ong-wrecked
worlds, and the interminable gloomy realms

Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes,

--suggested, as the author tells us, by the reading of Cuvier--leaves us
with impressions of grandeur and desolation which no other passages of
English poetry can convey. Lord Byron has elsewhere exhibited more
versatility of fancy and richness of illustration, but nowhere else has he
so nearly "struck the stars." From constellation to constellation the pair
speed on, cleaving the blue with mighty wings, but finding in all a blank,
like that in Richter's wonderful dream. The result on the mind of Cain is
summed in the lines on the fatal tree,--

It was a lying tree--for we _know_ nothing;
At least, it _promised knowledge_ at the price
Of death--but _knowledge_ still; but, what _knows_ man?

A more modern poet answers, after beating at the same iron gates, "Behold,
we know not anything." The most beautiful remaining passage is Cain's
reply to the question--what is more beautiful to him than all that he has
seen in the "unimaginable ether"?--

My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven,
The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world--
The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming--
His setting indescribable, which fills
My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold
Him sink, and feel my heart flow softly with him
Along that western paradise of clouds
The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice--
The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love,
And mingles with the song of cherubim,
As the day closes over Eden's walls:--
All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart,
Like Adah's face.

Lucifer's speech, at the close of the act is perhaps too Miltonic to be
absolutely original. Returning to earth, we have a pastoral, of which Sir
Egerton Brydges justly and sufficiently remarks, "The censorious may say
what they will, but there are speeches in the mouth of Cain and Adah,
especially regarding their child, which nothing in English poetry but the
'wood-notes wild' of Shakespeare, ever equalled." Her cry, as Cain seems
to threaten the infant, followed by the picture of his bloom and joy, is a
touch of perfect pathos. Then comes the interview with the pious Abel, who
is amazed at the lurid light in the eyes of his brother, with the spheres
"singing in thunder round" him--the two sacrifices, the murder, the shriek
of Zillah--

Father! Eve!
Ada