University of Virginia Library

Scene I

[Magus's cottage with the wood and lake in the distance. Enter Devil and takes his station before the cottage door attired in a cap and gown.
DEVIL
The starry fires of yon Chrystalline vault
Are waning, and the airy-footed Night
Will soon withdraw the dismal solitude
Of her capacious pall, wherewith she clouds
Yon mighty and illimitable sky,
Placing a death-like colour in all things,
Monopolizing all the varied Earth
With her dim mantle—
[A pause
Oh! ye eyes of Heaven,
Ye glorious inextinguishable lights,
High blazing mid the lone solemnity
Of night and silence, shall the poor worm, Man,
The creature of this solitary earth,
Presume to think his destiny enroll'd
In your almighty everlasting fires?
Shall this poor thing of melancholy clay,
This lone ephemeris of one small hour,
Proudly suppose his little fate incribed
In the magnificent stars? What have the worlds
Of yon o'er arching Heav'n—the ample spheres
Of never-ending space, to do with Man?
And some romantick visionaries have deem'd
This petty clod the centre of all worlds.
Nay—even the Sun himself, the gorgeous Sun,
Pays homage to it. Ha! Ha! Ha! Poor Man,
Thou summer midge!—Oh, ye shine bravely now
Through the deep purple of the summer sky,
I know that ye are Earths as fair and fairer
And mightier than this I tread upon—
For I have scaled your mountains, to whose cones
Of most inusuperable altitude
This Earth's most glorious Eminences and heights
All pil'd and heap'd upon each other's brows,
And massed and kneaded to one common substance,
Were but a molehill.
And I have swum your boundless seas, whose waves
Were each an ocean of this little orb,
Yet know I not your natures, or if that
Which we call palpable and visible
Is condensation of firm particles.
O suns and spheres and stars and belts and systems,
Are ye or are ye not?
Are ye realities or semblances
Of that which men call real?
Are ye true substance? are ye anything
Except delusive shows and physical points
Endow'd with some repulsive potency?
Could the Omnipotent fill all space, if ye
Or the least atom in ye or the least
Division of that atom (if least can dwell
In infinite divisibility) should be impenetrable?
I have some doubt if ye exist when none
Are by to view ye; if your Being alone
Be in the mind and the intelligence
Of the created? should some great decree
Annihilate the sentient principle
Would ye or would ye not be non-existent?
'Tis a shrewd doubt—
[A sound of footsteps heard
But softly! who comes here?
What stealthy foot invades these secret woods?
Tis some Alcinoüs or Eurymedon
Who haunts this wild and wanton Amoret!
Perchance some smooth-chinn'd Tyro just emerging
From Hobbledehoyhood's twilight, and elated
With the dark sproutings of incipient beard,
Or some sleek monk enveloping the bronze
Of his dark cheek beneath his rusty cowl.
Now will I cloak myself, and thus conceal
This grim, fantastic nose and these wide lips,
That starting shew the black and knotty teeth
That fence my jaws like hedge-stakes (I have lost
Much of original beauty since my fall),
Now will I smooth the harshness of my voice
Into a feminine croak, tuck up my tail,
And thus unsex myself.

[Draws the hood over his face