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My sons and daughters; children's children; Cain's
Posterity:—God, what a multitude
From one man's seed—hiding the sun!
They stop the air, and make this cave a tomb
Already! . . . What? I bade them? If I did,
'Twas not to stifle me. Stand from the door!
Let in the light, let in the breath, of heaven!

Now I remember why I bade them come.
Carry me out among them. All the air
That mantles earth invisibly, and fills
The bosom of the world, would scarce suffice
To word with power the thing I have to tell.

My sight grows keen again: I see them,—these
The offspring of my loins:—Enoch and Irad,
Sons and companions; generations; boys
That promise to be great—Jabal and Jubal,
And my namesake, Tubalcain. My lusty men,
My breeding women and my little ones,
My maidens beautiful, my young men chaste,
My blessing and God's curse be with you all.
Lie down about me, stretched at length; behind
There, sit or kneel; and let the standers ring
Us closely round, that every one may hear.

My children, I am dying. Very old
Am I. A thousand storms have shaken all
My members; and the moments, like a rain
That never lessens, falling day and night
Throughout the steadfast centuries have cleansed
My memory of the chances that befell:—
Our sojourns and our warfare and our work,
Our triumphs, travels, happinesses, pains,
My own especial charge and vigilance
For us and ours, as well as intimate
Affection, privy thoughts and single life,
From my remembrance like a landslip fall,
Leaving the naked rock of that event
Whereon our fate is founded. Many times
I thought to tell you, many times put off.
It may be said when I have made it known—

Often I told myself so:—Had he kept
His secret to himself, our folk, unswayed
By knowledge, might have overborne divine
Intention, and the tribal fate decreed.
But I say, No. I fought God's will, and built
A city east of Eden. Void it stands,—
It, and the city, Enoch, which I named
After my eldest born,—silent and void
Except for beasts and birds:—you would not live
In houses, rooted, impotent as trees.
Why had God loosed you from the cumbering earth
And given you pliant limbs if not to roam
From place to place? Caves in the wilderness,
And in the desert camps, for sons of mine!
God had ordained it; deftly given us limbs
That He might curse us:—did we grow like trees
Where had His fugitives and wanderers been?
God cannot be escaped: He means that I
Should tell you. Fables, whispered closely, hum
About the watch-fires; and a lie believed
May sow a tribal fate more terrible
Than errantry like ours. This too, I know,
My children,—that I dare not, cannot, die
Until I tell you:—and I wish to die,
Being forwearied of the world and time.

I had a brother, Abel, whom I loved
As no man shall be loved by man again.
Companions were we when the world was young,
And only us of our nativity
To love the other for the other's sake:
Our gentle mates were second in our hearts.
Younger than I, he was the hardier;
And I in everything gave way, well pleased
That he should still excel,—and with his pride
In excellence well pleased. Our thoughts of God
Alone divided us, as such thoughts will—
Father from son, kindred from kindred, folk
From folk, until the world or God shall cease.

I dug and planted; studied nature's way;
And out of meagre grasses fostered grain,
Enhanced the zest, augmented and refined
The substances of fruits and roots and herbs.
My brother idled, angry in the sun
And sullen in the shade. At times he gazed
On Eden half a day in ecstasy;
Or dark with sin hereditary, wrath
And sorrow intermingled, frowned on heaven
Until he fell down pulseless, breathless, dead
It seemed, by fighting passions hacked and slain.
In rarer moods he wrought with me, perturbed
By mystery of the blossoms that unveiled
Such tender beauty, and with fragrance bore
The seed the earth enwombed: it maddened him
To watch how nature did, to know the thing
Achieved and not to understand:—“Shall folk,
The human fruit of blossoms that unite,
Be in the earth enwombed and live again?”

“Not as the plants are we”, I answered still
His obdurate demand. “Released from earth,
Our birth, our growth, our life are in the air,
Though when we die the soil reclaims us: God
Appointed it. But in our seed we live
As blossoms do”:—an all-atoning truth
That only tortured him. He knew no ease
In life, no respite found from doubt and dread
Except in force expended, powers employed.
Loving the heats and dangers of the chase,
Deep-bosomed, swift of foot, he overtook
The leopard flying for life; the lion feared
To meet him; from their bloody dens he dragged
The fiercest beasts and killed them weaponless.

At dawn upon an altar built of turf
And grafted in the earth, I daily spread
For God a grateful table, fruit and corn
In season. But my brother worshipped not
With me:—“I serve the Lord by killing things”,
He told me when I asked him how he praised
The maker of the world. “God's will it is”,
He said, “that all His creatures should destroy
Each other: hoofed-and-horned devour the herb
Fattening themselves for fanged-and-clawed; the night
Devours the day; the day, the night; I kill
All things that are—beasts, fishes, birds, grain, fruit;
Darkness itself with fire I can dismember.
God's will is light and darkness, life and death:
Two utmost joys, to kill and to beget,
I share with God, creator and destroyer”.

“But God is love”, I said. “Seek not for God
In bloodshed. In the rapture of desire,
In busy peace of heart by day, in dreams
By night that sweeten sleep with paradise
Discover God”.

“No; God is strength”, he said.
“Hunger and carnage, lust and strife are God
Inspiring all His creatures, strong or weak,
In their divine degree”.

“Save man!” I cried.
“Although with skins of slaughtered beasts we veil
Our nakedness, against the weather pitch
Pavilions in the desert, we devour
No flesh, nor stain our lips with blood; the earth's
Benignant bosom feeds us tenderly”.

“Like sheep and kine—big-bellied things, the prey
Of lean ferocity! Since we can kill” . . .
He looked at me askance, a splintered fire
Burst from his eyes athwart the dawning thought:
Unwonted laughter shimmered in his face,
Like heat that vibrates from the sun-soaked earth
And makes a presence of the throbbing air.
“Since we can kill?” I echoed, knowing well
His dreadful meaning. “What you dare not speak
You will not do!”

“The thoughts that teem with deeds
Fulfil themselves unspoken. God delights
To rend and tear, to lap the smoking blood.
God's a voracious God; the uddered things
And haunched, the sagging entrails are His prey
Assigned; the tiger and the lion, His fangs,
His appetite and maw. Were we to dip
Our mouths in blood, like those belovëd beasts,
It would rejoice the hungry heart of God.
And for our own behoof,—if flesh of fruit,
The blood of berries, mellow sap of pulse
And marrow of the grain can nourish strength
Like ours, what keener zest, what ampler might
A more compact, a more essential fare
Might goad our palates with and prime our nerves!
The loins of timid things that chew the cud
Mature the pasturage we cannot eat
For our superior nurture. I shall flesh
My appetite—God's appetite in me”.
“Not God's!” I cried in wrath. “The God of man
Lions and tigers in his similitude
Would never frame”.

“In whose resemblance, then?
Brother, God shaped His wanton, ravening beasts
In likeness of His cruelty—the mark,
The very soul and character of God.
So sure am I that God designed His men
To feed on flesh and blood as lions do
That I shall challenge it. You offer God
The sweetness and the ripeness of the earth
Upon your turfen table, and salute
The dawn. To-morrow at your side
I shall upon an altar built of stone—
The monument of what must there befall—
A living victim sacrifice, while both
Entreat a sign from heaven, nor cease to pray
Until God's will and pleasure are made known.
How say you? Dare you put God to the test?”

“In His great name!” I cried, assured that now
The man I loved would know the heart of God,
So human, so divine—as I believed.
Wet with the vapour that involved the earth,
A sheaf of corn across my shoulders slung,
With apples in a basket in my right,
And in my other hand a bunch of grapes,
I climbed the hill before the dawn, and laid
My offering on my altar, sure of heaven.
My brother followed, leading in a withe,
A white bull, whiter than the rolling fog
That wreathed its horns. He spoke not; nor did I.
But when the touch of morning lit the crests
Of Havilah o'erhanging Eden, doubt
Assailed me suddenly. I crushed the grapes
In eager hands, staining the golden corn,
The ruddy fruit—a rite then first observed
Unwittingly, for all my being shook
With abject fear of God, unknown before,
But soon about to overcast the world—
Though not on us the woeful shadow lies:
Accursed of God we earnestly disclaim
The cowardice that hallows vengeful wrath
And terror of the inconceivable.
It was in ignorance I crushed the grapes,
Inspired by God against my conscious will
To pour out blood before Him. Yet I spoke
My prayer—our prayer:—together children, pray
Once more with me—with Cain before he dies:—
“O God of men, we thank Thee for the earth,
For life and death, for labour and for rest,
For day and night, for seasons, times and tides;
Empower our souls with faith; direct our steps
In ways of pleasantness and paths of peace;
And thine shall be the praise for ever more,
Creator of the world, the just, the true,
The merciful, the gracious God of men”.

I made my invocation, unaware
How insolent it was; and on my knees
Implored a token of acceptance. Through
The valley rolled the mist; a pearly smoke
O'ercanopied the guarded bowers, and depths
Profound of sylvan shadow, that the day,
Unveiling, deepened; sundered mountain-tops,
Pellucid in the crimson gorge of dawn,
Above the earth like pendent meteors burned;
The Pishon would among the woods below,
The mirror of the morning streaming blood,
With amber and with beryl-stone enchased.

But God was silent and allowed no sign.
Then as the sun surmounted Havilah,
My brother, kneeling strongly on the bull's
Ascendant shoulder, bore the creature down:
His left hand gripped its underjaw, and bent
Its tossing head backward and stretched its throat;
His right implanted in its curded neck
The ivory blade, that out he drew again
Ensanguined all its length, swiftly and smooth
As though the spouting blood had thrust it forth.
His grip upon its muzzle choked the bull's
Affrighted roar, his puissance overcame
Its agony, and held it till it died,
Upon the dripping altar offered up,
Its milk-white dewlap and its milk-white flank
With bloody foliage strown and flowers of death.

Mastering his bosom as a rough-wrought sea
Recovers tidal measure when the storm
Desists, my brother tarried, vigilant
To repossess himself; then stepping slow
With majesty and grace unseen on earth
Before that morn of world-transforming chance,
He left the altar, and flung his looks aloft
Where sumptuously the vintage of the east
Empurpled all the peaks of Havilah,
And westward where belated orbs of night,
So limpid was the heaven-spanned firmament,
Between Assyrian summits darkling swung
Their crystal lamps. The beauty of the world
Rebuked him for a moment—or I thought
It did: the pause, the doubt, if doubt or pause
Began, was seen by me, not felt by him,
And died upon its birth.

“Almighty God”,
With hardihood devout he said, “accept
This blood that steams new-spilt, and this, Thy brute,
New-slain to please Thee; and bestow a sign
Of Thy acceptance that Thy men may know
How strenuous, how absolute Thou art,
A God alive, an active God, a God
Delighting in a bloody sacrifice,
As Thy ferocious creatures take delight
In slaughter and the flesh of rams and bulls”.

Forthwith while yet the coil of breath, that bore
His supplicative arrogance, aspired
Unseen in the unseen, the cloudless top
And tented blue of heaven, disparting, showed
As in a fruit that bursts, the sanguine seed
And crimson heart of glory, lucid shapes
Celestial and pavilions thronged with life,—
A transient revelation, but beheld
In vision still, as obvious as the sun,
By my surviving eyes that wait on death.
Heaven opened and heaven closed: adown the gulf
Unmeasured and aerial steep of space
A saffron flame, in figure like a frond
The wind inwraps and tapers skywards, fell
Directly on my brother's altar, lapped
The hissing blood as with a hundred tongues,
And, fawning o'er the carcase, burnt it up.
Transfigured by acceptance of the blood
He spilt, my brother laughed aloud, and called
Exultantly on God. “Divine destroyer,
Reveller in life and death, let me partake
With Thee!” he cried. Dropping the ivory blade
That broached the creature's life, before the fire
Had licked the flesh from all the blackened ribs,
He grasped a smouldering handful and scorched his mouth
With God's accepted sacrifice. Appalled
To see a man, my brother, taste the food
Of savage brutes, my senses failed, my heart
Stood still a space; then thundering in my ears
A tide of passion swept me from myself,
A thousand judgments like a gathered storm
Burst in my mind:—“If God”, I thought and seized
My brother's blade, “delights in blood of beasts,
The blood of men should fill the cup divine
With happiness ineffable”. Straightway
I flung an arm about my brother's neck,
And drove the bloodstained ivory through his heart.
He fell without a murmur: the breath of life
Escaped his grinding teeth, his parted lips;
The wonder in his eyes dismays me still,—
And overwhelmed then. But when I looked
To see the vaulted base of paradise
Re-open, and a sheaf of fire descend,
No fissure, chink or crevice, broke the blue
Immensity that hid the infinite.

Thus God refused my brother's blood—the man
I loved, and killed that he might live divine
Eternally, a part of God; for that,
Within the madness of the murder, sang
Like music in a tempest. God preferred
A bull's blood to my brother's:—still I think,
Old, dying as I am, something went wrong
In heaven. Howbeit when I saw him dead
And unaccepted, not the saltest tear
Assuaged the fiery horror of myself
That melted all my strength: in thunder drops
The sweat splashed from my brow; a core of pain
Without remission rising in my gorge,
Hot, hard and noisome sickened me; I beat
My breast; I fell; I rose; I fled, and plunged
In wooded darkness where the thicket wove
A thorny canopy. My fate, my doom!—
God had me there alone, unhelped by light,
By power and beauty of the widespread world.
Immediately the still and awful voice,
Whose accents are omnipotence, besieged
My soul and said, “Thy brother, where is he?”
I answered, as men answer God, at once,
“I know not, I. Am I my brother's keeper?”

“What hast thou done?” God said. “Thy brother's blood,
That crieth from the ground, hath cursed the ground
For thee. When thou shalt till the ground that oped
Her mouth to drink thy brother's blood, poured by thy hand,
Henceforth it shall not yield thee of her strength.
A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be
Upon the earth!”

I answered in the rapt
Despair the presence and the ire of God
Begat, “I know that my iniquity
Can never be forgiven. Behold, since Thou
Hast reft from me the favour of the ground
And turned Thy countenance away, and I
Shall be a wanderer, it shall come to pass
That whosoever findeth me shall slay me”.
“Therefore”, said God, “whoever slayeth Cain
On him a sevenfold vengeance shall be taken”.

With that God set His mark upon my brow,
Which none behold unawed or look on twice.

I have told the truth; no more remains to tell:
God's curse is on us; and we make it do.
Our errant life is not unhappy; fear,
That harrows others, is to us unknown,
Being close to God by reason of His curse.
Sometimes I think that God Himself is cursed,
For all His things go wrong. We cannot guess;
He is very God of God, not God of men:
We feel His power, His inhumanity;
Yet, being men, we fain would think Him good.
Since in imagination we conceive
A merciful, a gracious God of men,
It may be that our prayer and innocent life
Will shame Him into goodness in the end.
Meantime His vengeance is upon us; so,
My blessing and God's curse be with you all.