SCENE I

Adam and Eve.

Adam. Since that last evening we have fallen indeed! Yes, we have fallen, my Eve! O yes! One, two, and three, and four; the Appetite, The Enjoyment, the aftervoid, the thinking of it Specially the latter two, most specially the last. There, in synopsis, see, you have it all: Come, let us go and work! Is it not enough? What, is there three, four, five?

Eve. Oh, guilt, guilt, guilt!

Adam. Be comforted; muddle not your soul with doubt. ’Tis done, it was to be done; if, indeed, Other way than this there was, I cannot say: This was one way, and a way was needs to be found. That which we were we could no more remain Than in the moist provocative vernal mould A seed its suckers close and rest a seed; We were to grow. Necessity on us lay This way or that to move; necessity, too, Not to be over careful this or that, So only move we should. Come, my wife, We were to grow, and grow I think we may, And yet bear goodly fruit.

Eve. Oh, guilt! oh, guilt!

Adam. You weary me with your ‘Oh, guilt! oh, guilt!’ Peace to the senseless iteration. What! Because I plucked an apple from a twig Be damned to death eterne! parted from Good, Enchained to Ill! No, by the God of gods; No, by the living will within my breast, It cannot be, and shall not; and if this, This guilt of your distracted fantasy, Be our experiment’s sum, thank God for guilt, Which makes me free! But thou, poor wife! poor mother, shall I say? Big with the first maternity of man, Draw’st from thy teeming womb thick fancies fond, That with confusion mix thy delicate brain; Fondest of which and cloudiest call the dream (Yea, my beloved, hear me, it is a dream) Of the serpent, and the apple, and the curse: Fondest of dreams and cloudiest of clouds. Well I remember, in our marriage bower, How in the dewiest balminess of rest, Inarmèd as we lay, sudden at once Up from my side you started, screaming ‘Guilt!’ And ‘Lost! lost! lost!’ I on my elbow rose, And rubbed unwilling eyes, and cried, ‘Eve! Eve! My love! my wife!’ and knit anew the embrace, And drew thee to me close, and calmed thy fear, And wooed thee back to sleep. In vain; for soon I felt thee gone, and opening widest eyes, Beheld thee kneeling on the turf, hands now Clenched and uplifted high, now vainly outspread To hide a burning face and streaming eyes And pale small lips that muttered faintly, ‘Death.’ And thou would’st fain depart; thou said’st the place Was for the like of us too good: we left The pleasant woodland shades, and passed abroad Into this naked Champaign glorious soil For digging and for delving, but indeed, Until I killed a beast or two, and spread Skins upon sticks to make our palace here, A residence sadly exposed to wind and rain. But I in all submit to you; and then I turned out too, and trudged a furlong’s space, Till you fell tired and fain would wait for morn. So as our nightly journey we began, Because the autumnal fruitage that had fallen From trees whereunder we had slept, lay thick, And we had eaten overnight, and seen, And saw again by starlight when you woke me, A sly and harmless snake glide by our couch; And because, some few hours before, a lamb Fell from a rock and broke its neck, and I Had answered, to your wonder, that ’twas dead, Forsooth the molten lava of your fright Forth from your brain, its crater, hurrying down, Took the chance mould; the vapour blowing by Caught and reflected back some random shapes. A vague and queasy dream was obstinate In waking thoughts to find itself renewed, And to! the mighty Mythus of the Fall! Nay, smile with me, sweet mother!

Eve. Guilt! oh, guilt!

Adam. Peace, woman, peace; I go.

Eve. Nay, Adam, nay; Hear me, I am not dreaming, am not crazed. Did not yourself confess that we are changed? Do not you too?

Adam. Do not I too? Well, well, Listen! I too when homeward, weary of toil, Through the dark night I have wandered in rain and wind, Bewildered, haply scared, I too have lost heart, And deemed all space with angry power replete, Angry, almighty-and panic-stricken have cried, ‘What have I done?’ ‘What wilt thou do to me?’ Or with the coward’s ‘No, I did not, I will not,’ Belied my own soul’s self. I too have heard, And listened, too, to a voice that in my ear Hissed the temptation to curse God, or worse, And yet more frequent, curse myself and die; Until, in fine, I have begun to half believe Your dream my dream too, and the dream of both No dream but dread reality; have shared Your fright: e’en so share thou, sweet life, my hope; I too, again, when weeds with growth perverse Have choked my corn and marred a season’s toil, Have deemed I heard in heaven abroad a cry, ‘Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thou art cursed.’ But oftener far, and stronger also far, In consonance with all things out and in, I hear a voice more searching bid me, ‘On! On! on! it is the folly of the child To choose his path and straightway think it wrong, And turn right back and lie on the ground to weep. Forward! go, conquer! work and live! ‘Withal A word comes, half command, half prophecy, Forgetting things behind thee, onward press Unto the mark of your high calling.’ Yea, And voices, too, in woods and flowery fields Speak confidence from budding banks and boughs, And tell me, ‘Live and grow,’ and say, ‘Look still Upward, spread outward, trust, be patient, live;’ Therefore, if weakness bid me curse and die, I answer, No! I will not curse myself, Nor aught beside; I shall not die, but live.

Eve. Ah, me! alas! alas More dismally in my face stares the doubt, More heavily on my heart weighs the world. Methinks The questionings of ages yet to be, The thinkings and cross-thinkings, self-contempts, Self-horror; all despondencies, despairs Of multitudinous souls on souls to come, In me imprisoned fight, complain and cry. Alas! Mystery, mystery, mystery evermore.