Is your course measured for ye? Or do ye
Sweep on in your unbounded revelry
Through an aerial universe of endless
Expansion--at which my soul aches to think--
Intoxicated with eternity[113]?
Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are! 110
How beautiful ye are! how beautiful
Your works, or accidents, or whatsoe'er
They may be! Let me die, as atoms die,
(If that they die), or know ye in your might
And knowledge! My thoughts are not in this hour
Unworthy what I see, though my dust is;
Spirit! let me expire, or see them nearer.

_Lucifer_. Art thou not nearer? look back to thine earth!

_Cain_. Where is it? I see nothing save a mass
Of most innumerable lights.

_Lucifer_. Look there! 120

_Cain_. I cannot see it.

_Lucifer_. Yet it sparkles still.

_Cain_. That!--yonder!

_Lucifer_. Yea.

_Cain_. And wilt thou tell me so?
Why, I have seen the fire-flies and fire-worms
Sprinkle the dusky groves and the green banks
In the dim twilight, brighter than yon world
Which bears them.

_Lucifer_. Thou hast seen both worms and worlds,
Each bright and sparkling--what dost think of them?

_Cain_. That they are beautiful in their own sphere,
And that the night, which makes both beautiful,
The little shining fire-fly in its flight, 130
And the immortal star in its great course,
Must both be guided.

_Lucifer_. But by whom or what?

_Cain_. Show me.

_Lucifer_. Dar'st thou behold?

_Cain_. How know I what
I _dare_ behold? As yet, thou hast shown nought
I dare not gaze on further.

_Lucifer_. On, then, with me.
Wouldst thou behold things mortal or immortal?

_Cain_. Why, what are things?

_Lucifer_. _Both_ partly: but what doth
Sit next thy heart?

_Cain_. The things I see.

_Lucifer_. But what
_Sate_ nearest it?

_Cain_. The things I have not seen,
Nor ever shall--the mysteries of Death. 140

_Lucifer_. What, if I show to thee things which have died,
As I have shown thee much which cannot die?

_Cain_. Do so.