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. 120
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
soul is imprisoned in an alien and evil body. There can be no harmony between soul and body.]
