Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/245

] Which speaks within you.
 * Cain. What immortal part?

This has not been revealed: the Tree of Life Was withheld from us by my father's folly, While that of Knowledge, by my mother's haste, Was plucked too soon ; and all the fruit is Death!
 * Lucifer. They have deceived thee ; thou shalt live.
 * Cain.I live,

But live to die; and, living, see no thing To make death hateful, save an innate clinging, A loathsome, and yet all invincible Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I Despise myself, yet cannot overcome— And so I live. Would I had never lived!
 * Lucifer. Thou livest—and must live for ever. Think

not The Earth, which is thine outward cov'ring, is Existence—it will cease—and thou wilt be— No less than thou art now.
 * Cain. No less! and why

No more?
 * Lucifer. It may be thou shalt be as we.
 * Cain. And ye?
 * Lucifer. Are everlasting.
 * Cain. Are ye happy?
 * Lucifer. We are mighty.
 * Cain. Are ye happy?
 * Lucifer. No: art thou?
 * Cain. How should I be so? 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. I am none:

And having failed to be one, would be nought