Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/255

Rh Mortality.
 * Adah.What is the sin which is not

Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin Or virtue?—if it doth, we are the slaves Of—
 * Lucifer. Higher things than ye are slaves: and higher

Than them or ye would be so, did they not Prefer an independency of torture To the smooth agonies of adulation, In hymns and harpings, and self-seeking prayers, To that which is omnipotent, because It is omnipotent, and not from love, But terror and self-hope.
 * Adah.Omnipotence

Must be all goodness.
 * Lucifer. Was it so in Eden?
 * Adah. Fiend! tempt me not with beauty; thou art fairer

Than was the Serpent, and as false.
 * Lucifer.As true.

Ask Eve, your mother: bears she not the knowledge Of good and evil?
 * Adah. Oh, my mother! thou

Hast plucked a fruit more fatal to thine offspring Than to thyself; thou at the least hast passed Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent And happy intercourse with happy spirits: But we, thy children, ignorant of Eden, Are girt about by demons, who assume The words of God, and tempt us with our own Dissatisfied and curious thoughts—as thou Wert worked on by the snake, in thy most flushed And heedless, harmless wantonness of bliss. I cannot answer this immortal thing Which stands before me; I cannot abhor him; I look upon him with a pleasing fear, And yet I fly not from him: in his eye There is a fastening attraction which