Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/254

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226
cain.
[act i.

Lucifer. Thou errest, Adah! was not the Tree that
Of Knowledge?
Adah. Aye—to our eternal sorrow.
Lucifer. And yet that grief is knowledge—so he lied not:
And if he did betray you, 'twas with Truth;
And Truth in its own essence cannot be
But good.
Adah. But all we know of it has gathered
Evil on ill; expulsion from our home,
And dread, and toil, and sweat, and heaviness;
Remorse of that which was—and hope of that360
Which cometh not. Cain! walk not with this Spirit.
Bear with what we have borne, and love me—I
Love thee.
Lucifer. More than thy mother, and thy sire ?
Adah. I do. Is that a sin, too ?
Lucifer.No, not yet;
It one day will be in your children.
Adah.What!
Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?
Lucifer. Not as thou lovest Cain.
Adah. Oh, my God!
Shall they not love and bring forth things that love
Out of their love? have they not drawn their milk
Out of this bosom? was not he, their father,370
Born of the same sole womb,[1] in the same hour
With me? did we not love each other? and
In multiplying our being multiply
Things which will love each other as we love
Them?—And as I love thee, my Cain! go not
Forth with this spirit; he is not of ours.
Lucifer. The sin I speak of is not of my making,
And cannot be a sin in you—whate'er
It seem in those who will replace ye in

  1. ["The most common opinion is that a son and daughter were born together; and they go so far as to tell us the very name of the daughters. Cain's twin sister was called Calmana (see, too, Le Mistère du Viel Testament, lines 1883-1926, ed. 1878), or Caimana, or Debora, or Azzrum; that of Abel was called Delbora or Awina."—Bayle's Dictionary, 1735, ii. 854, art. "Eve," D.]