_Eve._ Ah me! alas! alas! More dismally in my face stares the doubt, More heavily on my heart weighs the world. Methinks The questionings of ages yet to be, The thinkings and cross-thinkings, self-contempts, Self-horror; all despondencies, despairs, Of multitudinous souls on souls to come, In me imprisoned fight, complain and cry. Alas! Mystery, mystery, mystery evermore. SCENE II. _Adam, alone._ _Adam._ Misery, oh my misery! O God, God! How could I ever, ever, could I do it? Whither am I come? where am I? O me, miserable! My God, my God, that I were back with Thee! O fool! O fool! O irretrievable act! Irretrievable what, I should like to know? What act, I wonder? What is it I mean? O heaven! the spirit holds me; I must yield; Up in the air he lifts me, casts me down; I writhe in vain, with limbs convulsed, in the void. Well, well! go idle words, babble your will; I think the fit will leave me ere I die. Fool, fool! where am I? O my God! Fool, fool! Why did we do ’t? Eve, Eve! where are you? quick! His tread is in the garden! hither it comes! Hide us, O bushes! and ye thick trees, hide! He comes, on, on. Alack, and all these leaves, These petty, quivering and illusive blinds, Avail us nought: the light comes in and in; Displays us to ourselves; displays—ah, shame— Unto the inquisitive day our nakedness. He comes; He calls. The large eye of His truth, His full, severe, all-comprehending view, Fixes itself upon our guiltiness. O God, O God! what are we? what shall we be? What is all this about, I wonder now? Yet I am better, too. I think it will pass ’Tis going now, unless it comes again. A terrible possession while it lasts. Terrible, surely; and yet indeed ’tis true. E’en in my utmost impotence I find A fount of strange persistence in my soul; Also, and that perchance is stronger still, A wakeful, changeless touchstone in my brain, Receiving, noting, testing all the while These passing, curious, new phenomena— Painful, and yet not painful unto it. Though tortured in the crucible I lie, Myself my own experiment, yet still I, or a something that is I indeed, A living, central, and more inmost I, Within the scales of mere exterior me’s, I,—seem eternal, O thou God, as Thou; Have knowledge of the evil and the good, Superior in a higher good to both. Well, well, well! it has gone from me, though still Its images remain upon me whole; And undisplaced upon my mind I view The reflex of the total seizure past. Really now, had I only time and space, And were not troubled with this wife of mine, And the necessity of meat and drink— I really do believe, With time and space and proper quietude, I could resolve the problem in my brain. But, no; I scarce can stay one moment more To watch the curious seething process out. If I could only dare to let Eve see