The Judgement of the Flood :: :: University of Virginia Library

And while Seth knelt, as, prescient of his death,
Adam on him the hallowed raiment put,
He said: ‘This done, the Merciful pursued:
‘But now ye have become like us, to know
Both good, and ill, and much ambition shewn,
And less submission; ye may deem to thwart
The doom of death, and, plucking from the Tree
Of Lives, become immortal in your sin,
And earn eternal sorrow. Hence it needs
The way be barred, that Life be not outlived,
And Paradise become unparadised.
Therefore, without its walls, I do return
With you unto the Place whence thee I brought,

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O Adam; there to till the ground wherefrom
I took thee.’ So he drave us forth, and left,
East of the garden, there his Cherubim,
Whereon he rode in living majesty,
To frustrate all return, until the hour
When death sets free the soul, and that great time
When for the world atonement shall be made.
—My hour is come. Farewell. Restore to earth
Earth's perishable dust.’

So Adam died.
—Six days were past in sorrow. These elapsed,
The race of Adam at his obsequies
Assembled. Seth, the Patriarch, and the Priest,
Amidst the multitudes, where now I stand,
In venerable dignity, prepared
The sacrifice of burial. In cold earth
The body of our father he entombed;
Saying, ‘As thus the chamber of the grave
Within, his mortal frame reposes here,
Thus in the bowers of Paradise his soul,
In visionary slumber, findeth peace,
Till their re-union in the end of time.’

Tears then were shed; a loud lament arose
From thousands, and from thousands. ‘And is this
The hope of man? Are all his days of toil
Decreed to this reward? Hath Adam died,
Even like the holocaust we sacrificed?
Perishes man as perishes the worm,
And, mingling with the dust, is seen no more?’

Loud sobs were heard, and then the clamour ceased;
At length, a Stranger from the Land of Naid
Rose in the midst . . and, asking with his hand
Attention, thus began: ‘Such are the hopes
Of miserable man. Knew ye not Death
Before? I knew him, King of Terrours, ere
Your generation was; for I beheld
Young Abel die, whose blood cried from the ground.’

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Hereat was raised the question, like a shout—
‘Cain? art thou Cain?’ . . He answered, ‘I am Cain:’
And, taking off his iron crown, exclaimed—
‘Behold the sign upon my writhen brow,
Branded by God, devoted Fratricide,
First witness of man's death, first murtherer.
I rose against him in my wrath, for he,
Who shed blood of the firstlings of his flock,
Was pleasing to his Maker; while I—I—
Who offered of the produce of my toil,
Was hateful in his sight. I tilled the earth;
I fattened it with sweat, and watered it
With tears, . . for food, . . all to prolong this life,
This miserable life, whose end ye see.
He ate the food who earned not; but his days
Passed idly, contemplating with delight
The soil accursed, whose stubbornness would yield
Only to labour—painful, and severe.—
Alas, my lovely brother. I esteemed
Thy life but vanity . . and what is mine?
Vanity only more laborious, cursed.
A curse—a curse—a curse is on the earth,
And death within its bosom, night, and hell,
Populous hell, and night depopulate.’

Then from the ground rose Eve; where, weeping, she
Had sate, and ran to clasp her long-lost son—
Spurned rudely.—‘Cain,’ she cried, ‘my first-born son:
A happy mother I, when thou wert born:
When I to Adam said, that I had got
The man Jehovah.’—

‘I the first-born man—
Why by another are these rites performed?
Behold, a king am I. Lo, I am crowned.
The diadem conceals a branded brow—
Ye have no kings among you, . . look on me; . .
The blood I shed did consecrate me such;
Fearful my name, and sacred made my life.

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Thou art Sin's mother—Death was my red son,
Who, like an harvest man asweat with toil,
Perspires all gore, dissolved in bloody dews—
Anon, he makes huge havoc with the race,
Long-time preserved, of Adam, the Unborn,
Yet dead. And soon his father shall he slay,
And I will bid him hail, and be no more.’

Then spake the youngest of the fathers there,
Enoch: . . ‘Why are ye silent, sons of God?
Ye fathers of the family of men?
Man was by God created, and was found
Of him, by nature ignorant, and wild,
Spread on the ground whence he had taken him:
Then did he lead him by the hand into
A Paradise of pleasure, and contract
With him a gracious covenant, that he
Might soar by wisdom, on the wings of faith,
To blessèd life, to immortality,
From carnal lusts abstaining; and appoint
A righteous law to manifest his sin,
If he transgressed. Then did he drive him forth,
To win by labour what the soul, absorbed
In sensible indulgence, indolent,
Left unattempted in a state of ease.
And know ye not, prophetic Adam taught,
Death is not final, but transition mere
To an immortal state for weal, or woe.
And while we speak, his spirit hovers near,
And weeps for pity at this blasphemy.’

Then Cain laughed loud. ‘His spirit, even now
Ye said, had sped to Paradise—'tis here,
'Tis there—or any where; but where it is,
Ye know not, . . ay, or that it is.’ Then tears
Channelled his rugged cheeks. ‘How oft have I,
In the lone visions of the night, with loud
And earnest prayers, and groanings from the soul,

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Called upon Abel to appear to me,
And soothe my spirit with his presence once,
In sign of pardon, or that I had not
Extinguished all his being. He heard not
My supplication; had he heard, he would
Have come, . . for he was ever gentle. No—
There is no hope for man. But on the grave,
The gate of hell, sits, like a fiend, Despair.’

And saying thus, he vanished; and the rest
Departed sad, a mournful company.

Returning to the realm o'er which he ruled,
Cain, the man-slayer, the death-angel slew;
By touch ethereal slain, and not by man.