_Lucifer_. Believe--and sink not! doubt--and perish! thus Would run the edict of the other God, Who names me Demon to his angels; they Echo the sound to miserable things, Which, knowing nought beyond their shallow senses, Worship the _word_ which strikes their ear, and deem 10 Evil or good what is proclaimed to them In their abasement. I will have none such: Worship or worship not, thou shalt behold The worlds beyond thy little world, nor be Amerced for doubts beyond thy little life, With torture of _my_ dooming. There will come An hour, when, tossed upon some water-drops[cd], A man shall say to a man, "Believe in me, And walk the waters;" and the man shall walk The billows and be safe. _I_ will not say, 20 Believe in _me_, as a conditional creed To save thee; but fly with me o'er the gulf Of space an equal flight, and I will show What thou dar'st not deny,--the history Of past--and present, and of future worlds. _Cain_. Oh God! or Demon! or whate'er thou art, Is yon our earth? _Lucifer_. Dost thou not recognise The dust which formed your father? _Cain_. Can it be? Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether[ce], With an inferior circlet purpler it still[111], 30 Which looks like that which lit our earthly night? Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls, And they who guard them? _Lucifer_. Point me out the site Of Paradise. _Cain_. How should I? As we move Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller, And as it waxes little, and then less, Gathers a halo round it, like the light Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise: Methinks they both, as we recede from them, 40 Appear to join the innumerable stars Which are around us; and, as we move on, Increase their myriads. _Lucifer_. And if there should be Worlds greater than thine own--inhabited By greater things--and they themselves far more In number than the dust of thy dull earth, Though multiplied to animated atoms, All living--and all doomed to death--and wretched, What wouldst thou think? _Cain_. I should be proud of thought Which knew such things. _Lucifer_. But if that high thought were 50 Linked to a servile mass of matter--and, Knowing such things, aspiring to such things, And science still beyond them, were chained down To the most gross and petty paltry wants, All foul and fulsome--and the very best Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation, A most enervating and filthy cheat To lure thee on to the renewal of Fresh souls and bodies[112], all foredoomed to be As frail, and few so happy----