[124] vying with The rose leaves strewn beneath them.

Adah. And his lips, too, How beautifully parted! No; you shall not Kiss him, at least not now: he will awake soon-- His hour of mid-day rest is nearly over; But it were pity to disturb him till 'Tis closed.

Cain. You have said well; I will contain My heart till then. He smiles, and sleeps!--sleep on, And smile, thou little, young inheritor Of a world scarce less young: sleep on, and smile! 20 Thine are the hours and days when both are cheering And innocent! thou hast not plucked the fruit-- Thou know'st not thou art naked! Must the time Come thou shalt be amerced for sins unknown, Which were not thine nor mine? But now sleep on! His cheeks are reddening into deeper smiles, And shining lids are trembling o'er his long Lashes,[125] dark as the cypress which waves o'er them; Half open, from beneath them the clear blue Laughs out, although in slumber. He must dream-- 30 Of what? Of Paradise!--Aye! dream of it, My disinherited boy! 'Tis but a dream; For never more thyself, thy sons, nor fathers, Shall walk in that forbidden place of joy!

Adah. Dear Cain! Nay, do not whisper o'er our son Such melancholy yearnings o'er the past: Why wilt thou always mourn for Paradise? Can we not make another?

Cain. Where?

Adah. Here, or Where'er thou wilt: where'er thou art, I feel not The want of this so much regretted Eden. 40 Have I not thee--our boy--our sire, and brother, And Zillah--our sweet sister, and our Eve, To whom we owe so much besides our birth?

Cain. Yes--Death, too, is amongst the debts we owe her.

Adah. Cain! that proud Spirit, who withdrew thee hence, Hath saddened thine still deeper. I had hoped The promised wonders which thou hast beheld, Visions, thou say'st, of past and present worlds, Would have composed thy mind into the calm Of a contented knowledge; but I see 50 Thy guide hath done thee evil: still I thank him, And can forgive him all, that he so soon Hath given thee back to us.

Cain. So soon?

Adah. 'Tis scarcely Two hours since ye departed: two long hours To me, but only hours upon the sun.

Cain. And yet I have approached that sun, and seen Worlds which he once shone on, and never more Shall light; and worlds he never lit: methought Years had rolled o'er my absence.

Adah. Hardly hours.

Cain. The mind then hath capacity of time, 60 And measures it by that which it beholds, Pleasing or painful[126]; little or almighty. I had beheld the immemorial works Of endless beings; skirred extinguished worlds; And, gazing on eternity, methought I had borrowed more by a few drops of ages From its immensity: but now I feel My littleness again. Well said the Spirit, That I was nothing!

Adah. Wherefore said he so? Jehovah said not that.

Cain. No: he contents him 70 With making us the nothing which we are; And after flattering dust with glimpses of Eden and Immortality, resolves It back to dust again--for what?

Adah. Thou know'st-- Even for our parents' error.

Cain. What is that To us? they sinned, then let them die!

Adah. Thou hast not spoken well, nor is that thought Thy own, but of the Spirit who was with thee. Would I could die for them, so they might live!

Cain. Why, so say I--provided that one victim 80 Might satiate the Insatiable of life, And that our little rosy sleeper there Might never taste of death nor human sorrow, Nor hand it down to those who spring from him.

Adah. How know we that some such atonement one day May not redeem our race?

Cain. By sacrificing The harmless for the guilty? what atonement[127] Were there? why, we are innocent: what have we Done, that we must be victims for a deed Before our birth, or need have victims to 90 Atone for this mysterious, nameless sin-- If it be such a sin to seek for knowledge?

Adah. Alas! thou sinnest now, my Cain: thy words Sound impious in mine ears.

Cain. Then leave me!

Adah. Never, Though thy God left thee.

Cain. Say, what have we here?

Adah. Two altars, which our brother Abel made During thine absence, whereupon to offer A sacrifice to God on thy return.

Cain. And how knew he, that I would be so ready With the burnt offerings, which he daily brings 100 With a meek brow, whose base humility Shows more of fear than worship--as a bribe To the Creator?

Adah. Surely, 'tis well done.

Cain. One altar may suffice; I have no offering.

Adah. The fruits of the earth,[128] the early, beautiful, Blossom and bud--and bloom of flowers and fruits-- These are a goodly offering to the Lord, Given with a gentle and a contrite spirit.

Cain. I have toiled, and tilled, and sweaten in the sun, According to the curse:--must I do more? 110 For what should I be gentle? for a war With all the elements ere they will yield The bread we eat? For what must I be grateful? For being dust, and grovelling in the dust, Till I return to dust? If I am nothing-- For nothing shall I be an hypocrite, And seem well-pleased with pain? For what should I Be contrite? for my father's sin, already Expiate with what we all have undergone, And to be more than expiated by 120 The ages prophesied, upon our seed. Little deems our young blooming sleeper, there, The germs of an eternal misery To myriads is within him! better 'twere I snatched him in his sleep, and dashed him 'gainst The rocks, than let him live to----

Adah. Oh, my God! Touch not the child--my child! thy child! Oh, Cain!

Cain. Fear not! for all the stars, and all the power Which sways them, I would not accost yon infant With ruder greeting than a father's kiss. 130

Adah. Then, why so awful in thy speech?

Cain. I said, 'Twere better that he ceased to live, than give Life to so much of sorrow as he must Endure, and, harder still, bequeath; but since That saying jars you, let us only say-- 'Twere better that he never had been born.

Adah. Oh, do not say so! Where were then the joys, The mother's joys of watching, nourishing, And loving him? Soft! he awakes. Sweet Enoch! [She goes to the child. Oh, Cain! look on him; see how full of life, 140 Of strength, of bloom, of beauty, and of joy-- How like to me--how like to thee, when gentle-- For then we are all alike; is't not so, Cain? Mother, and sire, and son, our features are Reflected in each other; as they are In the clear waters, when they are gentle, and When thou art gentle. Love us, then, my Cain! And love thyself for our sakes, for we love thee. Look! how he laughs and stretches out his arms, And opens wide his blue eyes upon thine, 150 To hail his father; while his little form Flutters as winged with joy. Talk not of pain! The childless cherubs well might envy thee The pleasures of a parent! Bless him, Cain! As yet he hath no words to thank thee, but His heart will, and thine own too.

Cain. Bless thee, boy! If that a mortal blessing may avail thee, To save thee from the Serpent's curse!

Adah. It shall. Surely a father's blessing may avert A reptile's subtlety.

Cain. Of that I doubt; 160 But bless him ne'er the less.

Adah. Our brother comes.

Cain. Thy brother Abel.

Enter ABEL.

Abel. Welcome, Cain! My brother, The peace of God be on thee!

Cain. Abel, hail!

Abel. Our sister tells me that thou hast been wandering, In high communion with a Spirit, far Beyond our wonted range. Was he of those We have seen and spoken with, like to our father?

Cain. No.

Abel. Why then commune with him? he may be A foe to the Most High.

Cain. And friend to man. Has the Most High been so--if so you term him? 170

Abel. Term him! your words are strange to-day, my brother. My sister Adah, leave us for awhile-- We mean to sacrifice[129].

Adah. Farewell, my Cain; But first embrace thy son. May his soft spirit, And Abel's pious ministry, recall thee To peace and holiness! [Exit ADAH, with her child.

Abel. Where hast thou been?

Cain. I know not.

Abel. Nor what thou hast seen?

Cain. The dead-- The Immortal--the Unbounded--the Omnipotent-- The overpowering mysteries of space-- The innumerable worlds that were and are-- 180 A whirlwind of such overwhelming things, Suns, moons, and earths, upon their loud-voiced spheres Singing in thunder round me, as have made me Unfit for mortal converse: leave me, Abel.

Abel. Thine eyes are flashing with unnatural light-- Thy cheek is flushed with an unnatural hue-- Thy words are fraught with an unnatural sound-- What may this mean?

Cain. It means--I pray thee, leave me.

Abel. Not till we have prayed and sacrificed together.

Cain. Abel, I pray thee, sacrifice alone-- 190 Jehovah loves thee well.

Abel. Both well, I hope.

Cain. But thee the better: I care not for that; Thou art fitter for his worship than I am; Revere him, then--but let it be alone-- At least, without me.

Abel. Brother, I should ill Deserve the name of our great father's son, If, as my elder, I revered thee not, And in the worship of our God, called not On thee to join me, and precede me in Our priesthood--'tis thy place.

Cain. But I have ne'er 200 Asserted it.

Abel. The more my grief; I pray thee To do so now: thy soul seems labouring in Some strong delusion; it will calm thee.

Cain. No; Nothing can calm me more. Calm! say I? Never Knew I what calm was in the soul, although I have seen the elements stilled. My Abel, leave me! Or let me leave thee to thy pious purpose.

Abel. Neither; we must perform our task together. Spurn me not.

Cain. If it must be so----well, then, What shall I do?

Abel. Choose one of those two altars. 210

Cain. Choose for me: they to me are so much turf And stone.

Abel. Choose thou!

Cain. I have chosen.

Abel. 'Tis the highest, And suits thee, as the elder. Now prepare Thine offerings.

Cain. Where are thine?

Abel. Behold them here-- The firstlings of the flock, and fat thereof-- A shepherd's humble offering.

Cain. I have no flocks; I am a tiller of the ground, and must Yield what it yieldeth to my toil--its fruit: [He gathers fruits. Behold them in their various bloom and ripeness. [They dress their altars, and kindle aflame upon them[130].

Abel. My brother, as the elder, offer first 220 Thy prayer and thanksgiving with sacrifice.

Cain. No--I am new to this; lead thou the way, And I will follow--as I may.

Abel (kneeling). Oh, God! Who made us, and who breathed the breath of life Within our nostrils, who hath blessed us, And spared, despite our father's sin, to make His children all lost, as they might have been, Had not thy justice been so tempered with The mercy which is thy delight, as to Accord a pardon like a Paradise, 230 Compared with our great crimes:--Sole Lord of light! Of good, and glory, and eternity! Without whom all were evil, and with whom Nothing can err, except to some good end Of thine omnipotent benevolence! Inscrutable, but still to be fulfilled! Accept from out thy humble first of shepherds' First of the first-born flocks--an offering, In itself nothing--as what offering can be Aught unto thee?--but yet accept it for 240 The thanksgiving of him who spreads it in The face of thy high heaven--bowing his own Even to the dust, of which he is--in honour Of thee, and of thy name, for evermore!

Cain (standing erect during this speech). Spirit whate'er or whosoe'er thou art, Omnipotent, it may be--and, if good, Shown in the exemption of thy deeds from evil; Jehovah upon earth! and God in heaven! And it may be with other names, because Thine attributes seem many, as thy works:-- 250 If thou must be propitiated with prayers, Take them! If thou must be induced with altars, And softened with a sacrifice, receive them; Two beings here erect them unto thee. If thou lov'st blood, the shepherd's shrine, which smokes On my right hand, hath shed it for thy service In the first of his flock, whose limbs now reek In sanguinary incense to thy skies; Or, if the sweet and blooming fruits of earth, And milder seasons, which the unstained turf 260 I spread them on now offers in the face Of the broad sun which ripened them, may seem Good to thee--inasmuch as they have not Suffered in limb or life--and rather form A sample of thy works, than supplication To look on ours! If a shrine without victim, And altar without gore, may win thy favour, Look on it! and for him who dresseth it, He is--such as thou mad'st him; and seeks nothing Which must be won by kneeling: if he's evil[ck], 270 Strike him! thou art omnipotent, and may'st-- For what can he oppose? If he be good, Strike him, or spare him, as thou wilt! since all Rests upon thee; and Good and Evil seem To have no power themselves, save in thy will-- And whether that be good or ill I know not, Not being omnipotent, nor fit to judge Omnipotence--but merely to endure Its mandate; which thus far I have endured.

[The fire upon the altar of ABEL kindles into a column of the brightest flame, and ascends to heaven; while a whirlwind throws down the altar of CAIN, and scatters the fruits abroad upon the earths[131]

Abel (kneeling). Oh, brother, pray! Jehovah's wroth with thee. 280

Cain. Why so?

Abel. Thy fruits are scattered on the earth.

Cain. From earth they came, to earth let them return; Their seed will bear fresh fruit there ere the summer: Thy burnt flesh-offering prospers better; see How Heaven licks up the flames, when thick with blood!

Abel. Think not upon my offering's acceptance, But make another of thine own--before It is too late.

Cain. I will build no more altars, Nor suffer any----

Abel (rising). Cain! what meanest thou?

Cain. To cast down yon vile flatterer of the clouds, 290 The smoky harbinger of thy dull prayers-- Thine altar, with its blood of lambs and kids, Which fed on milk, to be destroyed in blood.

Abel (opposing him). Thou shalt not:--add not impious works to impious Words! let that altar stand--'tis hallowed now By the immortal pleasure of Jehovah, In his acceptance of the victims.

Cain. His! His pleasure! what was his high pleasure in The fumes of scorching flesh and smoking blood, To the pain of the bleating mothers, which 300 Still yearn for their dead offspring? or the pangs Of the sad ignorant victims underneath Thy pious knife? Give way! this bloody record Shall not stand in the sun, to shame creation!

Abel. Brother, give back! thou shalt not touch my altar With violence: if that thou wilt adopt it, To try another sacrifice, 'tis thine.

Cain. Another sacrifice! Give way, or else That sacrifice may be----

Abel. What mean'st thou?

Cain. Give-- Give way!--thy God loves blood!--then look to it:-- 310 Give way, ere he hath more!

Abel. In his great name, I stand between thee and the shrine which hath Had his acceptance.

Cain. If thou lov'st thyself, Stand back till I have strewed this turf along Its native soil:--else----

Abel (opposing him). I love God far more Than life.

Cain (striking him with a brand, on the temples, which he snatches from the altar). Then take thy life unto thy God, Since he loves lives.

Abel (falls). What hast thou done--my brother?

Cain. Brother!

Abel. Oh, God! receive thy servant! and Forgive his slayer, for he knew not what He did--Cain, give me--give me thy hand; and tell 320 Poor Zillah--

Cain (after a moment's stupefaction). My hand! 'tis all red, and with---- What? [A long pause.--Looking slowly round. Where am I? alone! Where's Abel? where Cain? Can it be that I am he? My brother, Awake!--why liest thou so long on the green earth? 'Tis not the hour of slumber:--why so pale? What hast thou!--thou wert full of life this morn! Abel! I pray thee, mock me not! I smote Too fiercely, but not fatally. Ah, why Wouldst thou oppose me? This is mockery; And only done to daunt me:--'twas a blow-- 330 And but a blow. Stir--stir--nay, only stir! Why, so--that's well!--thou breathest! breathe upon me! Oh God! Oh God!

Abel (very faintly). What's he who speaks of God?

Cain. Thy murderer.

Abel. Then may God forgive him! Cain, Comfort poor Zillah:--she has but one brother Now. [ABEL dies.

Cain. And I none!--Who makes me brotherless? His eyes are open! then he is not dead! Death is like sleep[132]; and sleep shuts down our lids. His lips, too, are apart; why then he breathes; And yet I feel it not.--His heart!--his heart!-- 340 Let me see, doth it beat? methinks----No!--no! This is a vision, else I am become The native of another and worse world. The earth swims round me:--what is this?--'tis wet; [Puts his hand to his brow, and then looks at it. And yet there are no dews! 'Tis blood--my blood-- My brother's and my own! and shed by me! Then what have I further to do with life, Since I have taken life from my own flesh? But he can not be dead!--Is silence death? No; he will wake; then let me watch by him. 350 Life cannot be so slight, as to be quenched Thus quickly!--he hath spoken to me since-- What shall I say to him?--My brother!--No: He will not answer to that name; for brethren Smite not each other. Yet--yet--speak to me. Oh! for a word more of that gentle voice, That I may bear to hear my own again!

Enter ZILLAH.

Zillah. I heard a heavy sound; what can it be? 'Tis Cain; and watching by my husband. What Dost thou there, brother? Doth he sleep? Oh, Heaven! 360 What means this paleness, and yon stream?--No, no! It is not blood; for who would shed his blood? Abel! what's this?--who hath done this? He moves not; He breathes not: and his hands drop down from mine With stony lifelessness! Ah! cruel Cain! Why camest thou not in time to save him from This violence? Whatever hath assailed him, Thou wert the stronger, and shouldst have stepped in Between him and aggression! Father!--Eve!-- Adah!--come hither! Death is in the world! 370 [Exit ZILLAH, calling on her Parents, etc.

Cain (solus). And who hath brought him there?--I--who abhor The name of Death so deeply, that the thought Empoisoned all my life, before I knew His aspect--I have led him here, and given My brother to his cold and still embrace, As if he would not have asserted his Inexorable claim without my aid. I am awake at last--a dreary dream Had maddened me;--but he shall ne'er awake!

Enter ADAM, EVE, ADAH, and ZILLAH.

Adam. A voice of woe from Zillah brings me here-- 380 What do I see?--'Tis true!--My son!--my son! Woman, behold the Serpent's work, and thine! [To EVE.

Eve. Oh! speak not of it now: the Serpent's fangs Are in my heart! My best beloved, Abel! Jehovah! this is punishment beyond A mother's sin, to take him from me!

Adam. Who, Or what hath done this deed?--speak, Cain, since thou Wert present; was it some more hostile angel, Who walks not with Jehovah? or some wild Brute of the forest?

Eve. Ah! a livid light 390 Breaks through, as from a thunder-cloud! yon brand Massy and bloody! snatched from off the altar, And black with smoke, and red with----

Adam. Speak, my son! Speak, and assure us, wretched as we are, That we are not more miserable still.

Adah. Speak, Cain! and say it was not thou!

Eve. It was! I see it now--he hangs his guilty head, And covers his ferocious eye with hands Incarnadine!

Adah. Mother, thou dost him wrong-- Cain! clear thee from this horrible accusal, 400 Which grief wrings from our parent.

Eve. Hear, Jehovah! May the eternal Serpent's curse be on him! For he was fitter for his seed than ours. May all his days be desolate! May----

Adah. Hold! Curse him not, mother, for he is thy son-- Curse him not, mother, for he is my brother, And my betrothed.

Eve. He hath left thee no brother-- Zillah no husband--me no son! for thus I curse him from my sight for evermore! All bonds I break between us, as he broke 410 That of his nature, in yon----Oh Death! Death! Why didst thou not take me, who first incurred thee? Why dost thou not so now?

Adam. Eve! let not this, Thy natural grief, lead to impiety! A heavy doom was long forespoken to us; And now that it begins, let it be borne In such sort as may show our God, that we Are faithful servants to his holy will.

Eve (pointing to Cain). His will! the will of yon Incarnate Spirit Of Death, whom I have brought upon the earth 420 To strew it with the dead. May all the curses Of life be on him! and his agonies Drive him forth o'er the wilderness, like us From Eden, till his children do by him As he did by his brother! May the swords And wings of fiery Cherubim pursue him By day and night--snakes spring up in his path-- Earth's fruits be ashes in his mouth--the leaves On which he lays his head to sleep be strewed With scorpions! May his dreams be of his victim! 430 His waking a continual dread of Death! May the clear rivers turn to blood as he[133] Stoops down to stain them with his raging lip! May every element shun or change to him! May he live in the pangs which others die with! And Death itself wax something worse than Death To him who first acquainted him with man! Hence, fratricide! henceforth that word is Cain, Through all the coming myriads of mankind, Who shall abhor thee, though thou wert their sire! 440 May the grass wither from thy feet! the woods Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust A grave! the sun his light! and heaven her God[134]! [Exit EVE.

Adam. Cain! get thee forth: we dwell no more together. Depart! and leave the dead to me--I am Henceforth alone--we never must meet more.

Adah. Oh, part not with him thus, my father: do not Add thy deep curse to Eve's upon his head!

Adam. I curse him not: his spirit be his curse. Come, Zillah!

Zillah. I must watch my husband's corse[135]. 450

Adam. We will return again, when he is gone Who hath provided for us this dread office. Come, Zillah!

Zillah. Yet one kiss on yon pale clay, And those lips once so warm--my heart! my heart! [Exeunt ADAM and ZILLAH weeping.

Adah. Cain! thou hast heard, we must go forth. I am ready, So shall our children be. I will bear Enoch, And you his sister. Ere the sun declines Let us depart, nor walk the wilderness Under the cloud of night.--Nay, speak to me. To me--thine own.

Cain. Leave me!

Adah. Why, all have left thee. 460

Cain. And wherefore lingerest thou? Dost thou not fear To dwell with one who hath done this?

Adah. I fear Nothing except to leave thee, much as I Shrink from the deed which leaves thee brotherless. I must not speak of this--it is between thee And the great God.

A Voice from within exclaims. Cain! Cain!

Adah. Hear'st thou that voice?

The Voice within. Cain! Cain!

Adah. It soundeth like an angel's tone.

Enter the ANGEL of the Lord.[136]

Angel. Where is thy brother Abel?

Cain. Am I then My brother's keeper?

Angel. Cain! what hast thou done? The voice of thy slain brother's blood cries out, 470 Even from the ground, unto the Lord!--Now art thou Cursed from the earth, which opened late her mouth To drink thy brother's blood from thy rash hand. Henceforth, when thou shalt till the ground, it shall not Yield thee her strength; a fugitive shalt thou Be from this day, and vagabond on earth!

Adah. This punishment is more than he can bear. Behold thou drivest him from the face of earth, And from the face of God shall he be hid. A fugitive and vagabond on earth, 480 'Twill come to pass, that whoso findeth him Shall slay him.

Cain. Would they could! but who are they Shall slay me? Where are these on the lone earth As yet unpeopled?

Angel. Thou hast slain thy brother, And who shall warrant thee against thy son?

Adah. Angel of Light! be merciful, nor say That this poor aching breast now nourishes A murderer in my boy, and of his father.

Angel. Then he would but be what his father is. Did not the milk of Eve give nutriment 490 To him thou now seest so besmeared with blood? The fratricide might well engender parricides.-- But it shall not be so--the Lord thy God And mine commandeth me to set his seal On Cain, so that he may go forth in safety. Who slayeth Cain, a sevenfold vengeance shall Be taken on his head. Come hither!

Cain. What Wouldst thou with me?

Angel. To mark upon thy brow[cl] Exemption from such deeds as thou hast done.

Cain. No, let me die!

Angel. It must not be. [The ANGEL sets the mark on CAIN'S brow.

Cain. It burns 500 My brow, but nought to that which is within it! Is there more? let me meet it as I may.

Angel. Stern hast thou been and stubborn from the womb, As the ground thou must henceforth till; but he Thou slew'st was gentle as the flocks he tended.

Cain. After the fall too soon was I begotten; Ere yet my mother's mind subsided from The Serpent, and my sire still mourned for Eden. That which I am, I am; I did not seek For life, nor did I make myself; but could I 510 With my own death redeem him from the dust-- And why not so? let him return to day, And I lie ghastly! so shall be restored By God the life to him he loved; and taken From me a being I ne'er loved to bear.

Angel. Who shall heal murder? what is done, is done; Go forth! fulfil thy days! and be thy deeds Unlike the last! [The ANGEL disappears.

Adah. He's gone, let us go forth; I hear our little Enoch cry within Our bower.

Cain. Ah! little knows he what he weeps for! 520 And I who have shed blood cannot shed tears! But the four rivers[137] would not cleanse my soul. Think'st thou my boy will bear to look on me?

Adah. If I thought that he would not, I would----

Cain (interrupting her). No, No more of threats: we have had too many of them: Go to our children--I will follow thee.

Adah. I will not leave thee lonely with the dead-- Let us depart together.

Cain. Oh! thou dead And everlasting witness! whose unsinking Blood darkens earth and heaven! what thou now art 530 I know not! but if thou seest what I am, I think thou wilt forgive him, whom his God Can ne'er forgive, nor his own soul.--Farewell! I must not, dare not touch what I have made thee. I, who sprung from the same womb with thee, drained The same breast, clasped thee often to my own, In fondness brotherly and boyish, I Can never meet thee more, nor even dare To do that for thee, which thou shouldst have done For me--compose thy limbs into their grave-- 540 The first grave yet dug for mortality. But who hath dug that grave? Oh, earth! Oh, earth! For all the fruits thou hast rendered to me, I Give thee back this.--Now for the wilderness! [ADAH stoops down and kisses the body of ABEL.

Adah. A dreary, and an early doom, my brother, Has been thy lot! Of all who mourn for thee, I alone must not weep. My office is Henceforth to dry up tears, and not to shed them; But yet of all who mourn, none mourn like me, Not only for thyself, but him who slew thee. 550 Now, Cain! I will divide thy burden with thee.

Cain. Eastward from Eden will we take our way; 'Tis the most desolate, and suits my steps.

Adah. Lead! thou shalt be my guide, and may our God Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children.

Cain. And he who lieth there was childless! I Have dried the fountain of a gentle race, Which might have graced his recent marriage couch, And might have tempered this stern blood of mine, Uniting with our children Abel's offspring! 560 O Abel!

Adah. Peace be with him!

Cain. But with me!---- [Exeunt.

FOOTNOTES:

[86] {205}[On the 13th December [1821] Sir Walter received a copy of Cain, as yet unpublished, from Murray, who had been instructed to ask whether he had any objection to having the "Mystery" dedicated to him. He replied in these words--

"Edinburgh, 4th December, 1821.

"My Dear Sir,--I accept, with feelings of great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous drama of 'Cain.'[*] I may be partial to it, and you will allow I have cause; but I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose line will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then they must condemn the 'Paradise Lost,' if they have a mind to be consistent. The fiend-like reasoning and bold blasphemy of the fiend and of his pupil lead exactly to the point which was to be expected,--the commission of the first murder, and the ruin and despair of the perpetrator.

"I do not see how any one can accuse the author himself of Manicheism. The Devil talks the language of that sect, doubtless; because, not being able to deny the existence of the Good Principle, he endeavours to exalt himself--the Evil Principle--to a seeming equality with the Good; but such arguments, in the mouth of such a being, can only be used to deceive and to betray. Lord Byron might have made this more evident, by placing in the mouth of Adam, or of some good and protecting spirit, the reasons which render the existence of moral evil consistent with the general benevolence of the Deity. The great key to the mystery is, perhaps, the imperfection of our own faculties, which see and feel strongly the partial evils which press upon us, but know too little of the general system of the universe, to be aware how the existence of these is to be reconciled with the benevolence of the great Creator.

"To drop these speculations, you have much occasion for some mighty spirit, like Lord Byron, to come down and trouble the waters; for, excepting 'The John Bull,'[**] you seem stagnating strangely in London.

"Yours, my dear Sir,

"Very truly,

"WALTER SCOTT.

"To John Murray, Esq."-Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, by J. G. Lockhart, Esq., 1838, iii. 92, 93.

[[*] "However, the praise often given to Byron has been so exaggerated as to provoke, perhaps, a reaction in which he is unduly disparaged. 'As various in composition as Shakespeare himself, Lord Byron has embraced,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'every topic of human life, and sounded every string on the divine harp, from its slightest to its most powerful and heart-astounding tones.... In the very grand and tremendous drama of Cain,' etc.... 'And Lord Byron has done all this,' Scott adds, 'while managing his pen with the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality.'"--Poetry of Byron, chosen and arranged by Matthew Arnold, 1881, p. xiii.

Scott does not add anything of the kind. The comparison with Shakespeare was written after Byron's death in May, 1824; the appreciation of Cain in December, 1821 (vide supra); while the allusion to "a man of quality" is to be found in an article contributed to the Quarterly Review in 1816!]

[[**] The first number of John Bull, "For God, the King, and the People," was published Sunday, December 17, 1820. Theodore Hook was the editor, and it is supposed that he owed his appointment to the intervention of Sir Walter Scott. The raison d'être of John Bull was to write up George IV., and to write down Queen Caroline. "The national movement (in favour of the Queen) was arrested; and George IV. had mainly John Bull to thank for that result."--A Sketch, [by J. G. Lockhart], 1852, p. 45.]]

[87] {207}["Mysteries," or Mystery Plays, were prior to and distinct from "Moralities." Byron seems to have had some acquaintance with the archæology of the drama, but it is not easy to divine the source or extent of his knowledge. He may have received and read the Roxburghe reprint of the Chester Plays, published in 1818; but it is most probable that he had read the pages devoted to mystery plays in Warton's History of Poetry, or that he had met with a version of the Ludus Coventriæ (reprinted by J. O. Halliwell Phillipps, in 1841), printed in Stevens's continuation of Dugdale's Monasticon, 1722, i. 139-153. There is a sixteenth-century edition of Le Mistère du Viel Testament, which was reprinted by the Baron James de Rothschild, in 1878 (see for "De la Mort d'Abel et de la Malediction Cayn," pp. 103-113); but it is improbable that it had come under Byron's notice. For a quotation from an Italian Mystery Play, vide post, p. 264; and for Spanish "Mystery Plays," see Teatro Completo de Juan del Encina, "Proemio," Madrid, 1893, and History of Spanish Literature, by George Ticknor, 1888, i. 257. For instances of the profanity of Mystery Plays, see the Towneley Plays ("Mactacio Abel," p. 7), first published by the Surtees Society in 1836, and republished by the Early English Text Society, 1897, E.S. No. lxxi.]

[88] {208}[For the contention that "the snake was the snake"--no more (vide post, p. 211), see La Bible enfin Expliquée, etc.; Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Paris, 1837, vi. 338, note. "La conversation de la femme et du serpent n'est point racontée comme une chose surnaturelle et incroyable, comme un miracle, ou conune une allégorie." See, too, Bayle (Hist. and Crit. Dictionary, 1735, ii. 851, art. "Eve," note A), who quotes Josephus, Paracelsus, and "some Rabbins," to the effect that it was an actual serpent which tempted Eve; and compare Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures, by the Rev. Alexander Geddes, LL.D., 1800, p. 42.]

[89] [Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff, 1782, was appointed Moderator of the Schools in 1762, and Regius Professor of Divinity October 31, 1771. According to his own story (Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson, 1817, p. 39), "I determined to study nothing but my Bible.... I had no prejudice against, no predilection for, the Church of England, but a sincere regard for the Church of Christ, and an insuperable objection to every degree of dogmatical intolerance. I never troubled myself with answering any arguments which the opponents in the Divinity Schools brought against the articles of the Church, ... but I used on such occasions to say to them, holding the New Testament in my hand, 'En sacrum codicem! Here is the foundation of truth! Why do you follow the streams derived from it by the sophistry, or polluted by the passions, of man?'" It may be conceived that Watson's appeal to "Scripture" was against the sentence of orthodoxy. His authority as "a school Divine" is on a par with that of the author of Cain, or of an earlier theologian who "quoted Genesis like a very learned clerk"!]

[90] [Byron breaks through his self-imposed canon with regard to the New Testament. There are allusions to the doctrine of the Atonement, act i. sc. I, lines 163-166: act iii. sc. I, lines 85-88; to the descent into Hades, act i. sc. I, lines 541, 542; and to the miraculous walking on the Sea of Galilee, act ii. se. i, lines 16-20.]

[91] {209}[The words enclosed in brackets are taken from an original draft of the Preface.]

[92] [The Manichæans (the disciples of Mani or Manes, third century A.D.) held that there were two co-eternal Creators--a God of Darkness who made the body, and a God of Light who was responsible for the soul--and that it was the aim and function of the good spirit to rescue the soul, the spiritual part of man, from the possession and grasp of the body, which had been created by and was in the possession of the spirit of evil. St. Augustine passed through a stage of Manicheism, and in after-life exposed and refuted the heretical tenets which he had advocated, and with which he was familiar. See, for instance, his account of the Manichæan heresy "de duplici terrâ, de regno lucis et regno tenebrarum" (Opera, 1700, viii. 484, c; vide ibid., i. 693, 717; x. 893, d. etc.).]

[93] [Conan the Jester, a character in the Irish ballads, was "a kind of Thersites, but brave and daring even to rashness. He had made a vow that he would never take a blow without returning it; and having ... descended to the infernal regions, he received a cuff from the arch-fiend, which he instantly returned, using the expression in the text ('blow for blow')." Sometimes the proverb is worded thus: "'Claw for claw, and the devil take the shortest nails,' as Conan said to the devil."--Waverley Novels, 1829 (notes to chap. xxii. of Waverley), i. 241, note 1; see, too, ibid., p. 229.]

[94] [The full title of Warburton's book runs thus: The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist; from the omission of the Doctrine of a Future State of Reward and Punishment in the Jewish Dispensation. (See, more particularly (ed. 1741), Vol. II. pt. ii. bk. v. sect. 5, pp. 449-461, and bk. vi. pp. 569-678.) Compare the following passage from Dieu et les Hommes (Œuvres, etc., de Voltaire, 1837, vi. 236, chap. xx.): "Notre Warburton s'est épuisé a ramasser dans son fatras de la Divine légation, toutes les preuves que l'auteur du Pentateuque, n'a jamais parlé d'une vie a venir, et il n'a pas eu grande peine; mais il en tire une plaisante conclusion, et digne d'un esprit aussi faux que le sien."]

[95] {210}[See Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles, par M. le B^on^ G. Cuvier, Paris, 1821, i., "Discours Préliminaire," pp. iv., vii; and for the thesis, "Il n'y a point d'os humaines fossiles," see p. lxiv.; see, too, Cuvier's Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe, ed. 1825, p. 282: "Si l'on peut en juger par les differens ordres d'animaux dont on y trouve les dépouilles, ils avaient peut-être subi jusqu' á deux ou trois irruptions de la mer." It is curious to note that Moore thought that Cuvier's book was "a most desolating one in the conclusions to which it may lead some minds" (Life, p. 554).]

[96] {211}[Alfieri's Abele was included in his Opere inediti, published by the Countess of Albany and the Abbé Calma in 1804.

"In a long Preface ... dated April 25, 1796, Alfieri gives a curious account of the reasons which induced him to call it ... 'Tramelogedy.' He says that Abel is neither a tragedy, a comedy, a drama, a tragi-comedy, nor a Greek tragedy, which last would, he thinks, be correctly described as melo-tragedy. Opera-tragedy would, in his opinion, be a fitting name for it; but he prefers interpolating the word 'melo' into the middle of the word 'tragedy,' so as not to spoil the ending, although by so doing he has cut in two ... the root of the word--τραγος [tragos]."--The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, edited by E. A. Bowring, C. B., 1876, ii. 472.

There is no resemblance whatever between Byron's Cain and Alfieri's Abele.]

[97] {216}[Compare--

" ... his form had not yet lost All her original brightness, nor appears Less than Arch-angel mind, and the excess Of glory obscure."

Paradise Lost, i. 591-593.

Compare, too--

" ... but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek."

Ibid., i., 600-602.]

[98] [According to the Manichæans, the divinely created and immortal soul is imprisoned in an alien and evil body. There can be no harmony between soul and body.]

[99] {218}[Compare--

"Let him unite above Star upon star, moon, Sun; And let his God-head toil To re-adorn and re-illume his Heaven, Since in the end derision Shall prove his works and all his efforts vain."

Adam, a Sacred Drama, by Giovanni Battista Andreini; Cowper's Milton, 1810, iii. 24, sqq.]

[100] {219}[Lines 163-166 ("perhaps" ... "sacrifice"), which appear in the MS., were omitted from the text in the first and all subsequent editions. In the edition of 1832, etc. (xiv. 27), they are printed as a variant in a footnote. The present text follows the MS.]

[101] [According to the Encyclopædia Biblica, the word "Abel" signifies "shepherd" or "herdman." The Massorites give "breath," or "vanity," as an equivalent.]

[by]

A drudging husbandman who offers up The first fruits of the earth to him who made That earth----.--[MS. M. erased.]

[bz] {220}

Have stood before thee as I am; but chosen The serpents charming symbol.--[MS. M. erased.]

[102] {221}[Vide ante, "Preface," p. 208.]

[103] {223}[Compare--

"If, as thou sayst thine essence be as ours, We have replied in telling thee, the thing Mortals call Death hath nought to do with us."

Manfred, act i. sc. 1, lines 161-163, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 90.]

[104] {224}[Dr. Arnold, speaking of Cain, used to say, "There is something to me almost awful in meeting suddenly, in the works of such a man, so great and solemn a truth as is expressed in that speech of Lucifer, 'He who bows not to God hath bowed to me'" (Stanley's Life of Arnold, ed. 1887, i. 263, note). It may be awful, but it is not strange. Byron was seldom at a loss for a text, and must have been familiar with the words, "He that is not with Me is against Me." Moreover, he was a man of genius!]

[105] {226}["The most common opinion is that a son and daughter were born together; and they go so far as to tell us the very name of the daughters. Cain's twin sister was called Calmana (see, too, Le Mistère du Viel Testament, lines 1883-1936, ed. 1878), or Caimana, or Debora, or Azzrum; that of Abel was named Delbora or Awina."--Bayle's Dictionary, 1735, ii. 854, art. "Eve," D.]

[106] {227}[It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between many of these passages and others in Manfred, e.g. act ii. sc. 1, lines 24-28, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 99, note 1.]

[ca] {228} What can he be who places love in ignorance?--[MS. M.]

[107] {228}["One of the second order of angels of the Dionysian hierarchy, reputed to excel specially in knowledge (as the seraphim in love). See Bacon's Advancement of Learning, i. 28: 'The first place is given to the Angels of loue, which are tearmed Seraphim, the second to the Angels of light, which are tearmed Cherubim,'"-N. Eng. Dict., art. "Cherub."]

[cb] {229} But it was a lie no doubt.--[MS. M. erased.]

[cc] {230}What else can be joy?----.--[MS. M.]

[108] {231}[Compare--"She walks in Beauty like the night." Hebrew Melodies, i. 1, Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 381.]

[109] {232}[Lucifer was evidently indebted to the Manichæans for his theory of the duplex terra--an infernal as well as a celestial kingdom.]

[110] {233}["According to the prince of the power of the air" (Eph. ii. 2).]

[cd] An hour, when walking on a petty lake.--[MS. M. erased.]

[ce] {234}

Yon round blue circle swinging in far ether With an inferior circlet dimmer still.--[MS. M. erased.]

[111] [Compare--

"And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent World, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon."

Paradise Lost, ii. 1051-1053.

Compare, too--

"The magic car moved on. Earth's distant orb appeared The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens; Whilst round the chariot's way Innumerable systems rolled, And countless spheres diffused An ever-varying glory."

Shelley's Queen Mab, Poetical Works, 1829, p. 106.]

[112] {235}["Several of the ancient Fathers, too much prejudiced in favour of virginity, have pretended that if Man had persevered in innocence he would not have entered into the carnal commerce of matrimony, and that the propagation of mankind would have been effected quite another way." (See St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xiv. cap. xxi.; Bayle's Dictionary, art. "Eve," 1735, ii. 853, note C.)]

[113] {236}[Compare--

"Below lay stretched the universe! There, far as the remotest line That bounds imagination's flight, Countless and unending orbs In many motions intermingled, Yet still fulfilled immutably Eternal Nature's laws."

Shelley's Queen Mab, ii. ibid., p. 107.]

[cf] {239} And with serpents too?--[MS. M.]

[cg] {240} Rather than things to be inhabited.--[MS. M.]

[114] {241}["I have ... supposed Cain to be shown in the rational pre-Adamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite canonical."--Letter to Moore, September 19, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 368.]

[115] {243}[Compare the "jingle between king and kine," in Sardanapalus, act v. sc. I, lines 483, 484. It is hard to say whether Byron inserted and then omitted to erase these blemishes from negligence and indifference, or whether he regarded them as permissible or even felicitous.]

[116] ["Let He." There is no doubt that Byron wrote, or that he should have written, "Let Him."]

[ch] {246} And being of all things the sole thing sure.--[MS. M.]

[ci] Which seems like water and which I should deem.--[MS. M.]

[117] {247}[Lucifer's candour and disinterested advice are "after" and in the manner of Mephistopheles.]

[118] {250}["If you say that God permitted sin to manifest His wisdom, which shines the more brightly by the disorders which the wickedness of men produces every day, than it would have done in a state of innocence, it may be answered that this is to compare the Deity to a father who should suffer his children to break their legs on purpose to show to all the city his great art in setting their broken bones; or to a king who should suffer seditions and factions to increase through all his kingdom, that he might purchase the glory of quelling them.... This is that doctrine of a Father of the Church who said, 'Felix culpa quæ talem Redemptorem meruit!'"--Bayle's Dictionary, 1737, art. "Paulicians," note B, 25, iv. 515.]

[119] {251}[Lucifer does not infect Cain with his cynical theories as to the origin and endurance of love. For the antidote, compare Wordsworth's sonnet "To a Painter" (No. II), written in 1841--

"Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve, And the old day was welcome as the young, As welcome, and as beautiful--in sooth More beautiful, as being a thing more holy," etc.

Works, 1889, p. 772.]

[cj] {252} Which my sire shrinks from--Death----.--[MS. erased.]

[120] {254}[In Byron's Diary for January 28, 1821, we find the following entry--

"Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the Tragedy of Cain.

"Were Death an evil, would I let thee live? Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives. And thy sons' sons shall live for evermore!"

Letters, 1901, v. 191.]

[121] [Matthew Arnold (Poetry of Byron, 1881, p. xxii.) quotes these lines as an instance of Byron's unknowingness and want of humour. It cannot be denied that he leaves imbedded in his fabric lumps of unshapen material, which mar the symmetry of his art. Lucifer's harangue involves a reference to "hard words ending in ism." The spirit of error, not the Manichæan heresy, should have proceeded out of his lips.]

[122] ["Cain is a proud man: if Lucifer promised him kingdoms, etc., it would elate him: the object of the Demon is to depress him still further in his own estimation than he was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against Life, and the author of Life, than the mere living."--Letter to Moore, November 3, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 470. Here, no doubt, Byron is speaking in propriâ personâ. It was this sense of limitation, of human nothingness, which provoked an "internal irritation ... a rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions." His "spirit beats its mortal bars," not, like Galahad, to be possessed by, but to possess the Heavenly Vision.]

[123] {255}[Compare--

"What though the field be lost, All is not lost; th' unconquerable will And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield."

Paradise Lost, i. 105-108.]

[124] {257}[An obsolete form of carnation, the colour of "flesh."]

[125] [Compare--

"Her dewy eyes are closed, And on their lids, whose texture fine Scarce hides the dark-blue orbs beneath, The baby Sleep is pillowed."

Shelley's Queen Mab, i., ibid., p. 104.]

[126] {258}["Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our mind.... One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours, another sleeps soundly in his bed. The difference of time perceived by these two persons is immense: one hardly will believe that half an hour has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his agony."--Shelley's note to the lines--

" ... the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness."

Queen Mab, viii., ibid., p. 136.]

[127] {259}[Vide ante, p. 208.]

[128] {260}[It is Adah, Cain's wife, who suggests the disastrous compromise, not a "burnt-offering," but the "fruits of the earth," which would cost the giver little or nothing--an instance in point of Lucifer's cynical reminder (vide ante, act ii. sc. 2, line 210, p. 247) "that there are some things still which woman may tempt man to."]

[129] {262}["From the beginning" the woman is ineligible for the priesthood--"He for God only, she for God in him" (Paradise Lost, iv. 299). "Let the women keep silence in the churches" (Corinthians, i. xiv. 34).]

[130] {264}[Compare the following passage from _La Rapresentatione di Abel et di Caino_ (in Firenze l'anno MDLIV.)--

"Abel parla a dio fatto il sacrifitio, Rendendogli laude. Signor per cui di tanti bene abondo Liquali tu sommamente mi concedi Tanto mi piace, et tanto me' giocondo Quanto delle mie greggie che tu vedi El piu grasso el migliore el piu mondo Ti do con lieto core come tu vedi Tu vedi la intentione con lequal vegno," etc.]

[ck] {265} Which must be won with prayers--if he be evil.--[MS. M.]

[131] {266}[See Gessner's Death of Abel.]

[132] {268}[Compare--

"How wonderful is Death-- Death and his brother Sleep!"

Queen Mab, i. lines 1, 2.]

[133] {271}[Compare--

"And Water shall hear me, And know thee and fly thee; And the Winds shall not touch thee When they pass by thee.... And thou shalt seek Death To release thee in vain."

The Curse of Kehama, by R. Southey, Canto II.]

[134] [The last three lines of this terrible denunciation were not in the original MS. In forwarding them to Murray (September 12, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 361), to be added to Eve's speech, Byron says, "There's as pretty a piece of Imprecation for you, when joined to the lines already sent, as you may wish to meet with in the course of your business. But don't forget the addition of these three lines, which are clinchers to Eve's speech."]

[135] [If Byron had read his plays aloud, or been at pains to revise the proofs, he would hardly have allowed "corse" to remain in such close proximity to "curse."]

[136] {272}["I have avoided introducing the Deity, as in Scripture (though Milton does, and not very wisely either); but have adopted his angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any feelings on the subject, by falling short of what all uninspired men must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of the presence of Jehovah. The Old Mysteries introduced him liberally enough, and this is avoided in the New."--Letter to Murray, February 8, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. 13. Byron does not seem to have known that in the older portions of the Bible "Angel of the Lord" is only a name for the Second Person of the Trinity.]

[cl] {273} On thy brow----.--[MS.]

[137] {274}[The "four rivers" which flowed round Eden, and consequently the only waters with which Cain was acquainted upon earth.]

HEAVEN AND EARTH;

A MYSTERY.

FOUNDED ON THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE IN GENESIS, CHAP. VI. 1, 2.

"And it came to pass ... that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."

"And woman wailing for her demon lover." Coleridge [Kubla Khan, line 16]

INTRODUCTION TO HEAVEN AND EARTH.

Heaven and Earth was begun at Ravenna October 9, 1821. "It occupied about fourteen days" (Medwin's Conversations, 1824, p. 231), and was forwarded to Murray, November 9, 1821. "You will find it," wrote Byron (Letters, 1901, v. 474), "pious enough, I trust--at least some of the Chorus might have been written by Sternhold and Hopkins themselves for that, and perhaps for the melody." It was on "a scriptural subject"--"less speculative than Cain, and very pious" (Letters, 1901, v. 475; vi. 31). It was to be published, he insists, at the same time, and, if possible, in the same volume with the "others" (Sardanapalus, etc.), and would serve, so he seems to have reflected ("The moment he reflects, he is a child," said Goethe), as an antidote to the audacities, or, as some would have it, the impieties of Cain!

He reckoned without his publisher, who understood the temper of the public and of the Government, and was naturally loth to awaken any more "reasonable doubts" in the mind of the Chancellor with regard to whether a "scriptural drama" was irreverent or profane. The new "Mystery" was revised by Gifford and printed, but withheld from month to month, till, at length, "the fire kindled," and, on the last day of October, 1821, Byron instructed John Hunt to "obtain from Mr. Murray Werner: a Drama, and another dramatic poem called Heaven and Earth." It was published in the second number of The Liberal (pp. 165-206), January 1, 1823.

The same subject, the unequal union of angelic lovers with the daughters of men, had taken Moore's fancy a year before Byron had begun to "dramatize the Old Testament." He had designed a long poem, but having discovered that Byron was at work on the same theme, he resolved to restrict himself to the production of an "episode," to "give himself the chance of ... an heliacal rising," before he was outshone by the advent of a greater luminary. Thanks to Murray's scruples, and the "translation" of MSS. to Hunt, the "episode" took the lead of the "Mystery" by eight days. The Loves of the Angels (see Memoirs, etc., 1853, iv. 28) was published December 23, 1822. None the less, lyric and drama were destined to run in double harness. Critics found it convenient to review the two poems in the same article, and were at pains to draw a series of more or less pointed and pungent comparisons between the unwilling though not unwitting rivals.

Wilson, in Blackwood, writes, "The first [the Loves, etc.] is all glitter and point like a piece of Derbyshire spar, and the other is dark and massy like a block of marble.... Moore writes with a crow-quill, ... Byron writes with an eagle's plume;" while Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh, likens Moore to "an aurora borealis" and Byron to "an eruption of Mount Vesuvius"!

There is, indeed, apart from the subject, nothing in common between Moore's tender and alluring lyric and Byron's gloomy and tumultuous rhapsody, while contrast is to be sought rather in the poets than in their poems. The Loves of the Angels is the finished composition of an accomplished designer of Amoretti, one of the best of his kind, Heaven and Earth is the rough and unpromising sketch thrown off by a great master.

Both the one and the other have passed out of the ken of readers of poetry, but, on the whole, the Loves of the Angels has suffered the greater injustice. It is opined that there may be possibilities in a half-forgotten work of Byron, but it is taken for granted that nothing worthy of attention is to be found in Moore. At the time, however, Moore scored a success, and Byron hardly escaped a failure. It is to be noted that within a month of publication (January 18, 1823) Moore was at work upon a revise for a fifth edition--consulting D'Herbelot "for the project of turning the poor 'Angels' into Turks," and so "getting rid of that connection with the Scriptures," which, so the Longmans feared, would "in the long run be a drag on the popularity of the poem" (Memoirs, etc., 1853, iv. 41). It was no wonder that Murray was "timorous" with regard to Byron and his "scriptural dramas," when the Longmans started at the shadow of a scriptural allusion.

Byron, in his innocence, had taken for his motto the verse in Genesis (ch. vi. 2), which records the intermarriage of the "sons of God" with the "daughters of men." In Heaven and Earth the angels are angels, members, though erring members, of Jehovah's "thundering choir," and the daughters of men are the descendants of Cain. The question had come up for debate owing to the recent appearance of a translation of the Book of Enoch (by Richard Laurence, LL.D., Oxford, 1821); and Moore, by way of safeguarding himself against any suspicion of theological irregularity, is careful to assure his readers ("Preface" to Loves of the Angels, 1823, p. viii. and note, pp. 125-127) that the "sons of God" were the descendants of Seth, and not beings of a supernatural order, as a mis-translation by the LXX., assisted by Philo and the "rhapsodical fictions of the Book of Enoch" had induced the ignorant or the profane to suppose. Nothing is so dangerous as innocence, and a little more of that empeiria of which Goethe accused him, would have saved Byron from straying from the path of orthodoxy.

It is impossible to say for certain whether Laurence's translation of the whole of the Book of Enoch had come under Byron's notice before he planned his new "Mystery," but it is plain that he was, at any rate, familiar with the well-known fragment, "Concerning the 'Watchers'" [Περὶ των Ἐγρηγόρων [Peri\ tôn E)grêgo/rôn]], which is preserved in the Chronographia of Georgius Syncellus, and was first printed by J. J. Scaliger in Thes. temp. Euseb. in 1606. In the prophecy of the Deluge to which he alludes (vide post, p. 302, note 1), the names of the delinquent seraphs (Semjâzâ and Azâzêl), and of the archangelic monitor Raphael, are to be found in the fragment. The germ of Heaven and Earth is not in the Book of Genesis, but in the Book of Enoch.

Medwin, who prints (Conversations, 1824, pp. 234-238) what purports to be the prose sketch of a Second Part of Heaven and Earth (he says that Byron compared it to Coleridge's promised conclusion of Christabel--"that, and nothing more!"), detects two other strains in the composition of the "Mystery," an echo of Goethe's Faust and a "movement" which recalls the Eumenides of Æschylus. Byron told Murray that his fourth tragedy was "more lyrical and Greek" than he at first intended, and there is no doubt that with the Prometheus Vinctus he was familiar, if not at first hand, at least through the medium of Shelley's rendering. But apart from the "Greek choruses," which "Shelley made such a fuss about," Byron was acquainted with, and was not untouched by, the metrical peculiarities of the Curse of Kehama, and might have traced a kinship between his "angels" and Southey's "Glendoveers," to say nothing of their collaterals, the "glumms" and "gawreys" of Peter Wilkins (see notes to Southey's Curse of Kehama, Canto VI., Poetical Works, 1838, viii. 231-233).

Goethe was interested in Heaven and Earth. "He preferred it," says Crabb Robinson (Diary, 1869, ii. 434), "to all the other serious poems of Byron.... 'A bishop,' he exclaimed, though it sounded almost like satire, 'might have written it.' Goethe must have been thinking of a German bishop!" (For his daughter-in-law's translation of the speeches of Anah and Aholibamah with their seraph-lovers, see Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1899, pp. 18-21 [Letters, 1901, v. Appendix II. p. 518].)

Heaven and Earth was reviewed by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, February, 1823, vol. 38, pp. 42-48; by Wilson in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, January, 1823, vol. xiii. pp. 71, 72; and in the New Monthly Magazine, N.S., 1823, vol. 7, pp. 353-358.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

ANGELS.

SAMIASA.

AZAZIEL.

RAPHAEL, THE ARCHANGEL.

MEN.

NOAH AND HIS SONS.

IRAD.

JAPHET.

WOMEN.

ANAH.

AHOLIBAMAH.

Chorus of Spirits of the Earth.--Chorus of Mortals.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

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I. A woody and mountainous district near Mount Ararat.--Time, midnight

Enter ANAH and AHOLIBAMAH.[138]

Anah. OUR father sleeps: it is the hour when they Who love us are accustomed to descend Through the deep clouds o'er rocky Ararat:-- How my heart beats!

Aho. Let us proceed upon Our invocation.

Anah. But the stars are hidden. I tremble.

Aho. So do I, but not with fear Of aught save their delay.

Anah. My sister, though I love Azaziel more than----oh, too much! What was I going to say? my heart grows impious.

Aho. And where is the impiety of loving 10 Celestial natures?

Anah. But, Aholibamah, I love our God less since his angel loved me: This cannot be of good; and though I know not That I do wrong, I feel a thousand fears Which are not ominous of right.

Aho. Then wed thee Unto some son of clay, and toil and spin! There's Japhet loves thee well, hath loved thee long: Marry, and bring forth dust!

Anah. I should have loved Azaziel not less were he mortal; yet I am glad he is not. I cannot outlive him. 20 And when I think that his immortal wings Will one day hover o'er the sepulchre Of the poor child of clay[139] which so adored him, As he adores the Highest, death becomes Less terrible; but yet I pity him: His grief will be of ages, or at least Mine would be such for him, were I the Seraph, And he the perishable.

Aho. Rather say, That he will single forth some other daughter Of earth, and love her as he once loved Anah. 30

Anah. And if it should be so, and she loved him, Better thus than that he should weep for me.

Aho. If I thought thus of Samiasa's love, All Seraph as he is, I'd spurn him from me. But to our invocation!--'Tis the hour.

Anah. Seraph! From thy sphere! Whatever star contain thy glory; In the eternal depths of heaven Albeit thou watchest with "the seven,"[140] 40 Though through space infinite and hoary Before thy bright wings worlds be driven, Yet hear! Oh! think of her who holds thee dear! And though she nothing is to thee, Yet think that thou art all to her. Thou canst not tell,--and never be Such pangs decreed to aught save me,-- The bitterness of tears. Eternity is in thine years, 50 Unborn, undying beauty in thine eyes; With me thou canst not sympathise, Except in love, and there thou must Acknowledge that more loving dust Ne'er wept beneath the skies. Thou walk'st thy many worlds, thou see'st The face of him who made thee great, As he hath made me of the least Of those cast out from Eden's gate: Yet, Seraph dear! 60 Oh hear! For thou hast loved me, and I would not die Until I know what I must die in knowing, That thou forget'st in thine eternity Her whose heart Death could not keep from o'er-flowing For thee, immortal essence as thou art! Great is their love who love in sin and fear; And such, I feel, are waging in my heart A war unworthy: to an Adamite Forgive, my Seraph! that such thoughts appear, 70 For sorrow is our element; Delight An Eden kept afar from sight, Though sometimes with our visions blent. The hour is near Which tells me we are not abandoned quite.-- Appear! Appear! Seraph! My own Azaziel! be but here, And leave the stars to their own light! 80

Aho. Samiasa! Wheresoe'er Thou rulest in the upper air-- Or warring with the spirits who may dare Dispute with him Who made all empires, empire; or recalling Some wandering star, which shoots through the abyss, Whose tenants dying, while their world is falling, Share the dim destiny of clay in this; Or joining with the inferior cherubim, 90 Thou deignest to partake their hymn-- Samiasa! I call thee, I await thee, and I love thee. Many may worship thee, that will I not: If that thy spirit down to mine may move thee, Descend and share my lot! Though I be formed of clay, And thou of beams More bright than those of day On Eden's streams, 100 Thine immortality can not repay With love more warm than mine My love. There is a ray In me, which, though forbidden yet to shine, I feel was lighted at thy God's and thine. It may be hidden long: death and decay Our mother Eve bequeathed us--but my heart Defies it: though this life must pass away, Is that a cause for thee and me to part? Thou art immortal--so am I: I feel-- 110 I feel my immortality o'ersweep All pains, all tears, all fears, and peal, Like the eternal thunders of the deep, Into my ears this truth--"Thou liv'st for ever!" But if it be in joy I know not, nor would know; That secret rests with the Almighty giver, Who folds in clouds the fonts of bliss and woe. But thee and me he never can destroy; Change us he may, but not o'erwhelm; we are 120 Of as eternal essence, and must war With him if he will war with us; with thee I can share all things, even immortal sorrow; For thou hast ventured to share life with me, And shall I shrink from thine eternity? No! though the serpent's sting should pierce me thorough, And thou thyself wert like the serpent, coil Around me still! and I will smile, And curse thee not; but hold Thee in as warm a fold 130 As----but descend, and prove A mortal's love For an immortal. If the skies contain More joy than thou canst give and take, remain!

Anah. Sister! sister! I view them winging Their bright way through the parted night.

Aho. The clouds from off their pinions flinging, As though they bore to-morrow's light.

Anah. But if our father see the sight!

Aho. He would but deem it was the moon 140 Rising unto some sorcerer's tune An hour too soon.[141]

Anah. They come! he comes!--Azaziel!

Aho. Haste To meet them! Oh! for wings to bear My spirit, while they hover there, To Samiasa's breast!

Anah. Lo! they have kindled all the west, Like a returning sunset;--lo! On Ararat's late secret crest A mild and many-coloured bow, 150 The remnant of their flashing path, Now shines! and now, behold! it hath Returned to night, as rippling foam, Which the Leviathan hath lashed From his unfathomable home, When sporting on the face of the calm deep, Subsides soon after he again hath dashed Down, down, to where the Ocean's fountains sleep.

Aho. They have touched earth! Samiasa!

Anah. My Azaziel! [Exeunt.

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II. Enter IRAD and JAPHET

Irad. Despond not: wherefore wilt thou wander thus To add thy silence to the silent night, And lift thy tearful eye unto the stars? They cannot aid thee.

Japh. But they soothe me--now Perhaps she looks upon them as I look. Methinks a being that is beautiful Becometh more so as it looks on beauty, The eternal beauty of undying things. Oh, Anah!

Irad. But she loves thee not.

Japh. Alas!

Irad. And proud Aholibamah spurns me also. 10

Japh. I feel for thee too.

Irad. Let her keep her pride, Mine hath enabled me to bear her scorn: It may be, time too will avenge it.

Japh. Canst thou Find joy in such a thought?

Irad. Nor joy nor sorrow. I loved her well; I would have loved her better, Had love been met with love: as 'tis, I leave her To brighter destinies, if so she deems them.

Japh. What destinies?

Irad. I have some cause to think She loves another.

Japh. Anah!

Irad. No; her sister.

Japh. What other?

Irad. That I know not; but her air, 20 If not her words, tells me she loves another.

Japh. Aye, but not Anah: she but loves her God.

Irad. Whate'er she loveth, so she loves thee not, What can it profit thee?

Japh. True, nothing; but I love.

Irad. And so did I.

Japh. And now thou lov'st not, Or think'st thou lov'st not, art thou happier?

Irad. Yes.

Japh. I pity thee.

Irad. Me! why?

Japh. For being happy, Deprived of that which makes my misery.

Irad. I take thy taunt as part of thy distemper, And would not feel as thou dost for more shekels 30 Than all our father's herds would bring, if weighed Against the metal of the sons of Cain--[142] The yellow dust they try to barter with us, As if such useless and discoloured trash, The refuse of the earth, could be received For milk, and wool, and flesh, and fruits, and all Our flocks and wilderness afford.--Go, Japhet, Sigh to the stars, as wolves howl to the moon-- I must back to my rest.

Japh. And so would I If I could rest.

Irad. Thou wilt not to our tents then? 40

Japh. No, Irad; I will to the cavern,[143] whose Mouth they say opens from the internal world, To let the inner spirits of the earth Forth when they walk its surface.

Irad. Wherefore so? What wouldst thou there?

Japh. Soothe further my sad spirit With gloom as sad: it is a hopeless spot, And I am hopeless.

Irad. But 'tis dangerous; Strange sounds and sights have peopled it with terrors. I must go with thee.

Japh. Irad, no; believe me I feel no evil thought, and fear no evil. 50

Irad. But evil things will be thy foe the more As not being of them: turn thy steps aside, Or let mine be with thine.

Japh. No, neither, Irad; I must proceed alone.

Irad. Then peace be with thee! [Exit IRAD.

Japh. (solus). Peace! I have sought it where it should be found, In love--with love, too, which perhaps deserved it; And, in its stead, a heaviness of heart, A weakness of the spirit, listless days, And nights inexorable to sweet sleep Have come upon me. Peace! what peace? the calm 60 Of desolation, and the stillness of The untrodden forest, only broken by The sweeping tempest through its groaning boughs; Such is the sullen or the fitful state Of my mind overworn. The Earth's grown wicked, And many signs and portents have proclaimed A change at hand, and an o'erwhelming doom To perishable beings. Oh, my Anah! When the dread hour denounced shall open wide The fountains of the deep, how mightest thou 70 Have lain within this bosom, folded from The elements; this bosom, which in vain Hath beat for thee, and then will beat more vainly, While thine--Oh, God! at least remit to her Thy wrath! for she is pure amidst the failing As a star in the clouds, which cannot quench, Although they obscure it for an hour. My Anah! How would I have adored thee, but thou wouldst not; And still would I redeem thee--see thee live When Ocean is earth's grave, and, unopposed 80 By rock or shallow, the Leviathan, Lord of the shoreless sea and watery world, Shall wonder at his boundlessness of realm. [Exit JAPHET.

Enter NOAH and SHEM.

Noah. Where is thy brother Japhet?

Shem. He went forth, According to his wont, to meet with Irad, He said; but, as I fear, to bend his steps Towards Anah's tents, round which he hovers nightly, Like a dove round and round its pillaged nest; Or else he walks the wild up to the cavern Which opens to the heart of Ararat. 90

Noah. What doth he there? It is an evil spot Upon an earth all evil; for things worse Than even wicked men resort there: he Still loves this daughter of a fated race, Although he could not wed her if she loved him, And that she doth not. Oh, the unhappy hearts Of men! that one of my blood, knowing well The destiny and evil of these days, And that the hour approacheth, should indulge In such forbidden yearnings! Lead the way; 100 He must be sought for!

Shem. Go not forward, father: I will seek Japhet.

Noah. Do not fear for me: All evil things are powerless on the man Selected by Jehovah.--Let us on.

Shem. To the tents of the father of the sisters?

Noah. No; to the cavern of the Caucasus. [Exeunt NOAH and SHEM.

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III. The mountains.--A cavern,[144] and the rocks of Caucasus

Japh. (solus). Ye wilds, that look eternal; and thou cave, Which seem'st unfathomable; and ye mountains, So varied and so terrible in beauty; Here, in your rugged majesty of rocks And toppling trees that twine their roots with stone[145] In perpendicular places, where the foot Of man would tremble, could he reach them--yes, Ye look eternal! Yet, in a few days, Perhaps even hours, ye will be changed, rent, hurled Before the mass of waters; and yon cave, 10 Which seems to lead into a lower world, Shall have its depths searched by the sweeping wave, And dolphins gambol in the lion's den! And man----Oh, men! my fellow-beings! Who Shall weep above your universal grave, Save I? Who shall be left to weep? My kinsmen, Alas! what am I better than ye are, That I must live beyond ye? Where shall be The pleasant places where I thought of Anah While I had hope? or the more savage haunts, 20 Scarce less beloved, where I despaired for her? And can it be!--Shall yon exulting peak, Whose glittering top is like a distant star, Lie low beneath the boiling of the deep? No more to have the morning sun break forth, And scatter back the mists in floating folds From its tremendous brow? no more to have Day's broad orb drop behind its head at even, Leaving it with a crown of many hues? No more to be the beacon of the world, 30 For angels to alight on, as the spot Nearest the stars? And can those words "no more" Be meant for thee, for all things, save for us, And the predestined creeping things reserved By my sire to Jehovah's bidding? May He preserve them, and I not have the power To snatch the loveliest of earth's daughters from A doom which even some serpent, with his mate, Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolonged, To hiss and sting through some emerging world, 40 Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this, until The salt morass subside into a sphere Beneath the sun, and be the monument, The sole and undistinguished sepulchre, Of yet quick myriads of all life? How much Breath will be stilled at once! All beauteous world! So young, so marked out for destruction, I With a cleft heart look on thee day by day, And night by night, thy numbered days and nights. 50 I cannot save thee, cannot save even her Whose love had made me love thee more; but as A portion of thy dust, I cannot think Upon thy coming doom without a feeling Such as--Oh God! and canst thou-- [He pauses.

[A rushing sound from the cavern is heard, and shouts of laughter--afterwards a Spirit passes.

Japh. In the name Of the Most High, what art thou?

Spirit (laughs). Ha! ha! ha![146]

Japh. By all that earth holds holiest, speak!

Spirit (laughs). Ha! ha!

Japh. By the approaching deluge! by the earth Which will be strangled by the ocean! by The deep which will lay open all her fountains! 60 The heaven which will convert her clouds to seas, And the Omnipotent who makes and crushes! Thou unknown, terrible, and indistinct, Yet awful Thing of Shadows, speak to me! Why dost thou laugh that horrid laugh?

Spirit. Why weep'st thou?

Japh. For earth and all her children.

Spirit. Ha! ha! ha! [Spirit vanishes.

Japh. How the fiend mocks the tortures of a world, The coming desolation of an orb, On which the sun shall rise and warm no life! How the earth sleeps! and all that in it is 70 Sleep too upon the very eve of death! Why should they wake to meet it? What are here, Which look like death in life, and speak like things Born ere this dying world? They come like clouds! [Various Spirits pass from the cavern.

Spirit. Rejoice! The abhorréd race Which could not keep in Eden their high place, But listened to the voice Of knowledge without power, Are nigh the hour, 80 Of Death! Not slow, not single, not by sword, nor sorrow, Nor years, nor heart-break, nor Time's sapping motion, Shall they drop off. Behold their last to-morrow! Earth shall be Ocean! And no breath, Save of the winds, be on the unbounded wave! Angels shall tire their wings, but find no spot: Not even a rock from out the liquid grave Shall lift its point to save, 90 Or show the place where strong Despair hath died, After long looking o'er the ocean wide For the expected ebb which cometh not: All shall be void, Destroyed![147] Another element shall be the lord Of life, and the abhorred Children of dust be quenched; and of each hue Of earth nought left but the unbroken blue; And of the variegated mountain 100 Shall nought remain Unchanged, or of the level plain; Cedar and pine shall lift their tops in vain: All merged within the universal fountain, Man, earth, and fire, shall die, And sea and sky Look vast and lifeless in the eternal eye. Upon the foam Who shall erect a home?

Japh. (coming forward). My sire! 110 Earth's seed shall not expire; Only the evil shall be put away From day. Avaunt! ye exulting demons of the waste! Who howl your hideous joy When God destroys whom you dare not destroy: Hence! haste! Back to your inner caves! Until the waves Shall search you in your secret place, 120 And drive your sullen race Forth, to be rolled upon the tossing winds, In restless wretchedness along all space!

Spirit. Son of the saved! When thou and thine have braved The wide and warring element; When the great barrier of the deep is rent, Shall thou and thine be good or happy?--No! Thy new world and new race shall be of woe-- Less goodly in their aspect, in their years 130 Less than the glorious giants, who Yet walk the world in pride, The Sons of Heaven by many a mortal bride. Thine shall be nothing of the past, save tears! And art thou not ashamed Thus to survive, And eat, and drink, and wive? With a base heart so far subdued and tamed, As even to hear this wide destruction named, Without such grief and courage, as should rather 140 Bid thee await the world-dissolving wave, Than seek a shelter with thy favoured father, And build thy city o'er the drowned earth's grave? Who would outlive their kind, Except the base and blind? Mine Hateth thine As of a different order in the sphere, But not our own. There is not one who hath not left a throne 150 Vacant in heaven to dwell in darkness here, Rather than see his mates endure alone. Go, wretch! and give A life like thine to other wretches--live! And when the annihilating waters roar Above what they have done, Envy the giant patriarchs then no more, And scorn thy sire as the surviving one! Thyself for being his son!

Chorus of Spirits issuing from the cavern.

Rejoice! 160 No more the human voice Shall vex our joys in middle air With prayer; No more Shall they adore; And we, who ne'er for ages have adored The prayer-exacting Lord, To whom the omission of a sacrifice Is vice; We, we shall view the deep's salt sources poured 170 Until one element shall do the work Of all in chaos; until they, The creatures proud of their poor clay, Shall perish, and their bleached bones shall lurk In caves, in dens, in clefts of mountains, where The deep shall follow to their latest lair; Where even the brutes, in their despair, Shall cease to prey on man and on each other, And the striped tiger shall lie down to die Beside the lamb, as though he were his brother; 180 Till all things shall be as they were, Silent and uncreated, save the sky: While a brief truce Is made with Death, who shall forbear The little remnant of the past creation, To generate new nations for his use; This remnant, floating o'er the undulation Of the subsiding deluge, from its slime, When the hot sun hath baked the reeking soil Into a world, shall give again to Time 190 New beings--years, diseases, sorrow, crime-- With all companionship of hate and toil, Until----

Japh. (Interrupting them). The eternal Will Shall deign to expound this dream Of good and evil; and redeem Unto himself all times, all things; And, gathered under his almighty wings, Abolish Hell! And to the expiated Earth Restore the beauty of her birth, 200 Her Eden in an endless paradise, Where man no more can fall as once he fell, And even the very demons shall do well!

Spirits. And when shall take effect this wondrous spell?

Japh. When the Redeemer cometh; first in pain, And then in glory.

Spirit. Meantime still struggle in the mortal chain, Till Earth wax hoary; War with yourselves, and Hell, and Heaven, in vain, Until the clouds look gory 210 With the blood reeking from each battle-plain; New times, new climes, new arts, new men; but still, The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill, Shall be amongst your race in different forms; But the same moral storms Shall oversweep the future, as the waves In a few hours the glorious giants' graves[148].

Chorus of Spirits.

Brethren, rejoice! Mortal, farewell! Hark! hark! already we can hear the voice 220 Of growing Ocean's gloomy swell; The winds, too, plume their piercing wings; The clouds have nearly filled their springs; The fountains of the great deep shall be broken, And heaven set wide her windows[149]; while mankind View, unacknowledged, each tremendous token-- Still, as they were from the beginning, blind. We hear the sound they cannot hear, The mustering thunders of the threatening sphere; Yet a few hours their coming is delayed; 230 Their flashing banners, folded still on high, Yet undisplayed, Save to the Spirit's all-pervading eye. Howl! howl! oh Earth! Thy death is nearer than thy recent birth; Tremble, ye mountains, soon to shrink below The Ocean's overflow! The wave shall break upon your cliffs; and shells, The little shells, of ocean's least things be Deposed where now the eagle's offspring dwells[150]-- 240 How shall he shriek o'er the remorseless sea! And call his nestlings up with fruitless yell, Unanswered, save by the encroaching swell;-- While man shall long in vain for his broad wings, The wings which could not save:-- Where could he rest them, while the whole space brings Nought to his eye beyond the deep, his grave? Brethren, rejoice! And loudly lift each superhuman voice-- All die, 250 Save the slight remnant of Seth's seed-- The seed of Seth, Exempt for future sorrow's sake from death. But of the sons of Cain None shall remain; And all his goodly daughters Must lie beneath the desolating waters; Or, floating upward, with their long hair laid Along the wave, the cruel heaven upbraid, Which would not spare 260 Beings even in death so fair. It is decreed, All die! And to the universal human cry The universal silence shall succeed! Fly, brethren, fly! But still rejoice! We fell! They fall! So perish all 270 These petty foes of Heaven who shrink from Hell! [The Spirits disappear, soaring upwards.

Japh. (solus). God hath proclaimed the destiny of earth; My father's ark of safety hath announced it; The very demons shriek it from their caves; The scroll[151] of Enoch prophesied it long In silent books, which, in their silence, say More to the mind than thunder to the ear: And yet men listened not, nor listen; but Walk darkling to their doom: which, though so nigh, Shakes them no more in their dim disbelief, 280 Than their last cries shall shake the Almighty purpose, Or deaf obedient Ocean, which fulfils it. No sign yet hangs its banner in the air; The clouds are few, and of their wonted texture; The Sun will rise upon the Earth's last day As on the fourth day of creation, when God said unto him, "Shine!" and he broke forth Into the dawn, which lighted not the yet Unformed forefather of mankind--but roused Before the human orison the earlier 290 Made and far sweeter voices of the birds, Which in the open firmament of heaven Have wings like angels, and like them salute Heaven first each day before the Adamites: Their matins now draw nigh--the east is kindling-- And they will sing! and day will break! Both near, So near the awful close! For these must drop Their outworn pinions on the deep; and day, After the bright course of a few brief morrows,-- Aye, day will rise; but upon what?--a chaos, 300 Which was ere day; and which, renewed, makes Time Nothing! for, without life, what are the hours? No more to dust than is Eternity Unto Jehovah, who created both. Without him, even Eternity would be A void: without man, Time, as made for man, Dies with man, and is swallowed in that deep Which has no fountain; as his race will be Devoured by that which drowns his infant world.-- What have we here? Shapes of both earth and air? 310 No--all of heaven, they are so beautiful. I cannot trace their features; but their forms, How lovelily they move along the side Of the grey mountain, scattering its mist! And after the swart savage spirits, whose Infernal immortality poured forth Their impious hymn of triumph, they shall be Welcome as Eden. It may be they come To tell me the reprieve of our young world, For which I have so often prayed.--They come! 320 Anah! oh, God! and with her----

Enter SAMIASA, AZAZIEL, ANAH, and AHOLIBAMAH.

Anah. Japhet!

Sam. Lo! A son of Adam!

Aza. What doth the earth-born here, While all his race are slumbering?

Japh. Angel! what Dost thou on earth when thou should'st be on high?

Aza. Know'st thou not, or forget'st thou, that a part Of our great function is to guard thine earth?

Japh. But all good angels have forsaken earth, Which is condemned; nay, even the evil fly The approaching chaos. Anah! Anah! my In vain, and long, and still to be, beloved! 330 Why walk'st thou with this Spirit, in those hours When no good Spirit longer lights below?

Anah. Japhet, I cannot answer thee; yet, yet Forgive me----

Japh. May the Heaven, which soon no more Will pardon, do so! for thou art greatly tempted.

Aho. Back to thy tents, insulting son of Noah! We know thee not.

Japh. The hour may come when thou May'st know me better; and thy sister know Me still the same which I have ever been.

Sam. Son of the patriarch, who hath ever been 340 Upright before his God, whate'er thy gifts, And thy words seem of sorrow, mixed with wrath, How have Azaziel, or myself, brought on thee Wrong?

Japh. Wrong! the greatest of all wrongs! but, thou Say'st well, though she be dust--I did not, could not, Deserve her. Farewell, Anah! I have said That word so often! but now say it, ne'er To be repeated. Angel! or whate'er Thou art, or must be soon, hast thou the power To save this beautiful--these beautiful 350 Children of Cain?

Aza. From what?

Japh. And is it so, That ye too know not? Angels! angels! ye Have shared man's sin, and, it may be, now must Partake his punishment; or, at the least, My sorrow.

Sam. Sorrow! I ne'er thought till now To hear an Adamite speak riddles to me.

Japh. And hath not the Most High expounded them? Then ye are lost as they are lost.

Aho. So be it! If they love as they are loved, they will not shrink More to be mortal, than I would to dare 360 An immortality of agonies With Samiasa!

Anah. Sister! sister! speak not Thus.

Aza. Fearest thou, my Anah?

Anah. Yes, for thee: I would resign the greater remnant of This little life of mine, before one hour Of thine eternity should know a pang.

Japh. It is for him, then! for the Seraph thou Hast left me! That is nothing, if thou hast not Left thy God too! for unions like to these, Between a mortal and an immortal, cannot 370 Be happy or be hallowed. We are sent Upon the earth to toil and die; and they Are made to minister on high unto The Highest: but if he can save thee, soon The hour will come in which celestial aid Alone can do so.

Anah. Ah! he speaks of Death.

Sam. Of death to us! and those who are with us! But that the man seems full of sorrow, I Could smile.

Japh. I grieve not for myself, nor fear. I am safe, not for my own deserts, but those 380 Of a well-doing sire, who hath been found Righteous enough to save his children. Would His power was greater of redemption! or That by exchanging my own life for hers, Who could alone have made mine happy, she, The last and loveliest of Cain's race, could share The ark which shall receive a remnant of The seed of Seth!

Aho. And dost thou think that we, With Cain's, the eldest born of Adam's, blood Warm in our veins,--strong Cain! who was begotten 390 In Paradise[152],--would mingle with Seth's children? Seth, the last offspring of old Adam's dotage? No, not to save all Earth, were Earth in peril! Our race hath always dwelt apart from thine From the beginning, and shall do so ever.

Japh. I did not speak to thee, Aholibamah! Too much of the forefather whom thou vauntest Has come down in that haughty blood which springs From him who shed the first, and that a brother's! But thou, my Anah! let me call thee mine, 400 Albeit thou art not; 'tis a word I cannot Part with, although I must from thee. My Anah! Thou who dost rather make me dream that Abel Had left a daughter, whose pure pious race Survived in thee, so much unlike thou art The rest of the stem Cainites, save in beauty, For all of them are fairest in their favour----

Aho. (interrupting him). And would'st thou have her like our father's foe In mind, in soul? If I partook thy thought, And dreamed that aught of Abel was in her!-- 410 Get thee hence, son of Noah; thou makest strife.

Japh. Offspring of Cain, thy father did so!

Aho. But He slew not Seth: and what hast thou to do With other deeds between his God and him?

Japh. Thou speakest well: his God hath judged him, and I had not named his deed, but that thyself Didst seem to glory in him, nor to shrink From what he had done.

Aho. He was our father's father; The eldest born of man, the strongest, bravest, And most enduring:--Shall I blush for him 420 From whom we had our being? Look upon Our race; behold their stature and their beauty, Their courage, strength, and length of days----

Japh. They are numbered.

Aho. Be it so! but while yet their hours endure, I glory in my brethren and our fathers.

Japh. My sire and race but glory in their God, Anah! and thou?----

Anah. Whate'er our God decrees, The God of Seth as Cain, I must obey, And will endeavour patiently to obey. But could I dare to pray in his dread hour 430 Of universal vengeance (if such should be), It would not be to live, alone exempt Of all my house. My sister! oh, my sister! What were the world, or other worlds, or all The brightest future, without the sweet past-- Thy love, my father's, all the life, and all The things which sprang up with me, like the stars, Making my dim existence radiant with Soft lights which were not mine? Aholibamah! Oh! if there should be mercy--seek it, find it: 440 I abhor Death, because that thou must die.

Aho. What, hath this dreamer, with his father's ark, The bugbear he hath built to scare the world, Shaken my sister? Are we not the loved Of Seraphs? and if we were not, must we Cling to a son of Noah for our lives? Rather than thus----But the enthusiast dreams The worst of dreams, the fantasies engendered By hopeless love and heated vigils. Who Shall shake these solid mountains, this firm earth, 450 And bid those clouds and waters take a shape Distinct from that which we and all our sires Have seen them wear on their eternal way? Who shall do this?

Japh. He whose one word produced them.

Aho. Who heard that word?

Japh. The universe, which leaped To life before it. Ah! smilest thou still in scorn? Turn to thy Seraphs: if they attest it not, They are none.

Sam. Aholibamah, own thy God!

Aho. I have ever hailed our Maker, Samiasa, As thine, and mine: a God of Love, not Sorrow. 460

Japh. Alas! what else is Love but Sorrow? Even He who made earth in love had soon to grieve Above its first and best inhabitants.

Aho. 'Tis said so.

Japh. It is even so.

Enter NOAH and SHEM.

Noah. Japhet! What Dost thou here with these children of the wicked? Dread'st thou not to partake their coming doom?

Japh. Father, it cannot be a sin to seek To save an earth-born being; and behold, These are not of the sinful, since they have The fellowship of angels.

Noah. These are they, then, 470 Who leave the throne of God, to take them wives From out the race of Cain; the sons of Heaven, Who seek Earth's daughters for their beauty?

Aza. Patriarch! Thou hast said it.

Noah. Woe, woe, woe to such communion! Has not God made a barrier between Earth And Heaven, and limited each, kind to kind?

Sam. Was not man made in high Jehovah's image? Did God not love what he had made? And what Do we but imitate and emulate His love unto created love?

Noah. I am 480 But man, and was not made to judge mankind, Far less the sons of God; but as our God Has deigned to commune with me, and reveal His judgments, I reply, that the descent Of Seraphs from their everlasting seat Unto a perishable and perishing, Even on the very eve of perishing[153]?--world, Cannot be good.

Aza. What! though it were to save?

Noah. Not ye in all your glory can redeem What he who made you glorious hath condemned. 490 Were your immortal mission safety, 'twould Be general, not for two, though beautiful; And beautiful they are, but not the less Condemned.

Japh. Oh, father! say it not.

Noah. Son! son! If that thou wouldst avoid their doom, forget That they exist: they soon shall cease to be, While thou shalt be the sire of a new world, And better.

Japh. Let me die with this, and them!

Noah. Thou shouldst for such a thought, but shalt not: he Who can, redeems thee.

Sam. And why him and thee, 500 More than what he, thy son, prefers to both?

Noah. Ask him who made thee greater than myself And mine, but not less subject to his own Almightiness. And lo! his mildest and Least to be tempted messenger appears!

Enter RAPHAEL[154] the Archangel.

Raph. Spirits! Whose seat is near the throne, What do ye here? Is thus a Seraph's duty to be shown, Now that the hour is near 510 When Earth must be alone? Return! Adore and burn, In glorious homage with the elected "Seven." Your place is Heaven.

Sam. Raphael! The first and fairest of the sons of God, How long hath this been law, That Earth by angels must be left untrod? Earth! which oft saw 520 Jehovah's footsteps not disdain her sod! The world he loved, and made For love; and oft have we obeyed His frequent mission with delighted pinions: Adoring him in his least works displayed; Watching this youngest star of his dominions; And, as the latest birth of his great word, Eager to keep it worthy of our Lord. Why is thy brow severe? And wherefore speak'st thou of destruction near? 530

Raph. Had Samiasa and Azaziel been In their true place, with the angelic choir, Written in fire They would have seen Jehovah's late decree, And not enquired their Maker's breath of me: But ignorance must ever be A part of sin; And even the Spirits' knowledge shall grow less As they wax proud within; 540 For Blindness is the first-born of Excess. When all good angels left the world, ye stayed, Stung with strange passions, and debased By mortal feelings for a mortal maid: But ye are pardoned thus far, and replaced With your pure equals. Hence! away! away! Or stay, And lose Eternity by that delay!

Aza. And thou! if Earth be thus forbidden In the decree 550 To us until this moment hidden, Dost thou not err as we In being here?

Raph. I came to call ye back to your fit sphere, In the great name and at the word of God, Dear, dearest in themselves, and scarce less dear-- That which I came to do[155]: till now we trod Together the eternal space; together Let us still walk the stars[156]. True, Earth must die! Her race, returned into her womb, must wither, 560 And much which she inherits: but oh! why Cannot this Earth be made, or be destroyed, Without involving ever some vast void In the immortal ranks? immortal still In their immeasurable forfeiture. Our brother Satan fell; his burning will Rather than longer worship dared endure! But ye who still are pure! Seraphs! less mighty than that mightiest one,-- Think how he was undone! 570 And think if tempting man can compensate For Heaven desired too late? Long have I warred, Long must I war With him who deemed it hard To be created, and to acknowledge him Who midst the cherubim Made him as suns to a dependent star, Leaving the archangels at his right hand dim. I loved him--beautiful he was: oh, Heaven! 580 Save his who made, what beauty and what power Was ever like to Satan's! Would the hour In which he fell could ever be forgiven! The wish is impious: but, oh ye! Yet undestroyed, be warned! Eternity With him, or with his God, is in your choice: He hath not tempted you; he cannot tempt The angels, from his further snares exempt: But man hath listened to his voice, And ye to woman's--beautiful she is, 590 The serpent's voice less subtle than her kiss. The snake but vanquished dust; but she will draw A second host from heaven, to break Heaven's law. Yet, yet, oh fly! Ye cannot die; But they Shall pass away, While ye shall fill with shrieks the upper sky For perishable clay, Whose memory in your immortality 600 Shall long outlast the Sun which gave them day. Think how your essence differeth from theirs In all but suffering! why partake The agony to which they must be heirs-- Born to be ploughed with years, and sown with cares, And reaped by Death, lord of the human soil? Even had their days been left to toil their path Through time to dust, unshortened by God's wrath, Still they are Evil's prey, and Sorrow's spoil.

Aho. Let them fly! 610 I hear the voice which says that all must die, Sooner than our white-bearded patriarchs died; And that on high An ocean is prepared, While from below The deep shall rise to meet Heaven's overflow-- Few shall be spared, It seems; and, of that few, the race of Cain Must lift their eyes to Adam's God in vain. Sister! since it is so, 620 And the eternal Lord In vain would be implored For the remission of one hour of woe, Let us resign even what we have adored, And meet the wave, as we would meet the sword, If not unmoved, yet undismayed, And wailing less for us than those who shall Survive in mortal or immortal thrall, And, when the fatal waters are allayed, Weep for the myriads who can weep no more. 630 Fly, Seraphs! to your own eternal shore, Where winds nor howl, nor waters roar. Our portion is to die, And yours to live for ever: But which is best, a dead Eternity, Or living, is but known to the great Giver. Obey him, as we shall obey; I would not keep this life of mine in clay An hour beyond his will; Nor see ye lose a portion of his grace, 640 For all the mercy which Seth's race Find still. Fly! And as your pinions bear ye back to Heaven, Think that my love still mounts with thee on high, Samiasa! And if I look up with a tearless eye, 'Tis that an angel's bride disdains to weep,-- Farewell! Now rise, inexorable deep!

Anah. And must we die? 650 And must I lose thee too, Azaziel? Oh, my heart! my heart! Thy prophecies were true! And yet thou wert so happy too! The blow, though not unlocked for, falls as new: But yet depart! Ah! why? Yet let me not retain thee--fly! My pangs can be but brief; but thine would be 660 Eternal, if repulsed from Heaven for me. Too much already hast thou deigned To one of Adam's race! Our doom is sorrow: not to us alone, But to the Spirits who have not disdained To love us, cometh anguish with disgrace. The first who taught us knowledge hath been hurled From his once archangelic throne Into some unknown world: And thou, Azaziel! No-- 670 Thou shall not suffer woe For me. Away! nor weep! Thou canst not weep; but yet May'st suffer more, not weeping: then forget Her, whom the surges of the all-strangling deep Can bring no pang like this. Fly! fly! Being gone, 'twill be less difficult to die.

Japh. Oh say not so! Father! and thou, archangel, thou! Surely celestial mercy lurks below 680 That pure severe serenity of brow: Let them not meet this sea without a shore, Save in our ark, or let me be no more!

Noah. Peace, child of passion, peace! If not within thy heart, yet with thy tongue Do God no wrong! Live as he wills it--die, when he ordains, A righteous death, unlike the seed of Cain's. Cease, or be sorrowful in silence; cease To weary Heaven's ear with thy selfish plaint. 690 Wouldst thou have God commit a sin for thee? Such would it be To alter his intent For a mere mortal sorrow. Be a man! And bear what Adam's race must bear, and can.

Japh. Aye, father! but when they are gone, And we are all alone, Floating upon the azure desert, and The depth beneath us hides our own dear land, And dearer, silent friends and brethren, all 700 Buried in its immeasurable breast, Who, who, our tears, our shrieks, shall then command? Can we in Desolation's peace have rest? Oh God! be thou a God, and spare Yet while 'tis time! Renew not Adam's fall: Mankind were then but twain, But they are numerous now as are the waves And the tremendous rain, Whose drops shall be less thick than would their graves, 710 Were graves permitted to the seed of Cain.

Noah. Silence, vain boy! each word of thine's a crime. Angel! forgive this stripling's fond despair.

Raph. Seraphs! these mortals speak in passion: Ye! Who are, or should be, passionless and pure, May now return with me.

Sam. It may not be: We have chosen, and will endure.

Raph. Say'st thou?

Aza. He hath said it, and I say, Amen!

Raph. Again! Then from this hour, 720 Shorn as ye are of all celestial power, And aliens from your God, Farewell!

Japh. Alas! where shall they dwell? Hark, hark! Deep sounds, and deeper still, Are howling from the mountain's bosom: There's not a breath of wind upon the hill, Yet quivers every leaf, and drops each blossom: Earth groans as if beneath a heavy load.

Noah. Hark, hark! the sea-birds cry! 730 In clouds they overspread the lurid sky, And hover round the mountain, where before Never a white wing, wetted by the wave, Yet dared to soar, Even when the waters waxed too fierce to brave. Soon it shall be their only shore, And then, no more!

Japh. The sun! the sun[157]! He riseth, but his better light is gone; And a black circle, bound 740 His glaring disk around, Proclaims Earth's last of summer days hath shone! The clouds return into the hues of night, Save where their brazen-coloured edges streak The verge where brighter morns were wont to break.

Noah. And lo! yon flash of light, The distant thunder's harbinger, appears! It cometh! hence, away! Leave to the elements their evil prey! Hence to where our all-hallowed ark uprears 750 Its safe and wreckless sides!

Japh. Oh, father, stay! Leave not my Anah to the swallowing tides!

Noah. Must we not leave all life to such? Begone!

Japh. Not I.

Noah. Then die With them! How darest thou look on that prophetic sky, And seek to save what all things now condemn, In overwhelming unison 760 With just Jehovah's wrath!

Japh. Can rage and justice join in the same path?

Noah. Blasphemer! darest thou murmur even now!

Raph. Patriarch, be still a father! smooth thy brow: Thy son, despite his folly, shall not sink: He knows not what he says, yet shall not drink With sobs the salt foam of the swelling waters; But be, when passion passeth, good as thou, Nor perish like Heaven's children with man's daughters.

Aho. The tempest cometh; heaven and earth unite 770 For the annihilation of all life. Unequal is the strife Between our strength and the Eternal Might!

Sam. But ours is with thee; we will bear ye far To some untroubled star, Where thou, and Anah, shalt partake our lot: And if thou dost not weep for thy lost earth, Our forfeit Heaven shall also be forgot.

Anah. Oh! my dear father's tents, my place of birth, And mountains, land, and woods! when ye are not, 780 Who shall dry up my tears?

Aza. Thy spirit-lord. Fear not; though we are shut from Heaven, Yet much is ours, whence we can not be driven.

Raph. Rebel! thy words are wicked, as thy deeds Shall henceforth be but weak: the flaming sword, Which chased the first-born out of Paradise, Still flashes in the angelic hands.

Aza. It cannot slay us: threaten dust with death, And talk of weapons unto that which bleeds. What are thy swords in our immortal eyes? 790

Raph. The moment cometh to approve thy strength; And learn at length How vain to war with what thy God commands: Thy former force was in thy faith.

Enter Mortals, flying for refuge.

Chorus of Mortals.

The heavens and earth are mingling--God! oh God! What have we done? Yet spare! Hark! even the forest beasts howl forth their prayer! The dragon crawls from out his den, To herd, in terror, innocent with men; And the birds scream their agony through air. 800 Yet, yet, Jehovah! yet withdraw thy rod Of wrath, and pity thine own world's despair! Hear not man only but all nature plead!

Raph. Farewell, thou earth! ye wretched sons of clay, I cannot, must not, aid you. 'Tis decreed! [Exit RAPHAEL.

Japh. Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey, While others, fixed as rocks, await the word At which their wrathful vials shall be poured. No azure more shall robe the firmament, Nor spangled stars be glorious: Death hath risen: 810 In the Sun's place a pale and ghastly glare Hath wound itself around the dying air.

Aza. Come, Anah! quit this chaos-founded prison, To which the elements again repair, To turn it into what it was: beneath The shelter of these wings thou shall be safe, As was the eagle's nestling once within Its mother's.--Let the coming chaos chafe With all its elements! Heed not their din! A brighter world than this, where thou shalt breathe 820 Ethereal life, will we explore: These darkened clouds are not the only skies.

[AZAZIEL and SAMIASA fly off, and disappear with ANAH and AHOLIBAMAH.

Japh. They are gone! They have disappeared amidst the roar Of the forsaken world; and never more, Whether they live, or die with all Earth's life, Now near its last, can aught restore Anah unto these eyes.

Chorus of Mortals.

Oh son of Noah! mercy on thy kind! What! wilt thou leave us all--all--all behind? While safe amidst the elemental strife, 830 Thou sitt'st within thy guarded ark?

A Mother (offering her infant to JAPHET). Oh, let this child embark! I brought him forth in woe, But thought it joy To see him to my bosom clinging so. Why was he born? What hath he done-- My unweaned son-- To move Jehovah's wrath or scorn? What is there in this milk of mine, that Death 840 Should stir all Heaven and Earth up to destroy My boy, And roll the waters o'er his placid breath? Save him, thou seed of Seth! Or curséd be--with him who made Thee and thy race, for which we are betrayed!

Japh. Peace! 'tis no hour for curses, but for prayer!

Chorus of Mortals.

For prayer!!! And where Shall prayer ascend, 850 When the swoln clouds unto the mountains bend And burst, And gushing oceans every barrier rend, Until the very deserts know no thirst? Accursed Be he who made thee and thy sire! We deem our curses vain; we must expire; But as we know the worst, Why should our hymns be raised, our knees be bent Before the implacable Omnipotent, 860 Since we must fall the same? If he hath made Earth, let it be his shame, To make a world for torture.--Lo! they come, The loathsome waters, in their rage! And with their roar make wholesome nature dumb! The forest's trees (coeval with the hour When Paradise upsprung, Ere Eve gave Adam knowledge for her dower, Or Adam his first hymn of slavery sung), So massy, vast, yet green in their old age, 870 Are overtopped, Their summer blossoms by the surges lopped, Which rise, and rise, and rise. Vainly we look up to the lowering skies-- They meet the seas, And shut out God from our beseeching eyes. Fly, son of Noah, fly! and take thine ease, In thine allotted ocean-tent; And view, all floating o'er the element, The corpses of the world of thy young days: 880 Then to Jehovah raise Thy song of praise!

A Mortal. Blesséd are the dead Who die in the Lord! And though the waters be o'er earth outspread, Yet, as his word, Be the decree adored! He gave me life--he taketh but The breath which is his own: And though these eyes should be for ever shut, 890 Nor longer this weak voice before his throne Be heard in supplicating tone, Still blessed be the Lord, For what is past, For that which is: For all are his, From first to last-- Time--Space--Eternity--Life--Death-- The vast known and immeasurable unknown. He made, and can unmake; 900 And shall I, for a little gasp of breath, Blaspheme and groan? No; let me die, as I have lived, in faith, Nor quiver, though the Universe may quake!

Chorus of Mortals.

Where shall we fly? Not to the mountains high; For now their torrents rush, with double roar, To meet the Ocean, which, advancing still, Already grasps each drowning hill, Nor leaves an unsearched cave. 910

Enter a Woman.

Woman. Oh, save me, save! Our valley is no more: My father and my father's tent, My brethren and my brethren's herds, The pleasant trees that o'er our noonday bent, And sent forth evening songs from sweetest birds, The little rivulet which freshened all Our pastures green, No more are to be seen. When to the mountain cliff I climbed this morn, 920 I turned to bless the spot, And not a leaf appeared about to fall;-- And now they are not!-- Why was I born?

Japh. To die! in youth to die! And happier in that doom, Than to behold the universal tomb, Which I Am thus condemned to weep above in vain. Why, when all perish, why must I remain?

[_The waters rise; Men fly in every direction; many are overtaken by the waves: the Chorus of Mortals disperses in search of safety up the mountains:_ JAPHET _remains upon a rock, while the Ark floats towards him in the distance_.[158]

FOOTNOTES:

[138] {285}[Aholibamah ("tent of the highest") was daughter of Anah (a Hivite clan-name), the daughter of Zibeon, Esau's wife, Gen. xxxvi. 14. Irad was the son of Enoch, and grandson of Cain, Gen. iv. 18.]

[139] {286}[Compare Manfred, act i. sc. I, line 131, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 89, and note i.]

[140] The archangels, said to be seven in number, and to occupy the eighth rank in the celestial hierarchy.

[Compare Tobit xii. 15, "I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints." The Book of Enoch (ch. xx.) names the other archangels, "Uriel, Rufael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqael, and Gabriel, who is over Paradise and the serpents and the cherubin." In the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite, a chapter is devoted to archangels, but their names are not recorded, or their number given. On the other hand, "The teaching of the oracles concerning the angels affirms that they are thousand thousands and myriad myriads."--Celestial Hierarchy, etc., translated by the Rev. J. Parker, 1894, cap. xiv. p. 43. It has been supposed that "the seven which are the eyes of the Lord" (Zech. iv. 10) are the seven archangels.]

[141] {289}["The adepts of Incantation ... enter the realms of air, and by their spells they scatter the clouds, they gather the clouds, they still the storm.... We may adduce Ovid (Amor., bk. ii., El., i. 23), who says, 'Charmers draw down the horns of the blood-red moon,'... Here it is to be observed that in the opinion of simple-minded persons, the moon could be actually drawn down from heaven. So Aristophanes says (Clouds, lines 739, 740), 'If I should purchase a Thessalian witch, and draw down the moon by night;' and Claudian (In Ruffin., bk. i. 145), 'I know by what spell the Thessalian sorceress snatches away the lunar beam.'"--Magic Incantations, by Christianus Pazig (circ. 1700), edited by Edmund Goldsmid, F.R.H.S., F.S.A. (Scot.), 1886, pp. 30, 31. See, too, Virgil, Eclogues, viii. 69, "Carmina vel cœlo possunt de ducere Lunam."]

[142] {291}["Tubal-Cain [the seventh in descent from Cain] was an instructor of every artificer of brass and iron" (Gen. iv. 22). According to the Book of Enoch, cap. viii., it was "Azâzêl," one of the "sons of the heavens," who "taught men to make swords, and knives, and skins, and coats of mail, and made known to them metals, and the art of working them, bracelets and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyebrows, and the most costly and choicest stones, and all colouring tincture, so that the world was changed."]

[143] [Vide post, p. 294.]

[144] {294}[Byron's knowledge of Mount Ararat was probably derived from the following passage in Tournefort: "It is a most frightful sight; David might well say such sort of places show the grandeur of the Lord. One can't but tremble to behold it; and to look on the horrible precipices ever so little will make the head turn round. The noise made by a vast number of crows [hence the 'rushing sound,' vide post, p. 295], who are continually flying from one side to the other, has something in it very frightful. To form any idea of this place you must imagine one of the highest mountains in the world opening its bosom, only to show the most horrible spectacle that can be thought of. All the precipices are perpendicular, and the extremities are rough and blackish, as if a smoke came out of the sides and smutted them."--A Voyage in the Levant, by M. [Joseph Pitton de] Tournefort, 1741, iii. 205, 206.

Kitto also describes this "vast chasm," which contained "an enormous mass of ice, which seems to have fallen from a cliff that overhangs the ice" (Travels in Persia, 1846, i. 34); but Professor Friedrich Parrot, who was the first to ascend Mount Ararat, does not enlarge upon the "abyss" or chasm.--Journey to Ararat, translated by W. D. Cowley, 1845, p. 134.]

[145] [Compare the description of the "roots like snakes," which "wind out from rock and sand," in the scene on the Hartz Mountains in Goethe's Faust.]

[146] {296} [Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 233) compares the laughter of the fiends in the cave of Caucasus with the snoring of the Furies in the Eumenides of Æschylus--

Ῥέγκουσι δ' oὐ πλατοῖσι φυσιάμασιν [R(e/gkousi d' ou) platoi~si physia/masin] (line 53). ("Their snoring nostrils blow fearsome breath.")

There is a closer parallel with--

Γελᾶ δὲ δαίμων ἐπ' ἀνδρὶ θερμῶ [Gela~ de\ dai/môn e)p' a)ndri\ thermô~] (line 560). ("The spirit mocketh the headlong soul.")]

[147] {297}[Matthew Arnold, Poetry of Byron, 1881, xiv., xv., quotes this line in proof of Byron's barbarian insensibility, "to the true artist's fine passion for the correct use and consummate management of words."]

[148] {300} "[And] there were giants in the earth in those days; and ... after, ... mighty men, which were of old, men of renown."--Genesis [vi. 4].

[149] "The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."--Genesis [vii. II].

[150] {301}[Byron falls in with the popular theory as to the existence of fossil remains of marine animals at a height above the level of the sea. The "deluge" accounted for what was otherwise inexplicable.]

[151] {302} The book of Enoch, preserved by the Ethiopians, is said by them to be anterior to the flood.

[Some fragments of the Book of Enoch (vide ante, Introduction to Heaven and Earth, p. 281), which were included by Georgius Syncellus (a Byzantine writer of the eighth century A.D.) in his Chronographia, pp. ii, 26 (Corpus Script. Hist. Byzantintæ, 1829, i. 20), were printed by J. J. Scaliger in 1606. They were, afterwards, included (i. 347-354) in the Spicilegium SS. Patrum of Joannes Ernestus Grabius, which was published at Oxford in 1714. A year after (1715) one of the fragments was "made English," and published under the title of The History of the Angels and their Gallantry with the Daughters of Men, written by Enoch the Patriarch.

In 1785 James Bruce, the traveller, discovered three MSS. of the Book of Enoch. One he conveyed to the library at Paris: a second MS. he presented to the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Travels, ii. 422, 8vo ed. 1805). In 1801 an article entitled, "Notice du Libre d'Enoch," was contributed by Silvestre de Sacy to the Magasin Encyclopédique (An. vi. tom. i. p. 369); and in 1821 Richard Laurence, LL.D., published a translation "from the Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library." This was the first translation of the book as a whole.

The following extracts, which were evidently within Byron's recollection when he planned Heaven and Earth, are taken from The Book of Enoch, translated from Professor Dillman's Ethiopic Text, by R. H. Charles, Oxford, 1892:--

"Chap. vi. [1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied in those days that beautiful and comely daughters were born unto them. [2. And the angels, the sons of the Heavens, saw and lusted after them, and spake one to another, 'Come now, let us choose us wives from among the children of men, and beget children.' [3. And Semjâzâ, who was the leader, spake unto them: I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed.... [6. And they descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon....

"Chap. viii. [i. And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, etc.

"Chap. x. Then spake the Most High, the Great, the Holy One, and sent Arsjalâljûr (= Uriel) to the son of Lamech, and said to him, 'Tell him in My Name to hide thyself!' and reveal to him that the end is approaching; for the whole earth will be destroyed, and a deluge will presently cover up the whole earth, and all that is in it will be destroyed. [3. And now instruct him that he may escape, as his seed may be preserved for all generations. [4. And again the Lord spake to Rafael; Bind Azâzêl hand and foot, and place him in darkness; make an opening in the desert which is in Dudâêl and place him therein. [5. And place upon him rough and ragged rocks," etc.]

[152] {306}[This does not correspond with Cain's statement--"After the fall too soon was I begotten," Cain, act. iii. sc. I, line 506 (vide ante).

Bayle (Hist. and Crit. Dict., 1735, art. "Eve," note B) has a great deal to say with regard to the exact date of the birth of Cain. He concludes with Cornelius à Lapide, who quotes Torniellus, "Cain genitum ease mox post expulsionem Adæ et Evæ ex Paradiso."]

[153] {309}[Byron said that it was difficult to make Lucifer talk "like a clergyman." He contrived to make Noah talk like a street-preacher.]

[154] [In the original MS. "Michael."--"I return you," says Byron, "the revise. I have softened the part to which Gifford objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an angel of gentler sympathies."--July 6, 1822, Letters, vi. 93.]

[155] {311}[That is, "to call you back." His ministry and function of clemency were almost as dear to him as his ministry and function of adoration and obedience.]

[156] [For the connection of stars with angels, see Book of Enoch, xxv. 1.]

[157] {315}[Compare Darkness, lines 2-5, Poetical Works, 1891, iv. 42, 43.]

[158] {321}[Sketch of Second Part of Heaven and Earth, as reported by Medwin (Conversations, 1824, pp. 234-237)--

"Azazael and Samiasa ... rise into the air with the two sisters.... The appearance of the land strangled by the ocean will serve by way of scenery and decorations. The affectionate tenderness of Adah for those from whom she is parted, and for ever, and her fears contrasting with the loftier spirit of Aholibamah triumphing in the hopes of a new and greater destiny will make the dialogue. They, in the meantime, continue their aërial voyage, everywhere denied admittance in those floating islands over the sea of space, and driven back by guardian-spirits of the different planets, till they are at length forced to alight on the only peak of the earth uncovered by water. Here a parting takes place between the lovers.... The fallen angels are suddenly called, and condemned, their destination and punishment unknown. The sisters cling to the rock, the waters mounting higher and higher. Now enter Ark. The scene draws up, and discovers Japhet endeavouring to persuade the Patriarch, with very strong arguments of love and pity, to receive the sisters, or at least Adah, on board. Adah joins in his entreaties, and endeavours to cling to the sides of the vessel. The proud and haughty Aholibamah scorns to pray either to God or man, and anticipates the grave by plunging into the waters. Noah is still inexorable. [Adah] is momentarily in danger of perishing before the eyes of the Arkites. Japhet is in despair. The last wave sweeps her from the rock, and her lifeless corpse floats past in all its beauty, whilst a sea-bird screams over it, and seems to be the spirit of her angel lord. I once thought of conveying the lovers to the moon or one of the planets; but it is not easy for the imagination to make any unknown world more beautiful than this; besides, I did not think they would approve of the moon as a residence. I remember what Fontenelle said of its having no atmosphere, and the dark spots having caverns where the inhabitants reside. There was another objection: all the human interest would have been destroyed, which I have even endeavoured to give my angels."]

WERNER;

OR,

THE INHERITANCE:

A TRAGEDY.

[Werner was produced, for the first time, at the Park Theatre, New York, in 1826. Mr. Barry played "Werner."

Werner was brought out at Drury Lane Theatre, and played, for the first time, December 15, 1830. Macready appeared as "Werner," J. W. Wallack as "Ulric," Mrs. Faucit as "Josephine," and Miss Mordaunt as "Ida." According to the Times, December 16, 1830, "Mr. Macready appeared to very great advantage. We have never seen him exert himself more--we have never known him to exert himself with more powerful effect. Three of his scenes were masterpieces." Genest says that Werner was acted seventeen times in 1830-31.

There was a revival in 1833. Macready says (Diary, March 20) that he acted "'Werner' with unusual force, truth, and collectedness ... finished off each burst of passion, and, in consequence, entered on the following emotion with clearness and earnestness" (Macready's Reminiscences, 1875, i 36.6).

Werner was played in 1834, 5, 6, 7, 9; in 1841; in 1843-4 (New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Montreal); in 1845 (Paris, London, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin); in 1846, 1847; in America in 1848; in the provinces in 1849; in 1850; and, for the last time, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, January 14, 1851. At the farewell performance Macready appeared as "Werner," Mr. Davenport as "Ulric," Mrs. Warner as "Josephine," Mrs. Ryder as "Ida." In the same year (1851) a portrait of Macready as "Werner," by Daniel Maclise, R.A., was on view at the Exhibition at the Royal Academy. The motto was taken from Werner, act i. sc. 1, lines 114, sq. (See, for a detailed criticism of Macready's "Werner," Our Recent Actors, by Westland Marston, 1881, i. 89-98; and for the famous "Macready burst," in act ii. sc. 2, and act v. sc. 1, vide ibid., i. 97.)

Werner was brought out at Sadler's Wells Theatre, November 21, 1860, and repeated November 22, 23, 24, 28, 29; December, 3, 4, 11, 13, 14, 1860. Phelps appeared as "Werner," Mr. Edmund Phelps as "Ulric," Miss Atkinson as "Josephine." "Perhaps the old actor never performed the part so finely as he did on that night. The identity between the real and ideal relations of the characters was as vivid to him as to the audience, and gave a deeper intensity, on both sides, to the scenes between father and son." (See The London Stage, by H. Barton Baker, 1889, ii. 217.)

On the afternoon of June 1, 1887, Werner (four acts, arranged by Frank Marshall) was performed at the Lyceum Theatre for the benefit of Westland Marston. [Sir] Henry Irving appeared as "Werner," Miss Ellen Terry as "Josephine," Mr. Alexander as "Ulric." (See for an appreciation of Sir Henry Irving's presentation of Werner, the Athenæum, June 4, 1887.)]

INTRODUCTION TO WERNER.

Werner; or, The Inheritance, was begun at Pisa, December 18, 1821, and finished January 20, 1822. At the end of the month, January 29, Byron despatched the MS., not to Murray, but to Moore, then in retreat at Paris, intending, no doubt, that it should be placed in the hands of another publisher; but a letter from Murray "melted him," and on March 6, 1822 (Letters, 1901, vi. 34), he desired Moore to forward the packet to Albemarle Street. The play was set up in type, and revised proofs were returned to Murray at the end of June; but, for various reasons, publication was withheld, and, on October 31, Byron informed John Hunt that he had empowered his friend Douglas Kinnaird to obtain Werner, with other MSS., from Murray. None the less, milder counsels again prevailed, and on Saturday, November 23, 1822, Werner was published, not in the same volume with Heaven and Earth, as Byron intended and expected, nor by John Hunt, as he had threatened, but by itself, and, as heretofore, by John Murray. Werner was "the last of all the flock" to issue from Murray's fold.

In his Preface to Werner (vide post, p. 337) Byron disclaims all pretensions to originality. "The following drama," he writes, "is taken entirely from the 'German's Tale, Kruitzner,' published ... in Lee's Canterbury Tales.... I have adopted the characters, plan, and even the language, of many parts of this story." Kruitzner seems to have made a deep impression on his mind. When he was a boy of thirteen (i.e. in 1801, when the fourth volume of the Canterbury Tales was published), and again in 1815, he set himself to turn the tale into a drama. His first attempt, named Ulric and Ilvina, he threw into the fire, but he had nearly completed the first act of his second and maturer adaptation when he was "interrupted by circumstances," that is, no doubt, the circumstances which led up to and ended in the separation from his wife. (See letter of October 9, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 391.)

On his leaving England for the Continent, April 25, 1816, the fragment was left behind. Most probably the MS. fell into his sister's hands, for in October, 1821, it was not forthcoming when Byron gave directions that Hobhouse should search for it "amongst my papers." Ultimately it came into the possession of the late Mr. Murray, and is now printed for the first time in its entirety (vide post, pp. 453-466: selections were given in the Nineteenth Century, August, 1899). It should be borne in mind that this unprinted first act of Werner, which synchronizes with the Siege of Corinth and Parisina, was written when Byron was a member of the sub-committee of management of Drury Lane Theatre, and, as the numerous stage directions testify, with a view to stage-representation. The MS. is scored with corrections, and betrays an unusual elaboration, and, perhaps, some difficulty and hesitation in the choice of words and the construction of sentences. In the opening scene the situation is not caught and gripped, while the melancholy squalor of the original narrative is only too faithfully reproduced. The Werner of 1821, with all its shortcomings, is the production of a playwright. The Werner of 1815 is the attempt of a highly gifted amateur.

When Byron once more bethought himself of his old subject, he not only sent for the MS. of the first act, but desired Murray "to cut out Sophia Lee's" (vide post, p. 337) "German's Tale from the Canterbury Tales, and send it in a letter" (Letters, 1901, v. 390). He seems to have intended from the first to construct a drama out of the story, and, no doubt, to acknowledge the source of his inspiration. On the whole, he carried out his intention, taking places, characters, and incidents as he found them, but recasting the materials and turning prose into metre. But here and there, to save himself trouble, he "stole his brooms ready made," and, as he acknowledges in the Preface, "adopted even the language of the story." Act ii. sc. 2, lines 87-172; act iii. sc. 4; and act v. sc. 1, lines 94-479, are, more or less, faithful and exact reproductions of pp. 203-206, 228-232, and 252-271 of the novel (see Canterbury Tales, ed. 1832, vol. ii.). On the other hand, in the remaining three-fourths of the play, the language is not Miss Lee's, but Byron's, and the "conveyance" of incidents occasional and insignificant. Much, too, was imported into the play (e.g. almost the whole of the fourth act), of which there is neither hint nor suggestion in the story. Maginn's categorical statement (see "O'Doherty on Werner," Miscellanies, 1885, i. 189) that "here Lord Byron has invented nothing--absolutely, positively, undeniably NOTHING;" that "there is not one incident in his play, not even the most trivial, that is not to be found in the novel," etc., is "positively and undeniably" a falsehood. Maginn read Werner for the purpose of attacking Byron, and, by printing selected passages from the novel and the play, in parallel columns, gives the reader to understand that he had made an exhaustive analysis of the original and the copy. The review, which is quoted as an authority in the editions of 1832 (xiv. pp. 113, 114) and 1837, etc., p. 341, is disingenuous and misleading.

The original story may be briefly retold. The prodigal and outlawed son of a Bohemian noble, Count Siegendorf, after various adventures, marries, under the assumed name of Friedrich Kruitzner, the daughter of an Italian scholar and man of science, of noble birth, but in narrow circumstances. A son, Conrad, is born to him, who, at eight years of age, is transferred to the charge of his grandfather. Twelve years go by, and, when the fortunes of the younger Siegendorf are at their lowest ebb, he learns, at the same moment, that his father is dead, and that a distant kinsman, the Baron Stralenheim, is meditating an attack on his person, with a view to claiming his inheritance. Of Conrad, who has disappeared, he hears nothing.

An accident compels the count and the baron to occupy adjoining quarters in a small town on the northern frontier of Silesia; and, again, another accident places the usurping and intriguing baron at the mercy of his poverty-stricken and exiled kinsman. Stralenheim has fallen asleep near the fire in his easy-chair. Papers and several rouleaux of gold are ranged on a cabinet beside the bed. Kruitzner, who is armed with "a large and sharp knife," is suddenly confronted with his unarmed and slumbering foe, and though habit and conscience conspire to make murder impossible, he yields to a sudden and irresistible impulse, and snatches up "the portion of gold which is nearest." He has no sooner returned to his wife and confessed his deed, than Conrad suddenly appears on the scene, and at the very moment of an unexpected and joyous reunion with his parents, learns that his father is a thief. Kruitzner pleads "guilty with extenuating circumstances," and Conrad, who either is or pretends to be disgusted at his father's sophistries, makes the best of a bad business, and undertakes to conceal his father's dishonour and rescue him from the power of Stralenheim. The plot hinges on the unlooked-for and unsuspected action of Conrad. Unlike his father, he is not the man to let "I dare not wait upon I would," but murders Stralenheim in cold blood, and, at the same time, diverts suspicion from his father and himself to the person of his comrade, a Hungarian soldier of fortune, who is already supposed to be the thief, and who had sought and obtained shelter in the apartments of the conscience-stricken Kruitzner.

The scene changes to Prague. Siegendorf, no longer Kruitzner, has regained his inheritance, and is once more at the height of splendour and prosperity. A service of thanksgiving is being held in the cathedral to commemorate the signature of the Treaty of Prague (1635), and the count is present in state. Suddenly he catches sight of the Hungarian, and, "like a flash of lightning" feels and remembers that he is a thief, and that he might, however unjustly, be suspected if not accused of the murder of Stralenheim. The service is over, and the count is recrossing "Muldau's Bridge," when he hears the fatal word Kruitzner, "the seal of his shame," spoken in his ear. He returns to his castle, and issues orders that the Hungarian should be arrested and interrogated. An interview takes place, at which the Hungarian denounces Conrad as the murderer of Stralenheim. The son acknowledges the deed, and upbraids the father for his weakness and credulity in supposing that his escape from Stralenheim's machinations could have been effected by any other means. If, he argues, circumstances can palliate dishonesty, they can compel and justify murder. Common sense even now demands the immediate slaughter of the Hungarian, as it compelled and sanctioned the effectual silencing of Stralenheim. But Siegendorf knows not "thorough," and shrinks at assassination. He repudiates and denounces his son, and connives at the escape of the Hungarian. Conrad, who is banished from Prague, rejoins his former associates, the "black bands," which were the scandal and terror of the neighbouring provinces, and is killed in a skirmish with the regular troops. Siegendorf dies of a broken heart.

The conception of The German's Tale, as Byron perceived, is superior to the execution. The style is laboured and involved, and the narrative long-winded and tiresome. It is, perhaps, an adaptation, though not a literal translation, of a German historical romance. But the motif--a son predestined to evil by the weakness and sensuality of his father, a father punished for his want of rectitude by the passionate criminality of his son, is the very key-note of tragedy.

If from haste or indolence Byron scamped his task, and cut up whole cantles of the novel into nerveless and pointless blank verse, here and there throughout the play, in scattered lines and passages, he outdoes himself. The inspiration is fitful, but supreme.

Werner was reviewed in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, December, 1822, vol. xii. pp. 710-719 (republished in Miscellanies of W. Maginn, 1885, i. 189); in the Scots Magazine, December, 1822, N.S. vol. xi. pp. 688-694; the European Magazine, January, 1823, vol. 83, pp. 73-76; and in the Eclectic Review, February, 1823, N.S. vol. xix. pp. 148-155.

NOTE TO THE INTRODUCTION TO WERNER.

In an article entitled, "Did Byron write Werner?" which appeared in the Nineteenth Century (August, 1899, vol. 46, pp. 243-250), the Hon. F. Leveson Gower undertakes to prove that Werner was not written by Lord Byron, but by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (born June 9, 1757, died March 30, 1806). He adduces, in support of this claim, (1) a statement made to him by his sister, the late Lady Georgiana Fullerton, to the effect that their grandmother, the duchess, "wrote the poem and gave the MS. to her niece, Lady Caroline Ponsonby (better known as Lady Caroline Lamb), and that she, some years later, handed it over to Lord Byron, who, in 1822, published it in his own name;" (2) a letter written in 1822 by his mother, Lady Granville, to her sister, Lady Carlisle, which asserts that their mother, the duchess, "wrote an entire tragedy from Miss Lee's Kreutzner the Hungarian (sic)," and that the MS. had been sent to her by Lady Caroline's brother, Mr. William Ponsonby, and was in her possession; (3) another letter of Lady Granville's, dated December 3, 1822, in which she informs her sister that her husband, Lord Granville, had promised to read Werner aloud to her (i.e. Byron's Werner, published November 23, 1822), a promise which, if fulfilled, must have revealed one of two things--the existence of two dramas based on Miss Lee's Kruitzner, or the identity of Byron's version with that of the duchess. Now, argues Mr. Leveson Gower, if Lady Granville had known that two dramas were in existence, she would not have allowed her daughter, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, to believe "that the duchess was the author of the published poem."

I will deal with the external evidence first. Practically it amounts to this: (1) that Lady Granville knew that her mother, the Duchess of Devonshire, dramatized Miss Lee's Kruitzner; and (2) that Lady Georgiana Fullerton believed that the duchess gave the MS. of her play to Lady Caroline Ponsonby, and that, many years after, Lady Caroline handed it over to Byron.

The external evidence establishes the fact that the Duchess of Devonshire dramatized Kruitzner, but it does not prove that Byron purloined her adaptation. It records an unverified impression on the part of the duchess's granddaughter, that the MS. of a play written between the years 1801-1806, passed into Byron's hands about the year 1813; that he took a copy of the MS.; and that in 1821-22 he caused his copy to be retranscribed and published under his own name.

But Mr. Leveson Gower appeals to internal as well as external evidence, (1) He regards the great inferiority of Werner to Byron's published plays, and to the genuine (hitherto) unpublished first act, together with the wholesale plagiarisms from Miss Lee's story, as an additional proof that the work was none of his. (2) He notes, as a suspicious circumstance, that "while the rough copies of his other poems have been preserved, no rough copy of Werner is to be found."

In conclusion, he deals with two possible objections which may be brought against his theory: (1) that Byron would not have incurred the risk of detection at the hands of the owners of the duchess's MS.; and (2) that a great poet of assured fame and reputation could have had no possible motive for perpetrating a literary fraud. The first objection he answers by assuming that Byron would have counted on the reluctance of the "Ponsonby family and the daughters of the Duchess" to rake up the ashes of old scandals; the second, by pointing out that, in 1822, he was making "frantic endeavours to obtain money, not for himself, but to help the cause of Greece."

(1) With regard to the marked inferiority of Werner to Byron's other plays, and the relative proportion of adapted to original matter, Mr. Leveson Gower appears to have been misled by the disingenuous criticism of Maginn and other contemporary reviewers (vide the Introduction, etc., p. 326). There is no such inferiority, and the plagiarisms, which were duly acknowledged, are confined to certain limited portions of the play. (2) There is nothing unusual in the fact that the rough draft of Werner cannot be found. In fact, but few of the early drafts of the dramas and other poems written in the later Italian days ever reached Murray's hands, or are still in existence. The fair copy for the printer alone was sent home. The time had gone by when Byron's publisher, who was also his friend, would stipulate that "all the original MSS., copies and scraps" should fall to his share. But no argument can be founded on so insignificant a circumstance.

Finally, the argument on which Mr. Leveson Gower dwells at some length, that Byron's "motive" for perpetrating a literary fraud was the necessity for raising money for the cause of Greek independence, is refuted by the fact that Werner was begun in December, 1821, and finished in January, 1822, and that it was not till the spring of 1823 that he was elected a member of the Greek Committee, or had any occasion to raise funds for the maintenance of troops or the general expenses of the war. So far from attempting to raise money by Werner, in letters to Murray, dated March 6, October 24, November 18, 1822, he emphatically waives the question of "terms," and makes no demand or request for money whatever. It was not till December 23, 1823 (Letters, 1901, vi. 287), two years after the play had been written, that he speaks of applying the two or three hundred pounds which the copyright of Werner might be worth, to the maintenance of armed men in the service of the Provisional Government. He could not have "purloined" and palmed off as his own the duchess's version of Miss Lee's story in order to raise money for a purpose which had not arisen. He had no intention at first or last of presenting the copyright of Werner to Murray or Hunt, but he was willing to wait for his money, and had no motive for raising funds by an illegal and dishonourable trick.

That Byron did not write Werner is, surely, non-proven on the external and internal evidence adduced by Mr. Leveson Gower. On the other hand, there is abundant evidence, both external and internal, that, apart from his acknowledged indebtedness to Miss Lee's story, he did write Werner.

To take the external evidence first. On the first page of Mrs. Shelley's transcript of Werner, Byron inserted the date, "Dec. 18, 1821," and on the last he wrote "[The End] of fifth act of the Drama. B. P[isa]. Jy 21. 1822."

Turning to the journal of Edward Williams (Shelley's Prose Works, 1880, iv. 318), I find the following entries:--

"December 21, 1821. Lord B. told me that he had commenced a tragedy from Miss Lee's German Tale ('Werner'), and had been fagging at it all day."

"January 8, 1822. Mary read us the first two acts of Lord B.'s Werner."

Again, in an unpublished diary of the same period it is recorded that Mrs. Shelley was engaged in the task of copying on January 17, 1822, and the eight following days, and that on January 25 she finished her transcript.

Again, Medwin (Conversations, 1824, p. 409) records the fact that Byron told him "that he had almost finished another play ... called Werner;" and (p. 412) "that Werner was written in twenty-eight days, and one entire act at a sitting." It is almost incredible that Byron should have recopied a copy of the duchess's play in order to impose on Mrs. Shelley and Williams and Medwin; and it is quite incredible that they were in the plot, and lent themselves to the deception. It is certain that both Williams and Medwin believed that Byron was the author of Werner, and it is certain that nothing would have induced Mrs. Shelley to be particeps criminis--to copy a play which was not Byron's, to be published as Byron's, and to suffer her copy to be fraudulently endorsed by her guilty accomplice.

The internal evidence of the genuineness of Werner is still more convincing. In the first place, there are numerous "undesigned coincidences," allusions, and phrases to be found in Werner and elsewhere in Byron's Poetical Works, which bear his sign-manual, and cannot be attributed to another writer; and, secondly, scattered through the play there are numerous lines, passages, allusions--"a cloud of witnesses" to their Byronic inspiration and creation.

Take the following parallels:--

Werner, act i. sc. 1, lines 693, 694--

"... as parchment on a drum, Like Ziska's skin."

Age of Bronze, lines 133, 134--

"The time may come, His name shall beat the alarm like Ziska's drum."

Werner, act ii. sc. 2, lines 177, 178--

"... save your throat From the Raven-stone."

Manfred, act iii. (original version)--

"The raven sits On the Raven-stone."

Werner, act ii. sc. 2, line 279--

"Things which had made this silkworm cast his skin."

Marino Faliero, act ii. sc. 2, line 115--

"... these swoln silkworms masters."

("Silkworm," as a term of contempt, is an Italianism.)

Werner, act iii. sc. 1, lines 288, 289--

"I fear that men must draw their chariots, as They say kings did Sesostris'."

Age of Bronze, line 45--

"The new Sesostris, whose unharnessed kings."

Werner, act iii. sc. 3, lines 10, 11--

"... while the knoll Of long-lived parents."

Childe Harold, Canto III. stanza xcvi. lines 5, 6--

"... is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless."

(Byron is the authority for the use of "knoll" as a substantive.)

Or, compare the statement (see act i. sc. 1, line 213, sq.) that "A great personage ... is drowned below the ford, with five post-horses, A monkey and a mastiff--and a valet," with the corresponding passage in Kruitzner and in Byron's unfinished fragment; and note that "the monkey, the mastiff, and the valet," which formed part of Byron's retinue in 1821, are conspicuous by their absence from Miss Lee's story and the fragment.

Space precludes the quotation of further parallels, and for specimens of a score of passages which proclaim their author the following lines must suffice:--

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

I. sc. 1, lines 163-165

"... although then My passions were all living serpents, and Twined like the Gorgon's round me."

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III. sc. 1, lines 264-268

"... sound him with the gem; 'Twill sink into his venal soul like lead Into the deep, and bring up slime and mud. And ooze, too, from the bottom, as the lead doth With its greased understratum."

Did Byron write Werner, or was it the Duchess of Devonshire?

(For a correspondence on the subject, see Literature, August 12, 19, 26, September 9, 1899.)

TO

THE ILLUSTRIOUS GOETHE

BY ONE OF HIS HUMBLEST ADMIRERS,

THIS TRAGEDY

IS DEDICATED.

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Preface

The following drama is taken entirely from the German's Tale, Kruitzner, published many years ago in "Lee's Canterbury Tales" written (I believe) by two sisters, of whom one furnished only this story and another, both of which are considered superior to the remainder of the collection.[159] I have adopted the characters, plan, and even the language of many parts of this story. Some of the characters are modified or altered, a few of the names changed, and one character (Ida of Stralenheim) added by myself: but in the rest the original is chiefly followed. When I was young (about fourteen, I think,) I first read this tale, which made a deep impression upon me; and may, indeed, be said to contain the germ of much that I have since written. I am not sure that it ever was very popular; or, at any rate, its popularity has since been eclipsed by that of other great writers in the same department. But I have generally found that those who had read it, agreed with me in their estimate of the singular power of mind and conception which it developes. I should also add conception, rather than execution; for the story might, perhaps, have been developed with greater advantage. Amongst those whose opinions agreed with mine upon this story, I could mention some very high names: but it is not necessary, nor indeed of any use; for every one must judge according to his own feelings. I merely refer the reader to the original story, that he may see to what extent I have borrowed from it; and am not unwilling that he should find much greater pleasure in perusing it than the drama which is founded upon its contents.

I had begun a drama upon this tale so far back as 1815, (the first I ever attempted, except one at thirteen years old, called "Ulric and Ilvina," which I had sense enough to burn,) and had nearly completed an act, when I was interrupted by circumstances. This is somewhere amongst my papers in England; but as it has not been found, I have re-written the first, and added the subsequent acts.

The whole is neither intended, nor in any shape adapted, for the stage[cm].

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

MEN.

WERNER. ULRIC. STRALENHEIM. IDENSTEIN. GABOR. FRITZ. HENRICK. ERIC. ARNHEIM. MEISTER. RODOLPH. LUDWIG.

WOMEN.

JOSEPHINE. IDA STRALENHEIM.

SCENE--Partly on the Frontier of Silesia, and partly in Siegendorf Castle, near Prague.

Time--The Close of the Thirty Years' War[160].

WERNER; OR, THE INHERITANCE.

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