University of Virginia Library

SCENE VIII.

Seth
alone.
O sorrow, past all sorrows, inexpressible!
O how it rends my heart, and drags it down
E'en to my father's grave. O thou the first,
Best of all fathers, father of all children
Which on their mother's breast repose, and of
Our children's children to the latest time.
—But mine, alas, will ne'er behold those locks,
Silver'd with reverend age; O day of death!
Day of my father's death, thou comest also
Precipitated thus, with all thy terrors,
To prove, if with religious awe I fear,
I reverence the Eternal. I'll go with Adam;
With him fall prostrate at the altar's foot.
This trembling hand too, if its weaken'd pow'rs
Deny not the sad office, shall assist
To dig his grave.—His grave! my father's grave!
—Ere the sun reach the forest of the cedars.—
O word of horror! dreadful pow'r of God!