tossed upon some water-drops[cd],
A man shall say to a man, "Believe in me,
And walk the waters;" and the man shall walk
The billows and be safe. _I_ will not say, 20
Believe in _me_, as a conditional creed
To save thee; but fly with me o'er the gulf
Of space an equal flight, and I will show
What thou dar'st not deny,--the history
Of past--and present, and of future worlds.

_Cain_. Oh God! or Demon! or whate'er thou art,
Is yon our earth?

_Lucifer_. Dost thou not recognise
The dust which formed your father?

_Cain_. Can it be?
Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether[ce],
With an inferior circlet purpler it still[111], 30
Which looks like that which lit our earthly night?
Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls,
And they who guard them?

_Lucifer_. Point me out the site
Of Paradise.

_Cain_. 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, 40
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 doomed to death--and wretched,
What wouldst thou think?

_Cain_. I should be proud of thought
Which knew such things.

_Lucifer_. But if that high thought were 50
Linked to a servile mass of matter--and,
Knowing such things, aspiring to such things,
And science still beyond them, were chained 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[112], all foredoomed to be
As frail, and few so happy----

_Cain_. Spirit! I