185 With whom God deigns to talk, and thus begins:
"Tell Me, if thou live rightly, and discern
Things hurtful, couldst thou not then pass shine age
Pure from contracted guilt? Cease to essay
With gnawing sense thy brother's ruin, who,
190 Subject to thee as lord, his neck shall yield."
Not e'en thus softened, he unto the fields
Conducts his brother; whom when overta'en
In lonely mead he saw, with his twin palms
Bruising his pious throat, he crushed life out.
195 Which deed the Lord espying from high heaven,
Straitly demands "where Abel is on earth? "
He says "he will not as his brother's guard
Be set." Then God outspeaks to him again:
"Doth not the sound of his blood's voice, sent up
200 To Me, ascend unto heaven's lofty pole?
Learn, therefore, for so great a crime what doom
Shall wait thee. Earth, which with thy kinsman's blood
Hath reeked but now, shall to thy hateful hand
Refuse to render back the cursed seeds
205 Entrusted her; nor shall, if set with herbs,
Produce her fruit: that, torpid, thou shalt dash
Thy limbs against each other with much fear."....
Footnotes
1 Terram.
2 Tellus.
3 Immensus. See note on the word in the fragment "Concerning the Cursing of the Heathen's Gods."
4 Cardine.
5 Mundo.
6 "Errantia;" so called, probably, either because they appear to move as ships pass them, or because they may be said to "wander" by reason of the constant change which they undergo from the action of the sea, and because of the shifting nature of their sands.
7 Terrarum.
8 "God called the dry land Earth:" Gen. i. 10.
9 i.e., "together with;" it begets both sun and moon.
10 i.e., "the fourth day."
11 Mundo.
12 Or, "lucid" - liquentia.
13 i.e., "Power Divine."
14 So Milton and Shakespeare.
15 As (see above, l. 31) He had all other things.
16 SeeGen. iii. 20, with the LXX., and the marg. in the Eng. ver.
17 Terrae.
18 The "gladsome court" - "laeta aula" - seems to mean Eden, in which the garden is said to have been planted. See Gen. ii. 8.
19 i.e., eastward. See the last reference.
20 Aedibus in mediis.
21 Terit. So Job (xiv. 19), "The waters wear the stones."
22 "Onyx," Eng. ver. See the following piece, l. 277.
23 "Bdellium," Eng. Ver.; anqrac, LXX.
24 Comp. Ps. xxix. 3, especially in "Great Bible" (xxviii. 3 in LXX.)
25 Malum.
26 Mali.
27 "Numquid poma Deus non omnia nota sacravit?"
28 Mundus.
29 The writer, supposing it to be night (see 88, 89), seems to mean that the serpent hinted that the fruit would instantly dispel night and restore day. Compare the ensuing lines.
30 Mundo.
31 Virorum.
32 "Servitiumque sui studio perferre mariti;" or, perhaps, "and drudge in patience at her husband's beck."
33 "Sententia:" her sentence, or opinion, as to the fruit and its effects.
34 Or,
"That with heart-weariness and mournful breast
Full many sighs may furnish anxious food."
35 The writer makes "cherubim" - or "cherubin" - singular. I have therefore retained his mistake. What the "hot point" - "calidus apex" - is, is not clear. It may be an allusion the "flaming sword" (see Gen. iii. 24); or it may mean the top of the flame.
36 Or, "origins" - "orsis" - because Cain and Abel were original types, as it were, of two separate classes of men.
37 "Perpetuo;" "in process of time," Eng. ver.; meq hmeraj, LXX. in Gen. iv. 3.
38 Quae porsata fuerant. But, as Wordsworth remarks on Gen. iv., we do not read that Caïn's offerings were first-fruits even.
39 Quod propter gelida Cain incanduit ira. If this, which is Oehler's and Migne's reading, be correct, the words gelida and incanduit seem to be intentionally contrasted, unless incandescere be used here in a supposed sense of "growing white," "turning pale." Urere is used in Latin of heat and cold indifferently. Calida would, of course, be a ready emendation; but gelida has the advantage of being far more startling.