No More Learning

_Adah_. Oh, Cain! choose Love.

_Cain_. For thee, my Adah, I choose not--It was
Born with me--but I love nought else.

_Adah_. Our parents?

_Cain_. Did they love us when they snatched from the Tree
That which hath driven us all from Paradise?

_Adah_. We were not born then--and if we had been,
Should we not love them--and our children, Cain?

_Cain_. My little Enoch! and his lisping sister!
Could I but deem them happy, I would half
Forget----but it can never be forgotten 440
Through thrice a thousand generations!
never
Shall men love the remembrance of the man
Who sowed the seed of evil and mankind
In the same hour! They plucked the tree of science
And sin--and, not content with their own sorrow,
Begot _me_--_thee_--and all the few that are,
And all the unnumbered and innumerable
Multitudes, millions, myriads, which may be,
To inherit agonies accumulated
By ages! --and _I_ must be sire of such things! 450
Thy beauty and thy love--my love and joy,
The rapturous moment and the placid hour,
All we love in our children and each other,
But lead them and ourselves through many years
Of sin and pain--or few, but still of sorrow,
Interchecked with an instant of brief pleasure,
To Death--the unknown! Methinks the Tree of Knowledge
Hath not fulfilled its promise:--if they sinned,
At least they ought to have known all things that are
Of knowledge--and the mystery of Death[cb]. 460
What do they know? --that they are miserable.
What need of snakes and fruits to teach us that?

_Adah_. I am not wretched, Cain, and if thou
Wert happy----

_Cain_. Be thou happy, then, alone--
I will have nought to do with happiness,
Which humbles me and mine.

_Adah_. Alone I could not,
Nor _would_ be happy; but with those around us
I think I could be so, despite of Death,
Which, as I know it not, I dread not, though
It seems an awful shadow--if I may 470
Judge from what I have heard.

_Lucifer_. And thou couldst not
_Alone_, thou say'st, be happy?

_Adah_.