At Ravenna Cain was also written; a dramatic poem, in some degree, chiefly in its boldness, resembling the ancient mysteries of the monasteries before the secular stage was established.  This performance, in point of conception, is of a sublime order.  The object of the poem is to illustrate the energy and the art of Lucifer in accomplishing the ruin of the first-born.  By an unfair misconception, the arguments of Lucifer have been represented as the sentiments of the author upon some imaginary warranty derived from the exaggerated freedom of his life; and yet the moral tendency of the reflections are framed in a mood of reverence as awful towards Omnipotence as the austere divinity of Milton.  It would be presumption in me, however, to undertake the defence of any question in theology; but I have not been sensible to the imputed impiety, while I have felt in many passages influences that have their being amid the shadows and twilights of “old religion”;

“Stupendous spirits
That mock the pride of man, and people space
With life and mystical predominance.”

The morning hymns and worship with which the mystery opens are grave, solemn, and scriptural, and the dialogue which follows with Cain is no less so: his opinion of the tree of life is, I believe, orthodox; but it is daringly expressed: indeed, all the sentiments ascribed to Cain are but the questions of the sceptics.  His description of the approach of Lucifer would have shone in the Paradise Lost.

A shape like to the angels,
Yet of a sterner and a sadder aspect,
Of spiritual essence.  Why do I quake?
Why should I fear him more than other spirits
Whom I see daily wave their fiery swords
Before the gates round which I linger oft
In twilight’s hour, to catch a glimpse of those
Gardens which are my just inheritance,
Ere the night closes o’er the inhibited walls,
And the immortal trees which overtop
The cherubim-defended battlements?
I shrink not from these, the fire-arm’d angels;
Why should I quail from him who now approaches?
Yet he seems mightier far than them, nor less
Beauteous; and yet not all as beautiful
As he hath been, or might be: sorrow seems
Half of his immortality.

There is something spiritually fine in this conception of the terror or presentiment of coming evil.  The poet rises to the sublime in making Lucifer first inspire Cain with the knowledge of his immortality—a portion of truth which hath the efficacy of falsehood upon the victim; for Cain, feeling himself already unhappy, knowing that his being cannot be abridged, has the less scruple to desire to be as Lucifer, “mighty.”  The whole speech of Lucifer, beginning,

Souls who dare use their immortality,

is truly satanic; a daring and dreadful description given by everlasting despair of the Deity.