While he lived, he was theirs, as fits a subject- Mar. And I must live! [Exit Officer Your children live, Marina. Mar. My children! true-they live, and I must live To bring them up to serve the state, and die As died their father. Oh! what best of blessings Were barrenness in Venice! Would my mother Had been so ! Doge. Mar. My unhappy children! What ! You feel it then at last-you !---Where is now Doge (throwing himself down by the body). Here! CAIN AND LUCIFER IN THE ABYSS OF SPACE. (CAIN, Act ii. Scene 1.) Cain. Oh, god, or demon, or whate'er thou art, Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether, With an inferior circlet near it still, Which looks like that which lit our earthly night? Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls, And they who guard them? Lucifer. Of Paradise. Cain. Point me out the site How should I? As we move Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller, And as it waxes little, and then less, Gathers a halo round it, like the light Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise: Methinks they both, as we recede from them, Appear to join the innumerable stars Which are around us; and, as we move on, Lucifer. And if there should be Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited By greater things, and they themselves far more All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched, Cain. Which knew such things, Lucifer. I should be proud of thought But if that high thought were Link'd to a servile mass of matter, and, Knowing such things, aspiring to such things, Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation, To lure thee on to the renewal of Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be Cain. Spirit! I Know nought of death, save as a dreadful thing No less than life; a heritage not happy, Lucifer. Thou canst not All die-there is what must survive. Cain. The Other Spake not of this unto my father, when He shut him forth from Paradise, with death Written upon his forehead. But at least Let what is mortal of me perish, that I may be in the rest as angels are. Lucifer. I am angelic: wouldst thou be as I am? Cain. I know not what thou art: I see thy power, And see thou show'st me things beyond my power. Beyond all power of my born faculties, Although inferior still to my desires And my conceptions. Lucifer. What are they which dwell So humbly in their pride, as to sojourn Cain. And what art thou who dwellest So haughtily in spirit, and canst range Seem'st sorrowful? Lucifer. I seem that which I am; And therefore do I ask of thee, if thou Cain. Thou hast said, I must be Immortal in despite of me. I knew not This until lately-but since it must be, To anticipate my immortality. Lucifer. Thou didst before I came upon thee. Lucifer. By suffering. Cain. How? And must torture be immortal? Lucifer. We and thy sons will try. But now behold! Is it not glorious? Cain. Oh, thou beautiful And unimaginable ether! and Ye multiplying masses of increased And still increasing lights! what are ye? what Is this blue wilderness of interminable Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden? Expansion at which my soul aches to think- Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are ! Spirit! let me expire, or see them nearer. Lucifer. Art thou not nearer? look back to thine earth! Cain. Where is it? I see nothing save a mass Of most innumerable lights. Why, I have see the fire-flies and fire-worms Lucifer. Thou hast seen both worms and worlds, Each bright and sparkling—what dost think of them? Cain. That they are beautiful in their own sphere, And that the night, which makes both beautiful, The little shining fire-fly in its flight, And the immortal star in its great course, |