1822. 
One answer to all questions, “”Twas His 
will, 
And He is good”—how know I that ? 
cause 
He is all-powerful,—must_ all-good, too, 
follow ? 
J judge but by the fruits, and they are bitter, 
Which I must feed on; for a fault not mine. 
Whom have wehere? A shape like to the 
angels, 
Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect 
Ofspiritual essence Sorrow seems 
Half of his immortality. And is it 
So? And can aught grieve save humanity? 
He cometh. 
Lucifer now enters cn the stage, and 
if we allow that he is a different and 
inferior personage to the Satan of Mil- 
ton, itis a concession which, we have no 
doubt, would be made as readily by the 
author as by ourselves. The Satan of 
Paradise Lost has still a tinge of hea- 
ven; his passions are high and heroic, 
and his motion is vast and solemn. 
Those of Lord Byron’s spirit are less 
dignified and more abrupt, but charged 
as intensely with fierce and bitter 
spleen. The one seems not unworthy 
to haunt'the solitudes of Eden; the other 
sppears to have no little knowledge of 
the world, and to be most at home in 
the busy walks of men. After some 
conversation, Cain propounds an en- 
quiry as to his future state. 
Lucifer. \t may be thou shalt be as we. 
Cain. And ye? 
Lucifer. Ave everlasting. 
Cain. Are ye happy ? 
Lucifer. We are mighty. 
Cain. Are ye happy? 
Lucifer. No—art thou? 
Cain. How should I beso? Look on me! 
Lucifer. Poor clay! 
And thou pretendest to be wretched !— 
Thou! 
Cain. I am: and thou, with all thy 
might, what art thou ? 
Lucifer. One who aspired to be’ what 
made thee, and 
Would not have made thee what thou art. 
Cain. Ah! 
Thou look’st almost a god, and— 
Lucifer. 1am none ; 
And having failed to be one, would be 
nought 
Save what 1 qm-—Be ‘conquer’d: let him 
reign ! 
Cain. Who? 
Lucifer. Thy sire’s Maker, and the 
earth’s. 
Cain. And heaven's, 
And all that in them is? So have I heard 
His seraphs sing: and so my father saith. 
Lucifer. They say, what they must sing 
and say, on pain 
Of being that which I am—and thou art— 
Be- 
Cain, a Mystery, by the Right Hon. Lord Byron. 
ld 
Of spirits and of men. 
Cain. What is that ? 
Lucifer. Souls who dare use their im- 
mortality— 
Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant 
in 
His everlasting face, and tell him that 
His evil is not good !—If He has made, 
As He saith—which I know not, nor believe. 
But if He made us, He cannot unmake: 
We areimmortal! Nay, He’d have us so 
That Hemay torture. Lethim! Heis great, 
But in his greatness is no happier than 
We in our conflict. Goodness would not 
make 
Evil; and what else hath He made? 
let him 
Sit on his vast and solitary throne, 
Creating worlds, to make eternity 
Less burthensome to his immense existence 
And unparticipated solitude. 
Let him crowd orb on orb: He is alone 
Indefinite, indissoluble Tyrant ! 
Could He but crush himself, ’twere the best 
boon 
He ever granted: but let him reign on, 
And multiply himself in misery ! 
Spirits and men, at least we sympathize : 
Aud, suffering in concert, make our pangs 
Innumerable, more endurable, 
By the unbounded sympathy of all— 
With all. But He, so wretched in his 
height, 
So restless in his wretchedness, must still 
Create and recreate. 
Cain. Thou speak’st to me of things 
which long have swum 
In visions thro’ my thought. I never could 
Reconcile what I saw with what I heard— 
Never till 
Now, met I aught to sympathize with me. 
Tis well—I rather would consort with 
spirits. 
Lucifer undertakes to ee the 
curiosity of Cain, by unfolding to him 
the secrets of other worlds, and is about 
to carry him off, when Adah, the sister- 
bride of Cain, enters, and expostulates, 
beseeching him not to walk with that 
spirit. 
Adah..Oh, Cain! 
This spirit curseth us! 
Cain. Let him say on ; 
Him will I follow. 
Adah. Whither? 
Lucifer. To a place 
Whence he shall come back to thee in an 
hour, 
But in that hour see things of many days! 
Cain confides in the safe conduct of 
the demon, and is wafted at once into 
the abyss of space, where he surveys the 
endless succession of worlds, and breaks. 
forth in admiration : 
Oh! thou beautiful: 
And unimagiuable ether! and ~ 
6 
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