As He hath made me of the least

Of those cast out from Eden's gate:

Yet, seraph dear!

Oh hear!

For thou hast loved me, and I would not die
Until I know what I must die in knowing,

That thou forget'st in thine eternity

Her whose heart death could not keep from o'erflowing

For thee, immortal essence as thou art!

Great is their love who love in sin and fear;

And such I feel are waging in my heart

A war unworthy: to an Adamite

Forgive, my seraph! that such thoughts appear,

For sorrow is our element;

Delight

An Eden kept afar from sight,

Though sometimes with our visions blent.

The hour is near

Which tells me we are not abandon'd quite.

Appear! appear!

Seraph!

My own Azaziel! be but here,

"Ard leave the stars to their own light.

AHOLIBАМАН.

Samiasa!

Wheresoe'er

Thou rulest in the upper air-
Or warring with the spirits who may dare
Dispute with Him

Who made all empires, empire; or recalling
Some wandering star which shoots through the abyss,
Whose tenants, dying while their world is falling,
Share the dim destiny of clay in this;
Or joining with the inferior cherubim,
Thou deignest to partake their hymn-
Samiasa!

I call thee, I await thee, and I love thee.
Many worship thee that will I not:

If that thy spirit down to mine may move thee,
Descend and share my lot!

Though I be form'd of clay,
And thou of beams

More bright than those of day
On Eden's streams,
Thine immortality cannot repay
With love more warm than mine
My love. There is a ray

In me, which, though forbidden yet to snime,
I feel was lighted at thy God's and thine.
It may be hidden long: death and decay
Our mother Eve bequeath'd us-but my heart
Defies it: though this life must pass away,
Is that a cause for thee and me to part?

Thou art immortal-so am I: I feel,
I feel my immortality o'ersweep

All pains, all tears, all time, all fears, and peal
Like the eternal thunders of the deep,

Into my ears this truth" thou livest for ever!"

But if it be in joy,

I know not, nor would knew;

That secret rests with the Almighty giver

Who folds in clouds the fonts of bliss and woe. But thee and me He never can destroy; Change us He may, but not o'erwhelm; we are as eternal essence, and must war

JAPHET.

No; neither, Irad:

I must proceed alone.

IRAD.

Then peace be with thee!

JAPHET (solus).

[Exit IRAD.

Peace! I have sought it where it should be found, In love-with love too, which perhaps deserved it : And, in its stead, a heaviness of heart

A weakness of the spirit-listless days,

And nights inexorable to sweet sleep

Have come upon me. Peace! what peace? the calm Of desolation, and the stillness of

The untrodden forest, only broken by

The sweeping tempest through its groaning boughs;
Such is the sullen or the fitful state

Of my mind overworn. The earth's grown wicked,
And many signs and portents have proclaim'd
A change at hand, and an o'erwhelming doom
To perishable beings. Oh, my Anah!
When the dread hour denounced shal! open wide
The fountains of the deep, how mightest thou
Have lam within this bosom, folded from
The elements; this bosom, which in vain
Hath beat for thee, and then will beat more vainle
While thine Oh, God! at least remit to her
Thy wrath! for she is pure amidst the failing,
As a star in the clouds, which cannot quench,
Although they obscure it for an hour. My Anab
How would I have adored thee, but thou wouldst not;
And still would I redeem thee-see thee live
When ocean is earth's grave, and, unopposed
By rock or shallow, the leviathan.

Lord of the shoreless sea and watery world, Shall wonder at his boundlessness of realm.

Enter ΝOΛH and SHEM.

NOAH.

Where is thy brother Japhet?

SHEM.

He went forth,

According to his wont, to meet with Irad,
He said; but, as I fear, to bend his steps

Towards Anah's tents, round which he hovers nightly,
Like a dove round and round its pillaged nest;
Or else he walks the wild up to the cavern
Which opens to the heart of Ararat.

NOAH.

What doth he there? It is an evil spot
Upon an earth all evil; for things worse
Than even wicked men resort there: he
Still loves this daughter of a fated race,
Although he could not wed her if she loved him,
And that she doth not. Oh, the unhappy hearts
Of men! that one of my blood, knowing well
'The destiny and evil of these days,
And that the hour approacheth, should indulge
In such forbidden yearnings! Lead the way;
He must be sought for!

No more to have the morning sun break forth,
And scatter back the mists in floating folds
From its tremendous brow? no more to have
Day's broad orb drop behind its head at even,
Leaving it with a crown of many hues?
No more to be the beacon of the world,
For angels to alight on, as the spot

Nearest the stars? and can those words "no more"

Be meant for thee, for all things, save for us,
And the predestined creeping things reserved
By my sire to Jehovah's bidding? May
He preserve them, and I not have the power
To snatch the loveliest of earth's daughters from
A doom which even some serpent, with his mate,
Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolong'd,
To kiss and sting through some emerging world,
Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze
Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this, until
The salt morass subside into a sphere
Beneath the sun, and be the monument,
The sole and undistinguish'd sepulchre,
Of yet quick myriads of all life? How much
Breath will be still'd at once! All-beauteous world!
So young, so mark'd out for destruction, I
With a cleft heart look on thee day by day,
And night by night, thy number'd days and nights.
I cannot save thee, cannot save even her
Whose love had made me love thee more; but as
A portion of thy dust, I cannot think
Upon thy coming doom, without a feeling
Such as Oh God! and canst thou

[He pauses.

[A rushing sound from the cavern is heard, and shouts

of laughter-afterwards a Spirit passes.

NOAH.

No; to the cavern of the Caucasus.

[Exeunt NOAH and SHEM.

In the name

Of the Most High, what art thou?

SPIRIT (laughs).

SCENE III.

Ha! ha! ha'

How the earth sleeps! and all that in it is
Sleep too upon the very eve of death!
Why should they wake to meet it? What is here,
Which look like death in life, and speak like things

Born ere this dying world? They come like clouds!

[Various Spirits pass from the cavern.

SPIRIT.

Rejoice!

The abhorred race

Which could not keep in Eden their high place,

But listen'd to the voice

Of knowledge without power,

Are nigh the hour

Of death!

Not slow, not single, not by sword, nor sorrow,

Nor years, nor heart-break, nor time's sapping
motion,

Shall they drop off. Behold their last to-morrow!
Earth shall be ocean!

And no breath,

Save of the winds, be on the unbounded wave!
Angels shall tire their wings, but find no spot:
Not even a rock from out the liquid grave

Shall lift its point to save,

Or show the place where strong Despair hath died, After long looking o'er the ocean wide

For the expected ebb which cometh not:

All shall be void,
Destroy'd!

Another element shall be the lord

Of life, and the abhorr'd

Children of dust be quench'd; and of each hue Of earth nought left but the unbroken blue; And of the variegated mountain

Shall nought remain

Unchanged, or of the level plain;
Cedar and pine shall lift their tops in vain :

All merged within the universal fountain,
Man, earth, and fire, shall die,

And sea and sky

Look vast and lifeless in the eternal eye. Upon the foam

Who shall erect a home?

JAPHET (coming forward).

My sire!

Earth's seed shall not expire;

Only the evil shail be put away
From day.

Avaunt ye exulting demons of the waste! Who howl your hideous joy

When God destroys whom you dare not destroy;

Hence! haste!

Back to your inner caves!

Until the waves

Shall search you in your secret place,

And drive your sullen race

Forth, to be roll'd upon the tossing winds

In restless wretchedness along all space!

SPIRIT

Son of the saved!

When thou and trine have braved

The wide and warring element; When the great barrier of the deep is rent, Shalt thou and thine be good or happy? No! Thy new world and new race shall be of wo

Less goodly in their aspect, in their years,
Less than the glorious giants, who
Yet walk the world in pride,

The sons of Heaven by many a mortal bride.
Thine shall be nothing of the past, save tears.
And art thou not ashamed
Thus to survive,

And eat, and drink, and wive?
With a base heart so far subdued and tamed,
As even to hear this wide destruction named,
Without such grief and courage, as should rather

Bid thee await the world-dissolving wave, Than seek a shelter with thy favour'd father, And build thy city o'er the drown'd earth's gravel Who would outlive their kind, Except the base and blind?

Mine

Hateth thine,

As of a different order in the sphere,
But not our own.

There is not one who hath not left a throne
Vacant in heaven to dwell in darkness here,
Rather than see his mates endure alone.
Go, wretch! and give
A life like thine to other wretches-live!
And when the annihilating waters roar
Above what they have done,
Envy the giant patriarchs then no more,
And scorn thy sire as the surviving one!
Thyself for being his son!

Chorus of Spirits issuing from the cavern.
Rejoice!

No more the human voice

Shall vex our joys in middle air

With prayer;

No more

Shall they adore;

And we, who ne'er for ages have adored The prayer-exacting Lord,

To whom the omission of a sacrifice

Is vice;

We, we shall view the deep's salt sources pour'd Until one element shall do the work

Of all in chaos; until they,

The creatures proud of their poor clay, Shall perish, and their bleached bones shall lurk In caves, in dens, in clefts of mountains, where The deep shall follow to their latest lair;

Where even the brutes, in their despair, Shall cease to prey on man and on each other, And the striped tiger shall lie down to die Beside the lamb, as though he were his brother. Till all things shall be as they were, Silent and uncreated, save the sky: While a brief truce

Is made with Death, who shall forbear The little remnant of the past creation, To generate new nations for his use; This remnant, floating o'er the undulation Of the subsiding deluge, from its slime, When the hot sun hath baked the reeking son Into a world, shall give again to time New beings-years-diseases-sorrow-crimeWith all companionship of hate and toil,

Until