No More Learning

--if it doth, we are the slaves
Of----

_Lucifer_. Higher things than ye are slaves: and higher
Than them or ye would be so, did they not
Prefer an independency of torture
To the smooth agonies of adulation,
In hymns and harpings, and self-seeking prayers,
To that which is omnipotent, because
It is omnipotent, and not from love,
But terror and self-hope.

_Adah_. Omnipotence 390
Must be all goodness.

_Lucifer_. Was it so in Eden?

_Adah_. Fiend! tempt me not with beauty; thou art fairer
Than was the Serpent, and as false.

_Lucifer_. As true.
Ask Eve, your mother: bears she not the knowledge
Of good and evil?

_Adah_. Oh, my mother! thou
Hast plucked a fruit more fatal to thine offspring
Than to thyself; thou at the least hast passed
Thy youth in Paradise, in innocent
And happy intercourse with happy spirits:
But we, thy children, ignorant of Eden, 400
Are girt about by demons, who assume
The words of God, and tempt us with our own
Dissatisfied and curious thoughts--as thou
Wert worked on by the snake, in thy most flushed
And heedless, harmless wantonness of bliss.
I cannot answer this immortal thing
Which stands before me; I cannot abhor him;
I look upon him with a pleasing fear,
And yet I fly not from him: in his eye
There is a fastening attraction which 410
Fixes my fluttering eyes on his; my heart
Beats quick; he awes me, and yet draws me near,
Nearer and nearer:--Cain--Cain--save me from him!

_Cain_. What dreads my Adah? This is no ill spirit.

_Adah_. He is not God--nor God's: I have beheld
The Cherubs and the Seraphs; he looks not
Like them.

_Cain_. But there are spirits loftier still--
The archangels.

_Lucifer_. And still loftier than the archangels.

_Adah_. Aye--but not blessed.

_Lucifer_. If the blessedness
Consists in slavery--no.

_Adah_. I have heard it said, 420
The Seraphs _love most_--Cherubim _know most_[107]--
And this should be a Cherub--since he loves not.