No More Learning

O Spirits, have patience, 'stead of reverence,
And let me speak, for, not being innocent,
It little doth become me to be proud.
And I am prescient by the very hope
And promise set upon me, that henceforth
Only my gentleness shall make me great,
My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits,
Be witness that I stand in your reproof
But one sun's length off from my happiness--
Happy, as I have said, to look around,
Clear to look up! --And now! I need not speak--
Ye see me what I am; ye scorn me so,
Because ye see me what I have made myself
From God's best making! Alas,--peace forgone,
Love wronged, and virtue forfeit, and tears wept
Upon all, vainly! Alas, me! alas,
Who have undone myself, from all that best,
Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedest
Saddest and most defiled--cast out, cast down--
What word metes absolute loss? let absolute loss
Suffice you for revenge. For _I_, who lived
Beneath the wings of angels yesterday,
Wander to-day beneath the roofless world:
_I_, reigning the earth's empress yesterday,
Put off from me, to-day, your hate with prayers:
_I_, yesterday, who answered the Lord God,
Composed and glad as singing-birds the sun,
Might shriek now from our dismal desert, "God,"
And hear him make reply, "What is thy need,
Thou whom I cursed to-day? "

_Adam. _ Eve!

_Eve. _ _I_, at last,
Who yesterday was helpmate and delight
Unto mine Adam, am to-day the grief
And curse-mete for him. And, so, pity us,
Ye gentle Spirits, and pardon him and me,
And let some tender peace, made of our pain,
Grow up betwixt us, as a tree might grow,
With boughs on both sides!
In the shade of which,
When presently ye shall behold us dead,--
For the poor sake of our humility,
Breathe out your pardon on our breathless lips,
And drop your twilight dews against our brows,
And stroking with mild airs our harmless hands
Left empty of all fruit, perceive your love
Distilling through your pity over us,
And suffer it, self-reconciled, to pass!

_LUCIFER rises in the circle. _

_Lucifer. _ Who talks here of a complement of grief?
Of expiation wrought by loss and fall?
Of hate subduable to pity? Eve?
Take counsel from thy counsellor the snake,
And boast no more in grief, nor hope from pain,
My docile Eve! I teach you to despond
Who taught you disobedience. Look around:--
Earth spirits and phantasms hear you talk unmoved,
As if ye were red clay again and talked!
What are your words to them--your grief to them--
Your deaths, indeed, to them? Did the hand pause,
For _their_ sake, in the plucking of the fruit,
That they should pause for _you_, in hating you?
Or will your grief or death, as did your sin,
Bring change upon their final doom? Behold,
Your grief is but your sin in the rebound,
And cannot expiate for it.

_Adam. _ That is true.