Shape; for I never saw such. They bear not
The wing of Seraph, nor the face of man,
Nor form of mightiest brute, nor aught that is
Now breathing; mighty yet and beautiful
As the most beautiful and mighty which 60
Live, and yet so unlike them, that I scarce
Can call them living.[114]

_Lucifer_. Yet they lived.

_Cain_. Where?

_Lucifer_. Where
Thou livest.

_Cain_. When?

_Lucifer_. On what thou callest earth
They did inhabit.

_Cain_. Adam is the first.

_Lucifer_. Of thine, I grant thee--but too mean to be
The last of these.

_Cain_. And what are they?

_Lucifer_. That which
Thou shalt be.

_Cain_. But what _were_ they?

_Lucifer_. Living, high,
Intelligent, good, great, and glorious things,
As much superior unto all thy sire
Adam could e'er have been in Eden, as 70
The sixty-thousandth generation shall be,
In its dull damp degeneracy, to
Thee and thy son;--and how weak they are, judge
By thy own flesh.

_Cain_. Ah me! and did _they_ perish?

_Lucifer_. Yes, from their earth, as thou wilt fade from thine.

_Cain_. But was _mine_ theirs?

_Lucifer_. It was.

_Cain_. But not as now.
It is too little and too lowly to
Sustain such creatures.

_Lucifer_. True, it was more glorious.

_Cain_. And wherefore did it fall?

_Lucifer_. Ask him who fells.[115]

_Cain_. But how?

_Lucifer_. By a most crushing and inexorable 80
Destruction and disorder of the elements,
Which struck a world to chaos, as a chaos
Subsiding has struck out a world: such things,
Though rare in time, are frequent in eternity.--
Pass on, and gaze upon the past.

_Cain_. 'Tis awful!

_Lucifer_. And true. Behold these phantoms! they were once
Material as thou art.

_Cain_. And must I be
Like them?

_Lucifer_. Let He[116] who made thee answer that.
I show thee what thy predecessors are,
And what they _were_ thou feelest,