_FRAGMENTS OF THE MYSTERY OF THE FALL._[4] SCENE I. _Adam and Eve._ _Adam._ Since that last evening we have fallen indeed! Yes, we have fallen, my Eve! O yes!— One, two, and three, and four;—the Appetite, The Enjoyment, the aftervoid, the thinking of it— Specially the latter two, most specially the last. There, in synopsis, see, you have it all: Come, let us go and work! Is it not enough? What, is there three, four, five? _Eve._ Oh, guilt, guilt, guilt! _Adam._ Be comforted; muddle not your soul with doubt. ’Tis done, it was to be done; if, indeed, Other way than this there was, I cannot say: This was one way, and a way was needs to be found. That which we were we could no more remain Than in the moist provocative vernal mould A seed its suckers close and rest a seed; We were to grow. Necessity on us lay This way or that to move; necessity, too, Not to be over careful this or that, So only move we should. Come, my wife, We were to grow, and grow I think we may, And yet bear goodly fruit. _Eve._ Oh, guilt! oh, guilt! _Adam._ You weary me with your ‘Oh, guilt! oh, guilt!’ Peace to the senseless iteration. What! Because I plucked an apple from a twig Be damned to death eterne! parted from Good, Enchained to Ill! No, by the God of gods; No, by the living will within my breast, It cannot be, and shall not; and if this, This guilt of your distracted fantasy, Be our experiment’s sum, thank God for guilt, Which makes me free! But thou, poor wife! poor mother, shall I say? Big with the first maternity of man, Draw’st from thy teeming womb thick fancies fond, That with confusion mix thy delicate brain; Fondest of which and cloudiest call the dream (Yea, my beloved, hear me, it is a dream) Of the serpent, and the apple, and the curse: Fondest of dreams and cloudiest of clouds. Well I remember, in our marriage bower, How in the dewiest balminess of rest, Inarmèd as we lay, sudden at once Up from my side you started, screaming ‘Guilt!’ And ‘Lost! lost! lost!’ I on my elbow rose, And rubbed unwilling eyes, and cried, ‘Eve! Eve! My love! my wife!’ and knit anew the embrace, And drew thee to me close, and calmed thy fear, And wooed thee back to sleep. In vain; for soon I felt thee gone, and opening widest eyes, Beheld thee kneeling on the turf, hands now Clenched and uplifted high, now vainly outspread To hide a burning face and streaming eyes And pale small lips that muttered faintly, ‘Death.’ And thou wouldst fain depart; thou saidst the place Was for the like of us too good: we left The pleasant woodland shades, and passed abroad Into this naked champaign—glorious soil For digging and for delving, but indeed, Until I killed a beast or two, and spread Skins upon sticks to make our palace here,