Lucifer—­Who never doubted never half believed.  Where doubt, there truth is—­’tis her shadow.  I Declare unto thee that the past is not.  I have looked over all life, yet never seen The age that had been.  Why then fear or dream About the future?  Nothing but what is, is; Else God were not the Maker that he seems, As constant in creating as in being.  Embrace the present.  Let the future pass.  Plague not thyself about a future.  That Only which comes direct from God, his spirit, Is deathless.  Nature gravitates without Effort; and so all mortal natures fall Deathwards.  All aspiration is a toil; But inspiration cometh from above, And is no labor.  The earth’s inborn strength Could never lift her up to yon stars, whence She fell; nor human soul, by native worth, Claim heaven as birthright, more than man may call Cloudland his home.  The soul’s inheritance, Its birth-place, and its death-place, is of earth; Until God maketh earth and soul anew; The one like heaven, the other like himself.  So shall the new creation come at once; Sin, the dead branch upon the tree of life Shall be cut off forever; and all souls Concluded in God’s boundless amnesty.

     Festus—­Thou windest and unwindest faith at will. 
     What am I to believe?

     Lucifer—­ Thou mayest believe
     But that thou art forced to.

     Festus—­ Then I feel, perforce,
     That instinct of immortal life in me,
     Which prompts me to provide for it.

Lucifer—­ Perhaps. Festus—­Man hath a knowledge of a time to come—­ His most important knowledge:  the weight lies Nearest the short end; and the world depends Upon what is to be.  I would deny The present, if the future.  Oh! there is A life to come, or all’s a dream.

Lucifer—­And all May be a dream.  Thou seest in thine, men, deeds, Clear, moving, full of speech and order; then Why may not all this world be but a dream Of God’s?  Fear not!  Some morning God may waken.

Festus—­I would it were.  This life’s a mystery.  The value of a thought cannot be told; But it is clearly worth a thousand lives Like many men’s.  And yet men love to live As if mere life were worth their living for.  What but perdition will it be to most?  Life’s more than breath and the quick round of blood; It is a great spirit and a busy heart.  The coward and the small in soul scarce do live.  One generous feeling—­one great thought—­one deed Of good, ere night, would make life longer seem Than if each year might number a thousand days, Spent as is this by nations of mankind.  We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.  We should count time by heart-throbs.  He most lives Who thinks most—­feels the noblest—­acts the best.  Life’s but a means unto an end—­that end Beginning,