Offi.

- thou hast no son.

We must remove the body.

Mar. Touch it not, dungeon miscreants! your base

office

Ends with his life, and goes not beyond murder,
Even by your murderous laws. Leave his remains
To those who know to honor them.

Offi.
I must
Inform the signory, and learn their pleasure.

Doge. Inform the signory, from me, the Doge,
They have no further power upon those ashes:
While he lived, he was theirs, as fits a subject -
Now he is mine. my broken-hearted boy!

Mar. And I must live!
Doge.

[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

Doge (throwing himself down by the body). Here!

Ay, weep on!

Mar.

I thought you had no tears

you hoarded them

Until they are useless; but weep on! he never

Shall weep more - never, never more.

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,

Increase their myriads.

Lucifer.

And if there should be

Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited

By greater things, and they themselves far more
In number than the dust of thy dull earth,

Though multiplied to animated atoms,

All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched,
What wouldst thou think?

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,
And science still beyond them, were chain'd down
To the most gross and petty paltry wants,

All foul and fulsome, and the very best
Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation,
A most enervating and filthy cheat

To lure thee on to the renewal of

Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be
As frail, and few so happy

Cain.

Spirit! I

Know not of death, save as a dreadful thing
Of which I have heard my parents speak, as of
A hideous heritage I owe to them

No less than life; a heritage not happy,
If I may judge, till now. But, spirit! if
It be as thou hast said (and I within
Feel the prophetic torture of its truth),
Here let me die: for to give birth to those

Who can but suffer many years, and die,
Methinks is merely propagating death,
And multiplying murder.

Lucifer.

Thou canst not

The Other

All die - there is what must survive.

Cain.

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

With worms in clay?

Cain.

And what art thou who dwellest

So haughtily in spirit, and canst range

Nature and immortality — and yet
Seem'st sorrowful?

Lucifer.

I seem that which I am;

And therefore do I ask of thee, if thou
Would'st be immortal!

Cain.

Thou hast said, I must be

Immortal in despite of me. I knew not

This until lately-but since it must be,
Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn
To anticipate my immortality.

Lucifer. Thou didst before I came upon thee.
Cain.

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?
Is your course measured for ye? Or do ye
Sweep on in your unbounded revelry
Through an aërial universe of endless

Expansion — at which my soul aches to think
Intoxicated with eternity?

Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are !
How beautiful ye are! how beautiful

Your works, or accidents, or whatsoe'er

They may be !

Let me die, as atoms die,

(If that they die) or know ye in your might

And knowledge! My thoughts are not in this hour
Unworthy what I see, though my dust is;

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.

Lucifer.

Look there!