Festus · Scene 22 (2/2) (2/2)

| Festus | Lift me up then! World upon world how they come rolling on! But none that I see are so fair as earth: There is so much to love that is purely earth. Now I could wander all day in the wood, Where nature, like a sibyl, writes the fate Of all that live on her red forest leaves: And have no other aim than wandering Within that wood, and wind my arms around Its grey gaunt trunks, and think and feel to them; While the wind, sinking moans over the earth Like a giant over some dead captive dame, Whom death had saved from madness and his love;⁠— Could tramp across the brown and springy moor, And over the purple ling, and never tire;⁠— Could look upon the ripple of a river, Or on a tree’s long shadow down a hill, For a whole summer’s day, wishing the sun Would drink my soul up to him as he draws Dew from the earth. These things are in my mind, And suns and systems cannot drive them out. Dost ravage a these worlds? | | Lucifer | Ay, all mine own. Where spirit is, there evil; and the world Is full of me as ocean is of brine. | | Festus | God is all perfect; man imperfect. Thou? | | Lucifer | I am the imperfection of the whole⁠— The pitch profoundest of the fallible. Myself the all of evil which exists⁠— The ocean heaped into a single surge. | | Festus | O God! why wouldst Thou make the universe? | | Lucifer | Child! quench yon suns; strip death of its decay; Men of their follies⁠—Hell of all its woe! These, if thou didst, thou couldst not banish me. I am the shadow which Creation casts From God’s own light.⁠—But here we are, at Hell. Hark to the thunderous roaring of its fires! Yet ere we further pass⁠—stop! dost thou shrink? | | Festus | At nought⁠—not I! Come on, fiend! follow me! |