No More Learning

The Legend of the Ages[M]


_Conscience_

Cain, flying from the presence of the Lord,
Came through the tempest to a mountain land;
And being worn and weary with the flight,
His wife and children cried to him, and said:
"Here let us rest upon the earth and sleep. "
And, folded in the skin of beasts, they slept.
But no sleep fell on Cain; he raised his head,
And saw, amid the shadows of the night,
An eye in heaven sternly fixed on him.
"I am too near," he said, with trembling voice.
Rousing his weary children and worn wife,
He fled again along the wilderness.
For thirty days and thirty nights he fled.
Silent and pale, and shuddering at a sound,
He walked with downcast eyes, and never turned
To look behind him. On the thirtieth day
He came unto the shore of a great sea.
"Here we will live," he said. "Here we are safe.
Here on the lonely frontier of the world! "
And, sitting down, he gazed across the sea,
And there, on the horizon, was the eye
Still fixed on him. He leaped up, wild with fear,
Crying, "Oh, hide me! Hide me! " to his sons.
And Jabal, the tent-maker, sheltered him
Within his tent, and fastened down with stones
The flapping skins. But Cain still saw the eye
Burning upon him through the leathern tent.
And Enoch said, "Come, let us build with stone,
A city with a wall and citadel,
And hide our father there, and close the gates. "
Then Tubalcain, the great artificer,
Quarried the granite, and with iron bands
Bound the huge blocks together, and he made
A city, with a rampart like a hill
Encircling it, and towers that threw a shade
Longer than any mountain's on the plain.
Deep in the highest and the strongest tower,
Cain was enclosed. "Can the eye see you now? "
His children asked him. "Yes, it is fixed on me,"
He answered. And with haggard face he crept
Out of the tower, and cried unto his sons,
"I will go down into the earth, and live
Alone, within a dark and silent tomb.
No one shall ever see my face again,
And I will never look at anything. "
They made a vaulted tomb beneath the earth,
And he was lowered into it; the hole
Above his head was closed; but in the tomb
Cain saw the eye still sternly fixed on him.


_Eviradnus_

When John the Striker, lord of Lusace, died,
Leaving his kingdom to his gentle niece,
Mahaud, great joy there was in all the land;
For she was beautiful, and sweet and young,
Kind to the people, and beloved by them.
But Sigismund, the German emperor,
And Ladislas of Poland were not glad.
Long had they coveted the wide domains
Of John the Striker; and Eviradnus,
The tall, white-haired Alastian warrior,
Home from his battles in the Holy Land,
Heard, as he wandered through the castle grounds,
Strange talk between two strangers--a lute-player
And troubadour--who with their minstrelsy
Had charmed the lovely lady of Lusace.
And she was taking them with her that night
To Corbus Castle--an old ruined keep
From which her race was sprung. Ere she was crowned,
An ancient custom of the land required
Mahaud to pass the night in solitude
At Corbus, where her ancestors reposed,
Amid the silence of the wooded hills
On which the stronghold stands.