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Of what is visible; and yon bright star
Is leader of the host of Heaven.

_Adah_. Our father
Saith that he has beheld the God himself
Who made him and our mother.

_Lucifer_. Hast _thou_ seen him?

_Adah_. Yes--in his works.

_Lucifer_. But in his being?

_Adah_. No--
Save in my father, who is God's own image;
Or in his angels, who are like to thee--
And brighter, yet less beautiful and powerful
In seeming: as the silent sunny noon,
All light, they look upon us; but thou seem'st 510
Like an ethereal night[108], where long white clouds
Streak the deep purple, and unnumbered stars
Spangle the wonderful mysterious vault
With things that look as if they would be suns;
So beautiful, unnumbered, and endearing,
Not dazzling, and yet drawing us to them,
They fill my eyes with tears, and so dost thou.
Thou seem'st unhappy: do not make us so,
And I will weep for thee.

_Lucifer_. Alas! those tears!
Couldst thou but know what oceans will be shed---- 520

_Adah_. By me?

_Lucifer_. By all.

_Adah_. What all?

_Lucifer_. The million millions--
The myriad myriads--the all-peopled earth--
The unpeopled earth--and the o'er-peopled Hell,
Of which thy bosom is the germ.

_Adah_. O Cain!
This spirit curseth us.

_Cain_. Let him say on;
Him will I follow.

_Adah_. Whither?

_Lucifer_. To a place
_Whence_ he shall come back to thee in an hour;
But in that hour see things of many days.

_Adah_. How can that be?

_Lucifer_. Did not your Maker make
Out of old worlds this new one in few days? 530
And cannot I, who aided in this work,
Show in an hour what he hath made in many,
Or hath destroyed in few?

_Cain_. Lead on.

_Adah_. Will he,
In sooth, return within an hour?

_Lucifer_. He shall.
With us acts are exempt from time, and we
Can crowd eternity into an hour,
Or stretch an hour into eternity:
We breathe not by a mortal measurement--