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THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

_IN SIX VOLUMES_

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1890




ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING'S
POETICAL WORKS

VOL. I.


[Illustration: _Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett._
_at the age of nine._
_Engraved by G. Cooke from a Drawing by Charles Hayter._
London: Published by Smith, Elder & C^o. 15. Waterloo Place.]




PREFATORY NOTE.


In a recent "Memoir of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," by John H. Ingram,
it is observed that "such essays on her personal history as have
appeared, either in England or elsewhere, are replete with mistakes or
misstatements." For these he proposes to substitute "a correct if short
memoir:" but, kindly and appreciative as may be Mr. Ingram's
performance, there occur not a few passages in it equally "mistaken and
misstated."

1. "Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward Moulton Barrett, was born
in London on the 4th of March, 1809." Elizabeth was born, March 6, 1806,
at Coxhoe Hall, county of Durham, the residence of her father.[A]
"Before she was eleven she composed an epic on 'Marathon.'" She was then
fourteen.

2. "It is said that Mr. Barrett was a man of intellect and culture, and
therefore able to direct his daughter's education, but be that so or
not, he obtained for her the tutorial assistance of the well-known Greek
scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd ... who was also a writer of fluent verse: and
his influence and instruction doubtless confirmed Miss Barrett in her
poetical aspirations." Mr. Boyd, early deprived of sight from
over-study, resided at Malvern, and cared for little else than Greek
literature, especially that of the "Fathers." He was about or over
fifty, stooped a good deal, and was nearly bald. His daily habit was to
sit for hours before a table, treating it as a piano with his fingers,
and reciting Greek--his memory for which was such that, on a folio
column of his favourite St. Gregory being read to him, he would repeat
it without missing a syllable. Elizabeth, then residing in
Herefordshire, visited him frequently, partly from her own love of
Greek, and partly from a desire for the congenial society of one to whom
her attendance might be helpful. There was nothing in the least
"tutorial" in this relation--merely the natural feeling of a girl for a
blind and disabled scholar in whose pursuits she took interest. Her
knowledge of Greek was originally due to a preference for sharing with
her brother Edward in the instruction of his Scottish tutor Mr. M'Swiney
rather than in that of her own governess Mrs. Orme: and at such lessons
she constantly assisted until her brother's departure for the Charter
House--where he had Thackeray for a schoolfellow. In point of fact, she
was self-taught in almost every respect. Mr. Boyd was no writer of
"fluent verse," though he published an unimportant volume, and the
literary sympathies of the friends were exclusively bestowed on Greek.

3. "Edward, the eldest of the family," was Elizabeth's younger by nearly
two years. He and his companions perished, not "just off Teignmouth,"
but in Babbicombe Bay. The bodies drifted up channel, and were recovered
three days after.

4. "Her father's fortune was considerably augmented by his accession to
the property of his only brother Richard, for many years Speaker of the
House of Assembly at Jamaica." Mr. Edward Moulton, by the will of his
grandfather, was directed to affix the name of Barrett to that of
Moulton, upon succeeding to the estates in Jamaica. Richard was his
cousin, and by his death Mr. Barrett did not acquire a shilling. His
only brother was Samuel, sometime M.P. for Richmond. He had also a
sister who died young, the full-length portrait of whom by Sir Thomas
Lawrence (the first exhibited by that painter) is in the possession of
Octavius Moulton-Barrett at Westover, near Calbourne, in the Isle of
Wight. With respect to the "semi-tropical taste" of Mr. Barrett, so
characterised in the "Memoir," it may be mentioned that, on the early
death of his father, he was brought from Jamaica to England when a very
young child, as a ward of the late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr.
Scarlett, whom he frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on
Circuit. He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a
punishment for a supposed offence ("burning the toast") by the youth
whose "fag" he had become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his
mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was
sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage,
went to Northumberland. After purchasing the estate in Herefordshire, he
gave himself up assiduously to the usual duties and occupations of a
country gentleman,--farmed largely, was an active magistrate, became for
a year High Sheriff, and in all county contests busied himself as a
Liberal. He had a fine taste for landscape-gardening, planted
considerably, loved trees--almost as much as his friend, the early
correspondent of his daughter, Sir Uvedale Price--and for their sake
discontinued keeping deer in the park.

Many other particulars concerning other people, in other "Biographical
Memoirs which have appeared in England or elsewhere" for some years
past, are similarly "mistaken and misstated:" but they seem better left
without notice by anybody.

                                                                 R. B.
  29 DE VERE GARDENS, W.
      _December 10, 1887._

FOOTNOTE:

[A] The entry in the Parish Register of Kelloe Church is as follows:--
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett, daughter and first child of Edward
Barrett Moulton Barrett, of Coxhoe Hall, native of St James's, Jamaica,
by Mary, late Clarke, native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was born, March
6th, 1806, and baptized 10th of February, 1808.


[Illustration: COXHOE HALL, COUNTY OF DURHAM.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF MRS. BROWNING.]




Dedication

_TO MY FATHER_


_When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see
to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off
when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you
who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection
implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither
of us to speak before the world, nor would it be possible for us to
speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough,
that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to
yours._

_And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry
had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted
hands before this day,--that you, who have shared with me in things
bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day,--that you, who
hold with me, over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one
Name,--may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the
exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and
comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I
used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal
dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your
beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one
smile,--and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by
associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest
affection._

                                                     _Your_
                                                            _E. B. B._
  LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
            1844.




PREFACE

TO THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF MRS. BROWNING'S POEMS.


The collection here offered to the public consists of Poems which have
been written in the interim between the period of the publication of my
"Seraphim" and the present; variously , or perhaps shadowed, by
the life of which they are the natural expression,--and, with the
exception of a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are
printed now for the first time.

As the first poem of this collection, the "Drama of Exile," is the
longest and most important work (to _me_!) which I ever trusted into the
current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader's
attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after
considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the Drama rather
fastened on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of
the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under my hand, rather by force of
pleasure than of design. But when the excitement of composition had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and
strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from
Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her
womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her
offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more
expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical
emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense
of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the
recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of
the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence
of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile,
stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme
Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it
might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and
purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my
position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden
between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his
footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve
unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an
exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept
through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary
to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to
venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face
of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a
sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by
moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging
voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my
own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too
low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his
divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be
granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of
plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere
thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect
to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to
Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the
buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet
they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of
AEschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm
from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this analogy--the
more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer's
subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton's was his own
by illustration only,--I appeal. To this analogy--_not_ to this
comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger
may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the
weakest while she suggests the application.

On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my
dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the
close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the
introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most
reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same class, relating to the
frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me
with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When
the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar
fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their
earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve,
cried out "Profane." Yet Andreini's mystery suggested Milton's epic; and
Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work
into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough
ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the
tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the
spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and
by no means to "live by faith." There is a feeling abroad which appears
to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,
that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated
fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As
if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the
daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of God did not build a
church, by the very naming of it! As if the word God were not,
everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an
appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I
appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of
the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to
believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through
reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been
driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same
principle, have been hurried into speech.

It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being
sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the
evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened
my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know
nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that
I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of
purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a
"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the
scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that
approach them are not only of the night.

The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the
"Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary
relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the
living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he
used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and
the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper
and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may
apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the
mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great
work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has
beautifully and truly called "la patience angelique du genie;" and of
the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering
should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the
other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a
significance.

Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than
its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults
with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something
indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and
in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or
unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and,
in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my
songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language
on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my
favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public
as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value
and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do
better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of
poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too
hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses,
let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full
of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my
heart and life in them,--they are not empty shells. If it must be said
of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by
the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and
irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life
itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no
playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the
final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have
done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart
from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling
its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured
from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence
and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some
protection with the reverent and sincere.

  LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
            1844.




ADVERTISEMENT.


This edition, including my earlier and later writings, I have
endeavoured to render as little unworthy as possible of the indulgence
of the public. Several poems I would willingly have withdrawn, if it
were not almost impossible to extricate what has been once caught and
involved in the machinery of the press. The alternative is a request to
the generous reader that he may use the weakness of those earlier
verses, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening,
less as a reproach to the writer, than as a means of marking some
progress in her other attempts.

                                                              E. B. B.
  LONDON, 1856.




CONTENTS.


                                                                  PAGE

  A DRAMA OF EXILE.                                                  1

  THE SERAPHIM.
    PART THE FIRST                                                 107
    PART THE SECOND                                                121
    EPILOGUE                                                       150

  PROMETHEUS BOUND. FROM THE GREEK OR AESCHYLUS                     153

  A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION                      213

  A VISION OF POETS                                                223

  THE POET'S VOW.
    PART THE FIRST                                                 277
    PART THE SECOND                                                284
    PART THE THIRD                                                 292
    PART THE FOURTH                                                295
    PART THE FIFTH                                                 300




A DRAMA OF EXILE


_PERSONS._

  CHRIST, _in a Vision._

  ADAM.

  EVE.

  GABRIEL.

  LUCIFER.

  _Angels, Eden Spirits, Earth Spirits, and Phantasms._




A DRAMA OF EXILE.


SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from
the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are
seen, in the distance flying along the glare._

  LUCIFER, _alone._

  Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna,
    My exiled, my host!
  Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a
    Heaven's empire was lost.
  Through the seams of her shaken foundations,
    Smoke up in great joy!
  With the smoke of your fierce exultations
    Deform and destroy!
  Smoke up with your lurid revenges,
    And darken the face
  Of the white heavens and taunt them with changes
    From glory and grace.
  We, in falling, while destiny strangles,
    Pull down with us all.
  Let them look to the rest of their angels!
    Who's safe from a fall?
  HE saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon
    Requicken that sod?
  Unkinged is the King of the Garden,
    The image of God.
  Other exiles are cast out of Eden,--
    More curse has been hurled:
  Come up, O my locusts, and feed in
    The green of the world!
  Come up! we have conquered by evil;
    Good reigns not alone:
  _I_ prevail now, and, angel or devil,
    Inherit a throne.

[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank,
<DW72>s up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL
descends._

  _Lucifer._ Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!
  Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel,
  I hold that Eden is impregnable
  Under thy keeping.

  _Gabriel._            Angel of the sin,
  Such as thou standest,--pale in the drear light
  Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath
  Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls,
  A monumental melancholy gloom
  Seen down all ages, whence to mark despair
  And measure out the distances from good.
  Go from us straightway!

  _Lucifer._                  Wherefore?

  _Gabriel._                               Lucifer,
  Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up.
  Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.
  _Lucifer._ Angels are in the world--wherefore not I?
  Exiles are in the world--wherefore not I?
  The cursed are in the world--wherefore not I?

  _Gabriel._ Depart!

  _Lucifer._     And where's the logic of 'depart'?
  Our lady Eve had half been satisfied
  To obey her Maker, if I had not learnt
  To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream
  Of guarding some monopoly in heaven
  Instead of earth? Why, I can dream with thee
  To the length of thy wings.

  _Gabriel._                   I do not dream.
  This is not heaven, even in a dream, nor earth,
  As earth was once, first breathed among the stars,
  Articulate glory from the mouth divine,
  To which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly,
  Touched like a lute-string, and the sons of God
  Said AMEN, singing it. I know that this
  Is earth not new created but new cursed--
  This, Eden's gate not opened but built up
  With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream?
  Alas, not so! this is the Eden lost
  By Lucifer the serpent; this the sword
  (This sword alive with justice and with fire)
  That smote, upon the forehead, Lucifer
  The angel. Wherefore, angel, go--depart!
  Enough is sinned and suffered.

  _Lucifer._                       By no means.
  Here's a brave earth to sin and suffer on.
  It holds fast still--it cracks not under curse;
  It holds like mine immortal. Presently
  We'll sow it thick enough with graves as green
  Or greener certes, than its knowledge-tree.
  We'll have the cypress for the tree of life,
  More eminent for shadow: for the rest,
  We'll build it dark with towns and pyramids,
  And temples, if it please you:--we'll have feasts
  And funerals also, merrymakes and wars,
  Till blood and wine shall mix and run along
  Right o'er the edges. And, good Gabriel
  (Ye like that word in heaven), _I_ too have strength--
  Strength to behold Him and not worship Him,
  Strength to fall from Him and not cry on Him,
  Strength to be in the universe and yet
  Neither God nor his servant. The red sign
  Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with,
  Is God's sign that it bows not unto God,
  The potter's mark upon his work, to show
  It rings well to the striker. I and the earth
  Can bear more curse.

  _Gabriel._               O miserable earth,
  O ruined angel!

  _Lucifer._         Well, and if it be!
  I CHOSE this ruin, I elected it
  Of my will, not of service. What I do,
  I do volitient, not obedient,
  And overtop thy crown with my despair
  My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to heaven,
  And leave me to the earth, which is mine own
  In virtue of her ruin, as I hers
  In virtue of my revolt! Turn thou from both
  That bright, impassive, passive angelhood,
  And spare to read us backward any more
  Of the spent hallelujahs!

  _Gabriel._                Spirit of scorn,
  I might say, of unreason! I might say,
  That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives
  With God's relations set in time and space;
  That who elects, assumes a something good
  Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys
  The law of a Life-maker ...

  _Lucifer._                Let it pass!
  No more, thou Gabriel! What if I stand up
  And strike my brow against the crystalline
  Roofing the creatures,--shall I say, for that,
  My stature is too high for me to stand,--
  Henceforward I must sit? Sit _thou_!

  _Gabriel._                           I kneel.

  _Lucifer._ A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven,
  And leave my earth to me!

  _Gabriel._                  Through heaven and earth
  God's will moves freely, and I follow it,
  As colour follows light. He overflows
  The firmamental walls with deity,
  Therefore with love; his lightnings go abroad,
  His pity may do so, his angels must,
  Whene'er he gives them charges.

  _Lucifer._                        Verily,
  I and my demons, who are spirits of scorn,
  Might hold this charge of standing with a sword
  'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well
  As the benignest angel of you all.

  _Gabriel._ Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change.
  If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God
  This morning for a moment, thou hadst known
  That only pity fitly can chastise:
  Hate but avenges.

  _Lucifer._        As it is, I know
  Something of pity. When I reeled in heaven,
  And my sword grew too heavy for my grasp,
  Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce
  So much as the first shell of,--toward the throne;
  When I fell back, down,--staring up as I fell,--
  The lightnings holding open my scathed lids,
  And that thought of the infinite of God,
  Hurled after to precipitate descent;
  When countless angel faces still and stern
  Pressed out upon me from the level heavens
  Adown the abysmal spaces, and I fell
  Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind
  By the sight within your eyes,--'twas then I knew
  How ye could pity, my kind angelhood!

  _Gabriel._ Alas, discrowned one, by the truth in me
  Which God keeps in me, I would give away
  All--save that truth and his love keeping it,--
  To lead thee home again into the light
  And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars,
  When their rays tremble round them with much song
  Sung in more gladness!

  _Lucifer._                 Sing, my Morning Star!
  Last beautiful, last heavenly, that I loved!
  If I could drench thy golden locks with tears,
  What were it to this angel?

  _Gabriel._                   What love is.
  And now I have named God.

  _Lucifer._                    Yet, Gabriel,
  By the lie in me which I keep myself,
  Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise,
  What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts
  To that earth-angel or earth-demon--which,
  Thou and I have not solved the problem yet
  Enough to argue,--that fallen Adam there,--
  That red-clay and a breath,--who must, forsooth,
  Live in a new apocalypse of sense,
  With beauty and music waving in his trees
  And running in his rivers, to make glad
  His soul made perfect?--is it not for hope,
  A hope within thee deeper than thy truth,
  Of finally conducting him and his
  To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine,
  Which affront heaven with their vacuity?

  _Gabriel._ Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven
  To suit thy empty words. Glory and life
  Fulfil their own depletions; and if God
  Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in
  A compensative splendour up the vast,
  Flushing the starry arteries.

  _Lucifer._                 What a change!
  So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too
  Fill as may please you!--and be pitiful,
  As ye translate that word, to the dethroned
  And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,
  That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,
  Am here and will not go; while there, along
  The light to which ye flash the desert out,
  Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay
  In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?
  Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?
  Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,
  I am not a fallen angel!

  _Gabriel._                 Dost thou know
  Aught of those exiles?

  _Lucifer._                Ay: I know they have fled
  Silent all day along the wilderness:
  I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
  The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
  And faces of the marshalled cherubim
  Shining against, not for them; and I know
  They dare not look in one another's face,--
  As if each were a cherub!

  _Gabriel._                 Dost thou know
  Aught of their future?

  _Lucifer._              Only as much as this:
  That evil will increase and multiply
  Without a benediction.

  _Gabriel._                Nothing more?

  _Lucifer._ Why so the angels taunt! What should be more?

  _Gabriel._ God is more.

  _Lucifer._               Proving what?

  _Gabriel._                             That he is God,
  And capable of saving. Lucifer,
  I charge thee by the solitude he kept
  Ere he created,--leave the earth to God!

  _Lucifer._ My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin.

  _Gabriel._ I charge thee by the memory of heaven
  Ere any sin was done,--leave earth to God!

  _Lucifer._ My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon.

  _Gabriel._ I charge thee by the choral song we sang,
  When up against the white shore of our feet
  The depths of the creation swelled and brake,--
  And the new worlds, the beaded foam and flower
  Of all that coil, roared outward into space
  On thunder-edges,--leave the earth to God!

  _Lucifer._ My woe is on the earth, to curse thereby.

  _Gabriel._ I charge thee by that mournful Morning Star
  Which trembles ...

  _Lucifer._             Enough spoken. As the pine
  In norland forest drops its weight of snows
  By a night's growth, so, growing toward my ends
  I drop thy counsels. Farewell, Gabriel!
  Watch out thy service; I achieve my will.
  And peradventure in the after years,
  When thoughtful men shall bend their spacious brows
  Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere
  To ruffle their smooth manhood and break up
  With lurid lights of intermittent hope
  Their human fear and wrong,--they may discern
  The heart of a lost angel in the earth.


CHORUS OF EDEN SPIRITS

(_chanting from Paradise, while ADAM and EVE fly across the
Sword-glare_).

  Hearken, oh hearken! let your souls behind you
          Turn, gently moved!
  Our voices feel along the Dread to find you,
          O lost, beloved!
  Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels,
          They press and pierce:
  Our requiems follow fast on our evangels,--
          Voice throbs in verse.
  We are but orphaned spirits left in Eden
          A time ago:
  God gave us golden cups, and we were bidden
          To feed you so.
  But now our right hand hath no cup remaining,
          No work to do,
  The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining
          The whole earth through.
  Most ineradicable stains, for showing
          (Not interfused!)
  That brighter colours were the world's forgoing,
          Than shall be used.
  Hearken, oh hearken! ye shall hearken surely
          For years and years,
  The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely,
          Of spirits' tears.
  The yearning to a beautiful denied you
          Shall strain your powers;
  Ideal sweetnesses shall overglide you,
          Resumed from ours.
  In all your music, our pathetic minor
          Your ears shall cross;
  And all good gifts shall mind you of diviner,
          With sense of loss.
  We shall be near you in your poet-languors
          And wild extremes,
  What time ye vex the desert with vain angers,
          Or mock with dreams.
  And when upon you, weary after roaming,
          Death's seal is put,
  By the foregone ye shall discern the coming,
          Through eyelids shut.

  _Spirits of the Trees._
      Hark! the Eden trees are stirring,
      Soft and solemn in your hearing!
      Oak and linden, palm and fir,
      Tamarisk and juniper,
      Each still throbbing in vibration
      Since that crowning of creation
      When the God-breath spake abroad,
      _Let us make man like to God!_
      And the pine stood quivering
        As the awful word went by,
      Like a vibrant music-string
        Stretched from mountain-peak to sky;
      And the platan did expand
        Slow and gradual, branch and head;
        And the cedar's strong black shade
      Fluttered brokenly and grand:
      Grove and wood were swept aslant
      In emotion jubilant.

  _Voice of the same, but softer._
      Which divine impulsion cleaves
      In dim movements to the leaves
      Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted,
      In the sunlight greenly sifted,--
      In the sunlight and the moonlight
        Greenly sifted through the trees.
        Ever wave the Eden trees
      In the nightlight and the noonlight,
      With a ruffling of green branches
      Shaded off to resonances,
        Never stirred by rain or breeze.
      Fare ye well, farewell!
      The sylvan sounds, no longer audible,
      Expire at Eden's door.
        Each footstep of your treading
      Treads out some murmur which ye heard before.
        Farewell! the trees of Eden
      Ye shall hear nevermore.

  _River Spirits._
      Hark! the flow of the four rivers--
          Hark the flow!
      How the silence round you shivers,
          While our voices through it go,
      Cold and clear.

  _A softer Voice._
      Think a little, while ye hear,
          Of the banks
      Where the willows and the deer
          Crowd in intermingled ranks,
      As if all would drink at once
      Where the living water runs!--
          Of the fishes' golden edges
          Flashing in and out the sedges;
      Of the swans on silver thrones,
          Floating down the winding streams
      With impassive eyes turned shoreward
      And a chant of undertones,--
      And the lotos leaning forward
          To help them into dreams!
      Fare ye well, farewell!
      The river-sounds, no longer audible,
          Expire at Eden's door.
          Each footstep of your treading
      Treads out some murmur which ye heard before.
          Farewell! the streams of Eden
          Ye shall hear nevermore.

  _Bird Spirit._
        I am the nearest nightingale
            That singeth in Eden after you;
            And I am singing loud and true,
        And sweet,--I do not fail.
            I sit upon a cypress bough,
        Close to the gate, and I fling my song
        Over the gate and through the mail
      Of the warden angels marshalled strong,--
        Over the gate and after you.
    And the warden angels let it pass,
    Because the poor brown bird, alas,
      Sings in the garden, sweet and true.
    And I build my song of high pure notes,
      Note over note, height over height,
      Till I strike the arch of the Infinite,
    And I bridge abysmal agonies
    With strong, clear calms of harmonies,--
    And something abides, and something floats,
    In the song which I sing after you.
    Fare ye well, farewell!
    The creature-sounds, no longer audible,
        Expire at Eden's door.
        Each footstep of your treading
    Treads out some cadence which ye heard before.
        Farewell! the birds of Eden,
        Ye shall hear nevermore.

  _Flower Spirits._
      We linger, we linger,
        The last of the throng,
      Like the tones of a singer
        Who loves his own song.
      We are spirit-aromas
        Of blossom and bloom.
      We call your thoughts home,--as
        Ye breathe our perfume,--
      To the amaranth's splendour
        Afire on the <DW72>s;
      To the lily-bells tender,
        And grey heliotropes;
      To the poppy-plains keeping
        Such dream-breath and blee
      That the angels there stepping
        Grew whiter to see:
      To the nook, set with moly,
        Ye jested one day in,
      Till your smile waxed too holy
        And left your lips praying:
      To the rose in the bower-place,
        That dripped o'er you sleeping;
      To the asphodel flower-place,
        Ye walked ankle-deep in.
      We pluck at your raiment,
        We stroke down your hair,
      We faint in our lament
        And pine into air.
      Fare ye well, farewell!
    The Eden scents, no longer sensible,
      Expire at Eden's door.
      Each footstep of your treading
    Treads out some fragrance which ye knew before.
        Farewell! the flowers of Eden,
        Ye shall smell nevermore.

[_There is silence. ADAM and EVE fly on, and never look back. Only a
colossal shadow, as of the dark Angel passing quickly, is cast upon
the Sword-glare._

       *       *       *       *       *

SCENE.--_The extremity of the Sword-glare._

  _Adam._ Pausing a moment on this outer edge
  Where the supernal sword-glare cuts in light
  The dark exterior desert,--hast thou strength,
  Beloved, to look behind us to the gate?

  _Eve._ Have I not strength to look up to thy face?

  _Adam._ We need be strong: yon spectacle of cloud
  Which seals the gate up to the final doom,
  Is God's seal manifest. There seem to lie
  A hundred thunders in it, dark and dead;
  The unmolten lightnings vein it motionless;
  And, outward from its depth, the self-moved sword
  Swings slow its awful gnomon of red fire
  From side to side, in pendulous horror slow,
  Across the stagnant ghastly glare thrown flat
  On the intermediate ground from that to this.
  The angelic hosts, the archangelic pomps,
  Thrones, dominations, princedoms, rank on rank,
  Rising sublimely to the feet of God,
  On either side and overhead the gate,
  Show like a glittering and sustained smoke
  Drawn to an apex. That their faces shine
  Betwixt the solemn clasping of their wings
  Clasped high to a silver point above their heads,--
  We only guess from hence, and not discern.

  _Eve._ Though we were near enough to see them shine,
  The shadow on thy face were awfuller,
  To me, at least,--to me--than all their light.

  _Adam._ What is this, Eve? thou droppest heavily
  In a heap earthward, and thy body heaves
  Under the golden floodings of thine hair!

  _Eve._ O Adam, Adam! by that name of Eve--
  Thine Eve, thy life--which suits me little now,
  Seeing that I now confess myself thy death
  And thine undoer, as the snake was mine,--
  I do adjure thee, put me straight away,
  Together with my name! Sweet, punish me!
  O Love, be just! and, ere we pass beyond
  The light cast outward by the fiery sword,
  Into the dark which earth must be to us,
  Bruise my head with thy foot,--as the curse said
  My seed shall the first tempter's! strike with curse,
  As God struck in the garden! and as HE,
  Being satisfied with justice and with wrath,
  Did roll his thunder gentler at the close,--
  Thou, peradventure, mayst at last recoil
  To some soft need of mercy. Strike, my lord!
  _I_, also, after tempting, writhe on the ground,
  And I would feed on ashes from thine hand,
  As suits me, O my tempted!

  _Adam._                      My beloved,
  Mine Eve and life--I have no other name
  For thee or for the sun than what ye are,
  My utter life and light! If we have fallen,
  It is that we have sinned,--we: God is just;
  And, since his curse doth comprehend us both,
  It must be that his balance holds the weights
  Of first and last sin on a level. What!
  Shall I who had not virtue to stand straight
  Among the hills of Eden, here assume
  To mend the justice of the perfect God,
  By piling up a curse upon his curse,
  Against thee--thee?

  _Eve._                For so, perchance, thy God,
  Might take thee into grace for scorning me;
  Thy wrath against the sinner giving proof
  Of inward abrogation of the sin:
  And so, the blessed angels might come down
  And walk with thee as erst,--I think they would,--
  Because I was not near to make them sad
  Or soil the rustling of their innocence.

  _Adam._ They know me. I am deepest in the guilt,
  If last in the transgression.

  _Eve._                Thou!

  _Adam._                            If God,
  Who gave the right and joyaunce of the world
  Both unto thee and me,--gave thee to me,
  The best gift last, the last sin was the worst,
  Which sinned against more complement of gifts
  And grace of giving. God! I render back
  Strong benediction and perpetual praise
  From mortal feeble lips (as incense-smoke,
  Out of a little censer, may fill heaven),
  That thou, in striking my benumbed hands
  And forcing them to drop all other boons
  Of beauty and dominion and delight,--
  Hast left this well-beloved Eve, this life
  Within life, this best gift between their palms,
  In gracious compensation!

  _Eve._                       Is it thy voice?
  Or some saluting angel's--calling home
  My feet into the garden?

  _Adam._                    O my God!
  I, standing here between the glory and dark,--
  The glory of thy wrath projected forth
  From Eden's wall, the dark of our distress
  Which settles a step off in that drear world--
  Lift up to thee the hands from whence hath fallen
  Only creation's sceptre,--thanking thee
  That rather thou hast cast me out with _her_
  Than left me lorn of her in Paradise,
  With angel looks and angel songs around
  To show the absence of her eyes and voice,
  And make society full desertness
  Without her use in comfort!

  _Eve._                     Where is loss?
  Am I in Eden? can another speak
  Mine own love's tongue?

  _Adam._                     Because with _her_, I stand
  Upright, as far as can be in this fall,
  And look away from heaven which doth accuse,
  And look away from earth which doth convict,
  Into her face, and crown my discrowned brow
  Out of her love, and put the thought of her
  Around me, for an Eden full of birds,
  And lift her body up--thus--to my heart,
  And with my lips upon her lips,--thus, thus,--
  Do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath
  Which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides
  But overtops this grief.

  _Eve._                   I am renewed.
  My eyes grow with the light which is in thine;
  The silence of my heart is full of sound.
  Hold me up--so! Because I comprehend
  This human love, I shall not be afraid
  Of any human death; and yet because
  I know this strength of love, I seem to know
  Death's strength by that same sign. Kiss on my lips,
  To shut the door close on my rising soul,--
  Lest it pass outwards in astonishment
  And leave thee lonely!

  _Adam._                   Yet thou liest, Eve,
  Bent heavily on thyself across mine arm,
  Thy face flat to the sky.

  _Eve._                    Ay, and the tears
  Running, as it might seem, my life from me,
  They run so fast and warm. Let me lie so,
  And weep so, as if in a dream or prayer,
  Unfastening, clasp by clasp, the hard tight thought
  Which clipped my heart and showed me evermore
  Loathed of thy justice as I loathe the snake,
  And as the pure ones loathe our sin. To-day,
  All day, beloved, as we fled across
  This desolating radiance cast by swords
  Not suns,--my lips prayed soundless to myself,
  Striking against each other--"O Lord God!"
  ('Twas so I prayed) "I ask Thee by my sin,
  "And by thy curse, and by thy blameless heavens,
  "Make dreadful haste to hide me from thy face
  "And from the face of my beloved here
  "For whom I am no helpmeet, quick away
  "Into the new dark mystery of death!
  "I will lie still there, I will make no plaint,
  "I will not sigh, nor sob, nor speak a word,
  "Nor struggle to come back beneath the sun
  "Where peradventure I might sin anew
  "Against thy mercy and his pleasure. Death,
  "O death, whatever it be, is good enough
  "For such as I am: while for Adam here,
  "No voice shall say again, in heaven or earth,
  "_It is not good for him to be alone_."

  _Adam._ And was it good for such a prayer to pass,
  My unkind Eve, betwixt our mutual lives?
  If I am exiled, must I be bereaved?

  _Eve._ 'Twas an ill prayer: it shall be prayed no more;
  And God did use it like a foolishness,
  Giving no answer. Now my heart has grown
  Too high and strong for such a foolish prayer,
  Love makes it strong and since I was the first
  In the transgression, with a steady foot
  I will be first to tread from this sword-glare
  Into the outer darkness of the waste,--
  And thus I do it.

  _Adam._            Thus I follow thee,
  As erewhile in the sin.--What sounds! what sounds!
  I feel a music which comes straight from heaven,
  As tender as a watering dew.

  _Eve._                        I think
  That angels--not those guarding Paradise,--
  But the love-angels, who came erst to us,
  And when we said 'GOD,' fainted unawares
  Back from our mortal presence unto God,
  (As if he drew them inward in a breath)
  His name being heard of them,--I think that they
  With sliding voices lean from heavenly towers,
  Invisible but gracious. Hark--how soft!


CHORUS OF INVISIBLE ANGELS.

_Faint and tender._

    Mortal man and woman,
      Go upon your travel!
    Heaven assist the human
      Smoothly to unravel
    All that web of pain
      Wherein ye are holden.
    Do ye know our voices
      Chanting down the Golden?
    Do ye guess our choice is,
      Being unbeholden,
    To be hearkened by you yet again?

    This pure door of opal
      God hath shut between us,--
    Us, his shining people,
      You, who once have seen us
    And are blinded new!
      Yet, across the doorway,
    Past the silence reaching,
      Farewells evermore may,
    Blessing in the teaching,
      Glide from us to you.

  _First Semichorus._
    Think how erst your Eden,
    Day on day succeeding,
      With our presence glowed.
    We came as if the Heavens were bowed
      To a milder music rare.
    Ye saw us in our solemn treading,
      Treading down the steps of cloud,
    While our wings, outspreading
      Double calms of whiteness,
      Dropped superfluous brightness
    Down from stair to stair.

  _Second Semichorus._
    Or oft, abrupt though tender,
      While ye gazed on space,
    We flashed our angel-splendour
      In either human face.
    With mystic lilies in our hands,
    From the atmospheric bands
      Breaking with a sudden grace,
    We took you unaware!
      While our feet struck glories
    Outward, smooth and fair,
      Which we stood on floorwise,
    Platformed in mid-air.

  _First Semichorus._
    Or oft, when Heaven-descended,
      Stood we in our wondering sight
      In a mute apocalypse
      With dumb vibrations on our lips
    From hosannas ended,
      And grand half-vanishings
      Of the empyreal things
        Within our eyes belated,
    Till the heavenly Infinite
      Falling off from the Created,
    Left our inward contemplation
    Opened into ministration.

  _Chorus._
    Then upon our axle turning
      Of great joy to sympathy,
    We sang out the morning
      Broadening up the sky,
        Or we drew
        Our music through
  The noontide's hush and heat and shine,
  Informed with our intense Divine:
    Interrupted vital notes
      Palpitating hither, thither,
      Burning out into the aether,
    Sensible like fiery motes.
    Or, whenever twilight drifted
      Through the cedar masses,
    The globed sun we lifted,
    Trailing purple, trailing gold
      Out between the passes
    Of the mountains manifold,
      To anthems slowly sung:
    While he,--aweary, half in swoon
    For joy to hear our climbing tune
    Transpierce the stars' concentric rings,--
      The burden of his glory flung
    In broken lights upon our wings.

[_The chant dies away confusedly, and LUCIFER appears._

  _Lucifer._ Now may all fruits be pleasant to thy lips,
  Beautiful Eve! The times have somewhat changed
  Since thou and I had talk beneath a tree,
  Albeit ye are not gods yet.
  _Eve._                     Adam! hold
  My right hand strongly! It is Lucifer--
  And we have love to lose.

  _Adam._                   I' the name of God,
  Go apart from us, O thou Lucifer!
  And leave us to the desert thou hast made
  Out of thy treason. Bring no serpent-slime
  Athwart this path kept holy to our tears!
  Or we may curse thee with their bitterness.

  _Lucifer._ Curse freely! curses thicken. Why, this Eve
  Who thought me once part worthy of her ear
  And somewhat wiser than the other beasts,--
  Drawing together her large globes of eyes,
  The light of which is throbbing in and out
  Their steadfast continuity of gaze,--
  Knots her fair eyebrows in so hard a knot,
  And down from her white heights of womanhood
  Looks on me so amazed,--I scarce should fear
  To wager such an apple as she plucked
  Against one riper from the tree of life,
  That she could curse too--as a woman may--
  Smooth in the vowels.

  _Eve._                   So--speak wickedly!
  I like it best so. Let thy words be wounds,--
  For, so, I shall not fear thy power to hurt.
  Trench on the forms of good by open ill--
  For, so, I shall wax strong and grand with scorn,
  Scorning myself for ever trusting thee
  As far as thinking, ere a snake ate dust,
  He could speak wisdom.

  _Lucifer._                Our new gods, it seems,
  Deal more in thunders than in courtesies.
  And, sooth, mine own Olympus, which anon
  I shall build up to loud-voiced imagery
  From all the wandering visions of the world,
  May show worse railing than our lady Eve
  Pours o'er the rounding of her argent arm.
  But why should this be? Adam pardoned Eve.

  _Adam._ Adam loved Eve. Jehovah pardon both!

  _Eve._ Adam forgave Eve--because loving Eve.

  _Lucifer._ So, well. Yet Adam was undone of Eve,
  As both were by the snake. Therefore forgive,
  In like wise, fellow-temptress, the poor snake--
  Who stung there, not so poorly!

[_Aside._

  _Eve._                        Hold thy wrath,
  Beloved Adam! let me answer him;
  For this time he speaks truth, which we should hear,
  And asks for mercy, which I most should grant,
  In like wise, as he tells us--in like wise!
  And therefore I thee pardon, Lucifer,
  As freely as the streams of Eden flowed
  When we were happy by them. So, depart;
  Leave us to walk the remnant of our time
  Out mildly in the desert. Do not seek
  To harm us any more or scoff at us,
  Or ere the dust be laid upon our face,
  To find there the communion of the dust
  And issue of the dust,--Go!

  _Adam._                    At once, go!

  _Lucifer._ Forgive! and go! Ye images of clay,
  Shrunk somewhat in the mould,--what jest is this?
  What words are these to use? By what a thought
  Conceive ye of me? Yesterday--a snake!
  To-day--what?

  _Adam._         A strong spirit.

  _Eve._                          A sad spirit.

  _Adam._ Perhaps a fallen angel.--Who shall say!

  _Lucifer._ Who told thee, Adam?

  _Adam._                       Thou! The prodigy
  Of thy vast brows and melancholy eyes
  Which comprehend the heights of some great fall.
  I think that thou hast one day worn a crown
  Under the eyes of God.

  _Lucifer._             And why of God?

  _Adam._ It were no crown else. Verily, I think
  Thou'rt fallen far. I had not yesterday
  Said it so surely, but I know to-day
  Grief by grief, sin by sin.

  _Lucifer._             A crown, by a crown.

  _Adam._ Ay, mock me! now I know more than I knew:
  Now I know that thou art fallen below hope
  Of final re-ascent.

  _Lucifer._         Because?

  _Adam._                       Because
  A spirit who expected to see God
  Though at the last point of a million years,
  Could dare no mockery of a ruined man
  Such as this Adam.

  _Lucifer._            Who is high and bold--
  Be it said passing!--of a good red clay
  Discovered on some top of Lebanon,
  Or haply of Aornus, beyond sweep
  Of the black eagle's wing! A furlong lower
  Had made a meeker king for Eden. Soh!
  Is it not possible, by sin and grief
  (To give the things your names) that spirits should rise
  Instead of falling?

  _Adam._            Most impossible.
  The Highest being the Holy and the Glad,
  Whoever rises must approach delight
  And sanctity in the act.

  _Lucifer._               Ha, my clay-king!
  Thou wilt not rule by wisdom very long
  The after generations. Earth, methinks,
  Will disinherit thy philosophy
  For a new doctrine suited to thine heirs,
  And class these present dogmas with the rest
  Of the old-world traditions, Eden fruits
  And Saurian fossils.

  _Eve._                Speak no more with him,
  Beloved! it is not good to speak with him.
  Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more!
  We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn,
  Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting,
  Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft,
  We would be alone.--Go!

  _Lucifer._                    Ah! ye talk the same,
  All of you--spirits and clay--go, and depart!
  In Heaven they said so, and at Eden's gate,
  And here, reiterant, in the wilderness.
  None saith, Stay with me, for thy face is fair!
  None saith, Stay with me, for thy voice is sweet!
  And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.
  Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?

  _Eve._ Thou hast a glorious darkness.

  _Lucifer._                           Nothing more?

  _Eve._ I think, no more.

  _Lucifer._         False Heart--thou thinkest more!
  Thou canst not choose but think, as I praise God,
  Unwillingly but fully, that I stand
  Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves
  Were fashioned very good at best, so _we_
  Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word
  Which thrilled behind us, God himself being moved
  When that august work of a perfect shape,
  His dignities of sovran angel-hood,
  Swept out into the universe,--divine
  With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods,
  And silver-solemn clash of cymbal wings.
  Whereof was I, in motion and in form,
  A part not poorest. And yet,--yet, perhaps,
  This beauty which I speak of, is not here,
  As God's voice is not here, nor even my crown--
  I do not know. What is this thought or thing
  Which I call beauty? Is it thought, or thing?
  Is it a thought accepted for a thing?
  Or both? or neither?--a pretext--a word?
  Its meaning flutters in me like a flame
  Under my own breath, my perceptions reel
  For evermore around it, and fall off,
  As if it too were holy.

  _Eve._              Which it is.

  _Adam._ The essence of all beauty, I call love.
  The attribute, the evidence, and end,
  The consummation to the inward sense,
  Of beauty apprehended from without,
  I still call love. As form, when colourless,
  Is nothing to the eye,--that pine-tree there,
  Without its black and green, being all a blank,--
  So, without love, is beauty undiscerned
  In man or angel. Angel! rather ask
  What love is in thee, what love moves to thee,
  And what collateral love moves on with thee;
  Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.

  _Lucifer._ Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love
  I darken to the image. Beauty--love!

[_He fades away, while a low music sounds._

  _Adam._ Thou art pale, Eve.

  _Eve._                           The precipice of ill
  Down this colossal nature, dizzies me:
  And, hark! the starry harmony remote
  Seems measuring the heights from whence he fell.

  _Adam._ Think that we have not fallen so! By the hope
  And aspiration, by the love and faith,
  We do exceed the stature of this angel.

  _Eve._ Happier we are than he is, by the death.

  _Adam._ Or rather, by the life of the Lord God!
  How dim the angel grows, as if that blast
  Of music swept him back into the dark.

[_The music is stronger, gathering itself into uncertain articulation_

  _Eve._ It throbs in on us like a plaintive heart,
  Pressing, with slow pulsations, vibrative,
  Its gradual sweetness through the yielding air,
  To such expression as the stars may use,
  Most starry-sweet and strange! With every note
  That grows more loud, the angel grows more dim,
  Receding in proportion to approach,
  Until he stand afar,--a shade.

  _Adam._                 Now, words.


SONG OF THE MORNING STAR TO LUCIFER.

_He fades utterly away and vanishes, as it proceeds._

      Mine orbed image sinks
        Back from thee, back from thee,
      As thou art fallen, methinks,
        Back from me, back from me.
          O my light-bearer,
          Could another fairer
          Lack to thee, lack to thee?
            Ah, ah, Heosphoros!
  I loved thee with the fiery love of stars
  Who love by burning, and by loving move,
  Too near the throned Jehovah not to love.
            Ah, ah, Heosphoros!
  Their brows flash fast on me from gliding cars,
      Pale-passioned for my loss.
            Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

        Mine orbed heats drop cold
          Down from thee, down from thee,
        As fell thy grace of old
          Down from me, down from me,
            O my light-bearer,
            Is another fairer
          Won to thee, won to thee?
            Ah, ah, Heosphoros,
            Great love preceded loss,
          Known to thee, known to thee.
                Ah, ah!
  Thou, breathing thy communicable grace
            Of life into my light,
  Mine astral faces, from thine angel face,
              Hast inly fed,
  And flooded me with radiance overmuch
              From thy pure height.
                    Ah, ah!
  Thou, with calm, floating pinions both ways spread,
        Erect, irradiated,
        Didst sting my wheel of glory
        On, on before thee
  Along the Godlight by a quickening touch!
                    Ha, ha!
  Around, around the firmamental ocean
  I swam expanding with delirious fire!
  Around, around, around, in blind desire
  To be drawn upward to the Infinite--
                    Ha, ha!

  Until, the motion flinging out the motion
    To a keen whirl of passion and avidity,
  To a dim whirl of languor and delight,
  I wound in gyrant orbits smooth and white
        With that intense rapidity.
        Around, around,
        I wound and interwound,
  While all the cyclic heavens about me spun.
  Stars, planets, suns, and moons dilated broad,
  Then flashed together into a single sun,
  And wound, and wound in one:
  And as they wound I wound,--around, around,
  In a great fire I almost took for God.
           Ha, ha, Heosphoros!

    Thine angel glory sinks
      Down from me, down from me--
    My beauty falls, methinks,
      Down from thee, down from thee!
        O my light-bearer,
        O my path-preparer,
      Gone from me, gone from me!
          Ah, ah, Heosphoros!
  I cannot kindle underneath the brow
  Of this new angel here, who is not thou.
  All things are altered since that time ago,--
  And if I shine at eve, I shall not know.
         I am strange--I am slow.
           Ah, ah, Heosphoros!
  Henceforward, human eyes of lovers be
  The only sweetest sight that I shall see,
  With tears between the looks raised up to me.
                  Ah, ah!
  When, having wept all night, at break of day
  Above the folded hills they shall survey
  My light, a little trembling, in the grey.
                     Ah, ah!
  And gazing on me, such shall comprehend,
    Through all my piteous pomp at morn or even
    And melancholy leaning out of heaven,
  That love, their own divine, may change or end,
         That love may close in loss!
              Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

       *       *       *       *       *

SCENE.--_Farther on. A wild open country seen vaguely in the approaching
night._

  _Adam._ How doth the wide and melancholy earth
  Gather her hills around us, grey and ghast,
  And stare with blank significance of loss
  Right in our faces! Is the wind up?

  _Eve._                               Nay.

  _Adam._ And yet the cedars and the junipers
  Rock slowly through the mist, without a sound,
  And shapes which have no certainty of shape
  Drift duskly in and out between the pines,
  And loom along the edges of the hills,
  And lie flat, curdling in the open ground--
  Shadows without a body, which contract
  And lengthen as we gaze on them.

  _Eve._                         O life
  Which is not man's nor angel's! What is this?

  _Adam._ No cause for fear. The circle of God's life
  Contains all life beside.

  _Eve._                   I think the earth
  Is crazed with curse, and wanders from the sense
  Of those first laws affixed to form and space
  Or ever she knew sin.

  _Adam._               We will not fear;
  We were brave sinning.

  _Eve._                   Yea, I plucked the fruit
  With eyes upturned to heaven and seeing there
  Our god-thrones, as the tempter said,--not GOD.
  My heart, which beat then, sinks. The sun hath sunk
  Out of sight with our Eden.

  _Adam._                     Night is near.

  _Eve._ And God's curse, nearest. Let us travel back
  And stand within the sword-glare till we die,
  Believing it is better to meet death
  Than suffer desolation.

  _Adam._               Nay, beloved!
  We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand,
  As erst we plucked the apple: we must wait
  Until he gives death as he gave us life,
  Nor murmur faintly o'er the primal gift
  Because we spoilt its sweetness with our sin.

  _Eve._ Ah, ah! dost thou discern what I behold?

  _Adam._ I see all. How the spirits in thine eyes
  From their dilated orbits bound before
  To meet the spectral Dread!

  _Eve._                         I am afraid--
  Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes
  Of intermittent motion, aspect vague
  And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,
  Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.
  How near they reach ... and far! How grey they move--
  Treading upon the darkness without feet,
  And fluttering on the darkness without wings!
  Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;
  Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees;
  Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on
  Copious as rivers.

  _Adam._            Some spring up like fire;
  And some coil ...

  _Eve._         Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say
  Like what?--coil like the serpent, when he fell
  From all the emerald splendour of his height
  And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,
  Not a ring's length. I am afraid--afraid--
  I think it is God's will to make me afraid,--
  Permitting THESE to haunt us in the place
  Of his beloved angels--gone from us
  Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God,
  That didst permit the angels to go home
  And live no more with us who are not pure,
  Save _us_ too from a loathly company--
  Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps,
  As _we_ are in the purest! Pity us--
  Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away
  From verity and from stability,
  Or what we name such through the precedence
  Of earth's adjusted uses,--leave us not
  To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,
  Which are the more distraught and full of pain
  And weak of apprehension!

  _Adam._                      Courage, Sweet!
  The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop
  With slow concentric movement, each on each,--
  Expressing wider spaces,--and collapsed
  In lines more definite for imagery
  And clearer for relation, till the throng
  Of shapeless spectra merge into a few
  Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand
  Which sweep out and around us vastily
  And hold us in a circle and a calm.

  _Eve._ Strange phantasms of pale shadow! there are twelve.
  Thou who didst name all lives, hast names for these?

  _Adam._ Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth,
  Which rounds us with a visionary dread,
  Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,
  In fantasque apposition and approach,
  To those celestial, constellated twelve
  Which palpitate adown the silent nights
  Under the pressure of the hand of God
  Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour,
  Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven:
  But, girdling close our nether wilderness,
  The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow,--
  Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time,
  In twelve colossal shades instead of stars,
  Through which the ecliptic line of mystery
  Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope,
  Foreshowing life and death.

  _Eve._                         By dream or sense,
  Do we see this?

  _Adam._           Our spirits have climbed high
  By reason of the passion of our grief,
  And, from the top of sense, looked over sense
  To the significance and heart of things
  Rather than things themselves.

  _Eve._                   And the dim twelve....

  _Adam._ Are dim exponents of the creature-life
  As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved!
  By stricter apprehension of the sight,
  Suggestions of the creatures shall assuage
  The terror of the shadows,--what is known
  Subduing the unknown and taming it
  From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there,
  Presents a lion, albeit twenty times
  As large as any lion--with a roar
  Set soundless in his vibratory jaws,
  And a strange horror stirring in his mane.
  And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh--
  Good against ill, perchance; and there, a crab
  Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws,
  Like a slow blot that spreads,--till all the ground,
  Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself.
  A bull stands horned here with gibbous glooms;
  And a ram likewise: and a scorpion writhes
  Its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark.
  This way a goat leaps with wild blank of beard;
  And here, fantastic fishes duskly float,
  Using the calm for waters, while their fins
  Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.
  While images more human----

  _Eve._                         How he stands,
  That phantasm of a man--who is not _thou_!
  Two phantasms of two men!

  _Adam._                    One that sustains,
  And one that strives,--resuming, so, the ends
  Of manhood's curse of labour.[B] Dost thou see
  That phantasm of a woman?

  _Eve._                         I have seen;
  But look off to those small humanities[C]
  Which draw me tenderly across my fear,--
  Lesser and fainter than my womanhood,
  Or yet thy manhood--with strange innocence
  Set in the misty lines of head and hand.
  They lean together! I would gaze on them
  Longer and longer, till my watching eyes,
  As the stars do in watching anything,
  Should light them forward from their outline vague
  To clear configuration.

[_Two Spirits, of Organic and Inorganic Nature, arise from the
ground._

                           But what Shapes
  Rise up between us in the open space,
  And thrust me into horror, back from hope!

  _Adam._ Colossal Shapes--twin sovran images,
  With a disconsolate, blank majesty
  Set in their wondrous faces! with no look,
  And yet an aspect--a significance
  Of individual life and passionate ends,
  Which overcomes us gazing.
                             O bleak sound,
  O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound!
  How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels,
  Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail
  Around the cyclic zodiac, and gains force,
  And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,
  On the wan faces of these images
  We see before us,--whereby modified,
  It draws a straight line of articulate song
  From out that spiral faintness of lament,
  And, by one voice, expresses many griefs.

  _First Spirit._
  I am the spirit of the harmless earth.
    God spake me softly out among the stars,
  As softly as a blessing of much worth;
    And then his smile did follow unawares,
  That all things fashioned so for use and duty
  Might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty--
                 Yet I wail!
  I drave on with the worlds exultingly,
    Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall;
  Individual aspect and complexity
    Of gyratory orb and interval
  Lost in the fluent motion of delight
  Toward the high ends of Being beyond sight--
                 Yet I wail!

  _Second Spirit._
  I am the spirit of the harmless beasts,
    Of flying things, and creeping things, and swimming;
  Of all the lives, erst set at silent feasts,
    That found the love-kiss on the goblet brimming,
  And tasted in each drop within the measure
  The sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure--
                 Yet I wail!
  What a full hum of life around his lips
    Bore witness to the fulness of creation!
  How all the grand words were full-laden ships
    Each sailing onward from enunciation
  To separate existence,--and each bearing
  The creature's power of joying, hoping, fearing!
                 Yet I wail!

  _Eve._ They wail, beloved! they speak of glory and God,
  And they wail--wail. That burden of the song
  Drops from it like its fruit, and heavily falls
  Into the lap of silence.

  _Adam._                   Hark, again!

  _First Spirit._
  I was so beautiful, so beautiful,
    My joy stood up within me bold to add
  A word to God's,--and, when His work was full,
    To "very good" responded "very glad!"
  Filtered through roses did the light enclose me,
  And bunches of the grape swam blue across me--
                 Yet I wail!

  _Second Spirit._
  I bounded with my panthers: I rejoiced
    In my young tumbling lions rolled together:
  My stag, the river at his fetlocks, poised
    Then dipped his antlers through the golden weather
  In the same ripple which the alligator
  Left, in his joyous troubling of the water--
                 Yet I wail!

  _First Spirit._
  O my deep waters, cataract and flood,
    What wordless triumph did your voices render
  O mountain-summits, where the angels stood
    And shook from head and wing thick dews of splendour!
  How, with a holy quiet, did your Earthy
  Accept that Heavenly, knowing ye were worthy!
                 Yet I wail!

  _Second Spirit._
  O my wild wood-dogs, with your listening eyes!
    My horses--my ground-eagles, for swift fleeing!
  My birds, with viewless wings of harmonies,
    My calm cold fishes of a silver being,
  How happy were ye, living and possessing,
  O fair half-souls capacious of full blessing!
                 Yet I wail!

  _First Spirit._
  I wail, I wail! Now hear my charge to-day,
    Thou man, thou woman, marked as the misdoers
  By God's sword at your backs! I lent my clay
    To make your bodies, which had grown more flowers:
  And now, in change for what I lent, ye give me
  The thorn to vex, the tempest-fare to cleave me--
                 And I wail!

  _Second Spirit._
  I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fasten
    My sorrow's fang upon your souls dishonoured?
  Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten,--
    Your crown's weight on the world, to drag it downward
  Unto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scenting
  The blood of wars, roar hoarse and unrelenting--
                 And I wail!

  _First Spirit._
  I wail, I wail! Do you hear that I wail?
    I had no part in your transgression--none.
  My roses on the bough did bud not pale,
    My rivers did not loiter in the sun;
  _I_ was obedient. Wherefore in my centre
  Do I thrill at this curse of death and winter?--
                 Do I wail?

  _Second Spirit._
  I wail, I wail! I wail in the assault
    Of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded!
  My nightingale sang sweet without a fault,
    My gentle leopards innocently bounded.
  _We_ were obedient. What is this convulses
  Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses?
                 And I wail!

  _Eve._ I choose God's thunder and His angels' swords
  To die by, Adam, rather than such words.
  Let us pass out and flee.

  _Adam._                    We cannot flee.
  This zodiac of the creatures' cruelty
  Curls round us, like a river cold and drear,
  And shuts us in, constraining us to hear.

  _First Spirit._
  I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike
    A sense of death to me, and undug graves!
  The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling like
    The ragged foam along the ocean-waves:
  The restless earthquakes rock against each other;
  The elements moan 'round me--"Mother, mother"--
                 And I wail!

  _Second Spirit._
  Your melancholy looks do pierce me through;
    Corruption swathes the paleness of your beauty.
  Why have ye done this thing? What did we do
    That we should fall from bliss as ye from duty?
  Wild shriek the hawks, in waiting for their jesses,
  Fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses--
                 And I wail!

  _Adam._ To thee, the Spirit of the harmless earth,
  To thee, the Spirit of earth's harmless lives,
  Inferior creatures but still innocent,
  Be salutation from a guilty mouth
  Yet worthy of some audience and respect
  From you who are not guilty. If we have sinned,
  God hath rebuked us, who is over us
  To give rebuke or death, and if ye wail
  Because of any suffering from our sin,
  Ye who are under and not over us,
  Be satisfied with God, if not with us,
  And pass out from our presence in such peace
  As we have left you, to enjoy revenge
  Such as the heavens have made you. Verily,
  There must be strife between us, large as sin.

  _Eve._ No strife, mine Adam! Let us not stand high
  Upon the wrong we did to reach disdain,
  Who rather should be humbler evermore
  Since self-made sadder. Adam! shall I speak--
  I who spake once to such a bitter end--
  Shall I speak humbly now who once was proud?
  I, schooled by sin to more humility
  Than thou hast, O mine Adam, O my king--
  _My_ king, if not the world's?

  _Adam._                  Speak as thou wilt.

  _Eve._ Thus, then--my hand in thine--
                        ... Sweet, dreadful Spirits!
  I pray you humbly in the name of God,
  Not to say of these tears, which are impure--
  Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth
  From clean volitions toward a spotted will,
  From the wronged to the wronger, this and no more!
  I do not ask more. I am 'ware, indeed,
  That absolute pardon is impossible
  From you to me, by reason of my sin,--
  And that I cannot evermore, as once,
  With worthy acceptation of pure joy,
  Behold the trances of the holy hills
  Beneath the leaning stars, or watch the vales
  Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy,--
  Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between
  Two grassy uplands,--and the river-wells
  Work out their bubbling mysteries underground,--
  And all the birds sing, till for joy of song
  They lift their trembling wings as if to heave
  The too-much weight of music from their heart
  And float it up the aether. I am 'ware
  That these things I can no more apprehend
  With a pure organ into a full delight,--
  The sense of beauty and of melody
  Being no more aided in me by the sense
  Of personal adjustment to those heights
  Of what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned,
  But rather coupled darkly and made ashamed
  By my percipiency of sin and fall
  In melancholy of humiliant thoughts.
  But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits--albeit this
  Your accusation must confront my soul,
  And your pathetic utterance and full gaze
  Must evermore subdue me,--be content!
  Conquer me gently--as if pitying me,
  Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick
  As watering dews of Eden, unreproached;
  And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth,
  Not ruffled--smooth and still with your reproof,
  And peradventure better while more sad!
  For look to it, sweet Spirits, look well to it,
  It will not be amiss in you who kept
  The law of your own righteousness, and keep
  The right of your own griefs to mourn themselves,--
  To pity me twice fallen, from that, and this,
  From joy of place, and also right of wail,
  "I wail" being not for me--only "I sin."
  Look to it, O sweet Spirits!
                                 For was I not,
  At that last sunset seen in Paradise,
  When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs
  Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,
  All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God
  Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour,
  The lady of the world, princess of life,
  Mistress of feast and favour? Could I touch
  A rose with my white hand, but it became
  Redder at once? Could I walk leisurely
  Along our swarded garden, but the grass
  Tracked me with greenness? Could I stand aside
  A moment underneath a cornel-tree,
  But all the leaves did tremble as alive
  With songs of fifty birds who were made glad
  Because I stood there? Could I turn to look
  With these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast,
  Now good for only weeping,--upon man,
  Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoiced
  Because I looked on him? Alas, alas!
  And is not this much woe, to cry "alas!"
  Speaking of joy? And is not this more shame,
  To have made the woe myself, from all that joy?
  To have stretched my hand, and plucked it from the tree,
  And chosen it for fruit? Nay, is not this
  Still most despair,--to have halved that bitter fruit,
  And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have,
  Turning the GREATEST to mine enemy?

  _Adam._ I will not hear thee speak so. Hearken, Spirits!
  Our God, who is the enemy of none
  But only of their sin, hath set your hope
  And my hope, in a promise, on this Head.
  Show reverence, then, and never bruise her more
  With unpermitted and extreme reproach,--
  Lest, passionate in anguish, she fling down
  Beneath your trampling feet, God's gift to us
  Of sovranty by reason and freewill,
  Sinning against the province of the Soul
  To rule the soulless. Reverence her estate,
  And pass out from her presence with no words!

  _Eve._ O dearest Heart, have patience with my heart!
  O Spirits, have patience, 'stead of reverence,
  And let me speak, for, not being innocent,
  It little doth become me to be proud.
  And I am prescient by the very hope
  And promise set upon me, that henceforth
  Only my gentleness shall make me great,
  My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits,
  Be witness that I stand in your reproof
  But one sun's length off from my happiness--
  Happy, as I have said, to look around,
  Clear to look up!--And now! I need not speak--
  Ye see me what I am; ye scorn me so,
  Because ye see me what I have made myself
  From God's best making! Alas,--peace forgone,
  Love wronged, and virtue forfeit, and tears wept
  Upon all, vainly! Alas, me! alas,
  Who have undone myself, from all that best,
  Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedest
  Saddest and most defiled--cast out, cast down--
  What word metes absolute loss? let absolute loss
  Suffice you for revenge. For _I_, who lived
  Beneath the wings of angels yesterday,
  Wander to-day beneath the roofless world:
  _I_, reigning the earth's empress yesterday,
  Put off from me, to-day, your hate with prayers:
  _I_, yesterday, who answered the Lord God,
  Composed and glad as singing-birds the sun,
  Might shriek now from our dismal desert, "God,"
  And hear him make reply, "What is thy need,
  Thou whom I cursed to-day?"

  _Adam._                      Eve!

  _Eve._                              _I_, at last,
  Who yesterday was helpmate and delight
  Unto mine Adam, am to-day the grief
  And curse-mete for him. And, so, pity us,
  Ye gentle Spirits, and pardon him and me,
  And let some tender peace, made of our pain,
  Grow up betwixt us, as a tree might grow,
  With boughs on both sides! In the shade of which,
  When presently ye shall behold us dead,--
  For the poor sake of our humility,
  Breathe out your pardon on our breathless lips,
  And drop your twilight dews against our brows,
  And stroking with mild airs our harmless hands
  Left empty of all fruit, perceive your love
  Distilling through your pity over us,
  And suffer it, self-reconciled, to pass!

_LUCIFER rises in the circle._

  _Lucifer._ Who talks here of a complement of grief?
  Of expiation wrought by loss and fall?
  Of hate subduable to pity? Eve?
  Take counsel from thy counsellor the snake,
  And boast no more in grief, nor hope from pain,
  My docile Eve! I teach you to despond
  Who taught you disobedience. Look around:--
  Earth spirits and phantasms hear you talk unmoved,
  As if ye were red clay again and talked!
  What are your words to them--your grief to them--
  Your deaths, indeed, to them? Did the hand pause,
  For _their_ sake, in the plucking of the fruit,
  That they should pause for _you_, in hating you?
  Or will your grief or death, as did your sin,
  Bring change upon their final doom? Behold,
  Your grief is but your sin in the rebound,
  And cannot expiate for it.

  _Adam._                     That is true.

  _Lucifer._ Ay, that is true. The clay-king testifies
  To the snake's counsel,--hear him!--very true.

  _Earth Spirits._ I wail, I wail!

  _Lucifer._                    And certes, _that_ is true.
  Ye wail, ye all wail. Peradventure I
  Could wail among you. O thou universe,
  That holdest sin and woe,--more room for wail!

  _Distant Starry Voice._ Ah, ah, Heosphoros! Heosphoros!

  _Adam._ Mark Lucifer! He changes awfully.

  _Eve._ It seems as if he looked from grief to God
  And could not see him. Wretched Lucifer!

  _Adam._ How he stands--yet an angel!

  _Earth Spirits._                    We all wail!

  _Lucifer (after a pause)._ Dost thou remember, Adam, when the curse
  Took us in Eden? On a mountain-peak
  Half-sheathed in primal woods and glittering
  In spasms of awful sunshine at that hour,
  A lion couched, part raised upon his paws,
  With his calm massive face turned full on thine,
  And his mane listening. When the ended curse
  Left silence in the world, right suddenly
  He sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff,
  As if the new reality of death
  Were dashed against his eyes, and roared so fierce,
  (Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat
  Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)
  And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills
  Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales
  Precipitately,--that the forest beasts,
  One after one, did mutter a response
  Of savage and of sorrowful complaint
  Which trailed along the gorges. Then, at once,
  He fell back, and rolled crashing from the height
  Into the dusk of pines.

  _Adam._                  It might have been.
  I heard the curse alone.

  _Earth Spirits._          I wail, I wail!

  _Lucifer._ That lion is the type of what I am.
  And as he fixed thee with his full-faced hate,
  And roared, O Adam, comprehending doom,
  So, gazing on the face of the Unseen,
  I cry out here between the Heavens and Earth
  My conscience of this sin, this woe, this wrath,
  Which damn me to this depth.

  _Earth Spirits._          I wail, I wail!

  _Eve._ I wail--O God!

  _Lucifer._                I scorn you that ye wail,
  Who use your petty griefs for pedestals
  To stand on, beckoning pity from without,
  And deal in pathos of antithesis
  Of what ye _were_ forsooth, and what ye are;--
  I scorn you like an angel! Yet, one cry
  I, too, would drive up like a column erect,
  Marble to marble, from my heart to heaven,
  A monument of anguish to transpierce
  And overtop your vapoury complaints
  Expressed from feeble woes.

  _Earth Spirits._          I wail, I wail!

  _Lucifer._ For, O ye heavens, ye are my witnesses,
  That _I_, struck out from nature in a blot,
  The outcast and the mildew of things good,
  The leper of angels, the excepted dust
  Under the common rain of daily gifts,--
  I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,--
  To whom the highest and the lowest alike
  Say, Go from us--we have no need of thee,--
  Was made by God like others. Good and fair,
  He did create me!--ask him, if not fair!
  Ask, if I caught not fair and silverly
  His blessing for chief angels on my head
  Until it grew there, a crown crystallized!
  Ask, if he never called me by my name,
  _Lucifer_--kindly said as "Gabriel"--
  _Lucifer_--soft as "Michael!" while serene
  I, standing in the glory of the lamps,
  Answered "my Father," innocent of shame
  And of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think,
  White angels in your niches,--I repent,
  And would tread down my own offences back
  To service at the footstool? _that's_ read wrong!
  I cry as the beast did, that I may cry--
  Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep,
  Against the sides of this prodigious pit
  I cry--cry--dashing out the hands of wail
  On each side, to meet anguish everywhere,
  And to attest it in the ecstasy
  And exaltation of a woe sustained
  Because provoked and chosen.
                                 Pass along
  Your wilderness, vain mortals! Puny griefs
  In transitory shapes, be henceforth dwarfed
  To your own conscience, by the dread extremes
  Of what I am and have been. If ye have fallen,
  It is but a step's fall,--the whole ground beneath
  Strewn woolly soft with promise! if ye have sinned,
  Your prayers tread high as angels! if ye have grieved,
  Ye are too mortal to be pitiable,
  The power to die disproves the right to grieve.
  Go to! ye call this ruin? I half-scorn
  The ill I did you! Were ye wronged by me,
  Hated and tempted and undone of me,--
  Still, what's your hurt to mine of doing hurt,
  Of hating, tempting, and so ruining?
  This sword's _hilt_ is the sharpest, and cuts through
  The hand that wields it.
                           Go! I curse you all.
  Hate one another--feebly--as ye can!
  I would not certes cut you short in hate,
  Far be it from me! hate on as ye can!
  I breathe into your faces, spirits of earth,
  As wintry blast may breathe on wintry leaves
  And lifting up their brownness show beneath
  The branches bare. Beseech you, spirits, give
  To Eve who beggarly entreats your love
  For her and Adam when they shall be dead,
  An answer rather fitting to the sin
  Than to the sorrow--as the heavens, I trow,
  For justice' sake gave theirs.
                             I curse you both,
  Adam and Eve. Say grace as after meat,
  After my curses! May your tears fall hot
  On all the hissing scorns o' the creatures here,--
  And yet rejoice! Increase and multiply,
  Ye in your generations, in all plagues,
  Corruptions, melancholies, poverties,
  And hideous forms of life and fears of death,--
  The thought of death being always imminent,
  Immoveable and dreadful in your life,
  And deafly and dumbly insignificant
  Of any hope beyond,--as death itself,
  Whichever of you lieth dead the first,
  Shall seem to the survivor--yet rejoice!
  My curse catch at you strongly, body and soul,
  And HE find no redemption--nor the wing
  Of seraph move your way; and yet rejoice!
  Rejoice,--because ye have not, set in you,
  This hate which shall pursue you--this fire-hate
  Which glares without, because it burns within--
  Which kills from ashes--this potential hate,
  Wherein I, angel, in antagonism
  To God and his reflex beatitudes,
  Moan ever, in the central universe,
  With the great woe of striving against Love--
  And gasp for space amid the Infinite,
  And toss for rest amid the Desertness,
  Self-orphaned by my will, and self-elect
  To kingship of resistant agony
  Toward the Good round me--hating good and love,
  And willing to hate good and to hate love,
  And willing to will on so evermore,
  Scorning the past and damning the to-come--
  Go and rejoice! I curse you.

[_LUCIFER vanishes._

  _Earth Spirits._
      And we scorn you! there's no pardon
        Which can lean to you aright.
      When your bodies take the guerdon
        Of the death-curse in our sight,
  Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you:
      Then ye shall not move an eyelid
        Though the stars look down your eyes;
      And the earth which ye defiled
        Shall expose you to the skies,--
  "Lo! these kings of ours, who sought to comprehend you."

  _First Spirit._
      And the elements shall boldly
        All your dust to dust constrain.
          Unresistedly and coldly
            I will smite you with my rain.
      From the slowest of my frosts is no receding.

  _Second Spirit._
          And my little worm, appointed
            To assume a royal part,
          He shall reign, crowned and anointed,
            O'er the noble human heart.
      Give him counsel against losing of that Eden!

  _Adam._ Do ye scorn us? Back your scorn
          Toward your faces grey and lorn,
            As the wind drives back the rain,
          Thus I drive with passion-strife,
          I who stand beneath God's sun,
          Made like God, and, though undone,
          Not unmade for love and life.
            Lo! ye utter threats in vain.
          By my free will that chose sin,
          By mine agony within
          Round the passage of the fire,
            By the pinings which disclose
          That my native soul is higher
            Than what it chose,
      We are yet too high, O Spirits, for your disdain!

  _Eve._ Nay, beloved! If these be low,
            We confront them from no height.
          We have stooped down to their level
          By infecting them with evil,
          And their scorn that meets our blow Scathes aright.
          Amen. Let it be so.

  _Earth Spirits._
          We shall triumph--triumph greatly
            When ye lie beneath the sward.
          There, our lily shall grow stately
            Though ye answer not a word,
      And her fragrance shall be scornful of your silence:
          While your throne ascending calmly
            We, in heirdom of your soul,
          Flash the river, lift the palm-tree,
              The dilated ocean roll,
      By the thoughts that throbbed within you, round the islands.

          Alp and torrent shall inherit
            Your significance of will,
          And the grandeur of your spirit
            Shall our broad savannahs fill;
      In our winds, your exultations shall be springing!
          Even your parlance which inveigles,
            By our rudeness shall be won.
          Hearts poetic in our eagles
          Shall beat up against the sun
  And strike downward in articulate clear singing.

        Your bold speeches our Behemoth
          With his thunderous jaw shall wield.
        Your high fancies shall our Mammoth
          Breathe sublimely up the shield
  Of Saint Michael at God's throne, who waits to speed him:
        Till the heavens' smooth-grooved thunder
          Spinning back, shall leave them clear,
        And the angels, smiling wonder,
          With dropt looks from sphere to sphere,
  Shall cry "Ho, ye heirs of Adam! ye exceed him."

  _Adam._ Root out thine eyes, Sweet, from the dreary ground!
  Beloved, we may be overcome by God,
  But not by these.

  _Eve._          By God, perhaps, in these.

  _Adam._ I think, not so. Had God foredoomed despair
  He had not spoken hope. He may destroy
  Certes, but not deceive.

  _Eve._                   Behold this rose!
  I plucked it in our bower of Paradise
  This morning as I went forth, and my heart
  Has beat against its petals all the day.
  I thought it would be always red and full
  As when I plucked it. _Is_ it?--ye may see!
  I cast it down to you that ye may see,
  All of you!--count the petals lost of it,
  And note the colours fainted! ye may see!
  And I am as it is, who yesterday
  Grew in the same place. O ye spirits of earth,
  I almost, from my miserable heart,
  Could here upbraid you for your cruel heart,
  Which will not let me, down the <DW72> of death,
  Draw any of your pity after me,
  Or lie still in the quiet of your looks,
  As my flower, there, in mine.

[_A bleak wind, quickened with indistinct Human Voices, spins around the
Earth-zodiac, filling the circle with its presence; and then, wailing
off into the East, carries the rose away with it. EVE falls upon her
face. ADAM stands erect._

  _Adam._                So, verily,
  The last departs.

  _Eve._          So Memory follows Hope,
  And Life both. Love said to me, "Do not die,"
  And I replied, "O Love, I will not die.
  I exiled and I will not orphan Love."
  But now it is no choice of mine to die:
  My heart throbs from me.

  _Adam._                  Call it straightway back!
  Death's consummation crowns completed life,
  Or comes too early. Hope being set on thee
  For others, if for others then for thee,--
  For thee and me.

[_The wind revolves from the East, and round again to the East, perfumed
by the Eden rose, and full of Voices which sweep out into articulation
as they pass._

                  Let thy soul shake its leaves
  To feel the mystic wind--hark!

  _Eve._                         I hear life.

  _Infant Voices passing in the wind._
        O we live, O we live--
        And this life that we receive
        Is a warm thing and a new,
        Which we softly bud into
        From the heart and from the brain,--
        Something strange that overmuch is
          Of the sound and of the sight,
        Flowing round in trickling touches,
          With a sorrow and delight,--
        Yet is it all in vain?
                        Rock us softly,
        Lest it be all in vain.

  _Youthful Voices passing._
            O we live, O we live--
            And this life that we achieve
            Is a loud thing and a bold
            Which with pulses manifold
            Strikes the heart out full and fain--
            Active doer, noble liver,
              Strong to struggle, sure to conquer,
            Though the vessel's prow will quiver
              At the lifting of the anchor:
            Yet do we strive in vain?

  _Infant Voices passing._
                            Rock us softly,
            Lest it be all in vain.

  _Poet Voices passing._
            O we live, O we live--
            And this life that we conceive
            Is a clear thing and a fair,
            Which we set in crystal air
            That its beauty may be plain!
            With a breathing and a flooding
              Of the heaven-life on the whole,
            While we hear the forests budding
              To the music of the soul--
            Yet is it tuned in vain?

  _Infant Voices passing._
                            Rock us softly,
            Lest it be all in vain.

  _Philosophic Voices passing._
            O we live, O we live--
            And this life that we perceive
            Is a great thing and a grave
            Which for others' use we have,
            Duty-laden to remain.
            We are helpers, fellow-creatures,
              Of the right against the wrong;
            We are earnest-hearted teachers
              Of the truth which maketh strong--
            Yet do we teach in vain?

  _Infant Voices passing._
                            Rock us softly,
            Lest it be all in vain.

  _Revel Voices passing._
            O we live, O we live--
            And this life that we reprieve
            Is a low thing and a light,
            Which is jested out of sight
            And made worthy of disdain!
            Strike with bold electric laughter
              The high tops of things divine--
          Turn thy head, my brother, after,
            Lest thy tears fall in my wine!
          For is all laughed in vain?

  _Infant Voices passing._
                          Rock us softly,
          Lest it be all in vain.

  _Eve._ I hear a sound of life--of life like ours--
  Of laughter and of wailing, of grave speech,
  Of little plaintive voices innocent,
  Of life in separate courses flowing out
  Like our four rivers to some outward main.
  I hear life--life!

  _Adam._             And, so, thy cheeks have snatched
  Scarlet to paleness, and thine eyes drink fast
  Of glory from full cups, and thy moist lips
  Seem trembling, both of them, with earnest doubts
  Whether to utter words or only smile.

  _Eve._ Shall I be mother of the coming life?
  Hear the steep generations, how they fall
  Adown the visionary stairs of Time
  Like supernatural thunders--far, yet near,--
  Sowing their fiery echoes through the hills.
  Am I a cloud to these--mother to these?

  _Earth Spirits._ And bringer of the curse upon all these.

[_EVE sinks down again._

  _Poet Voices passing._
            O we live, O we live--
            And this life that we conceive
            Is a noble thing and high,
            Which we climb up loftily
              To view God without a stain;
            Till, recoiling where the shade is,
              We retread our steps again,
            And descend the gloomy Hades
              To resume man's mortal pain.
            Shall it be climbed in vain?

  _Infant Voices passing._
                            Rock us softly,
            Lest it be all in vain.

  _Love Voices passing._
            O we live, O we live--
            And this life we would retrieve,
            Is a faithful thing apart
            Which we love in, heart to heart,
            Until one heart fitteth twain.
            "Wilt thou be one with me?"
            "I will be one with thee."
            "Ha, ha!--we love and live!"
            Alas! ye love and die.
            Shriek--who shall reply?
            For is it not loved in vain?

  _Infant Voices passing._
                          Rock us softly,
          Though it be all in vain.

  _Aged Voices passing._
          O we live, O we live--
          And this life we would survive,
          Is a gloomy thing and brief,
          Which, consummated in grief,
          Leaveth ashes for all gain.
          Is it not _all_ in vain?

  _Infant Voices passing._
                          Rock us softly,
          Though it be _all_ in vain.

[_Voices die away._

  _Earth Spirits._ And bringer of the curse upon all these.

  _Eve._ The voices of foreshown Humanity
  Die off;--so let me die.

  _Adam._                So let us die,
  When God's will soundeth the right hour of death.

  _Earth Spirits._ And bringer of the curse upon all these.

  _Eve._ O Spirits! by the gentleness ye use
  In winds at night, and floating clouds at noon,
  In gliding waters under lily-leaves,
  In chirp of crickets, and the settling hush
  A bird makes in her nest with feet and wings,--
  Fulfil your natures now!

  _Earth Spirits._         Agreed, allowed!
  We gather out our natures like a cloud,
  And thus fulfil their lightnings! Thus, and thus!
          Hearken, oh hearken to us!

  _First Spirit._
  As the storm-wind blows bleakly from the norland,
  As the snow-wind beats blindly on the moorland,
  As the simoom drives hot across the desert,
  As the thunder roars deep in the Unmeasured.
  As the torrent tears the ocean-world to atoms,
  As the whirlpool grinds it fathoms below fathoms,
        Thus,--and thus!

  _Second Spirit._
  As the yellow toad, that spits its poison chilly,
  As the tiger, in the jungle crouching stilly,
  As the wild boar, with ragged tusks of anger,
  As the wolf-dog, with teeth of glittering clangour,
  As the vultures, that scream against the thunder,
  As the owlets, that sit and moan asunder,
        Thus,--and thus!

  _Eve._ Adam! God!

  _Adam._                Cruel, unrelenting Spirits!
  By the power in me of the sovran soul
  Whose thoughts keep pace yet with the angel's march,
  I charge you into silence--trample you
  Down to obedience. I am king of you!

  _Earth Spirits._
            Ha, ha! thou art king!
            With a sin for a crown,
            And a soul undone!
            Thou, the antagonized,
            Tortured and agonized,
            Held in the ring
            Of the zodiac!
            Now, king, beware!
            We are many and strong
            Whom thou standest among,--
            And we press on the air,
            And we stifle thee back,
            And we multiply where
            Thou wouldst trample us down
            From rights of our own
            To an utter wrong--
        And, from under the feet of thy scorn,
                O forlorn,
            We shall spring up like corn,
            And our stubble be strong.
  _Adam._ God, there is power in thee! I make appeal
  Unto thy kingship.

  _Eve._          There is pity in THEE,
  O sinned against, great God!--My seed, my seed,
  There is hope set on THEE--I cry to thee,
  Thou mystic Seed that shalt be!--leave us not
  In agony beyond what we can bear,
  Fallen in debasement below thunder-mark,
  A mark for scorning--taunted and perplext
  By all these creatures we ruled yesterday,
  Whom thou, Lord, rulest alway! O my Seed,
  Through the tempestuous years that rain so thick
  Betwixt my ghostly vision and thy face,
  Let me have token! for my soul is bruised
  Before the serpent's head is.

[_A vision of CHRIST appears in the midst of the Zodiac, which pales
before the heavenly light. The Earth Spirits grow greyer and fainter._

  CHRIST.               I AM HERE!

  _Adam._ This is God!--Curse us not, God, any more!

  _Eve._ But gazing so--so--with omnific eyes,
  Lift my soul upward till it touch thy feet!
  Or lift it only,--not to seem too proud,--
  To the low height of some good angel's feet,
  For such to tread on when he walketh straight
  And thy lips praise him!

  CHRIST.               Spirits of the earth,
  I meet you with rebuke for the reproach
  And cruel and unmitigated blame
  Ye cast upon your masters. True, they have sinned;
  And true their sin is reckoned into loss
  For you the sinless. Yet, your innocence
  Which of you praises? since God made your acts
  Inherent in your lives, and bound your hands
  With instincts and imperious sanctities
  From self-defacement. Which of you disdains
  These sinners who in falling proved their height
  Above you by their liberty to fall?
  And which of you complains of loss by them,
  For whose delight and use ye have your life
  And honour in creation? Ponder it!
  This regent and sublime Humanity,
  Though fallen, exceeds you! this shall film your sun,
  Shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud,
  Turn back your rivers, footpath all your seas,
  Lay flat your forests, master with a look
  Your lion at his fasting, and fetch down
  Your eagle flying. Nay, without this law
  Of mandom, ye would perish,--beast by beast
  Devouring,--tree by tree, with strangling roots
  And trunks set tuskwise. Ye would gaze on God
  With imperceptive blankness up the stars,
  And mutter, "Why, God, hast thou made us thus?"
  And pining to a sallow idiocy
  Stagger up blindly against the ends of life,
  Then stagnate into rottenness and drop
  Heavily--poor, dead matter--piecemeal down
  The abysmal spaces--like a little stone
  Let fall to chaos. Therefore over you
  Receive man's sceptre!--therefore be content
  To minister with voluntary grace
  And melancholy pardon, every rite
  And function in you, to the human hand!
  Be ye to man as angels are to God,
  Servants in pleasure, singers of delight,
  Suggesters to his soul of higher things
  Than any of your highest! So at last,
  He shall look round on you with lids too straight
  To hold the grateful tears, and thank you well,
  And bless you when he prays his secret prayers,
  And praise you when he sings his open songs
  For the clear song-note he has learnt in you
  Of purifying sweetness, and extend
  Across your head his golden fantasies
  Which glorify you into soul from sense.
  Go, serve him for such price! That not in vain
  Nor yet ignobly ye shall serve, I place
  My word here for an oath, mine oath for act
  To be hereafter. In the name of which
  Perfect redemption and perpetual grace,
  I bless you through the hope and through the peace
  Which are mine,--to the Love, which is myself.

  _Eve._ Speak on still, Christ! Albeit thou bless me not
  In set words, I am blessed in hearkening thee--
  Speak, Christ!

  CHRIST.    Speak, Adam! Bless the woman, man!
  It is thine office.

  _Adam._           Mother of the world,
  Take heart before this Presence! Lo, my voice,
  Which, naming erst the creatures, did express
  (God breathing through my breath) the attributes
  And instincts of each creature in its name,
  Floats to the same afflatus,--floats and heaves
  Like a water-weed that opens to a wave,--
  A full leaved prophecy affecting thee,
  Out fairly and wide. Henceforward, arise, aspire
  To all the calms and magnanimities,
  The lofty uses and the noble ends,
  The sanctified devotion and full work,
  To which thou art elect for evermore,
  First woman, wife, and mother!

  _Eve._                        And first in sin.

  _Adam._ And also the sole bearer of the Seed
  Whereby sin dieth. Raise the majesties
  Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
  And front with level eyelids the To-come,
  And all the dark o' the world! Rise, woman, rise
  To thy peculiar and best altitudes
  Of doing good and of enduring ill,
  Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,
  And reconciling all that ill and good
  Unto the patience of a constant hope,--
  Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
  And by sin, death,--the ransom-righteousness,
  The heavenly life and compensative rest
  Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee
  Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
  An angel of the woe thou didst achieve,
  Found acceptable to the world instead
  Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
  Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied;
  Something thou hast to bear through womanhood,
  Peculiar suffering answering to the sin,--
  Some pang paid down for each new human life,
  Some weariness in guarding such a life,
  Some coldness from the guarded, some mistrust
  From those thou hast too well served, from those beloved
  Too loyally some treason; feebleness
  Within thy heart, and cruelty without,
  And pressures of an alien tyranny
  With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
  And stronger sinews. But, go to! thy love
  Shall chant itself its own beatitudes
  After its own life-working. A child's kiss
  Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
  A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
  A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;
  Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
  Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown
  I set upon thy head,--Christ witnessing
  With looks of prompting love--to keep thee clear
  Of all reproach against the sin forgone,
  From all the generations which succeed.
  Thy hand which plucked the apple I clasp close,
  Thy lips which spake wrong counsel I kiss close,
  I bless thee in the name of Paradise
  And by the memory of Edenic joys
  Forfeit and lost,--by that last cypress tree,
  Green at the gate, which thrilled as we came out,
  And by the blessed nightingale which threw
  Its melancholy music after us,--
  And by the flowers, whose spirits full of smells
  Did follow softly, plucking us behind
  Back to the gradual banks and vernal bowers
  And fourfold river-courses.--By all these,
  I bless thee to the contraries of these,
  I bless thee to the desert and the thorns,
  To the elemental change and turbulence,
  And to the roar of the estranged beasts,
  And to the solemn dignities of grief,--
  To each one of these ends,--and to their END
  Of Death and the hereafter.

  _Eve._                       I accept
  For me and for my daughters this high part
  Which lowly shall be counted. Noble work
  Shall hold me in the place of garden-rest,
  And in the place of Eden's lost delight
  Worthy endurance of permitted pain;
  While on my longest patience there shall wait
  Death's speechless angel, smiling in the east,
  Whence cometh the cold wind. I bow myself
  Humbly henceforward on the ill I did,
  That humbleness may keep it in the shade.
  Shall it be so? shall I smile, saying so?
  O Seed! O King! O God, who _shalt_ be seed,--
  What shall I say? As Eden's fountains swelled
  Brightly betwixt their banks, so swells my soul
  Betwixt thy love and power!
                               And, sweetest thoughts
  Of forgone Eden! now, for the first time
  Since God said "Adam," walking through the trees,
  I dare to pluck you as I plucked erewhile
  The lily or pink, the rose or heliotrope
  So pluck I you--so largely--with both hands,
  And throw you forward on the outer earth,
  Wherein we are cast out, to sweeten it.

  _Adam._ As thou, Christ, to illume it, holdest Heaven
  Broadly over our heads.

[_The CHRIST is gradually transfigured, during the following phrases of
dialogue, into humanity and suffering._

  _Eve._                    O Saviour Christ,
  Thou standest mute in glory, like the sun!

  _Adam._ We worship in Thy silence, Saviour Christ!

  _Eve._ Thy brows grow grander with a forecast woe,--
  Diviner, with the possible of death.
  We worship in Thy sorrow, Saviour Christ!

  _Adam._ How do Thy clear, still eyes transpierce our souls,
  As gazing _through_ them toward the Father-throne
  In a pathetical, full Deity,
  Serenely as the stars gaze through the air
  Straight on each other!

  _Eve._                    O pathetic Christ,
  Thou standest mute in glory, like the moon!

  CHRIST. Eternity stands alway fronting God;
  A stern colossal image, with blind eyes
  And grand dim lips that murmur evermore
  God, God, God! while the rush of life and death,
  The roar of act and thought, of evil and good,
  The avalanches of the ruining worlds
  Tolling down space,--the new worlds' genesis
  Budding in fire,--the gradual humming growth
  Of the ancient atoms and first forms of earth,
  The slow procession of the swathing seas
  And firmamental waters,--and the noise
  Of the broad, fluent strata of pure airs,--
  All these flow onward in the intervals
  Of that reiterated sound of--GOD!
  Which WORD innumerous angels straightway lift
  Wide on celestial altitudes of song
  And choral adoration, and then drop
  The burden softly, shutting the last notes
  In silver wings. Howbeit in the noon of time
  Eternity shall wax as dumb as Death,
  While a new voice beneath the spheres shall cry,
  "God! why hast thou forsaken me, my God?"
  And not a voice in Heaven shall answer it.

[_The transfiguration is complete in sadness._

  _Adam._ Thy speech is of the Heavenlies, yet, O Christ,
  Awfully human are thy voice and face!

  _Eve._ My nature overcomes me from thine eyes.

  CHRIST. In the set noon of time shall one from Heaven,
  An angel fresh from looking upon God,
  Descend before a woman, blessing her
  With perfect benediction of pure love,
  For all the world in all its elements,
  For all the creatures of earth, air, and sea,
  For all men in the body and in the soul,
  Unto all ends of glory and sanctity.

  _Eve._ O pale, pathetic Christ--I worship thee!
  I thank thee for that woman!

  CHRIST.                  Then, at last,
  I, wrapping round me your humanity,
  Which, being sustained, shall neither break nor burn
  Beneath the fire of Godhead, will tread earth,
  And ransom you and it, and set strong peace
  Betwixt you and its creatures. With my pangs
  I will confront your sins; and since those sins
  Have sunken to all Nature's heart from yours,
  The tears of my clean soul shall follow them
  And set a holy passion to work clear
  Absolute consecration. In my brow
  Of kingly whiteness shall be crowned anew
  Your discrowned human nature. Look on me!
  As I shall be uplifted on a cross
  In darkness of eclipse and anguish dread,
  So shall I lift up in my pierced hands,
  Not into dark, but light--not unto death,
  But life,--beyond the reach of guilt and grief,
  The whole creation. Henceforth in my name
  Take courage, O thou woman,--man, take hope!
  Your grave shall be as smooth as Eden's sward,
  Beneath the steps of your prospective thoughts,
  And, one step past it, a new Eden-gate
  Shall open on a hinge of harmony
  And let you through to mercy. Ye shall fall
  No more, within that Eden, nor pass out
  Any more from it. In which hope, move on,
  First sinners and first mourners! Live and love,--
  Doing both nobly because lowlily!
  Live and work, strongly because patiently!
  And, for the deed of death, trust it to God
  That it be well done, unrepented of,
  And not to loss! And thence, with constant prayers,
  Fasten your souls so high, that constantly
  The smile of your heroic cheer may float
  Above all floods of earthly agonies,
  Purification being the joy of pain!

[_The vision of CHRIST vanishes. ADAM and EVE stand in an ecstasy. The
Earth-zodiac pales away shade by shade, as the stars, star by star,
shine out in the sky; and the following chant from the two Earth
Spirits (as they sweep back into the Zodiac and disappear with it)
accompanies the process of change._

  _Earth Spirits._
          By the mighty word thus spoken
            Both for living and for dying,
          We our homage-oath, once broken,
            Fasten back again in sighing,
  And the creatures and the elements renew their covenanting.

          Here, forgive us all our scorning;
            Here, we promise milder duty:
          And the evening and the morning
            Shall re-organize in beauty
  A sabbath day of sabbath joy, for universal chanting.

          And if, still, this melancholy
            May be strong to overcome us,
          If this mortal and unholy
            We still fail to cast out from us,
  If we turn upon you, unaware, your own dark influences,--

          If ye tremble when surrounded
            By our forest pine and palm trees,
          If we cannot cure the wounded
            With our gum trees and our balm trees,
  And if your souls all mournfully sit down among your senses,--

          Yet, O mortals, do not fear us!
            We are gentle in our languor;
          Much more good ye shall have near us
            Than any pain or anger,
  And our God's refracted blessing in our blessing shall be given.

          By the desert's endless vigil
            We will solemnize your passions,
          By the wheel of the black eagle
            We will teach you exaltations,
  When he sails against the wind, to the white spot up in heaven.

          Ye shall find us tender nurses
            To your weariness of nature,
          And our hands shall stroke the curse's
            Dreary furrows from the creature,
  Till your bodies shall lie smooth in death and straight and slumberful.

          Then, a couch we will provide you
            Where no summer heats shall dazzle,
          Strewing on you and beside you
            Thyme and rosemary and basil,
  And the yew-tree shall grow overhead to keep all safe and cool.

          Till the Holy Blood awaited
            Shall be chrism around us running,
          Whereby, newly-consecrated,
            We shall leap up in God's sunning,
  To join the spheric company which purer worlds assemble:

          While, renewed by new evangels,
            Soul-consummated, made glorious,
          Ye shall brighten past the angels,
            Ye shall kneel to Christ victorious,
  And the rays around his feet beneath your sobbing lips shall tremble.

[_The phantastic Vision has all passed; the Earth-zodiac has broken like
a belt, and is dissolved from the Desert. The Earth Spirits vanish,
and the stars shine out above._


CHORUS OF INVISIBLE ANGELS,

_while ADAM and EVE advance into the Desert, hand in hand._

            Hear our heavenly promise
              Through your mortal passion!
            Love, ye shall have from us,
              In a pure relation.
            As a fish or bird
              Swims or flies, if moving,
            We unseen are heard
              To live on by loving.
            Far above the glances
              Of your eager eyes,
          Listen! we are loving.
          Listen, through man's ignorances--
          Listen, through God's mysteries--
          Listen down the heart of things,
          Ye shall hear our mystic wings
              Murmurous with loving.
              Through the opal door
              Listen evermore
              How we live by loving!

  _First Semichorus._
          When your bodies therefore
            Reach the grave their goal,
          Softly will we care for
            Each enfranchised soul.
          Softly and unlothly
            Through the door of opal
            Toward the heavenly people,
          Floated on a minor fine
          Into the full chant divine,
            We will draw you smoothly,--
          While the human in the minor
          Makes the harmony diviner.
            Listen to our loving!

  _Second Semichorus._
          There, a sough of glory
            Shall breathe on you as you come,
          Ruffling round the doorway
            All the light of angeldom.
          From the empyrean centre
            Heavenly voices shall repeat,
          "Souls redeemed and pardoned, enter,
            For the chrism on you is sweet!"
          And every angel in the place
          Lowlily shall bow his face,
            Folded fair on softened sounds,
          Because upon your hands and feet
            He images his Master's wounds.
              Listen to our loving!

  _First Semichorus._
          So, in the universe's
            Consummated undoing,
          Our seraphs of white mercies
            Shall hover round the ruin.
          Their wings shall stream upon the flame
            As if incorporate of the same
            In elemental fusion;
          And calm their faces shall burn out
          With a pale and mastering thought,
          And a steadfast looking of desire
          From out between the clefts of fire,--
          While they cry, in the Holy's name,
            To the final Restitution.
               Listen to our loving!

  _Second Semichorus._
          So, when the day of God is
            To the thick graves accompted,
          Awaking the dead bodies,
            The angel of the trumpet
          Shall split and shatter the earth
            To the roots of the grave--
          Which never before were slackened--
          And quicken the charnel birth
          With his blast so clear and brave
            That the Dead shall start and stand erect,
          And every face of the burial-place
          Shall the awful, single look reflect
            Wherewith he them awakened.
              Listen to our loving!

  _First Semichorus._
          But wild is the horse of Death!
          He will leap up wild at the clamour
            Above and beneath.
            And where is his Tamer
            On that last day,
            When he crieth Ha, ha!
            To the trumpet's blare,
        And paweth the earth's Aceldama?
            When he tosseth his head,
            The drear-white steed,
        And ghastlily champeth the last moon-ray--
            What angel there
            Can lead him away,
          That the living may rule for the Dead?

  _Second Semichorus._
          Yet a TAMER shall be found!
          One more bright than seraph crowned,
          And more strong than cherub bold,
          Elder, too, than angel old,
          By his grey eternities.
          He shall master and surprise
            The steed of Death.
          For He is strong, and He is fain.
          He shall quell him with a breath,
          And shall lead him where He will,
          With a whisper in the ear,
            Full of fear,
          And a hand upon the mane,
            Grand and still.

  _First Semichorus._
  Through the flats of Hades where the souls assemble
  He will guide the Death-steed calm between their ranks,
  While, like beaten dogs, they a little moan and tremble
  To see the darkness curdle from the horse's glittering flanks.
  Through the flats of Hades where the dreary shade is,
  Up the steep of heaven will the Tamer guide the steed,--
  Up the spheric circles, circle above circle,
  We who count the ages shall count the tolling tread--
  Every hoof-fall striking a blinder blanker sparkle
  From the stony orbs, which shall show as they were dead.

  _Second Semichorus._
  All the way the Death-steed with tolling hoofs shall travel,
  Ashen-grey the planets shall be motionless as stones,
  Loosely shall the systems eject their parts coaeval,
  Stagnant in the spaces shall float the pallid moons:
  Suns that touch their apogees, reeling from their level,
  Shall run back on their axles, in wild low broken tunes.

  _Chorus._
  Up against the arches of the crystal ceiling,
  From the horse's nostrils shall steam the blurting breath:
  Up between the angels pale with silent feeling
  Will the Tamer calmly lead the horse of Death.

  _Semichorus._
  Cleaving all that silence, cleaving all that glory,
  Will the Tamer lead him straightway to the Throne:
  "Look out, O Jehovah, to this I bring before Thee,
  With a hand nail-pierced, I who am thy Son."
  Then the Eye Divinest, from the Deepest, flaming,
  On the mystic courser shall look out in fire:
  Blind the beast shall stagger where It overcame him,
  Meek as lamb at pasture, bloodless in desire.
  Down the beast shall shiver,--slain amid the taming,--
  And, by Life essential, the phantasm Death expire.

  _Chorus._
        Listen, man, through life and death,
        Through the dust and through the breath,
          Listen down the heart of things!
          Ye shall hear our mystic wings
            Murmurous with loving.

  _A Voice from below._ Gabriel, thou Gabriel!

  _A Voice from above._ What wouldst _thou_ with me?

  _First Voice._ I heard thy voice sound in the angels' song,
  And I would give thee question.

  _Second Voice._ Question me!

  _First Voice._ Why have I called thrice to my Morning Star
  And had no answer? All the stars are out,
  And answer in their places. Only in vain
  I cast my voice against the outer rays
  Of _my_ Star shut in light behind the sun.
  No more reply than from a breaking string,
  Breaking when touched. Or is she _not_ my star?
  Where _is_ my Star--my Star? Have ye cast down
  Her glory like my glory? Has she waxed
  Mortal, like Adam? Has she learnt to hate
  Like any angel?

  _Second Voice._ She is sad for thee.
  All things grow sadder to thee, one by one.

  _Angel Chorus._
          Live, work on, O Earthy!
            By the Actual's tension,
          Speed the arrow worthy
            Of a pure ascension!
          From the low earth round you,
            Reach the heights above you:
          From the stripes that wound you,
            Seek the loves that love you!
          God's divinest burneth plain
          Through the crystal diaphane
            Of our loves that love you.

  _First Voice._ Gabriel, O Gabriel!

  _Second Voice._ What wouldst _thou_ with me?

  _First Voice._ Is it true, O thou Gabriel, that the crown
  Of sorrow which I claimed, another claims?
  That HE claims THAT too?

  _Second Voice._           Lost one, it is true.

  _First Voice._ That HE will be an exile from his heaven,
  To lead those exiles homeward?

  _Second Voice._                  It is true.

  _First Voice._ That HE will be an exile by his will,
  As I by mine election?

  _Second Voice._        It is true.

  _First Voice._ That _I_ shall stand sole exile finally,--
  Made desolate for fruition?

  _Second Voice._                It is true.

  _First Voice._ Gabriel!

  _Second Voice._          I hearken.

  _First Voice._                     Is it true besides--
  Aright true--that mine orient Star will give
  Her name of "Bright and Morning-Star" to HIM,--
  And take the fairness of his virtue back
  To cover loss and sadness?

  _Second Voice._               It is true.

  _First Voice._ UNtrue, UNtrue! O Morning Star, O MINE,
  Who sittest secret in a veil of light
  Far up the starry spaces, say--_Untrue!_
  Speak but so loud as doth a wasted moon
  To Tyrrhene waters. I am Lucifer.

[_A pause. Silence in the stars._

  All things grow sadder to me, one by one.

  _Angel Chorus._
          Exiled human creatures,
            Let your hope grow larger!
          Larger grows the vision
            Of the new delight.
          From this chain of Nature's
            God is the Discharger,
          And the Actual's prison
            Opens to your sight.

  _Semichorus._
          Calm the stars and golden
            In a light exceeding:
          What their rays have measured
            Let your feet fulfil!
          These are stars beholden
            By your eyes in Eden,
          Yet, across the desert,
            See them shining still!

  _Chorus._
          Future joy and far light
            Working such relations,
          Hear us singing gently
            _Exiled is not lost!_
          God, above the starlight,
            God, above the patience,
          Shall at last present ye
            Guerdons worth the cost.
          Patiently enduring,
            Painfully surrounded,
          Listen how we love you,
            Hope the uttermost!
          Waiting for that curing
            Which exalts the wounded,
          Hear us sing above you--
            EXILED, BUT NOT LOST!

[_The stars shine on brightly while ADAM and EVE pursue their way into
the far wilderness. There is a sound through the silence, as of the
falling tears of an angel._

FOOTNOTES:

[B] Adam recognizes in _Aquarius_, the Water-bearer, and _Sagittarius_,
the Archer, distinct types of the man bearing and the man
combating,--the passive and active forms of human labour. I hope that
the preceding zodiacal signs--transferred to the earthly shadow and
representative purpose--of Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio,
Capricornus, and Pisces, are sufficiently obvious to the reader.

[C] Her maternal instinct is excited by Gemini.




THE SERAPHIM


I look for Angels' songs, and hear Him cry.

                               GILES FLETCHER.




THE SERAPHIM.


PART THE FIRST.

[_It is the time of the Crucifixion; and the Angels of Heaven have
departed towards the Earth, except the two Seraphim, ADOR the Strong
and ZERAH the Bright One._
_The place is the outer side of the shut Heavenly Gate._]

  _Ador._ O Seraph, pause no more!
        Beside this gate of heaven we stand alone.

  _Zerah._ Of heaven!

  _Ador._        Our brother hosts are gone--

  _Zerah._ Are gone before.

  _Ador._ And the golden harps the angels bore
        To help the songs of their desire,
        Still burning from their hands of fire,
        Lie without touch or tone
          Upon the glass-sea shore.

  _Zerah._ Silent upon the glass-sea shore!

  _Ador._ There the Shadow from the throne
          Formless with infinity
          Hovers o'er the crystal sea
            Awfuller than light derived,
          And red with those primeval heats
           Whereby all life has lived.

  _Zerah._ Our visible God, our heavenly seats!

  _Ador._ Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical,
          Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all,--
            The roar of whose descent has died
          To a still sound, as thunder into rain.
            Immeasurable space spreads magnified
          With that thick life, along the plane
          The worlds slid out on. What a fall
          And eddy of wings innumerous, crossed
          By trailing curls that have not lost
          The glitter of the God-smile shed
          On every prostrate angel's head!
          What gleaming up of hands that fling
            Their homage in retorted rays,
          From high instinct of worshipping,
            And habitude of praise!

  _Zerah._ Rapidly they drop below us:
            Pointed palm and wing and hair
          Indistinguishable show us
            Only pulses in the air
          Throbbing with a fiery beat,
          As if a new creation heard
          Some divine and plastic word,
        And trembling at its new-found being,
          Awakened at our feet.

  _Ador._ Zerah, do not wait for seeing!
        HIS voice, his, that thrills us so
        As we our harpstrings, uttered _Go_,
        _Behold the Holy in his woe!_
        And all are gone, save thee and--

  _Zerah._                                  Thee!

  _Ador._ I stood the nearest to the throne
        In hierarchical degree,
        What time the Voice said _Go_!
        And whether I was moved alone
        By the storm-pathos of the tone
      Which swept through heaven the alien name of _woe_,
        Or whether the subtle glory broke
        Through my strong and shielding wings,
        Bearing to my finite essence
        Incapacious of their presence,
            Infinite imaginings,
      None knoweth save the Throned who spoke;
      But I who at creation stood upright
        And heard the God-breath move
  Shaping the words that lightened, "Be there light,
        Nor trembled but with love,
        Now fell down shudderingly,
  My face upon the pavement whence I had towered,
  As if in mine immortal overpowered
        By God's eternity.

  _Zerah._ Let me wait!--let me wait!--

  _Ador._ Nay, gaze not backward through the gate!
  God fills our heaven with God's own solitude
      Till all the pavements glow:
  His Godhead being no more subdued,
      By itself, to glories low
        Which seraphs can sustain.
      What if thou, in gazing so,
      Shouldst behold but only one
      Attribute, the veil undone--
    Even that to which we dare to press
    Nearest, for its gentleness--
      Ay, his love!
    How the deep ecstatic pain
    Thy being's strength would capture!
    Without language for the rapture,
    Without music strong to come
      And set the adoration free,
      For ever, ever, wouldst thou be
    Amid the general chorus dumb,
    God-stricken to seraphic agony.
      Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
      In vision bare should rise
  The life-fount whence his hand did gather
      With solitary force
      Our immortalities!
  Straightway how thine own would wither,
      Falter like a human breath,
      And shrink into a point like death,
        By gazing on its source!--
      My words have imaged dread
      Meekly hast thou bent thine head,
      And dropt thy wings in languishment:
      Overclouding foot and face,
      As if God's throne were eminent
        Before thee, in the place.
        Yet not--not so,
  O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil
  The supreme Will.
  Not for obeisance but obedience,
  Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence!
          The voice said "Go!"

  _Zerah._ Beloved, I depart,
  His will is as a spirit within my spirit,
  A portion of the being I inherit.
  His will is mine obedience. I resemble
  A flame all undefiled though it tremble;
  I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!
      O thou, who stronger art,
  And standest ever near the Infinite,
      Pale with the light of Light,
  Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,
        More feeble, more afraid;
  And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,
  As close and gentle as the loving are,
  That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.

  _Ador._ I am near thee and I love thee.
        Were I loveless, from thee gone,
        Love is round, beneath, above thee,
        God, the omnipresent one.
        Spread the wing and lift the brow!
        Well-beloved, what fearest thou?

  _Zerah._ I fear, I fear--

  _Ador._                What fear?

  _Zerah._                        The fear of earth.

  _Ador._ Of earth, the God-created and God-praised
  In the hour of birth?
  Where every night the moon in light
  Doth lead the waters silver-faced?
    Where every day the sun doth lay
  A rapture to the heart of all
  The leafy and reeded pastoral,
      As if the joyous shout which burst
      From angel lips to see him first,
        Had left a silent echo in his ray?

  _Zerah._ Of earth--the God-created and God-curst,
      Where man is, and the thorn:
      Where sun and moon have borne
      No light to souls forlorn:
  Where Eden's tree of life no more uprears
    Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead
    The yew-tree bows its melancholy head
  And all the undergrasses kills and seres.

  _Ador._ Of earth the weak,
  Made and unmade?
  Where men, that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?
  Where, having won the profit which they seek,
  They lie beside the sceptre and the gold
  With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,
  And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?

  _Zerah._ Of earth the bold,
  Where the blind matter wrings
  An awful potence out of impotence,
  Bowing the spiritual things
      To the things of sense.
  Where the human will replies
  With ay and no,
  Because the human pulse is quick or slow.
        Where Love succumbs to Change,
        With only his own memories, for revenge.
        And the fearful mystery--

  _Ador._                      called Death?

  _Zerah._ Nay, death is fearful,--but who saith
        "To die," is comprehensible.
        What's fearfuller, thou knowest well,
        Though the utterance be not for thee,
        Lest it blanch thy lips from glory--
        Ay! the cursed thing that moved
        A shadow of ill, long time ago,
        Across our heaven's own shining floor,
        And when it vanished, some who were
        On thrones of holy empire there,
        Did reign--were seen--were--never more.
          Come nearer, O beloved!

  _Ador._ I am near thee. Didst thou bear thee
        Ever to this earth?

  _Zerah._                Before.
        When thrilling from His hand along
        Its lustrous path with spheric song
        The earth was deathless, sorrowless.
        Unfearing, then, pure feet might press
        The grasses brightening with their feet,
        For God's own voice did mix its sound
        In a solemn confluence oft
        With the rivers' flowing round,
        And the life-tree's waving soft.
        Beautiful new earth and strange!

  _Ador._ Hast thou seen it since--the change?

  _Zerah._ Nay, or wherefore should I fear
          To look upon it now?
        I have beheld the ruined things
        Only in depicturings
        Of angels from an earthly mission,--
        Strong one, even upon thy brow,
        When, with task completed, given
        Back to us in that transition,
        I have beheld thee silent stand,
        Abstracted in the seraph band,
            Without a smile in heaven.

  _Ador._ Then thou wast not one of those
        Whom the loving Father chose
        In visionary pomp to sweep
        O'er Judaea's grassy places,
        O'er the shepherds and the sheep,
        Though thou art so tender?--dimming
        All the stars except one star
        With their brighter kinder faces,
        And using heaven's own tune in hymning,
  While deep response from earth's own mountains ran,
        "Peace upon earth, goodwill to man."

  _Zerah._ "Glory to God." I said amen afar.
  And those who from that earthly mission are,
      Within mine ears have told
  That the seven everlasting Spirits did hold
  With such a sweet and prodigal constraint
  The meaning yet the mystery of the song
  What time they sang it, on their natures strong,
  That, gazing down on earth's dark steadfastness
  And speaking the new peace in promises,
  The love and pity made their voices faint
  Into the low and tender music, keeping
  The place in heaven of what on earth is weeping.

  _Ador._ "Peace upon earth." Come down to it.

  _Zerah._                              Ah me!
  I hear thereof uncomprehendingly.
  Peace where the tempest, where the sighing is,
  And worship of the idol, 'stead of His?

  _Ador._ Yea, peace, where He is.

  _Zerah._                        He!
  Say it again.

  _Ador._       Where He is.

  _Zerah._                   Can it be
  That earth retains a tree
  Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed
  By the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?

  _Ador._ There is a tree!--it hath no leaf nor root;
      Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:
        Its shadow on his head is laid.
        For he, the crowned Son,
        Has left his crown and throne,
        Walks earth in Adam's clay,
        Eve's snake to bruise and slay--

  _Zerah._ Walks earth in clay?

  _Ador._ And walking in the clay which he created,
      He through it shall touch death.
  What do I utter? what conceive? did breath
  Of demon howl it in a blasphemy?
  Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilated
  By the seven confluent Spirits?--Speak--answer me!

  _Who_ said man's victim was his deity?

  _Zerah._ Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee.
  Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous light
      Above, below, around,
  As putting thunder-questions without cloud,
      Reverberate without sound,
  To universal nature's depth and height.
  The tremor of an inexpressive thought
  Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud,
  O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips;
    And while thine hands are stretched above,
      As newly they had caught
  Some lightning from the Throne, or showed the Lord
      Some retributive sword,
  Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse
  And radiance, with contrasted wrath and love,
    As God had called thee to a seraph's part,
      With a man's quailing heart.

  _Ador._ O heart--O heart of man!
          O ta'en from human clay
    To be no seraph's but Jehovah's own!
          Made holy in the taking,
          And yet unseparate
        From death's perpetual ban,
  And human feelings sad and passionate:
  Still subject to the treacherous forsaking
  Of other hearts, and its own steadfast pain.
  O heart of man--of God! which God has ta'en
  From out the dust, with its humanity
  Mournful and weak yet innocent around it,
  And bade its many pulses beating lie
  Beside that incommunicable stir
  Of Deity wherewith he interwound it.
  O man! and is thy nature so defiled
  That all that holy Heart's devout law-keeping,
  And low pathetic beat in deserts wild,
  And gushings pitiful of tender weeping
  For traitors who consigned it to such woe--
  That all could cleanse thee not, without the flow
  Of blood, the life-blood--_His_--and streaming _so_?
  O earth the thundercleft, windshaken, where
  The louder voice of "blood and blood" doth rise,
  Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice?
        O heaven! O vacant throne!
  O crowned hierarchies that wear your crown
        When His is put away!
  Are ye unshamed that ye cannot dim
  Your alien brightness to be liker him,
  Assume a human passion, and down-lay
  Your sweet secureness for congenial fears,
  And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyes
        The mystery of his tears?

  _Zerah._ I am strong, I am strong.
  Were I never to see my heaven again,
  I would wheel to earth like the tempest rain
  Which sweeps there with an exultant sound
  To lose its life as it reaches the ground.
  I am strong, I am strong.
  Away from mine inward vision swim
  The shining seats of my heavenly birth,
  I see but his, I see but him--
  The Maker's steps on his cruel earth.
  Will the bitter herbs of earth grow sweet
  To me, as trodden by his feet?
        Will the vexed, accurst humanity,
        As worn by him, begin to be
        A blessed, yea, a sacred thing
        For love and awe and ministering?
            I am strong, I am strong.
        By our angel ken shall we survey
        His loving smile through his woeful clay?
            I am swift, I am strong,
        The love is bearing me along.

  _Ador._ One love is bearing us along.


PART THE SECOND.

_Mid-air, above Judaea. ADOR and ZERAH are a little apart from the
visible Angelic Hosts._

  _Ador._ Beloved! dost thou see?--

  _Zerah._    Thee,--thee.
        Thy burning eyes already are
        Grown wild and mournful as a star
        Whose occupation is for aye
        To look upon the place of clay
          Whereon thou lookest now.
        The crown is fainting on thy brow
        To the likeness of a cloud,
        The forehead's self a little bowed
        From its aspect high and holy,
        As it would in meekness meet
        Some seraphic melancholy:
        Thy very wings that lately flung
        An outline clear, do flicker here
        And wear to each a shadow hung,
          Dropped across thy feet.
        In these strange contrasting glooms
        Stagnant with the scent of tombs,
        Seraph faces, O my brother,
        Show awfully to one another.

  _Ador._ Dost thou see?

  _Zerah._               Even so; I see
        Our empyreal company,
      Alone the memory of their brightness
        Left in them, as in thee.
  The circle upon circle, tier on tier,
      Piling earth's hemisphere
      With heavenly infiniteness,
        Above us and around,
  Straining the whole horizon like a bow:
  Their songful lips divorced from all sound,
  A darkness gliding down their silvery glances,--
  Bowing their steadfast solemn countenances
  As if they heard God speak, and could not glow.

  _Ador._ Look downward! dost thou see?

  _Zerah._ And wouldst thou press _that_ vision on my words?
  Doth not earth speak enough
  Of change and of undoing,
  Without a seraph's witness? Oceans rough
  With tempest, pastoral swards
  Displaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruing
  The bolt fallen yesterday,
  That shake their piny heads, as who would say
  "We are too beautiful for our decay"--
  Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let alone
      Earth to her earthly moan!

  _Voice of all things._ Is there no moan but hers?

  _Ador._ Hearest thou the attestation
      Of the roused universe
      Like a desert-lion shaking
      Dews of silence from its mane?
      With an irrepressive passion
          Uprising at once,
      Rising up and forsaking
      Its solemn state in the circle of suns,
          To attest the pain
      Of him who stands (O patience sweet!)
      In his own hand-prints of creation,
          With human feet?

  _Voice of all things._ Is there no moan but ours?

  _Zerah._ Forms, Spaces, Motions wide,
      O meek, insensate things,
    O congregated matters! who inherit,
      Instead of vital powers,
      Impulsions God-supplied;
      Instead of influent spirit,
      A clear informing beauty;
      Instead of creature-duty,
      Submission calm as rest.
      Lights, without feet or wings,
      In golden courses sliding!
      Glooms, stagnantly subsiding,
    Whose lustrous heart away was prest
        Into the argent stars!
      Ye crystal firmamental bars
      That hold the skyey waters free
      From tide or tempest's ecstasy!
      Airs universal! thunders lorn
      That wait your lightnings in cloud-cave
      Hewn out by the winds! O brave
      And subtle elements! the Holy
      Hath charged me by your voice with folly.[D]
    Enough, the mystic arrow leaves its wound.
    Return ye to your silences inborn,
    Or to your inarticulated sound!

  _Ador._ Zerah!

  _Zerah._ Wilt _thou_ rebuke?
    God hath rebuked me, brother. I am weak.

  _Ador._ Zerah, my brother Zerah! could I speak
    Of thee, 'twould be of love to thee.

  _Zerah._                                Thy look
    Is fixed on earth, as mine upon thy face.
    Where shall I seek His?
                            I have thrown
      One look upon earth, but one,
      Over the blue mountain-lines,
      Over the forests of palms and pines,
      Over the harvest-lands golden,
      Over the valleys that fold in
      The gardens and vines--
        He is not there.
      All these are unworthy
      Those footsteps to bear,
        Before which, bowing down
  I would fain quench the stars of my crown
        In the dark of the earthy.
      Where shall I seek him?
                                No reply?
      Hath language left thy lips, to place
      Its vocal in thine eye?
        Ador, Ador! are we come
      To a double portent, that
      Dumb matter grows articulate
        And songful seraphs dumb?
      Ador, Ador!

  _Ador._    I constrain
      The passion of my silence. None
      Of those places gazed upon
        Are gloomy enow to fit his pain.
        Unto Him, whose forming word
        Gave to Nature flower and sward.
          She hath given back again,
            For the myrtle--the thorn,
  For the sylvan calm--the human scorn.
  Still, still, reluctant seraph, gaze beneath!
  There is a city----

  _Zerah._            Temple and tower,
  Palace and purple would droop like a flower,
        (Or a cloud at our breath)
        If He neared in his state
        The outermost gate.

  _Ador._                        Ah me, not so
  In the state of a king did the victim go!
  And THOU who hangest mute of speech
      'Twixt heaven and earth, with forehead yet
      Stained by the bloody sweat,
  God! man! Thou hast forgone thy throne in each.

  _Zerah._ Thine eyes behold him?

  _Ador._                           Yea, below.
      Track the gazing of mine eyes,
      Naming God within thine heart
      That its weakness may depart
        And the vision rise!
      Seest thou yet, beloved?

  _Zerah._                     I see
  Beyond the city, crosses three
  And mortals three that hang thereon
  'Ghast and silent to the sun.
  Round them blacken and welter and press
  Staring multitudes whose father
  Adam was, whose brows are dark
  With his Cain's corroded mark,--
  Who curse with looks. Nay--let me rather
  Turn unto the wilderness!

  _Ador._ Turn not! God dwells with men.

  _Zerah._                                Above
  He dwells with angels, and they love.
  Can these love? With the living's pride
  They stare at those who die, who hang
  In their sight and die. They bear the streak
  Of the crosses' shadow, black not wide,
  To fall on their heads, as it swerves aside
            When the victims' pang
            Makes the dry wood creak.

  _Ador._ The cross--the cross!

  _Zerah._                       A woman kneels
            The mid cross under,
            With white lips asunder,
            And motion on each.
            They throb, as she feels,
            With a spasm, not a speech;
            And her lids, close as sleep,
            Are less calm, for the eyes
            Have made room there to weep
            Drop on drop--

  _Ador._                    Weep? Weep blood,
            All women, all men!
            He sweated it, He,
            For your pale womanhood
            And base manhood. Agree
            That these water-tears, then,
            Are vain, mocking like laughter:
            Weep blood! Shall the flood
  Of salt curses, whose foam is the darkness, on roll
  Forward, on from the strand of the storm-beaten years,
  And back from the rocks of the horrid hereafter,
  And up, in a coil, from the present's wrath-spring,
  Yea, down from the windows of heaven opening,
  Deep calling to deep as they meet on His soul--
            And men weep only tears?

  _Zerah._ Little drops in the lapse!
            And yet, Ador, perhaps
            It is all that they can.
            Tears! the lovingest man
            Has no better bestowed
            Upon man.

  _Ador._                 Nor on God.

  _Zerah._                   Do all-givers need gifts?
  If the Giver said "Give," the first motion would slay
  Our Immortals, the echo would ruin away
  The same worlds which he made. Why, what angel uplifts
          Such a music, so clear,
          It may seem in God's ear
  Worth more than a woman's hoarse weeping? And thus,
  Pity tender as tears, I above thee would speak,
  Thou woman that weepest! weep unscorned of us!
  I, the tearless and pure, am but loving and weak.

  _Ador._ Speak low, my brother, low,--and not of love
  Or human or angelic! Rather stand
  Before the throne of that Supreme above,
  In whose infinitude the secrecies
  Of thine own being lie hid, and lift thine hand
  Exultant, saying, "Lord God, I am wise!"--
  Than utter _here_, "I love."

  _Zerah._                 And yet thine eyes
  Do utter it. They melt in tender light,
  The tears of heaven.

  _Ador._              Of heaven. Ah me!

  _Zerah._ Ador!

  _Ador._        Say on!

  _Zerah._               The crucified are three.
  Beloved, they are unlike.

  _Ador._                  Unlike.

  _Zerah._                          For one
        Is as a man who has sinned and still
        Doth wear the wicked will,
      The hard malign life-energy,
  Tossed outward, in the parting soul's disdain,
  On brow and lip that cannot change again.

  _Ador._ And one--

  _Zerah._             Has also sinned.
  And yet (O marvel!) doth the Spirit-wind
  Blow white those waters? Death upon his face
    Is rather shine than shade,
  A tender shine by looks beloved made:
  He seemeth dying in a quiet place,
  And less by iron wounds in hands and feet
  Than heart-broke by new joy too sudden and sweet.

  _Ador._ And ONE!--

  _Zerah._          And ONE!--

  _Ador._                    Why dost thou pause?

  _Zerah._                          God! God!
    Spirit of my spirit! who movest
  Through seraph veins in burning deity
  To light the quenchless pulses!--

  _Ador._                            But hast trod
  The depths of love in thy peculiar nature,
  And not in any thou hast made and lovest
  In narrow seraph hearts!--

  _Zerah._                     Above, Creator!
  Within, Upholder!

  _Ador._              And below, below,
  The creature's and the upholden's sacrifice!

  _Zerah._ Why do I pause?--

  _Ador._                      There is a silentness
          That answers thee enow,
          That, like a brazen sound
  Excluding others, doth ensheathe us round,--
  Hear it. It is not from the visible skies
          Though they are still,
  Unconscious that their own dropped dews express
  The light of heaven on every earthly hill.
  It is not from the hills, though calm and bare
          They, since their first creation,
  Through midnight cloud or morning's glittering air
  Or the deep deluge blindness, toward the place
  Whence thrilled the mystic word's creative grace,
          And whence again shall come
          The word that uncreates,
  Have lift their brows in voiceless expectation.
  It is not from the places that entomb
  Man's dead, though common Silence there dilates
  Her soul to grand proportions, worthily
          To fill life's vacant room.
        Not there: not there.
  Not yet within those chambers lieth He,
  A dead one in his living world; his south
  And west winds blowing over earth and sea,
  And not a breath on that creating mouth.
        But now,--a silence keeps
        (Not death's, nor sleep's)
        The lips whose whispered word
  Might roll the thunders round reverberated.
        Silent art thou, O my Lord,
        Bowing down thy stricken head!
        Fearest thou, a groan of thine
  Would make the pulse of thy creation fail
  As thine own pulse?--would rend the veil
  Of visible things and let the flood
  Of the unseen Light, the essential God,
  Rush in to whelm the undivine?
  Thy silence, to my thinking, is as dread.

  _Zerah._ O silence!

  _Ador._            Doth it say to thee--the NAME,
  Slow-learning seraph?

  _Zerah._              I have learnt.

  _Ador._                               The flame
  Perishes in thine eyes.

  _Zerah._              He opened his,
  And looked. I cannot bear--

  _Ador._                       Their agony?

  _Zerah._ Their love. God's depth is in them. From his brows
  White, terrible in meekness, didst thou see
          The lifted eyes unclose?
  He is God, seraph! Look no more on me,
  O God--I am not God.

  _Ador._                 The loving is
  Sublimed within them by the sorrowful.
  In heaven we could sustain them.

  _Zerah._                         Heaven is dull,
  Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burns
          In fluent, refluent motion
          Along the crystal ocean;
  The springing of the golden harps between
  The bowery wings, in fountains of sweet sound,
  The winding, wandering music that returns
  Upon itself, exultingly self-bound
  In the great spheric round
          Of everlasting praises;
  The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene,
  Visibly flashing from the supreme throne
          Full in seraphic faces
  Till each astonishes the other, grown
  More beautiful with worship and delight--
  My heaven! my home of heaven! my infinite
  Heaven-choirs! what are ye to this dust and death,
  This cloud, this cold, these tears, this failing breath,
  Where God's immortal love now issueth
          In this MAN'S woe?

  _Ador._ His eyes are very deep yet calm.

  _Zerah._                                 No more
  On _me_, Jehovah-man--

  _Ador._                  Calm-deep. They show
  A passion which is tranquil. They are seeing
  No earth, no heaven, no men that slay and curse,
          No seraphs that adore;
  Their gaze is on the invisible, the dread,
  The things we cannot view or think or speak,
  Because we are too happy, or too weak,--
  The sea of ill, for which the universe,
  With all its piled space, can find no shore,
  With all its life, no living foot to tread.
  But he, accomplished in Jehovah-being,
          Sustains the gaze adown,
          Conceives the vast despair,
  And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown,
  Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished.

  _Zerah._ Thus, do I find Thee thus? My undiminished
  And undiminishable God!--my God!
  The echoes are still tremulous along
  The heavenly mountains, of the latest song
  Thy manifested glory swept abroad
  In rushing past our lips: they echo aye
          "Creator, thou art strong!
  Creator, thou art blessed over all."
  By what new utterance shall I now recall,
  Unteaching the heaven-echoes? Dare I say,
  "Creator, thou art feebler than thy work!
  Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature!
          A worm, and not a man,
          Yea, no worm, but a curse?"
  I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse.
  Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork
          (Whose seed disordered ran
  From Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her)
  Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rod
  That smites thee never blossoming, and thou
  Grief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow--
  I leave to men their song of Ichabod:
  I have an angel-tongue--I know but praise.

  _Ador._ Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raise
  The passion-song of blood.

  _Zerah._                    And _we_, extend
  Our holy vacant hands towards the Throne,
  Crying "We have no music."

  _Ador._                      Rather, blend
          Both musics into one.
  The sanctities and sanctified above
  Shall each to each, with lifted looks serene,
          Their shining faces lean,
          And mix the adoring breath
  And breathe the full thanksgiving.

  _Zerah._                           But the love--
  The love, mine Ador!

  _Ador._                 Do we love not?

  _Zerah._                                   Yea,
  But not as man shall! not with life for death,
  New-throbbing through the startled being; not
  With strange astonished smiles, that ever may
  Gush passionate like tears and fill their place:
  Nor yet with speechless memories of what
  Earth's winters were, enverduring the green
         Of every heavenly palm
         Whose windless, shadeless calm
  Moves only at the breath of the Unseen.
  Oh, not with this blood on us--and this face,--
  Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore
  In our behalf, and tender evermore
  With nature all our own, upon us gazing--
  Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising
  Their unreproachful wounds, alone to bless!
  Alas, Creator! shall we love thee less
  Than mortals shall?

  _Ador._                 Amen! so let it be.
  We love in our proportion, to the bound
  Thine infinite our finite set around,
  And that is finitely,--thou, infinite
  And worthy infinite love! And our delight
  Is, watching the dear love poured out to thee
  From ever fuller chalice. Blessed they,
  Who love thee more than we do: blessed we,
  Viewing that love which shall exceed even this,
  And winning in the sight a double bliss
  For all so lost in love's supremacy.
  The bliss is better. Only on the sad
      Cold earth there are who say
  It seemeth better to be great than glad.
  The bliss is better. Love him more, O man,
          Than sinless seraphs can!

  _Zerah._ Yea, love him more!

  _Voices of the Angelic Multitude._ Yea, more!

  _Ador._                             The loving word
  Is caught by those from whom we stand apart.
  For silence hath no deepness in her heart
  Where love's low name low breathed would not be heard
  By angels, clear as thunder.

  _Angelic Voices._            Love him more!

  _Ador._ Sweet voices, swooning o'er
          The music which ye make!
    Albeit to love there were not ever given
    A mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,
    That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.
    Of love be silent now! we gaze adown
    Upon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.
  _Zerah._ No crown! the woe instead
            Is heavy on his head,
            Pressing inward on his brain
            With a hot and clinging pain
            Till all tears are prest away,
          And clear and calm his vision may
            Peruse the black abyss.
            No rod, no sceptre is
          Holden in his fingers pale;
          They close instead upon the nail,
            Concealing the sharp dole,
          Never stirring to put by
            The fair hair peaked with blood,
          Drooping forward from the rood
            Helplessly, heavily
          On the cheek that waxeth colder,
          Whiter ever, and the shoulder
            Where the government was laid.
            His glory made the heavens afraid;
          Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?
          His pity makes his piteous state;
        Will he be uncompassionate
          Alone to his proper soul?
          Yea, will he not lift up
          His lips from the bitter cup,
          His brows from the dreary weight,
          His hand from the clenching cross,
        Crying, "My Father, give to me
        Again the joy I had with thee
        Or ere this earth was made for loss?
            No stir no sound.
        The love and woe being interwound
            He cleaveth to the woe;
        And putteth forth heaven's strength below,
                  To bear.

  _Ador._ And that creates his anguish now,
        Which made his glory there.

  _Zerah._ Shall it need be so?
          Awake, thou Earth! behold.
          Thou, uttered forth of old
          In all thy life-emotion,
          In all thy vernal noises,
          In the rollings of thine ocean,
          Leaping founts, and rivers running,--
          In thy woods' prophetic heaving
          Ere the rains a stroke have given,
          In thy winds' exultant voices
        When they feel the hills anear,--
          In the firmamental sunning,
          And the tempest which rejoices
        Thy full heart with an awful cheer.
          Thou, uttered forth of old
          And with all thy music rolled
            In a breath abroad
            By the breathing God,--
        Awake! He is here! behold!
        Even _thou_--
                      beseems it good
        To thy vacant vision dim,
        That the deadly ruin should,
        For thy sake, encompass him?
        That the Master-word should lie
        A mere silence, while his own
            Processive harmony,
        The faintest echo of his lightest tone,
        Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?
          Awake! emit a cry!
          And say, albeit used
          From Adam's ancient years
          To falls of acrid tears,
          To frequent sighs unloosed,
          Caught back to press again
          On bosoms zoned with pain--
        To corses still and sullen
        The shine and music dulling
        With closed eyes and ears
        That nothing sweet can enter,
        Commoving thee no less
        With that forced quietness
        Than the earthquake in thy centre--
        Thou hast not learnt to bear
        This new divine despair!
        These tears that sink into thee,
        These dying eyes that view thee,
        This dropping blood from lifted rood,
        They darken and undo thee.
  Thou canst not presently sustain this corse--
        Cry, cry, thou hast not force!
        Cry, thou wouldst fainer keep
        Thy hopeless charnels deep,
        Thyself a general tomb
        Where the first and the second Death
        Sit gazing face to face
        And mar each other's breath,
  While silent bones through all the place
  'Neath sun and moon do faintly glisten
        And seem to lie and listen
  For the tramp of the coming Doom.
            Is it not meet
      That they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,
        Should champ the ashes?
      That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloud
        Should wear it as a shroud,
        Perishing by its flashes?
      That they who vexed the lion should be rent?
      Cry, cry "I will sustain my punishment,
      The sin being mine; but take away from me
      This visioned Dread--this man--this Deity!"

  _The Earth._ I have groaned; I have travailed: I am weary.
  I am blind with my own grief, and cannot see,
  As clear-eyed angels can, his agony,
  And what I see I also can sustain,
  Because his power protects me from his pain.
  I have groaned; I have travailed: I am dreary,
  Hearkening the thick sobs of my children's heart:
          How can I say "Depart"
  To that Atoner making calm and free?
          Am I a God as he,
  To lay down peace and power as willingly?

  _Ador._ He looked for some to pity. There is none.
  All pity is within him and not for him.
  His earth is iron under him, and o'er him
            His skies are brass.
            His seraphs cry "Alas!"
  With hallelujah voice that cannot weep.
  And man, for whom the dreadful work is done ...

  _Scornful Voices from the Earth_. If verily this _be_ the Eternal's son--

  _Ador._ Thou hearest. Man is grateful.

  _Zerah._                                 Can I hear
  Nor darken into man and cease for ever
          My seraph-smile to wear?
              Was it for such,
            It pleased him to overleap
          His glory with his love and sever
          From the God-light and the throne
          And all angels bowing down,
          For whom his every look did touch
          New notes of joy on the unworn string
          Of an eternal worshipping?
            For such, he left his heaven?
            There, though never bought by blood
          And tears, we gave him gratitude:
          We loved him there, though unforgiven.

  _Ador._      The light is riven
                Above, around,
          And down in lurid fragments flung,
          That catch the mountain-peak and stream
              With momentary gleam,
          Then perish in the water and the ground.
          River and waterfall,
          Forest and wilderness,
        Mountain and city, are together wrung
        Into one shape, and that is shapelessness;
          The darkness stands for all.

  _Zerah._ The pathos hath the day undone:
          The death-look of His eyes
          Hath overcome the sun
        And made it sicken in its narrow skies.

  _Ador._ Is it to death? He dieth.

  _Zerah._                            Through the dark
  He still, he only, is discernible--
  The naked hands and feet transfixed stark,
  The countenance of patient anguish white,
      Do make themselves a light
  More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,
  And therein do they shine.

  _Ador._                     God! Father-God!
  Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!
  Uplift the lids of inward deity,
        Flashing abroad
      Thy burning Infinite!
  Light up this dark where there is nought to see
  Except the unimagined agony
  Upon the sinless forehead of the Son!

  _Zerah._ God, tarry not! Behold, enow
  Hath he wandered as a stranger,
  Sorrowed as a victim. Thou
        Appear for him, O Father!
        Appear for him, Avenger!
  Appear for him, just One and holy One,
        For he is holy and just!
  At once the darkness and dishonour rather
  To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,
      And hurl aback to ancient dust
    These mortals that make blasphemies
    With their made breath, this earth and skies
        That only grow a little dim,
        Seeing their curse on him.
        But him, of all forsaken,
        Of creature and of brother,
        Never wilt thou forsake!
  Thy living and thy loving cannot slacken
  Their firm essential hold upon each other,
  And well thou dost remember how his part
  Was still to lie upon thy breast and be
  Partaker of the light that dwelt in thee
        Ere sun or seraph shone;
  And how while silence trembled round the throne
  Thou countedst by the beatings of his heart
  The moments of thine own eternity.
              Awaken,
  O right hand with the lightnings! Again gather
  His glory to thy glory! What estranger,
  What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust
  Between the faithful Father and the Son?
        Appear for him, O Father!
        Appear for him, Avenger!
  Appear for him, just One and holy One,
        For he is holy and just!

  _Ador._ Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;
  Thou hast no answer, Zerah.

  _Zerah._                    No reply,
  O unforsaking Father?

  _Ador._                 Hark!
  Instead of downward voice, a cry
      Is uttered from beneath.

  _Zerah._ And by a sharper sound than death,
      Mine immortality is riven.
  The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky
  Floats backward as by a sudden wind:
      But I see no light behind,
    But I feel the farthest stars are all
      Stricken and shaken,
  And I know a shadow sad and broad
      Doth fall--doth fall
  On our vacant thrones in heaven.

  _Voice from the Cross._ MY GOD, MY GOD,
  WHY HAST THOU ME FORSAKEN?

  _The Earth._ Ah me, ah me, ah me! the dreadful Why!
  My sin is on thee, sinless one! Thou art
  God-orphaned, for my burden on thy head.
  Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread!
  Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead;
  Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart.

  _Zerah._ _He_ hath forsaken _him_. I perish.

  _Ador._                                Hold
  Upon his name! we perish not. Of old
  His will--

  _Zerah._ I seek his will. Seek, seraphim!
  My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curse
  Reverberate spare us, seraph or universe?
      _He_ hath forsaken _him_.

  _Ador._ He cannot fail.

  _Angel Voices._ We faint, we droop,
      Our love doth tremble like fear.

  _Voices of Fallen Angels from the Earth._ Do we prevail?
  Or are we lost? Hath not the ill we did
      Been heretofore our good?
  Is it not ill that one, all sinless, should
  Hang heavy with all curses on a cross?
  Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hid
  Within the empty graves which men did scoop
  To hold more damned dead, we shudder through
      What shall exalt us or undo,
        Our triumph, or our loss.

  _Voice from the Cross._ IT IS FINISHED.

  _Zerah._                                 Hark, again!
          Like a victor, speaks the slain.

  _Angel Voices._ Finished be the trembling vain!

  _Ador._ Upward, like a well-loved son,
          Looketh he, the orphaned one.

  _Angel Voices._ Finished is the mystic pain.

  _Voices of Fallen Angels._ His deathly forehead at the word,
          Gleameth like a seraph sword.

  _Angel Voices._ Finished is the demon reign.

  _Ador._ His breath, as living God, createth,
          His breath, as dying man, completeth.

  _Angel Voices._ Finished work his hands sustain.

  _The Earth._ In mine ancient sepulchres
          Where my kings and prophets freeze,
          Adam dead four thousand years,
          Unwakened by the universe's
          Everlasting moan,
          Aye his ghastly silence mocking--
          Unwakened by his children's knocking
          At his old sepulchral stone,
            "Adam, Adam, all this curse is
            Thine and on us yet!"--
          Unwakened by the ceaseless tears
          Wherewith they made his cerement wet,
        "Adam, must thy curse remain?"--
      Starts with sudden life and hears
  Through the slow dripping of the caverned caves,--

  _Angel Voices._ Finished is his bane.

  _Voice from the Cross._ FATHER! MY SPIRIT TO THINE HANDS IS GIVEN.

  _Ador._ Hear the wailing winds that be
      By wings of unclean spirits made!
        They, in that last look, surveyed
      The love they lost in losing heaven,
          And passionately flee
      With a desolate cry that cleaves
      The natural storms--though _they_ are lifting
      God's strong cedar-roots like leaves,
      And the earthquake and the thunder,
      Neither keeping either under,
      Roar and hurtle through the glooms--
      And a few pale stars are drifting
      Past the dark, to disappear,
      What time, from the splitting tombs
      Gleamingly the dead arise,
      Viewing with their death-calmed eyes
      The elemental strategies,
      To witness, victory is the Lord's.
      Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear!

  _Zerah._ I hear alone the memory of his words.


EPILOGUE.


  I.

        My song is done.
  My voice that long hath faltered shall be still.
  The mystic darkness drops from Calvary's hill
  Into the common light of this day's sun.


  II.

  I see no more thy cross, O holy Slain!
  I hear no more the horror and the coil
      Of the great world's turmoil
  Feeling thy countenance _too still_,--nor yell
  Of demons sweeping past it to their prison.
  The skies that turned to darkness with thy pain
      Make now a summer's day;
  And on my changed ear that sabbath bell
      Records how CHRIST IS RISEN.


  III.

      And I--ah! what am I
  To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened,
        Seraphic brows of light
  And seraph language never used nor hearkened?
  Ah me! what word that seraphs say, could come
  From mouth so used to sighs, so soon to lie
  Sighless, because then breathless, in the tomb?


  IV.

  Bright ministers of God and grace--of grace
  Because of God! whether ye bow adown
  In your own heaven, before the living face
  Of him who died and deathless wears the crown,
  Or whether at this hour ye haply are
  Anear, around me, hiding in the night
  Of this permitted ignorance your light,
          This feebleness to spare,--
  Forgive me, that mine earthly heart should dare
  Shape images of unincarnate spirits
  And lay upon their burning lips a thought
  Cold with the weeping which mine earth inherits.
  And though ye find in such hoarse music, wrought
  To copy yours, a cadence all the while
  Of sin and sorrow--only pitying smile!
        Ye know to pity, well.


  V.

  _I_ too may haply smile another day
  At the far recollection of this lay,
  When God may call me in your midst to dwell,
  To hear your most sweet music's miracle
  And see your wondrous faces. May it be!
  For his remembered sake, the Slain on rood,
  Who rolled his earthly garment red in blood
  (Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me,
  Before his heavenly throne should walk in white.

FOOTNOTE:

[D] "His angels he charged with folly."--_Job_ iv. 18.




PROMETHEUS BOUND

FROM THE GREEK OF AESCHYLUS


_PERSONS._

  PROMETHEUS.

  OCEANUS.

  HERMES.

  HEPHAESTUS.

  IO, _daughter of_ Inachus.

  STRENGTH _and_ FORCE.

  _Chorus of Sea Nymphs._




PROMETHEUS BOUND


SCENE.--_STRENGTH and FORCE, HEPHAESTUS and PROMETHEUS, at the
Rocks._

  _Strength._ We reach the utmost limit of the earth,
  The Scythian track, the desert without man.
  And now, Hephaestus, thou must needs fulfil
  The mandate of our Father, and with links
  Indissoluble of adamantine chains
  Fasten against this beetling precipice
  This guilty god. Because he filched away
  Thine own bright flower, the glory of plastic fire,
  And gifted mortals with it,--such a sin
  It doth behove he expiate to the gods,
  Learning to accept the empery of Zeus
  And leave off his old trick of loving man.

  _Hephaestus._ O Strength and Force, for you, our Zeus's will
  Presents a deed for doing, no more!--but _I_,
  I lack your daring, up this storm-rent chasm
  To fix with violent hands a kindred god,
  Howbeit necessity compels me so
  That I must dare it, and our Zeus commands
  With a most inevitable word. Ho, thou!
  High-thoughted son of Themis who is sage!
  Thee loth, I loth must rivet fast in chains
  Against this rocky height unclomb by man,
  Where never human voice nor face shall find
  Out thee who lov'st them, and thy beauty's flower,
  Scorched in the sun's clear heat, shall fade away.
  Night shall come up with garniture of stars
  To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun
  Disperse with retrickt beams the morning-frosts,
  But through all changes sense of present woe
  Shall vex thee sore, because with none of them
  There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked
  From love of man! and in that thou, a god,
  Didst brave the wrath of gods and give away
  Undue respect to mortals, for that crime
  Thou art adjudged to guard this joyless rock,
  Erect, unslumbering, bending not the knee,
  And many a cry and unavailing moan
  To utter on the air. For Zeus is stern
  And new-made kings are cruel.

  _Strength._                    Be it so.
  Why loiter in vain pity? Why not hate
  A god the gods hate? one too who betrayed
  Thy glory unto men?

  _Hephaestus._             An awful thing
  Is kinship joined to friendship.

  _Strength._                      Grant it be;
  Is disobedience to the Father's word
  A possible thing? Dost quail not more for that?

  _Hephaestus._ Thou, at least, art a stern one: ever bold.

  _Strength._ Why, if I wept, it were no remedy;
  And do not _thou_ spend labour on the air
  To bootless uses.

  _Hephaestus._       Cursed handicraft!
  I curse and hate thee, O my craft!

  _Strength._                           Why hate
  Thy craft most plainly innocent of all
  These pending ills?

  _Hephaestus._         I would some other hand
  Were here to work it!

  _Strength._           All work hath its pain,
  Except to rule the gods. There is none free
  Except King Zeus.

  _Hephaestus._         I know it very well:
  I argue not against it.

  _Strength._             Why not, then,
  Make haste and lock the fetters over HIM
  Lest Zeus behold thee lagging?

  _Hephaestus._                    Here be chains.
  Zeus may behold these.

  _Strength._              Seize him: strike amain:
  Strike with the hammer on each side his hands--
  Rivet him to the rock.

  _Hephaestus._          The work is done,
  And thoroughly done.

  _Strength._           Still faster grapple him;
  Wedge him in deeper: leave no inch to stir.
  He's terrible for finding a way out
  From the irremediable.

  _Hephaestus._           Here's an arm, at least,
  Grappled past freeing.

  _Strength._           Now then, buckle me
  The other securely. Let this wise one learn
  He's duller than our Zeus.

  _Hephaestus._               Oh, none but he
  Accuse me justly.

  _Strength._       Now, straight through the chest,
  Take him and bite him with the clenching tooth
  Of the adamantine wedge, and rivet him.

  _Hephaestus._ Alas, Prometheus, what thou sufferest here
  I sorrow over.

  _Strength._    Dost thou flinch again
  And breathe groans for the enemies of Zeus?
  Beware lest thine own pity find thee out.

  _Hephaestus._ Thou dost behold a spectacle that turns
  The sight o' the eyes to pity.

  _Strength._                      I behold
  A sinner suffer his sin's penalty.
  But lash the thongs about his sides.

  _Hephaestus._                        So much,
  I must do. Urge no farther than I must.

  _Strength._ Ay, but I _will_ urge!--and, with shout on shout,
  Will hound thee at this quarry. Get thee down
  And ring amain the iron round his legs.

  _Hephaestus._ That work was not long doing.

  _Strength._                                 Heavily now
  Let fall the strokes upon the perforant gyves:
  For He who rates the work has a heavy hand.

  _Hephaestus._ Thy speech is savage as thy shape.

  _Strength._                                   Be thou
  Gentle and tender! but revile not me
  For the firm will and the untruckling hate.

  _Hephaestus._ Let us go. He is netted round with chains.

  _Strength._ Here, now, taunt on! and having spoiled the gods
  Of honours, crown withal thy mortal men
  Who live a whole day out. Why how could _they_
  Draw off from thee one single of thy griefs?
  Methinks the Daemons gave thee a wrong name,
  "Prometheus," which means Providence,--because
  Thou dost thyself need providence to see
  Thy roll and ruin from the top of doom.

  _Prometheus (alone)._ O holy AEther, and swift-winged Winds,
  And River-wells, and laughter innumerous
  Of yon sea-waves! Earth, mother of us all,
  And all-viewing cyclic Sun, I cry on you,--
  Behold me, a god, what I endure from gods!
      Behold, with throe on throe,
      How, wasted by this woe,
  I wrestle down the myriad years of time!
      Behold, how fast around me,
  The new King of the happy ones sublime
  Has flung the chain he forged, has shamed and bound me!
  Woe, woe! to-day's woe and the coming morrow's
  I cover with one groan. And where is found me
      A limit to these sorrows?
  And yet what word do I say? I have foreknown
  Clearly all things that should be; nothing done
  Comes sudden to my soul; and I must bear
  What is ordained with patience, being aware
      Necessity doth front the universe
      With an invincible gesture. Yet this curse
      Which strikes me now, I find it hard to brave
      In silence or in speech. Because I gave
      Honour to mortals, I have yoked my soul
      To this compelling fate. Because I stole
      The secret fount of fire, whose bubbles went
      Over the ferule's brim, and manward sent
      Art's mighty means and perfect rudiment,
      That sin I expiate in this agony,
      Hung here in fetters, 'neath the blanching sky.
          Ah, ah me! what a sound,
  What a fragrance sweeps up from a pinion unseen
  Of a god, or a mortal, or nature between,
  Sweeping up to this rock where the earth has her bound,
  To have sight of my pangs or some guerdon obtain.
  Lo, a god in the anguish, a god in the chain!
          The god, Zeus hateth sore
          And his gods hate again,
      As many as tread on his glorified floor,
      Because I loved mortals too much evermore.
      Alas me! what a murmur and motion I hear,
          As of birds flying near!
          And the air undersings
          The light stroke of their wings--
      And all life that approaches I wait for in fear.

  _Chorus of Sea Nymphs, 1st Strophe._
          Fear nothing! our troop
          Floats lovingly up
          With a quick-oaring stroke
          Of wings steered to the rock,
  Having softened the soul of our father below.
  For the gales of swift-bearing have sent me a sound,
  And the clank of the iron, the malleted blow,
          Smote down the profound
          Of my caverns of old,
  And struck the red light in a blush from my brow,--
  Till I sprang up unsandaled, in haste to behold,
  And rushed forth on my chariot of wings manifold.

  _Prometheus._ Alas me!--alas me!
  Ye offspring of Tethys who bore at her breast
  Many children, and eke of Oceanus, he
  Coiling still around earth with perpetual unrest!
          Behold me and see
        How transfixed with the fang
        Of a fetter I hang
  On the high-jutting rocks of this fissure and keep
  An uncoveted watch o'er the world and the deep.

  _Chorus, 1st Antistrophe._
  I behold thee, Prometheus; yet now, yet now,
  A terrible cloud whose rain is tears
  Sweeps over mine eyes that witness how
          Thy body appears
  Hung awaste on the rocks by infrangible chains:
  For new is the Hand, new the rudder that steers
  The ship of Olympus through surge and wind--
  And of old things passed, no track is behind.

  _Prometheus._ Under earth, under Hades
      Where the home of the shade is,
    All into the deep, deep Tartarus,
      I would he had hurled me adown.
  I would he had plunged me, fastened thus
  In the knotted chain with the savage clang,
  All into the dark where there should be none,
  Neither god nor another, to laugh and see.
      But now the winds sing through and shake
      The hurtling chains wherein I hang,
      And I, in my naked sorrows, make
        Much mirth for my enemy.

  _Chorus, 2nd Strophe._
    Nay! who of the gods hath a heart so stern
      As to use thy woe for a mock and mirth?
    Who would not turn more mild to learn
      Thy sorrows? who of the heaven and earth
              Save Zeus? But he
              Right wrathfully
        Bears on his sceptral soul unbent
        And rules thereby the heavenly seed,
        Nor will he pause till he content
        His thirsty heart in a finished deed;
        Or till Another shall appear,
        To win by fraud, to seize by fear
        The hard-to-be-captured government.

  _Prometheus._ Yet even of _me_ he shall have need,
        That monarch of the blessed seed,
        Of me, of me, who now am cursed
              By his fetters dire,--
        To wring my secret out withal
          And learn by whom his sceptre shall
        Be filched from him--as was, at first,
              His heavenly fire.
        But he never shall enchant me
          With his honey-lipped persuasion;
        Never, never shall he daunt me
          With the oath and threat of passion
        Into speaking as they want me,
        Till he loose this savage chain,
          And accept the expiation
        Of my sorrow, in his pain.

  _Chorus, 2nd Antistrophe._
        Thou art, sooth, a brave god,
          And, for all thou hast borne
        From the stroke of the rod,
          Nought relaxest from scorn.
        But thou speakest unto me
          Too free and unworn;
        And a terror strikes through me
          And festers my soul
          And I fear, in the roll
        Of the storm, for thy fate
          In the ship far from shore:
  Since the son of Saturnus is hard in his hate
    And unmoved in his heart evermore.

  _Prometheus._ I know that Zeus is stern;
  I know he metes his justice by his will;
  And yet, his soul shall learn
  More softness when once broken by this ill:
  And curbing his unconquerable vaunt
  He shall rush on in fear to meet with me
  Who rush to meet with him in agony,
  To issues of harmonious covenant.

  _Chorus._ Remove the veil from all things and relate
  The story to us,--of what crime accused,
  Zeus smites thee with dishonourable pangs.
  Speak: if to teach us do not grieve thyself.

  _Prometheus._ The utterance of these things is torture to me,
  But so, too, is their silence; each way lies
  Woe strong as fate.
                      When gods began with wrath,
  And war rose up between their starry brows,
  Some choosing to cast Chronos from his throne
  That Zeus might king it there, and some in haste
  With opposite oaths that they would have no Zeus
  To rule the gods for ever,--I, who brought
  The counsel I thought meetest, could not move
  The Titans, children of the Heaven and Earth,
  What time, disdaining in their rugged souls
  My subtle machinations, they assumed
  It was an easy thing for force to take
  The mastery of fate. My mother, then,
  Who is called not only Themis but Earth too,
  (Her single beauty joys in many names)
  Did teach me with reiterant prophecy
  What future should be, and how conquering gods
  Should not prevail by strength and violence
  But by guile only. When I told them so,
  They would not deign to contemplate the truth
  On all sides round; whereat I deemed it best
  To lead my willing mother upwardly
  And set my Themis face to face with Zeus
  As willing to receive her. Tartarus,
  With its abysmal cloister of the Dark,
  Because I gave that counsel, covers up
  The antique Chronos and his siding hosts,
  And, by that counsel helped, the king of gods
  Hath recompensed me with these bitter pangs:
  For kingship wears a cancer at the heart,--
  Distrust in friendship. Do ye also ask
  What crime it is for which he tortures me?
  That shall be clear before you. When at first
  He filled his father's throne, he instantly
  Made various gifts of glory to the gods
  And dealt the empire out. Alone of men,
  Of miserable men, he took no count,
  But yearned to sweep their track off from the world
  And plant a newer race there. Not a god
  Resisted such desire except myself.
  _I_ dared it! _I_ drew mortals back to light,
  From meditated ruin deep as hell!
  For which wrong, I am bent down in these pangs
  Dreadful to suffer, mournful to behold,
  And I, who pitied man, am thought myself
  Unworthy of pity; while I render out
  Deep rhythms of anguish 'neath the harping hand
  That strikes me thus--a sight to shame your Zeus!

  _Chorus._ Hard as thy chains and cold as all these rocks
  Is he, Prometheus, who withholds his heart

  From joining in thy woe. I yearned before
  To fly this sight; and, now I gaze on it,
  I sicken inwards.

  _Prometheus._       To my friends, indeed,
  I must be a sad sight.

  _Chorus._               And didst thou sin
  No more than so?

  _Prometheus._     I did restrain besides
  My mortals from premeditating death.

  _Chorus._ How didst thou medicine the plague-fear of death?

  _Prometheus._ I set blind Hopes to inhabit in their house.

  _Chorus._ By that gift thou didst help thy mortals well.

  _Prometheus._ I gave them also fire.

  _Chorus._                            And have they now,
  Those creatures of a day, the red-eyed fire?

  _Prometheus._ They have: and shall learn by it many arts.

  _Chorus._ And truly for such sins Zeus tortures thee
  And will remit no anguish? Is there set
  No limit before thee to thine agony?

  _Prometheus._ No other: only what seems good to HIM.

  _Chorus._ And how will it seem good? what hope remains?
  Seest thou not that thou hast sinned? But that thou hast sinned
  It glads me not to speak of, and grieves thee:
  Then let it pass from both, and seek thyself
  Some outlet from distress.

  _Prometheus._               It is in truth
  An easy thing to stand aloof from pain
  And lavish exhortation and advice
  On one vexed sorely by it. I have known
  All in prevision. By my choice, my choice,
  I freely sinned--I will confess my sin--
  And helping mortals, found my own despair.
  I did not think indeed that I should pine
  Beneath such pangs against such skyey rocks,
  Doomed to this drear hill and no neighbouring
  Of any life: but mourn not ye for griefs
  I bear to-day: hear rather, dropping down
  To the plain, how other woes creep on to me,
  And learn the consummation of my doom.
  Beseech you, nymphs, beseech you, grieve for me
  Who now am grieving; for Grief walks the earth,
  And sits down at the foot of each by turns.

  _Chorus._ We hear the deep clash of thy words,
        Prometheus, and obey.
  And I spring with a rapid foot away
  From the rushing car and the holy air,
        The track of birds;
  And I drop to the rugged ground and there
    Await the tale of thy despair.

_OCEANUS enters._

  _Oceanus._ I reach the bourn of my weary road
      Where I may see and answer thee,
      Prometheus, in thine agony.
  On the back of the quick-winged bird I glode,
        And I bridled him in
        With the will of a god.
  Behold, thy sorrow aches in me
    Constrained by the force of kin.
  Nay, though that tie were all undone,
  For the life of none beneath the sun
  Would I seek a larger benison
    Than I seek for thine.
  And thou shalt learn my words are truth,--
  That no fair parlance of the mouth
    Grows falsely out of mine.
  Now give me a deed to prove my faith;
  For no faster friend is named in breath
    Than I, Oceanus, am thine.

  _Prometheus._ Ha! what has brought thee? Hast thou also come
  To look upon my woe? How hast thou dared
  To leave the depths called after thee, the caves
  Self-hewn and self-roofed with spontaneous rock,
  To visit earth, the mother of my chain?
  Hast come indeed to view my doom and mourn
  That I should sorrow thus? Gaze on, and see
  How I, the fast friend of your Zeus,--how I
  The erector of the empire in his hand,
  Am bent beneath that hand, in this despair.

  _Oceanus._ Prometheus, I behold: and I would fain
  Exhort thee, though already subtle enough,
  To a better wisdom. Titan, know thyself,
  And take new softness to thy manners since
  A new king rules the gods. If words like these,
  Harsh words and trenchant, thou wilt fling abroad,
  Zeus haply, though he sit so far and high,
  May hear thee do it, and so, this wrath of his
  Which now affects thee fiercely, shall appear
  A mere child's sport at vengeance. Wretched god,
  Rather dismiss the passion which thou hast,
  And seek a change from grief. Perhaps I seem
  To address thee with old saws and outworn sense,--
  Yet such a curse, Prometheus, surely waits
  On lips that speak too proudly: thou, meantime,
  Art none the meeker, nor dost yield a jot
  To evil circumstance, preparing still
  To swell the account of grief with other griefs
  Than what are borne. Beseech thee, use me then
  For counsel: do not spurn against the pricks,--
  Seeing that who reigns, reigns by cruelty
  Instead of right. And now, I go from hence,
  And will endeavour if a power of mine
  Can break thy fetters through. For thee,--be calm,
  And smooth thy words from passion. Knowest thou not
  Of perfect knowledge, thou who knowest too much,
  That where the tongue wags, ruin never lags?

  _Prometheus._ I gratulate thee who hast shared and dared
  All things with me, except their penalty.
  Enough so! leave these thoughts. It cannot be
  That thou shouldst move HIM. HE may _not_ be moved;
  And _thou_ beware of sorrow on this road.

  _Oceanus._ Ay! ever wiser for another's use
  Than thine! the event, and not the prophecy,
  Attests it to me. Yet where now I rush,
  Thy wisdom hath no power to drag me back;
  Because I glory, glory, to go hence
  And win for thee deliverance from thy pangs,
  As a free gift from Zeus.

  _Prometheus._             Why there, again,
  I give thee gratulation and applause.
  Thou lackest no goodwill. But, as for deeds,
  Do nought! 'twere all done vainly; helping nought,
  Whatever thou wouldst do. Rather take rest
  And keep thyself from evil. If I grieve,
  I do not therefore wish to multiply
  The griefs of others. Verily, not so!
  For still my brother's doom doth vex my soul,--
  My brother Atlas, standing in the west,
  Shouldering the column of the heaven and earth,
  A difficult burden! I have also seen,
  And pitied as I saw, the earth-born one,
  The inhabitant of old Cilician caves,
  The great war-monster of the hundred heads,
  (All taken and bowed beneath the violent Hand,)
  Typhon the fierce, who did resist the gods,
  And, hissing slaughter from his dreadful jaws,
  Flash out ferocious glory from his eyes
  As if to storm the throne of Zeus. Whereat,
  The sleepless arrow of Zeus flew straight at him,
  The headlong bolt of thunder breathing flame,
  And struck him downward from his eminence
  Of exultation; through the very soul,
  It struck him, and his strength was withered up
  To ashes, thunder-blasted. Now he lies
  A helpless trunk supinely, at full length
  Beside the strait of ocean, spurred into
  By roots of AEtna; high upon whose tops
  Hephaestus sits and strikes the flashing ore.
  From thence the rivers of fire shall burst away
  Hereafter, and devour with savage jaws
  The equal plains of fruitful Sicily,
  Such passion he shall boil back in hot darts
  Of an insatiate fury and sough of flame,
  Fallen Typhon,--howsoever struck and charred
  By Zeus's bolted thunder. But for thee,
  Thou art not so unlearned as to need
  My teaching--let thy knowledge save thyself.
  _I_ quaff the full cup of a present doom,
  And wait till Zeus hath quenched his will in wrath.

  _Oceanus._ Prometheus, art thou ignorant of this,
  That words do medicine anger?

  _Prometheus._                    If the word
  With seasonable softness touch the soul
  And, where the parts are ulcerous, sear them not
  By any rudeness.

  _Oceanus._        With a noble aim
  To dare as nobly--is there harm in _that_?
  Dost thou discern it? Teach me.

  _Prometheus._                      I discern
  Vain aspiration, unresultive work.

  _Oceanus._ Then suffer me to bear the brunt of this!
  Since it is profitable that one who is wise
  Should seem not wise at all.

  _Prometheus._                   And such would seem
  My very crime.

  _Oceanus._      In truth thine argument
  Sends me back home.

  _Prometheus._           Lest any lament for me
  Should cast thee down to hate.

  _Oceanus._                     The hate of him
  Who sits a new king on the absolute throne?

  _Prometheus._ Beware of him, lest thine heart grieve by him.

  _Oceanus._ Thy doom, Prometheus, be my teacher!

  _Prometheus._                                   Go.
  Depart--beware--and keep the mind thou hast.

  _Oceanus._ Thy words drive after, as I rush before.
  Lo! my four-footed bird sweeps smooth and wide
  The flats of air with balanced pinions, glad
  To bend his knee at home in the ocean-stall.

[_OCEANUS departs._

  _Chorus, 1st Strophe._
      I moan thy fate, I moan for thee,
        Prometheus! From my eyes too tender,
      Drop after drop incessantly
        The tears of my heart's pity render
      My cheeks wet from their fountains free;
      Because that Zeus, the stern and cold,
        Whose law is taken from his breast,
        Uplifts his sceptre manifest
          Over the gods of old.

  _1st Antistrophe._
          All the land is moaning
      With a murmured plaint to-day;
          All the mortal nations
          Having habitations
        In the holy Asia
          Are a dirge entoning
      For thine honour and thy brothers',
      Once majestic beyond others
          In the old belief,--
      Now are groaning in the groaning
          Of thy deep-voiced grief.

  _2nd Strophe._
      Mourn the maids inhabitant
          Of the Colchian land,
      Who with white, calm bosoms stand
          In the battle's roar:
      Mourn the Scythian tribes that haunt
      The verge of earth, Maeotis' shore.

  _2nd Antistrophe._
          Yea! Arabia's battle-crown,
          And dwellers in the beetling town
          Mount Caucasus sublimely nears,--
          An iron squadron, thundering down
            With the sharp-prowed spears.

      But one other before, have I seen to remain
          By invincible pain
  Bound and vanquished,--one Titan! 'twas Atlas, who bears
  In a curse from the gods, by that strength of his own
          Which he evermore wears,
  The weight of the heaven on his shoulder alone,
          While he sighs up the stars;
  And the tides of the ocean wail bursting their bars,--
          Murmurs still the profound,
  And black Hades roars up through the chasm of the ground,
  And the fountains of pure-running rivers moan low
          In a pathos of woe.

  _Prometheus._ Beseech you, think not I am silent thus
  Through pride or scorn. I only gnaw my heart
  With meditation, seeing myself so wronged.
  For see--their honours to these new-made gods,
  What other gave but I, and dealt them out
  With distribution? Ay--but here I am dumb!
  For here, I should repeat your knowledge to you,
  If I spake aught. List rather to the deeds
  I did for mortals; how, being fools before,
  I made them wise and true in aim of soul.
  And let me tell you--not as taunting men,
  But teaching you the intention of my gifts,
  How, first beholding, they beheld in vain,
  And hearing, heard not, but, like shapes in dreams,
  Mixed all things wildly down the tedious time,
  Nor knew to build a house against the sun
  With wickered sides, nor any woodcraft knew,
  But lived, like silly ants, beneath the ground
  In hollow caves unsunned. There, came to them
  No steadfast sign of winter, nor of spring
  Flower-perfumed, nor of summer full of fruit,
  But blindly and lawlessly they did all things,
  Until I taught them how the stars do rise
  And set in mystery, and devised for them
  Number, the inducer of philosophies,
  The synthesis of Letters, and, beside,
  The artificer of all things, Memory,
  That sweet Muse-mother. I was first to yoke
  The servile beasts in couples, carrying
  An heirdom of man's burdens on their backs.
  I joined to chariots, steeds, that love the bit
  They champ at--the chief pomp of golden ease.
  And none but I originated ships,
  The seaman's chariots, wandering on the brine
  With linen wings. And I--oh, miserable!--
  Who did devise for mortals all these arts,
  Have no device left now to save myself
  From the woe I suffer.

  _Chorus._               Most unseemly woe
  Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense
  Bewildered! like a bad leech falling sick
  Thou art faint at soul, and canst not find the drugs
  Required to save thyself.

  _Prometheus._            Hearken the rest,
  And marvel further, what more arts and means
  I did invent,--this, greatest: if a man
  Fell sick, there was no cure, nor esculent
  Nor chrism nor liquid, but for lack of drugs
  Men pined and wasted, till I showed them all
  Those mixtures of emollient remedies
  Whereby they might be rescued from disease.
  I fixed the various rules of mantic art,
  Discerned the vision from the common dream,
  Instructed them in vocal auguries
  Hard to interpret, and defined as plain
  The wayside omens,--flights of crook-clawed birds,--
  Showed which are, by their nature, fortunate,
  And which not so, and what the food of each,
  And what the hates, affections, social needs,
  Of all to one another,--taught what sign
  Of visceral lightness,  to a shade,
  May charm the genial gods, and what fair spots
  Commend the lung and liver. Burning so
  The limbs encased in fat, and the long chine,
  I led my mortals on to an art abstruse,
  And cleared their eyes to the image in the fire,
  Erst filmed in dark. Enough said now of this
  For the other helps of man hid underground,
  The iron and the brass, silver and gold,
  Can any dare affirm he found them out
  Before me? none, I know! unless he choose
  To lie in his vaunt. In one word learn the whole,--
  That all arts came to mortals from Prometheus.

  _Chorus._ Give mortals now no inexpedient help,
  Neglecting thine own sorrow. I have hope still
  To see thee, breaking from the fetter here,
  Stand up as strong as Zeus.

  _Prometheus._               This ends not thus,
  The oracular fate ordains. I must be bowed
  By infinite woes and pangs, to escape this chain
  Necessity is stronger than mine art.

  _Chorus._ Who holds the helm of that Necessity?

  _Prometheus._ The threefold Fates and the unforgetting Furies.

  _Chorus._ Is Zeus less absolute than these are?

  _Prometheus._                                    Yea,
  And therefore cannot fly what is ordained.

  _Chorus._ What is ordained for Zeus, except to be
  A king for ever?

  _Prometheus._     'Tis too early yet
  For thee to learn it: ask no more.

  _Chorus._                         Perhaps
  Thy secret may be something holy?

  _Prometheus._                         Turn
  To another matter: this, it is not time
  To speak abroad, but utterly to veil
  In silence. For by that same secret kept,
  I 'scape this chain's dishonour and its woe.

  _Chorus, 1st Strophe._
              Never, oh never
              May Zeus, the all-giver,
              Wrestle down from his throne
              In that might of his own
              To antagonize mine!
              Nor let me delay
              As I bend on my way
              Toward the gods of the shrine
          Where the altar is full
          Of the blood of the bull,
          Near the tossing brine
          Of Ocean my father.
    May no sin be sped in the word that is said,
          But my vow be rather
              Consummated,
    Nor evermore fail, nor evermore pine.

  _1st Antistrophe._
          'Tis sweet to have
            Life lengthened out
          With hopes proved brave
            By the very doubt,
          Till the spirit enfold
    Those manifest joys which were foretold.
          But I thrill to behold
            Thee, victim doomed,
          By the countless cares
          And the drear despairs
            Forever consumed,--
    And all because thou, who art fearless now
          Of Zeus above,
    Didst overflow for mankind below
          With a free-souled, reverent love.
      Ah friend, behold and see!
    What's all the beauty of humanity?
          Can it be fair?
    What's all the strength? is it strong?
      And what hope can they bear,
    These dying livers--living one day long?
      Ah, seest thou not, my friend,
          How feeble and slow
          And like a dream, doth go
    This poor blind manhood, drifted from its end?
      And how no mortal wranglings can confuse
          The harmony of Zeus?

    Prometheus, I have learnt these things
    From the sorrow in thy face.
      Another song did fold its wings
    Upon my lips in other days,
    When round the bath and round the bed
    The hymeneal chant instead
      I sang for thee, and smiled,--
    And thou didst lead, with gifts and vows,
      Hesione, my father's child,
    To be thy wedded spouse.

_IO enters_.

  _Io._ What land is this? what people is here?
  And who is he that writhes, I see,
          In the rock-hung chain?
  Now what is the crime that hath brought thee to pain?
  Now what is the land--make answer free--
  Which I wander through, in my wrong and fear?
          Ah! ah! ah me!
  The gad-fly strength to agony!
  O Earth, keep off that phantasm pale
  Of earth-born Argus!--ah!--I quail
          When my soul descries
  That herdsman with the myriad eyes
  Which seem, as he comes, one crafty eye
  Graves hide him not, though he should die,
  But he doggeth me in my misery
  From the roots of death, on high--on high--
  And along the sands of the siding deep,
  All famine-worn, he follows me,
  And his waxen reed doth undersound
          The waters round
  And giveth a measure that giveth sleep.

          Woe, woe, woe!
  Where shall my weary course be done?
  What wouldst thou with me, Saturn's son?
  And in what have I sinned, that I should go
  Thus yoked to grief by thine hand for ever?
          Ah! ah! dost vex me so
            That I madden and shiver
            Stung through with dread?
          Flash the fire down to burn me!
          Heave the earth up to cover me!
  Plunge me in the deep, with the salt waves over me,
          That the sea-beasts may be fed!
          O king, do not spurn me
              In my prayer!
          For this wandering everlonger, evermore,
              Hath overworn me,
          And I know not on what shore
          I may rest from my despair.

  _Chorus._ Hearest thou what the ox-horned maiden saith?

  _Prometheus._ How could I choose but hearken what she saith,
  The phrensied maiden?--Inachus's child?--
  Who love-warms Zeus's heart, and now is lashed
  By Here's hate along the unending ways?

  _Io._ Who taught thee to articulate that name,--
          My father's? Speak to his child
          By grief and shame defiled!
  Who art thou, victim, thou who dost acclaim
  Mine anguish in true words on the wide air,
  And callest too by name the curse that came
              From Here unaware,
  To waste and pierce me with its maddening goad?
          Ah--ah--I leap
  With the pang of the hungry--I bound on the road--
          I am driven by my doom--
          I am overcome
  By the wrath of an enemy strong and deep!
  Are any of those who have tasted pain,
          Alas! as wretched as I?
  Now tell me plain, doth aught remain
  For my soul to endure beneath the sky?
  Is there any help to be holpen by?
  If knowledge be in thee, let it be said!
          Cry aloud--cry
  To the wandering, woful maid!

  _Prometheus._ Whatever thou wouldst learn I will declare,--
  No riddle upon my lips, but such straight words
  As friends should use to each other when they talk.
  Thou seest Prometheus, who gave mortals fire.

  _Io._ O common Help of all men, known of all,
  O miserable Prometheus,--for what cause
  Dost thou endure thus?

  _Prometheus._            I have done with wail
  For my own griefs, but lately.

  _Io._                          Wilt thou not
  Vouchsafe the boon to me?

  _Prometheus._                Say what thou wilt,
  For I vouchsafe all.

  _Io._                Speak then, and reveal
  Who shut thee in this chasm.

  _Prometheus._                 The will of Zeus,
  The hand of his Hephaestus.

  _Io._                          And what crime
  Dost expiate so?

  _Prometheus._    Enough for thee I have told
  In so much only.

  _Io._            Nay, but show besides
  The limit of my wandering, and the time
  Which yet is lacking to fulfil my grief.

  _Prometheus._ Why, not to know were better than to know
  For such as thou.

  _Io._             Beseech thee, blind me not
  To that which I must suffer.

  _Prometheus._                If I do,
  The reason is not that I grudge a boon.

  _Io._ What reason, then, prevents thy speaking out?

  _Prometheus._ No grudging; but a fear to break thine heart.

  _Io._ Less care for me, I pray thee. Certainty
  I count for advantage.

  _Prometheus._         Thou wilt have it so,
  And therefore I must speak. Now hear--

  _Chorus._                                Not yet.
  Give half the guerdon my way. Let us learn
  First, what the curse is that befell the maid,--
  Her own voice telling her own wasting woes:
  The sequence of that anguish shall await
  The teaching of thy lips.

  _Prometheus._           It doth behove
  That thou, Maid Io, shouldst vouchsafe to these
  The grace they pray,--the more, because they are called
  Thy father's sisters: since to open out
  And mourn out grief where it is possible
  To draw a tear from the audience, is a work
  That pays its own price well.

  _Io._                         I cannot choose
  But trust you, nymphs, and tell you all ye ask,
  In clear words--though I sob amid my speech
  In speaking of the storm-curse sent from Zeus,
  And of my beauty, from what height it took
  Its swoop on me, poor wretch! left thus deformed
  And monstrous to your eyes. For evermore
  Around my virgin-chamber, wandering went
  The nightly visions which entreated me
  With syllabled smooth sweetness.--"Blessed maid,
  Why lengthen out thy maiden hours when fate
  Permits the noblest spousal in the world?
  When Zeus burns with the arrow of thy love
  And fain would touch thy beauty?--Maiden, thou
  Despise not Zeus! depart to Lerne's mead
  That's green around thy father's flocks and stalls,
  Until the passion of the heavenly Eye
  Be quenched in sight." Such dreams did all night long
  Constrain me--me, unhappy!--till I dared
  To tell my father how they trod the dark
  With visionary steps. Whereat he sent
  His frequent heralds to the Pythian fane,
  And also to Dodona, and inquired
  How best, by act or speech, to please the gods.
  The same returning brought back oracles
  Of doubtful sense, indefinite response,
  Dark to interpret; but at last there came
  To Inachus an answer that was clear,
  Thrown straight as any bolt, and spoken out--
  This--"he should drive me from my home and land
  And bid me wander to the extreme verge
  Of all the earth--or, if he willed it not,
  Should have a thunder with a fiery eye
  Leap straight from Zeus to burn up all his race
  To the last root of it." By which Loxian word
  Subdued, he drove me forth and shut me out,
  He loth, me loth,--but Zeus's violent bit
  Compelled him to the deed: when instantly
  My body and soul were changed and distraught,
  And, horned as ye see, and spurred along
  By the fanged insect, with a maniac leap
  I rushed on to Cenchrea's limpid stream
  And Lerne's fountain-water. There, the earth-born,
  The herdsman Argus, most immitigable
  Of wrath, did find me out, and track me out
  With countless eyes set staring at my steps:
  And though an unexpected sudden doom
  Drew him from life, I, curse-tormented still,
  Am driven from land to land before the scourge
  The gods hold o'er me. So thou hast heard the past,
  And if a bitter future thou canst tell,
  Speak on. I charge thee, do not flatter me
  Through pity, with false words; for, in my mind,
  Deceiving works more shame than torturing doth.

  _Chorus._
            Ah! silence here!
            Nevermore, nevermore
            Would I languish for
            The stranger's word
            To thrill in mine ear--
      Nevermore for the wrong and the woe and the fear
                So hard to behold,
                So cruel to bear,
      Piercing my soul with a double-edged sword
                Of a sliding cold.
                Ah Fate! ah me!
                I shudder to see
      This wandering maid in her agony.

  _Prometheus._ Grief is too quick in thee and fear too full:
  Be patient till thou hast learnt the rest.

  _Chorus._                               Speak: teach
  To those who are sad already, it seems sweet,
  By clear foreknowledge to make perfect, pain.

  _Prometheus._ The boon ye asked me first was lightly won,--
  For first ye asked the story of this maid's grief
  As her own lips might tell it. Now remains
  To list what other sorrows she so young
  Must bear from Here. Inachus's child,
  O thou! drop down thy soul my weighty words,
  And measure out the landmarks which are set
  To end thy wandering. Toward the orient sun
  First turn thy face from mine and journey on
  Along the desert flats till thou shalt come
  Where Scythia's shepherd peoples dwell aloft,
  Perched in wheeled waggons under woven roofs,
  And twang the rapid arrow past the bow--
  Approach them not; but siding in thy course
  The rugged shore-rocks resonant to the sea,
  Depart that country. On the left hand dwell
  The iron-workers, called the Chalybes,
  Of whom beware, for certes they are uncouth
  And nowise bland to strangers. Reaching so
  The stream Hybristes (well the _scorner_ called),
  Attempt no passage,--it is hard to pass,--
  Or ere thou come to Caucasus itself,
  That highest of mountains, where the river leaps
  The precipice in his strength. Thou must toil up
  Those mountain-tops that neighbour with the stars,
  And tread the south way, and draw near, at last,
  The Amazonian host that hateth man,
  Inhabitants of Themiscyra, close
  Upon Thermodon, where the sea's rough jaw
  Doth gnash at Salmydessa and provide
  A cruel host to seamen, and to ships
  A stepdame. They with unreluctant hand
  Shall lead thee on and on, till thou arrive
  Just where the ocean-gates show narrowest
  On the Cimmerian isthmus. Leaving which,
  Behoves thee swim with fortitude of soul
  The strait Maeotis. Ay, and evermore
  That traverse shall be famous on men's lips,
  That strait, called Bosphorus, the horned-one's road,
  So named because of thee, who so wilt pass
  From Europe's plain to Asia's continent.
  How think ye, nymphs? the king of gods appears
  Impartial in ferocious deeds? Behold!
  The god desirous of this mortal's love
  Hath cursed her with these wanderings. Ah, fair child,
  Thou hast met a bitter groom for bridal troth!
  For all thou yet hast heard can only prove
  The incompleted prelude of thy doom.

  _Io._ Ah, ah!

  _Prometheus._ Is 't thy turn, now, to shriek and moan?
  How wilt thou, when thou hast hearkened what remains?

  _Chorus._ Besides the grief thou hast told can aught remain?

  _Prometheus._ A sea--of foredoomed evil worked to storm.

  _Io._ What boots my life, then? why not cast myself
  Down headlong from this miserable rock,
  That, dashed against the flats, I may redeem
  My soul from sorrow? Better once to die
  Than day by day to suffer.

  _Prometheus._             Verily,
  It would be hard for thee to bear my woe
  For whom it is appointed not to die.
  Death frees from woe: but I before me see
  In all my far prevision not a bound
  To all I suffer, ere that Zeus shall fall
  From being a king.

  _Io._                And can it ever be
  That Zeus shall fall from empire?

  _Prometheus._                       _Thou_, methinks,
  Wouldst take some joy to see it.

  _Io._                                Could I choose?
  _I_ who endure such pangs now, by that god!

  _Prometheus._ Learn from me, therefore, that the event shall be.

  _Io._ By whom shall his imperial sceptred hand
  Be emptied so?

  _Prometheus._ Himself shall spoil himself,
  Through his idiotic counsels.

  _Io._                      How? declare:
  Unless the word bring evil.

  _Prometheus._            He shall wed;
  And in the marriage-bond be joined to grief.

  _Io._ A heavenly bride--or human? Speak it out
  If it be utterable.

  _Prometheus._      Why should I say which?
  It ought not to be uttered, verily.

  _Io._                              Then
  It is his wife shall tear him from his throne?

  _Prometheus._ It is his wife shall bear a son to him,
  More mighty than the father.

  _Io._                          From this doom
  Hath he no refuge?

  _Prometheus._       None: or ere that I,
  Loosed from these fetters--

  _Io._                    Yea--but who shall loose
  While Zeus is adverse?

  _Prometheus._         One who is born of thee:
  It is ordained so.

  _Io._             What is this thou sayest?
  A son of mine shall liberate thee from woe?

  _Prometheus._ After ten generations, count three more,
  And find him in the third.

  _Io._                       The oracle
  Remains obscure.

  _Prometheus._ And search it not, to learn
  Thine own griefs from it.

  _Io._                 Point me not to a good,
  To leave me straight bereaved.

  _Prometheus._               I am prepared
  To grant thee one of two things.

  _Io._                          But which two?
  Set them before me; grant me power to choose.

  _Prometheus._ I grant it, choose now: shall I name aloud
  What griefs remain to wound thee, or what hand
  Shall save me out of mine?

  _Chorus._                   Vouchsafe, O god,
  The one grace of the twain to her who prays;
  The next to me; and turn back neither prayer
  Dishonour'd by denial. To herself
  Recount the future wandering of her feet;
  Then point me to the looser of thy chain,
  Because I yearn to know him.

  _Prometheus._                    Since ye will,
  Of absolute will, this knowledge, I will set
  No contrary against it, nor keep back
  A word of all ye ask for. Io, first
  To thee I must relate thy wandering course
  Far winding. As I tell it, write it down
  In thy soul's book of memories. When thou hast past
  The refluent bound that parts two continents,
  Track on the footsteps of the orient sun
  In his own fire, across the roar of seas,--
  Fly till thou hast reached the Gorgonaean flats
  Beside Cisthene. There, the Phorcides,
  Three ancient maidens, live, with shape of swan,
  One tooth between them, and one common eye:
  On whom the sun doth never look at all
  With all his rays, nor evermore the moon
  When she looks through the night. Anear to whom
  Are the Gorgon sisters three, enclothed with wings,
  With twisted snakes for ringlets, man-abhorred:
  There is no mortal gazes in their face
  And gazing can breathe on. I speak of such
  To guard thee from their horror. Ay, and list
  Another tale of a dreadful sight; beware
  The Griffins, those unbarking dogs of Zeus,
  Those sharp-mouthed dogs!--and the Arimaspian host
  Of one-eyed horsemen, habiting beside
  The river of Pluto that runs bright with gold:
  Approach them not, beseech thee! Presently
  Thou'lt come to a distant land, a dusky tribe
  Of dwellers at the fountain of the Sun,
  Whence flows the river AEthiops; wind along
  Its banks and turn off at the cataracts,
  Just as the Nile pours from the Bybline hills
  His holy and sweet wave; his course shall guide
  Thine own to that triangular Nile-ground
  Where, Io, is ordained for thee and thine
  A lengthened exile. Have I said in this
  Aught darkly or incompletely?--now repeat
  The question, make the knowledge fuller! Lo,
  I have more leisure than I covet, here.

  _Chorus._ If thou canst tell us aught that's left untold,
  Or loosely told, of her most dreary flight,
  Declare it straight: but if thou hast uttered all,
  Grant us that latter grace for which we prayed,
  Remembering how we prayed it.

  _Prometheus._                   She has heard
  The uttermost of her wandering. There it ends.
  But that she may be certain not to have heard
  All vainly, I will speak what she endured
  Ere coming hither, and invoke the past
  To prove my prescience true. And so--to leave
  A multitude of words and pass at once
  To the subject of thy course--when thou hadst gone
  To those Molossian plains which sweep around
  Dodona shouldering Heaven, whereby the fane
  Of Zeus Thesprotian keepeth oracle,
  And, wonder past belief, where oaks do wave
  Articulate adjurations--(ay, the same
  Saluted thee in no perplexed phrase
  But clear with glory, noble wife of Zeus
  That shouldst be,--there some sweetness took thy sense!)
  Thou didst rush further onward, stung along
  The ocean-shore, toward Rhea's mighty bay
  And, tost back from it, wast tost to it again
  In stormy evolution:--and, know well,
  In coming time that hollow of the sea
  Shall bear the name Ionian and present
  A monument of Io's passage through
  Unto all mortals. Be these words the signs
  Of my soul's power to look beyond the veil
  Of visible things. The rest, to you and her
  I will declare in common audience, nymphs,
  Returning thither where my speech brake off.
  There is a town Canobus, built upon
  The earth's fair margin at the mouth of Nile
  And on the mound washed up by it; Io, there
  Shall Zeus give back to thee thy perfect mind,
  And only by the pressure and the touch
  Of a hand not terrible; and thou to Zeus
  Shalt bear a dusky son who shall be called
  Thence, Epaphus, _Touched_. That son shall pluck the fruit
  Of all that land wide-watered by the flow
  Of Nile; but after him, when counting out
  As far as the fifth full generation, then
  Full fifty maidens, a fair woman-race,
  Shall back to Argos turn reluctantly,
  To fly the proffered nuptials of their kin,
  Their father's brothers. These being passion struck,
  Like falcons bearing hard on flying doves,
  Shall follow, hunting at a quarry of love
  They should not hunt; till envious Heaven maintain
  A curse betwixt that beauty and their desire,
  And Greece receive them, to be overcome
  In murtherous woman-war, by fierce red hands
  Kept savage by the night. For every wife
  Shall slay a husband, dyeing deep in blood
  The sword of a double edge--(I wish indeed
  As fair a marriage-joy to all my foes!)
  One bride alone shall fail to smite to death
  The head upon her pillow, touched with love,
  Made impotent of purpose and impelled
  To choose the lesser evil,--shame on her cheeks,
  Than blood-guilt on her hands: which bride shall bear
  A royal race in Argos. Tedious speech
  Were needed to relate particulars
  Of these things; 'tis enough that from her seed
  Shall spring the strong He, famous with the bow,
  Whose arm shall break my fetters off. Behold,
  My mother Themis, that old Titaness,
  Delivered to me such an oracle,--
  But how and when, I should be long to speak,
  And thou, in hearing, wouldst not gain at all.

  _Io._ Eleleu, eleleu!
        How the spasm and the pain
        And the fire on the brain
          Strike, burning me through!
  How the sting of the curse, all aflame as it flew,
        Pricks me onward again!
  How my heart in its terror is spurning my breast,
  And my eyes, like the wheels of a chariot, roll round!
  I am whirled from my course, to the east, to the west,
  In the whirlwind of phrensy all madly inwound--
  And my mouth is unbridled for anguish and hate,
  And my words beat in vain, in wild storms of unrest,
        On the sea of my desolate fate.

[_IO rushes out._

  _Chorus.--Strophe._
      Oh, wise was he, oh, wise was he
      Who first within his spirit knew
      And with his tongue declared it true
      That love comes best that comes unto
            The equal of degree!
      And that the poor and that the low
      Should seek no love from those above,
      Whose souls are fluttered with the flow
      Of airs about their golden height,
      Or proud because they see arow
            Ancestral crowns of light.

  _Antistrophe._
      Oh, never, never may ye, Fates,
        Behold me with your awful eyes
        Lift mine too fondly up the skies
      Where Zeus upon the purple waits!
        Nor let me step too near--too near
      To any suitor, bright from heaven:
        Because I see, because I fear
      This loveless maiden vexed and laden
      By this fell curse of Here, driven
        On wanderings dread and drear.

  _Epode._
      Nay, grant an equal troth instead
        Of nuptial love, to bind me by!
      It will not hurt, I shall not dread
        To meet it in reply.
      But let not love from those above
      Revert and fix me, as I said,
        With that inevitable Eye!
      I have no sword to fight that fight,
      I have no strength to tread that path,
      I know not if my nature hath
      The power to bear, I cannot see
      Whither from Zeus's infinite
      I have the power to flee.

  _Prometheus._ Yet Zeus, albeit most absolute of will,
  Shall turn to meekness,--such a marriage-rite
  He holds in preparation, which anon
  Shall thrust him headlong from his gerent seat
  Adown the abysmal void, and so the curse
  His father Chronos muttered in his fall,
  As he fell from his ancient throne and cursed,
  Shall be accomplished wholly. No escape
  From all that ruin shall the filial Zeus
  Find granted to him from any of his gods,
  Unless I teach him. I the refuge know,
  And I, the means. Now, therefore, let him sit
  And brave the imminent doom, and fix his faith
  On his supernal noises, hurtling on
  With restless hand the bolt that breathes out fire;
  For these things shall not help him, none of them,
  Nor hinder his perdition when he falls
  To shame, and lower than patience: such a foe
  He doth himself prepare against himself,
  A wonder of unconquerable hate,
  An organizer of sublimer fire
  Than glares in lightnings, and of grander sound
  Than aught the thunder rolls, out-thundering it,
  With power to shatter in Poseidon's fist
  The trident-spear which, while it plagues the sea,
  Doth shake the shores around it. Ay, and Zeus,
  Precipitated thus, shall learn at length
  The difference betwixt rule and servitude.

  _Chorus._ Thou makest threats for Zeus of thy desires.

  _Prometheus._ I tell you, all these things shall be fulfilled.
  Even so as I desire them.

  _Chorus._                  Must we then
  Look out for one shall come to master Zeus?

  _Prometheus._ These chains weigh lighter than his sorrows shall.

  _Chorus._ How art thou not afraid to utter such words?

  _Prometheus._ What should _I_ fear who cannot die?

  _Chorus._                                            But _he_
  Can visit thee with dreader woe than death's.

  _Prometheus._ Why, let him do it! I am here, prepared
  For all things and their pangs.

  _Chorus._                      The wise are they
  Who reverence Adrasteia.

  _Prometheus._              Reverence thou,
  Adore thou, flatter thou, whomever reigns,
  Whenever reigning! but for me, your Zeus
  Is less than nothing. Let him act and reign
  His brief hour out according to his will--
  He will not, therefore, rule the gods too long.
  But lo! I see that courier-god of Zeus,
  That new-made menial of the new-crowned king:
  He doubtless comes to announce to us something new.

_HERMES enters._

  _Hermes._ I speak to thee, the sophist, the talker-down
  Of scorn by scorn, the sinner against gods,
  The reverencer of men, the thief of fire,--
  I speak to thee and adjure thee! Zeus requires
  Thy declaration of what marriage-rite
  Thus moves thy vaunt and shall hereafter cause
  His fall from empire. Do not wrap thy speech
  In riddles, but speak clearly! Never cast
  Ambiguous paths, Prometheus, for my feet,
  Since Zeus, thou mayst perceive, is scarcely won
  To mercy by such means.

  _Prometheus._               A speech well-mouthed
  In the utterance, and full-minded in the sense,
  As doth befit a servant of the gods!
  New gods, ye newly reign, and think forsooth
  Ye dwell in towers too high for any dart
  To carry a wound there!--have I not stood by
  While two kings fell from thence? and shall I not
  Behold the third, the same who rules you now,
  Fall, shamed to sudden ruin?--Do I seem
  To tremble and quail before your modern gods?
  Far be it from me!--For thyself, depart,
  Re-tread thy steps in haste. To all thou hast asked
  I answer nothing.

  _Hermes._           Such a wind of pride
  Impelled thee of yore full-sail upon these rocks.

  _Prometheus._ I would not barter---learn thou soothly that!--
  My suffering for thy service. I maintain
  It is a nobler thing to serve these rocks
  Than live a faithful slave to father Zeus.
  Thus upon scorners I retort their scorn.

  _Hermes._ It seems that thou dost glory in thy despair.

  _Prometheus._ I glory? would my foes did glory so,
  And I stood by to see them!--naming whom,
  Thou art not unremembered.

  _Hermes._                     Dost thou charge
  Me also with the blame of thy mischance?

  _Prometheus._ I tell thee I loathe the universal gods,
  Who for the good I gave them rendered back
  The ill of their injustice.

  _Hermes._                  Thou art mad--
  Thou art raving, Titan, at the fever-height.

  _Prometheus._ If it be madness to abhor my foes,
  May I be mad!

  _Hermes._       If thou wert prosperous
  Thou wouldst be unendurable.

  _Prometheus._                      Alas!

  _Hermes._ Zeus knows not that word.

  _Prometheus._                      But maturing Time
  Teaches all things.

  _Hermes._        Howbeit, thou hast not learnt
  The wisdom yet, thou needest.

  _Prometheus._                    If I had,
  I should not talk thus with a slave like thee.

  _Hermes._ No answer thou vouchsafest, I believe,
  To the great Sire's requirement.

  _Prometheus._                   Verily
  I owe him grateful service,--and should pay it.

  _Hermes._ Why, thou dost mock me, Titan, as I stood
  A child before thy face.

  _Prometheus._            No child, forsooth,
  But yet more foolish than a foolish child,
  If thou expect that I should answer aught
  Thy Zeus can ask. No torture from his hand
  Nor any machination in the world
  Shall force mine utterance ere he loose, himself,
  These cankerous fetters from me. For the rest,
  Let him now hurl his blanching lightnings down,
  And with his white-winged snows and mutterings deep
  Of subterranean thunders mix all things,
  Confound them in disorder. None of this
  Shall bend my sturdy will and make me speak
  The name of his dethroner who shall come.

  _Hermes._ Can this avail thee? Look to it!

  _Prometheus._                             Long ago
  It was looked forward to, precounselled of.

  _Hermes._ Vain god, take righteous courage! dare for once
  To apprehend and front thine agonies
  With a just prudence.

  _Prometheus._          Vainly dost thou chafe
  My soul with exhortation, as yonder sea
  Goes beating on the rock. Oh, think no more
  That I, fear-struck by Zeus to a woman's mind,
  Will supplicate him, loathed as he is,
  With feminine upliftings of my hands,
  To break these chains. Far from me be the thought!

  _Hermes._ I have indeed, methinks, said much in vain,
  For still thy heart beneath my showers of prayers
  Lies dry and hard--nay, leaps like a young horse
  Who bites against the new bit in his teeth,
  And tugs and struggles against the new-tried rein,--
  Still fiercest in the feeblest thing of all,
  Which sophism is; since absolute will disjoined
  From perfect mind is worse than weak. Behold,
  Unless my words persuade thee, what a blast
  And whirlwind of inevitable woe
  Must sweep persuasion through thee! For at first
  The Father will split up this jut of rock
  With the great thunder and the bolted flame
  And hide thy body where a hinge of stone
  Shall catch it like an arm; and when thou hast passed
  A long black time within, thou shalt come out
  To front the sun while Zeus's winged hound,
  The strong carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down
  To meet thee, self-called to a daily feast,
  And set his fierce beak in thee and tear off
  The long rags of thy flesh and batten deep
  Upon thy dusky liver. Do not look
  For any end moreover to this curse
  Or ere some god appear, to accept thy pangs
  On his own head vicarious, and descend
  With unreluctant step the darks of hell
  And gloomy abysses around Tartarus.
  Then ponder this--this threat is not a growth
  Of vain invention; it is spoken and meant;
  King Zeus's mouth is impotent to lie,
  Consummating the utterance by the act;
  So, look to it, thou! take heed, and nevermore
  Forget good counsel, to indulge self-will.

  _Chorus._ Our Hermes suits his reasons to the times;
  At least I think so, since he bids thee drop
  Self-will for prudent counsel. Yield to him!
  When the wise err, their wisdom makes their shame.

  _Prometheus._ Unto me the foreknower, this mandate of power
            He cries, to reveal it.
  What's strange in my fate, if I suffer from hate
            At the hour that I feel it?
  Let the locks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening,
            Flash, coiling me round,
  While the aether goes surging 'neath thunder and scourging
            Of wild winds unbound!
  Let the blast of the firmament whirl from its place
            The earth rooted below,
  And the brine of the ocean, in rapid emotion,
            Be driven in the face
  Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro!
  Let him hurl me anon into Tartarus--on--
            To the blackest degree,
  With Necessity's vortices strangling me down;
  But he cannot join death to a fate meant for _me_!

  _Hermes._ Why, the words that he speaks and the thoughts that he thinks
            Are maniacal!--add,
  If the Fate who hath bound him should loose not the links,
            He were utterly mad.
        Then depart ye who groan with him,
        Leaving to moan with him,--
  Go in haste! lest the roar of the thunder anearing
  Should blast you to idiocy, living and hearing.

  _Chorus._ Change thy speech for another, thy thought for a new,
    If to move me and teach me indeed be thy care!
  For thy words swerve so far from the loyal and true
    That the thunder of Zeus seems more easy to bear.
  How! couldst teach me to venture such vileness? behold!
    I _choose_, with this victim, this anguish foretold!
  I recoil from the traitor in hate and disdain,
  And I know that the curse of the treason is worse
          Than the pang of the chain.

  _Hermes._ Then remember, O nymphs, what I tell you before,
    Nor, when pierced by the arrows that Ate will throw you,
  Cast blame on your fate and declare evermore
    That Zeus thrust you on anguish he did not foreshow you.
  Nay, verily, nay! for ye perish anon
    For your deed--by your choice. By no blindness of doubt,
  No abruptness of doom, but by madness alone,
    In the great net of Ate, whence none cometh out,
           Ye are wound and undone.

  _Prometheus._ Ay! in act now, in word now no more,
         Earth is rocking in space.
  And the thunders crash up with a roar upon roar,
    And the eddying lightnings flash fire in my face,
  And the whirlwinds are whirling the dust round and round,
    And the blasts of the winds universal leap free
  And blow each upon each with a passion of sound,
    And aether goes mingling in storm with the sea.
  Such a curse on my head, in a manifest dread,
    From the hand of your Zeus has been hurtled along.
  O my mother's fair glory! O AEther, enringing
  All eyes with the sweet common light of thy bringing!
          Dost see how I suffer this wrong?




A LAMENT FOR ADONIS


FROM THE GREEK OF BION


  I.

  I mourn for Adonis--Adonis is dead,
    Fair Adonis is dead and the Loves are lamenting.
  Sleep, Cypris, no more on thy purple-strewed bed:
    Arise, wretch stoled in black; beat thy breast unrelenting,
  And shriek to the worlds, "Fair Adonis is dead!"


  II.

  I mourn for Adonis--the Loves are lamenting.
    He lies on the hills in his beauty and death;
  The white tusk of a boar has transpierced his white thigh.
    Cytherea grows mad at his thin gasping breath,
  While the black blood drips down on the pale ivory,
    And his eyeballs lie quenched with the weight of his brows,
  The rose fades from his lips, and upon them just parted
    The kiss dies the goddess consents not to lose,
  Though the kiss of the Dead cannot make her glad-hearted:
    He knows not who kisses him dead in the dews.


  III.

  I mourn for Adonis--the Loves are lamenting.
    Deep, deep in the thigh is Adonis's wound,
  But a deeper, is Cypris's bosom presenting.
    The youth lieth dead while his dogs howl around,
  And the nymphs weep aloud from the mists of the hill,
    And the poor Aphrodite, with tresses unbound,
  All dishevelled, unsandaled, shrieks mournful and shrill
    Through the dusk of the groves. The thorns, tearing her feet,
  Gather up the red flower of her blood which is holy,
    Each footstep she takes; and the valleys repeat
  The sharp cry she utters and draw it out slowly.
    She calls on her spouse, her Assyrian, on him
  Her own youth, while the dark blood spreads over his body,
    The chest taking hue from the gash in the limb,
  And the bosom, once ivory, turning to ruddy.


  IV.

  Ah, ah, Cytherea! the Loves are lamenting.
    She lost her fair spouse and so lost her fair smile:
  When he lived she was fair, by the whole world's consenting,
    Whose fairness is dead with him: woe worth the while!
  All the mountains above and the oaklands below
    Murmur, ah, ah, Adonis! the streams overflow
  Aphrodite's deep wail; river-fountains in pity
    Weep soft in the hills, and the flowers as they blow
  Redden outward with sorrow, while all hear her go
    With the song of her sadness through mountain and city.


  V.

  Ah, ah, Cytherea! Adonis is dead,
    Fair Adonis is dead--Echo answers, Adonis:
  Who weeps not for Cypris, when bowing her head
    She stares at the wound where it gapes and astonies?
  --When, ah, ah!--she saw how the blood ran away
    And empurpled the thigh, and, with wild hands flung out,
  Said with sobs: "Stay, Adonis! unhappy one, stay,
    Let me feel thee once more, let me ring thee about
  With the clasp of my arms, and press kiss into kiss!
    Wait a little, Adonis, and kiss me again,
  For the last time, beloved,--and but so much of this
    That the kiss may learn life from the warmth of the strain!
  --Till thy breath shall exude from thy soul to my mouth,
    To my heart, and, the love-charm I once more receiving
  May drink thy love in it and keep of a truth
    That one kiss in the place of Adonis the living.
  Thou fliest me, mournful one, fliest me far,
    My Adonis, and seekest the Acheron portal,--
  To Hell's cruel King goest down with a scar,
    While I weep and live on like a wretched immortal,
  And follow no step! O Persephone, take him,
    My husband!--thou'rt better and brighter than I,
  So all beauty flows down to thee: _I_ cannot make him
    Look up at my grief; there's despair in my cry,
  Since I wail for Adonis who died to me--died to me--
    Then, I fear _thee_!--Art thou dead, my Adored?
  Passion ends like a dream in the sleep that's denied to me,
    Cypris is widowed, the Loves seek their lord
  All the house through in vain. Charm of cestus has ceased
    With thy clasp! O too bold in the hunt past preventing,
  Ay, mad, thou so fair, to have strife with a beast!"
    Thus the goddess wailed on--and the Loves are lamenting.


  VI.

  Ah, ah, Cytherea! Adonis is dead.
  She wept tear after tear with the blood which was shed,
  And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close,
  Her tears, to the windflower; his blood, to the rose.


  VII.

  I mourn for Adonis--Adonis is dead.
    Weep no more in the woods, Cytherea, thy lover!
  So, well: make a place for his corse in thy bed,
    With the purples thou sleepest in, under and over
  He's fair though a corse--a fair corse, like a sleeper.
    Lay him soft in the silks he had pleasure to fold
  When, beside thee at night, holy dreams deep and deeper
    Enclosed his young life on the couch made of gold.
  Love him still, poor Adonis; cast on him together
    The crowns and the flowers: since he died from the place,
  Why, let all die with him; let the blossoms go wither,
    Rain myrtles and olive-buds down on his face.
  Rain the myrrh down, let all that is best fall a-pining,
    Since the myrrh of his life from thy keeping is swept.
  Pale he lay, thine Adonis, in purples reclining,
    The Loves raised their voices around him and wept.
  They have shorn their bright curls off to cast on Adonis;
  One treads on his bow,--on his arrows, another,--
  One breaks up a well-feathered quiver, and one is
    Bent low at a sandal, untying the strings,
    And one carries the vases of gold from the springs,
  While one washes the wound,--and behind them a brother
    Fans down on the body sweet air with his wings.


  VIII.

  Cytherea herself now the Loves are lamenting
    Each torch at the door Hymenaeus blew out;
  And, the marriage-wreath dropping its leaves as repenting,
    No more "Hymen, Hymen," is chanted about,
  But the _ai ai_ instead--"Ai alas!" is begun
    For Adonis, and then follows "Ai Hymenaeus!"
  The Graces are weeping for Cinyris' son,
    Sobbing low each to each, "His fair eyes cannot see us!"
  Their wail strikes more shrill than the sadder Dione's.
  The Fates mourn aloud for Adonis, Adonis,
  Deep chanting; he hears not a word that they say:
    He _would_ hear, but Persephone has him in keeping.
  --Cease moan, Cytherea! leave pomps for to-day,
    And weep new when a new year refits thee for weeping.




A VISION OF POETS


    O Sacred Essence, lighting me this hour,
    How may I lightly stile thy great power?
  _Echo._                              Power.
    Power! but of whence? under the greenwood spraye?
    Or liv'st in Heaven? saye.
  _Echo._                      In Heavens aye.
    In Heavens aye! tell, may I it obtayne
    By alms, by fasting, prayer,--by paine?
  _Echo._                            By paine
    Show me the paine, it shall be undergone.
    I to mine end will still go on.
  _Echo._                           Go on.

                                          _Britannia's Pastorals._




A VISION OF POETS.


  A poet could not sleep aright,
  For his soul kept up too much light
  Under his eyelids for the night.

  And thus he rose disquieted
  With sweet rhymes ringing through his head,
  And in the forest wandered

  Where, sloping up the darkest glades,
  The moon had drawn long colonnades
  Upon whose floor the verdure fades

  To a faint silver: pavement fair,
  The antique wood-nymphs scarce would dare
  To foot-print o'er, had such been there,

  And rather sit by breathlessly,
  With fear in their large eyes, to see
  The consecrated sight. But HE--

  The poet who, with spirit-kiss
  Familiar, had long claimed for his
  Whatever earthly beauty is,

  Who also in his spirit bore
  A beauty passing the earth's store,--
  Walked calmly onward evermore.

  His aimless thoughts in metre went,
  Like a babe's hand without intent
  Drawn down a seven-stringed instrument:

  Nor jarred it with his humour as,
  With a faint stirring of the grass,
  An apparition fair did pass.

  He might have feared another time,
  But all things fair and strange did chime
  With his thoughts then, as rhyme to rhyme.

  An angel had not startled him,
  Alighted from heaven's burning rim
  To breathe from glory in the Dim;

  Much less a lady riding slow
  Upon a palfrey white as snow,
  And smooth as a snow-cloud could go.

  Full upon his she turned her face,
  "What ho, sir poet! dost thou pace
  Our woods at night in ghostly chase

  "Of some fair Dryad of old tales
  Who chants between the nightingales
  And over sleep by song prevails?"

  She smiled; but he could see arise
  Her soul from far adown her eyes,
  Prepared as if for sacrifice.

  She looked a queen who seemeth gay
  From royal grace alone. "Now, nay,"
  He answered, "slumber passed away,

  "Compelled by instincts in my head
  That I should see to-night, instead
  Of a fair nymph, some fairer Dread."

  She looked up quickly to the sky
  And spake: "The moon's regality
  Will hear no praise; She is as I.

  "She is in heaven, and I on earth;
  This is my kingdom: I come forth
  To crown all poets to their worth."

  He brake in with a voice that mourned;
  "To their worth, lady? They are scorned
  By men they sing for, till inurned.

  "To their worth? Beauty in the mind
  Leaves the hearth cold, and love-refined
  Ambitions make the world unkind.

  "The boor who ploughs the daisy down,
  The chief whose mortgage of renown,
  Fixed upon graves, has bought a crown--

  "Both these are happier, more approved
  Than poets!--why should I be moved
  In saying, both are more beloved?"

  "The south can judge not of the north,"
  She resumed calmly; "I come forth
  To crown all poets to their worth.

  "Yea, verily, to anoint them all
  With blessed oils which surely shall
  Smell sweeter as the ages fall."

  "As sweet," the poet said, and rung
  A low sad laugh, "as flowers are, sprung
  Out of their graves when they die young;

  "As sweet as window-eglantine,
  Some bough of which, as they decline,
  The hired nurse gathers at their sign:

  "As sweet, in short, as perfumed shroud
  Which the gay Roman maidens sewed
  For English Keats, singing aloud."

  The lady answered, "Yea, as sweet!
  The things thou namest being complete
  In fragrance, as I measure it.

  "Since sweet the death-clothes and the knell
  Of him who having lived, dies well;
  And wholly sweet the asphodel

  "Stirred softly by that foot of his,
  When he treads brave on all that is,
  Into the world of souls, from this.

  "Since sweet the tears, dropped at the door
  Of tearless Death, and even before:
  Sweet, consecrated evermore.

  "What, dost thou judge it a strange thing
  That poets, crowned for vanquishing,
  Should bear some dust from out the ring?

  "Come on with me, come on with me,
  And learn in coming: let me free
  Thy spirit into verity."

  She ceased: her palfrey's paces sent
  No separate noises as she went;
  'Twas a bee's hum, a little spent.

  And while the poet seemed to tread
  Along the drowsy noise so made,
  The forest heaved up overhead

  Its billowy foliage through the air,
  And the calm stars did far and spare
  O'erswim the masses everywhere

  Save when the overtopping pines
  Did bar their tremulous light with lines
  All fixed and black. Now the moon shines

  A broader glory. You may see
  The trees grow rarer presently;
  The air blows up more fresh and free:

  Until they come from dark to light,
  And from the forest to the sight
  Of the large heaven-heart, bare with night,

  A fiery throb in every star,
  Those burning arteries that are
  The conduits of God's life afar,--

  A wild brown moorland underneath,
  And four pools breaking up the heath
  With white low gleamings, blank as death.

  Beside the first pool, near the wood,
  A dead tree in set horror stood,
  Peeled and disjointed, stark as rood;

  Since thunder-stricken, years ago,
  Fixed in the spectral strain and throe
  Wherewith it struggled from the blow:

  A monumental tree, alone,
  That will not bend in storms, nor groan,
  But break off sudden like a stone.

  Its lifeless shadow lies oblique
  Upon the pool where, javelin-like,
  The star-rays quiver while they strike.

  "Drink," said the lady, very still--
  "Be holy and cold." He did her will
  And drank the starry water chill.

  The next pool they came near unto
  Was bare of trees; there, only grew
  Straight flags, and lilies just a few

  Which sullen on the water sate
  And leant their faces on the flat,
  As weary of the starlight-state.

  "Drink," said the lady, grave and slow--
  "_World's use_ behoveth thee to know."
  He drank the bitter wave below.

  The third pool, girt with thorny bushes
  And flaunting weeds and reeds and rushes
  That winds sang through in mournful gushes,

  Was whitely smeared in many a round
  By a slow slime; the starlight swound
  Over the ghastly light it found.

  "Drink," said the lady, sad and slow--
  "_World's love_ behoveth thee to know."
  He looked to her commanding so;

  Her brow was troubled, but her eye
  Struck clear to his soul. For all reply
  He drank the water suddenly,--

  Then, with a deathly sickness, passed
  Beside the fourth pool and the last,
  Where weights of shadow were downcast

  From yew and alder and rank trails
  Of nightshade clasping the trunk-scales
  And flung across the intervals

  From yew to yew: who dares to stoop
  Where those dank branches overdroop,
  Into his heart the chill strikes up,

  He hears a silent gliding coil,
  The snakes strain hard against the soil,
  His foot slips in their slimy oil,

  And toads seem crawling on his hand,
  And clinging bats but dimly scanned
  Full in his face their wings expand.

  A paleness took the poet's cheek:
  "Must I drink _here_?" he seemed to seek
  The lady's will with utterance meek:

  "Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be;"
  (And this time she spake cheerfully)
  "Behoves thee know _World's cruelty_."

  He bowed his forehead till his mouth
  Curved in the wave, and drank unloth
  As if from rivers of the south;

  His lips sobbed through the water rank,
  His heart paused in him while he drank,
  His brain beat heart-like, rose and sank,

  And he swooned backward to a dream
  Wherein he lay 'twixt gloom and gleam,
  With Death and Life at each extreme:

  And spiritual thunders, born of soul
  Not cloud, did leap from mystic pole
  And o'er him roll and counter-roll,

  Crushing their echoes reboant
  With their own wheels. Did Heaven so grant
  His spirit a sign of covenant?

  At last came silence. A slow kiss
  Did crown his forehead after this;
  His eyelids flew back for the bliss--

  The lady stood beside his head,
  Smiling a thought, with hair dispread;
  The moonshine seemed dishevelled

  In her sleek tresses manifold
  Like Danae's in the rain of old
  That dripped with melancholy gold:

  But SHE was holy, pale and high
  As one who saw an ecstasy
  Beyond a foretold agony.

  "Rise up!" said she with voice where song
  Eddied through speech, "rise up; be strong:
  And learn how right avenges wrong."

  The poet rose up on his feet:
  He stood before an altar set
  For sacrament with vessels meet

  And mystic altar-lights which shine
  As if their flames were crystalline
  Carved flames that would not shrink or pine.

  The altar filled the central place
  Of a great church, and toward its face
  Long aisles did shoot and interlace,

  And from it a continuous mist
  Of incense (round the edges kissed
  By a yellow light of amethyst)

  Wound upward slowly and throbbingly,
  Cloud within cloud, right silverly,
  Cloud above cloud, victoriously,--

  Broke full against the arched roof
  And thence refracting eddied off
  And floated through the marble woof

  Of many a fine-wrought architrave,
  Then, poising its white masses brave,
  Swept solemnly down aisle and nave

  Where, now in dark and now in light,
  The countless columns, glimmering white,
  Seemed leading out to the Infinite:

  Plunged halfway up the shaft, they showed
  In that pale shifting incense-cloud
  Which flowed them by and overflowed

  Till mist and marble seemed to blend
  And the whole temple, at the end,
  With its own incense to distend,--

  The arches like a giant's bow
  To bend and slacken,--and below,
  The niched saints to come and go:

  Alone amid the shifting scene
  That central altar stood serene
  In its clear steadfast taper-sheen.

  Then first, the poet was aware
  Of a chief angel standing there
  Before that altar, in the glare.

  His eyes were dreadful, for you saw
  That _they_ saw God; his lips and jaw
  Grand-made and strong, as Sinai's law

  They could enunciate and refrain
  From vibratory after-pain,
  And his brow's height was sovereign:

  On the vast background of his wings
  Rises his image, and he flings
  From each plumed arc pale glitterings

  And fiery flakes (as beateth, more
  Or less, the angel-heart) before
  And round him upon roof and floor,

  Edging with fire the shifting fumes,
  While at his side 'twixt lights and glooms
  The phantasm of an organ booms.

  Extending from which instrument
  And angel, right and left-way bent,
  The poet's sight grew sentient

  Of a strange company around
  And toward the altar, pale and bound
  With bay above the eyes profound.

  Deathful their faces were, and yet
  The power of life was in them set--
  Never forgot nor to forget:

  Sublime significance of mouth,
  Dilated nostril full of youth,
  And forehead royal with the truth.

  These faces were not multiplied
  Beyond your count, but side by side
  Did front the altar, glorified,

  Still as a vision, yet exprest
  Full as an action--look and geste
  Of buried saint in risen rest.

  The poet knew them. Faint and dim
  His spirits seemed to sink in him--
  Then, like a dolphin, change and swim

  The current: these were poets true,
  Who died for Beauty as martyrs do
  For Truth--the ends being scarcely two.

  God's prophets of the Beautiful
  These poets were; of iron rule,
  The rugged cilix, serge of wool.

  Here Homer, with the broad suspense
  Of thunderous brows, and lips intense
  Of garrulous god-innocence.

  There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
  The crowns o' the world: O eyes sublime
  With tears and laughters for all time!

  Here AEschylus, the women swooned
  To see so awful when he frowned
  As the gods did: he standeth crowned.

  Euripides, with close and mild
  Scholastic lips, that could be wild
  And laugh or sob out like a child

  Even in the classes. Sophocles,
  With that king's-look which down the trees
  Followed the dark effigies

  Of the lost Theban. Hesiod old,
  Who, somewhat blind and deaf and cold,
  Cared most for gods and bulls. And bold

  Electric Pindar, quick as fear,
  With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear
  Slant startled eyes that seem to hear

  The chariot rounding the last goal,
  To hurtle past it in his soul.
  And Sappho, with that gloriole

  Of ebon hair on calmed brows--
  O poet-woman! none forgoes
  The leap, attaining the repose.

  Theocritus, with glittering locks
  Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks
  He watched the visionary flocks.

  And Aristophanes, who took
  The world with mirth, and laughter-struck
  The hollow caves of Thought and woke

  The infinite echoes hid in each.
  And Virgil: shade of Mantuan beech
  Did help the shade of bay to reach

  And knit around his forehead high:
  For his gods wore less majesty
  Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.

  Lucretius, nobler than his mood,
  Who dropped his plummet down the broad
  Deep universe and said "No God--"

  Finding no bottom: he denied
  Divinely the divine, and died
  Chief poet on the Tiber-side

  By grace of God: his face is stern
  As one compelled, in spite of scorn,
  To teach a truth he would not learn.

  And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed;
  Once counted greater than the rest,
  When mountain-winds blew out his vest.

  And Spenser drooped his dreaming head
  (With languid sleep-smile you had said
  From his own verse engendered)

  On Ariosto's, till they ran
  Their curls in one: the Italian
  Shot nimbler heat of bolder man

  From his fine lids. And Dante stern
  And sweet, whose spirit was an urn
  For wine and milk poured out in turn.

  Hard-souled Alfieri; and fancy-willed
  Boiardo, who with laughter filled
  The pauses of the jostled shield.

  And Berni, with a hand stretched out
  To sleek that storm. And, not without
  The wreath he died in and the doubt

  He died by, Tasso, bard and lover,
  Whose visions were too thin to cover
  The face of a false woman over.

  And soft Racine; and grave Corneille,
  The orator of rhymes, whose wail
  Scarce shook his purple. And Petrarch pale,

  From whose brain-lighted heart were thrown
  A thousand thoughts beneath the sun,
  Each lucid with the name of One.

  And Camoens, with that look he had,
  Compelling India's Genius sad
  From the wave through the Lusiad,--

  The murmurs of the storm-cape ocean
  Indrawn in vibrative emotion
  Along the verse. And, while devotion

  In his wild eyes fantastic shone
  Under the tonsure blown upon
  By airs celestial, Calderon.

  And bold De Vega, who breathed quick
  Verse after verse, till death's old trick
  Put pause to life and rhetoric.

  And Goethe, with that reaching eye
  His soul reached out from, far and high,
  And fell from inner entity.

  And Schiller, with heroic front
  Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon 't,
  Too large for wreath of modern wont.

  And Chaucer, with his infantine
  Familiar clasp of things divine;
  That mark upon his lip is wine.

  Here, Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim:
  The shapes of suns and stars did swim
  Like clouds from them, and granted him

  God for sole vision. Cowley, there,
  Whose active fancy debonair
  Drew straws like amber--foul to fair.

  Drayton and Browne, with smiles they drew
  From outward nature, still kept new
  From their own inward nature true.

  And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben,
  Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when
  The world was worthy of such men.

  And Burns, with pungent passionings
  Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs
  Are of the fire-mount's issuings.

  And Shelley, in his white ideal,
  All statue-blind. And Keats the real
  Adonis with the hymeneal

  Fresh vernal buds half sunk between
  His youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen
  In his Rome-grave, by Venus queen.

  And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave
  And salt as life; forlornly brave,
  And quivering with the dart he drave.

  And visionary Coleridge, who
  Did sweep his thoughts as angels do
  Their wings with cadence up the Blue.

  These poets faced (and many more)
  The lighted altar looming o'er
  The clouds of incense dim and hoar:

  And all their faces, in the lull
  Of natural things, looked wonderful
  With life and death and deathless rule.

  All, still as stone and yet intense;
  As if by spirit's vehemence
  That stone were carved and not by sense.

  But where the heart of each should beat,
  There seemed a wound instead of it,
  From whence the blood dropped to their feet

  Drop after drop--dropped heavily
  As century follows century
  Into the deep eternity.

  Then said the lady--and her word
  Came distant, as wide waves were stirred
  Between her and the ear that heard,--

  "_World's use_ is cold, _world's love_ is vain,
  _World's cruelty_ is bitter bane,
  But pain is not the fruit of pain.

  "Hearken, O poet, whom I led
  From the dark wood: dismissing dread,
  Now hear this angel in my stead.

  "His organ's clavier strikes along
  These poets' hearts, sonorous, strong,
  They gave him without count of wrong,--

  "A diapason whence to guide
  Up to God's feet, from these who died,
  An anthem fully glorified--

  "Whereat God's blessing, IBARAK (=yivarech=)
  Breathes back this music, folds it back
  About the earth in vapoury rack,

  "And men walk in it, crying 'Lo
  The world is wider, and we know
  The very heavens look brighter so:

  "'The stars move statelier round the edge
  Of the silver spheres, and give in pledge
  Their light for nobler privilege:

  "'No little flower but joys or grieves,
  Full life is rustling in the sheaves,
  Full spirit sweeps the forest-leaves.'

  "So works this music on the earth,
  God so admits it, sends it forth
  To add another worth to worth--

  "A new creation-bloom that rounds
  The old creation and expounds
  His Beautiful in tuneful sounds.

  "Now hearken!" Then the poet gazed
  Upon the angel glorious-faced
  Whose hand, majestically raised,

  Floated across the organ-keys,
  Like a pale moon o'er murmuring seas,
  With no touch but with influences:

  Then rose and fell (with swell and swound
  Of shapeless noises wandering round
  A concord which at last they found)

  Those mystic keys: the tones were mixed,
  Dim, faint, and thrilled and throbbed betwixt
  The incomplete and the unfixed:

  And therein mighty minds were heard
  In mighty musings, inly stirred,
  And struggling outward for a word:

  Until these surges, having run
  This way and that, gave out as one
  An Aphrodite of sweet tune,

  A Harmony that, finding vent,
  Upward in grand ascension went,
  Winged to a heavenly argument,

  Up, upward like a saint who strips
  The shroud back from his eyes and lips,
  And rises in apocalypse:

  A harmony sublime and plain,
  Which cleft (as flying swan, the rain,--
  Throwing the drops off with a strain

  Of her white wing) those undertones
  Of perplext chords, and soared at once
  And struck out from the starry thrones

  Their several silver octaves as
  It passed to God. The music was
  Of divine stature; strong to pass:

  And those who heard it, understood
  Something of life in spirit and blood,
  Something of nature's fair and good:

  And while it sounded, those great souls
  Did thrill as racers at the goals
  And burn in all their aureoles;

  But she the lady, as vapour-bound,
  Stood calmly in the joy of sound,
  Like Nature with the showers around:

  And when it ceased, the blood which fell
  Again, alone grew audible,
  Tolling the silence as a bell.

  The sovran angel lifted high
  His hand, and spake out sovranly:
  "Tried poets, hearken and reply!

  "Give me true answers. If we grant
  That not to suffer, is to want
  The conscience of the jubilant,--

  "If ignorance of anguish is
  _But_ ignorance, and mortals miss
  Far prospects, by a level bliss,--

  "If, as two colours must be viewed
  In a visible image, mortals should
  Need good and evil, to see good,--

  "If to speak nobly, comprehends
  To feel profoundly,--if the ends
  Of power and suffering, Nature blends,--

  "If poets on the tripod must
  Writhe like the Pythian to make just
  Their oracles and merit trust,--

  "If every vatic word that sweeps
  To change the world must pale their lips
  And leave their own souls in eclipse,--

  "If to search deep the universe
  Must pierce the searcher with the curse,
  Because that bolt (in man's reverse)

  "Was shot to the heart o' the wood and lies
  Wedged deepest in the best,--if eyes
  That look for visions and surprise

  "From influent angels, must shut down
  Their eyelids first to sun and moon,
  The head asleep upon a stone,--

  "If ONE who did redeem you back,
  By His own loss, from final wrack,
  Did consecrate by touch and track

  "Those temporal sorrows till the taste
  Of brackish waters of the waste
  Is salt with tears He dropt too fast,--

  "If all the crowns of earth must wound
  With prickings of the thorns He found,--
  If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound,--

  "What say ye unto this?--refuse
  This baptism in salt water?--choose
  Calm breasts, mute lips, and labour loose?

  "Or, O ye gifted givers! ye
  Who give your liberal hearts to me
  To make the world this harmony,

  "Are ye resigned that they be spent
  To such world's help?"
                          The Spirits bent
  Their awful brows and said "Content."

  Content! it sounded like _Amen_
  Said by a choir of mourning men;
  An affirmation full of pain

  And patience,--ay, of glorying
  And adoration, as a king
  Might seal an oath for governing.

  Then said the angel--and his face
  Lightened abroad until the place
  Grew larger for a moment's space,--

  The long aisles flashing out in light,
  And nave and transept, columns white
  And arches crossed, being clear to sight

  As if the roof were off and all
  Stood in the noon-sun,--"Lo, I call
  To other hearts as liberal.

  "This pedal strikes out in the air:
  My instrument has room to bear
  Still fuller strains and perfecter.

  "Herein is room, and shall be room
  While Time lasts, for new hearts to come
  Consummating while they consume.

  "What living man will bring a gift
  Of his own heart and help to lift
  The tune?--The race is to the swift."

  So asked the angel. Straight the while,
  A company came up the aisle
  With measured step and sorted smile;

  Cleaving the incense-clouds that rise,
  With winking unaccustomed eyes
  And love-locks smelling sweet of spice.

  One bore his head above the rest
  As if the world were dispossessed,
  And one did pillow chin on breast,

  Right languid, an as he should faint;
  One shook his curls across his paint
  And moralized on worldly taint;

  One, slanting up his face, did wink
  The salt rheum to the eyelid's brink,
  To think--O gods! or--not to think.

  Some trod out stealthily and slow,
  As if the sun would fall in snow
  If they walked to instead of fro;

  And some, with conscious ambling free,
  Did shake their bells right daintily
  On hand and foot, for harmony;

  And some, composing sudden sighs
  In attitudes of point-device,
  Rehearsed impromptu agonies.

  And when this company drew near
  The spirits crowned, it might appear
  Submitted to a ghastly fear;

  As a sane eye in master-passion
  Constrains a maniac to the fashion
  Of hideous maniac imitation

  In the least geste--the dropping low
  O' the lid, the wrinkling of the brow,
  Exaggerate with mock and mow,--

  So mastered was that company
  By the crowned vision utterly,
  Swayed to a maniac mockery.

  One dulled his eyeballs, as they ached
  With Homer's forehead, though he lacked
  An inch of any; and one racked

  His lower lip with restless tooth,
  As Pindar's rushing words forsooth
  Were pent behind it; one his smooth

  Pink cheeks did rumple passionate
  Like AEschylus, and tried to prate
  On trolling tongue of fate and fate;

  One set her eyes like Sappho's--or
  Any light woman's; one forbore
  Like Dante, or any man as poor

  In mirth, to let a smile undo
  His hard-shut lips; and one that drew
  Sour humours from his mother, blew

  His sunken cheeks out to the size
  Of most unnatural jollities,
  Because Anacreon looked jest-wise;

  So with the rest: it was a sight
  A great world-laughter would requite,
  Or great world-wrath, with equal right

  Out came a speaker from that crowd
  To speak for all, in sleek and proud
  Exordial periods, while he bowed

  His knee before the angel--"Thus,
  O angel who hast called for us,
  We bring thee service emulous,

  "Fit service from sufficient soul,
  Hand-service to receive world's dole,
  Lip-service in world's ear to roll

  "Adjusted concords soft enow
  To hear the wine-cups passing, through,
  And not too grave to spoil the show:

  "Thou, certes, when thou askest more,
  O sapient angel, leanest o'er
  The window-sill of metaphor.

  "To give our hearts up? fie! that rage
  Barbaric antedates the age;
  It is not done on any stage.

  "Because your scald or gleeman went
  With seven or nine-stringed instrument
  Upon his back,--must ours be bent?

  "We are not pilgrims, by your leave;
  No, nor yet martyrs; if we grieve,
  It is to rhyme to--summer eve:

  "And if we labour, it shall be
  As suiteth best with our degree,
  In after-dinner reverie."

  More yet that speaker would have said,
  Poising between his smiles fair-fed
  Each separate phrase till finished;

  But all the foreheads of those born
  And dead true poets flashed with scorn
  Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn,

  Ay, jetted such brave fire that they,
  The new-come, shrank and paled away
  Like leaden ashes when the day

  Strikes on the hearth. A spirit-blast,
  A presence known by power, at last
  Took them up mutely: they had passed.

  And he our pilgrim-poet saw
  Only their places, in deep awe,
  What time the angel's smile did draw

  His gazing upward. Smiling on,
  The angel in the angel shone,
  Revealing glory in benison;

  Till, ripened in the light which shut
  The poet in, his spirit mute
  Dropped sudden as a perfect fruit;

  He fell before the angel's feet,
  Saying, "If what is true is sweet,
  In something I may compass it:

  "For, where my worthiness is poor,
  My will stands richly at the door
  To pay shortcomings evermore.

  "Accept me therefore: not for price
  And not for pride my sacrifice
  Is tendered, for my soul is nice

  "And will beat down those dusty seeds
  Of bearded corn if she succeeds
  In soaring while the covey feeds.

  "I soar, I am drawn up like the lark
  To its white cloud--so high my mark,
  Albeit my wing is small and dark.

  "I ask no wages, seek no fame:
  Sew me, for shroud round face and name,
  God's banner of the oriflamme.

  "I only would have leave to loose
  (In tears and blood if so He choose)
  Mine inward music out to use:

  "I only would be spent--in pain
  And loss, perchance, but not in vain--
  Upon the sweetness of that strain;

  "Only project beyond the bound
  Of mine own life, so lost and found,
  My voice, and live on in its sound;

  "Only embrace and be embraced
  By fiery ends, whereby to waste,
  And light God's future with my past."

  The angel's smile grew more divine,
  The mortal speaking; ay, its shine
  Swelled fuller, like a choir-note fine,

  Till the broad glory round his brow
  Did vibrate with the light below;
  But what he said I do not know.

  Nor know I if the man who prayed,
  Rose up accepted, unforbade,
  From the church-floor where he was laid,--

  Nor if a listening life did run
  Through the king-poets, one by one
  Rejoicing in a worthy son:

  My soul, which might have seen, grew blind
  By what it looked on: I can find
  No certain count of things behind.

  I saw alone, dim, white and grand
  As in a dream, the angel's hand
  Stretched forth in gesture of command

  Straight through the haze. And so, as erst,
  A strain more noble than the first
  Mused in the organ, and outburst:

  With giant march from floor to roof
  Rose the full notes, now parted off
  In pauses massively aloof

  Like measured thunders, now rejoined
  In concords of mysterious kind
  Which fused together sense and mind,

  Now flashing sharp on sharp along
  Exultant in a mounting throng,
  Now dying off to a low song

  Fed upon minors, wavelike sounds
  Re-eddying into silver rounds,
  Enlarging liberty with bounds:

  And every rhythm that seemed to close
  Survived in confluent underflows
  Symphonious with the next that rose.

  Thus the whole strain being multiplied
  And greatened, with its glorified
  Wings shot abroad from side to side,

  Waved backward (as a wind might wave
  A Brocken mist and with as brave
  Wild roaring) arch and architrave,

  Aisle, transept, column, marble wall,--
  Then swelling outward, prodigal
  Of aspiration beyond thrall,

  Soared, and drew up with it the whole
  Of this said vision, as a soul
  Is raised by a thought. And as a scroll

  Of bright devices is unrolled
  Still upward with a gradual gold,
  So rose the vision manifold,

  Angel and organ, and the round
  Of spirits, solemnized and crowned;
  While the freed clouds of incense wound

  Ascending, following in their track,
  And glimmering faintly like the rack
  O' the moon in her own light cast back.

  And as that solemn dream withdrew,
  The lady's kiss did fall anew
  Cold on the poet's brow as dew.

  And that same kiss which bound him first
  Beyond the senses, now reversed
  Its own law and most subtly pierced

  His spirit with the sense of things
  Sensual and present. Vanishings
  Of glory with AEolian wings

  Struck him and passed: the lady's face
  Did melt back in the chrysopras
  Of the orient morning sky that was

  Yet clear of lark and there and so
  She melted as a star might do,
  Still smiling as she melted slow:

  Smiling so slow, he seemed to see
  Her smile the last thing, gloriously
  Beyond her, far as memory.

  Then he looked round: he was alone.
  He lay before the breaking sun,
  As Jacob at the Bethel stone.

  And thought's entangled skein being wound,
  He knew the moorland of his swound,
  And the pale pools that smeared the ground;

  The far wood-pines like offing ships;
  The fourth pool's yew anear him drips,
  _World's cruelty_ attaints his lips,

  And still he tastes it, bitter still;
  Through all that glorious possible
  He had the sight of present ill.

  Yet rising calmly up and slowly
  With such a cheer as scorneth folly,
  A mild delightsome melancholy,

  He journeyed homeward through the wood
  And prayed along the solitude
  Betwixt the pines, "O God, my God!"

  The golden morning's open flowings
  Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings,
  In metric chant of blessed poems.

  And passing homeward through the wood,
  He prayed along the solitude,
  "THOU, Poet-God, art great and good!

  "And though we must have, and have had
  Right reason to be earthly sad,
  THOU, Poet-God, art great and glad!"


CONCLUSION.

  Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
  We press too close in church and mart
  To keep a dream or grave apart:

  And I was 'ware of walking down
  That same green forest where had gone
  The poet-pilgrim. One by one

  I traced his footsteps. From the east
  A red and tender radiance pressed
  Through the near trees, until I guessed

  The sun behind shone full and round;
  While up the leafiness profound
  A wind scarce old enough for sound

  Stood ready to blow on me when
  I turned that way, and now and then
  The birds sang and brake off again

  To shake their pretty feathers dry
  Of the dew sliding droppingly
  From the leaf-edges and apply

  Back to their song: 'twixt dew and bird
  So sweet a silence ministered,
  God seemed to use it for a word,

  Yet morning souls did leap and run
  In all things, as the least had won
  A joyous insight of the sun,

  And no one looking round the wood
  Could help confessing as he stood,
  _This Poet-God is glad and good._

  But hark! a distant sound that grows,
  A heaving, sinking of the boughs,
  A rustling murmur, not of those,

  A breezy noise which is not breeze!
  And white-clad children by degrees
  Steal out in troops among the trees,

  Fair little children morning-bright,
  With faces grave yet soft to sight,
  Expressive of restrained delight.

  Some plucked the palm-boughs within reach,
  And others leapt up high to catch
  The upper boughs and shake from each

  A rain of dew till, wetted so,
  The child who held the branch let go
  And it swang backward with a flow

  Of faster drippings. Then I knew
  The children laughed; but the laugh flew
  From its own chirrup as might do

  A frightened song-bird; and a child
  Who seemed the chief said very mild,
  "Hush! keep this morning undefiled."

  His eyes rebuked them from calm spheres,
  His soul upon his brow appears
  In waiting for more holy years.

  I called the child to me, and said,
  "What are your palms for?" "To be spread,"
  He answered, "on a poet dead.

  "The poet died last month, and now
  The world which had been somewhat slow
  In honouring his living brow,

  "Commands the palms; they must be strown
  On his new marble very soon,
  In a procession of the town."

  I sighed and said, "Did he foresee
  Any such honour?" "Verily
  I cannot tell you," answered he.

  "But this I know, I fain would lay
  My own head down, another day,
  As _he_ did,--with the fame away.

  "A lily, a friend's hand had plucked,
  Lay by his death-bed, which he looked
  As deep down as a bee had sucked,

  "Then, turning to the lattice, gazed
  O'er hill and river and upraised
  His eyes illumined and amazed

  "With the world's beauty, up to God,
  Re-offering on their iris broad
  The images of things bestowed

  "By the chief Poet. 'God!' he cried,
  'Be praised for anguish which has tried,
  For beauty which has satisfied:

  "'For this world's presence half within
  And half without me--thought and scene--
  This sense of Being and Having Been.

  "'I thank Thee that my soul hath room
  For Thy grand world: both guests may come--
  Beauty, to soul--Body, to tomb.

  "'I am content to be so weak:
  Put strength into the words I speak,
  And I am strong in what I seek.

  "'I am content to be so bare
  Before the archers, everywhere
  My wounds being stroked by heavenly air.

  "'I laid my soul before Thy feet
  That images of fair and sweet
  Should walk to other men on it.

  "'I am content to feel the step
  Of each pure image: let those keep
  To mandragore who care to sleep.

  "'I am content to touch the brink
  Of the other goblet and I think
  My bitter drink a wholesome drink.

  "'Because my portion was assigned
  Wholesome and bitter, Thou art kind,
  And I am blessed to my mind.

  "'Gifted for giving, I receive
  The maythorn and its scent outgive:
  I grieve not that I once did grieve.

  "'In my large joy of sight and touch
  Beyond what others count for such,
  I am content to suffer much.

  "'_I know_--is all the mourner saith,
  Knowledge by suffering entereth,
  And Life is perfected by Death.'"

  The child spake nobly: strange to hear,
  His infantine soft accents clear
  Charged with high meanings, did appear;

  And fair to see, his form and face
  Winged out with whiteness and pure grace
  From the green darkness of the place.

  Behind his head a palm-tree grew;
  An orient beam which pierced it through
  Transversely on his forehead drew

  The figure of a palm-branch brown
  Traced on its brightness up and down
  In fine fair lines,--a shadow-crown:

  Guido might paint his angels so--
  A little angel, taught to go
  With holy words to saints below--

  Such innocence of action yet
  Significance of object met
  In his whole bearing strong and sweet.

  And all the children, the whole band,
  Did round in rosy reverence stand,
  Each with a palm-bough in his hand.

  "And so he died," I whispered. "Nay,
  Not _so_," the childish voice did say,
  "That poet turned him first to pray

  "In silence, and God heard the rest
  'Twixt the sun's footsteps down the west.
  Then he called one who loved him best,

  "Yea, he called softly through the room
  (His voice was weak yet tender)--'Come,'
  He said, 'come nearer! Let the bloom

  "'Of Life grow over, undenied,
  This bridge of Death, which is not wide--
  I shall be soon at the other side.

  "'Come, kiss me!' So the one in truth
  Who loved him best,--in love, not ruth,
  Bowed down and kissed him mouth to mouth:

  "And in that kiss of love was won
  Life's manumission. All was done:
  The mouth that kissed last, kissed _alone_.

  "But in the former, confluent kiss,
  The same was sealed, I think, by His,
  To words of truth and uprightness."

  The child's voice trembled, his lips shook
  Like a rose leaning o'er a brook,
  Which vibrates though it is not struck.

  "And who," I asked, a little moved
  Yet curious-eyed, "was this that loved
  And kissed him last, as it behoved?"

  "_I_," softly said the child; and then
  "_I_," said he louder, once again:
  "His son, my rank is among men:

  "And now that men exalt his name
  I come to gather palms with them,
  That holy love may hallow fame.

  "He did not die alone, nor should
  His memory live so, 'mid these rude
  World-praisers--a worse solitude.

  "Me, a voice calleth to that tomb
  Where these are strewing branch and bloom
  Saying, 'Come nearer:' and I come.

  "Glory to God!" resumed he,
  And his eyes smiled for victory
  O'er their own tears which I could see

  Fallen on the palm, down cheek and chin--
  "That poet now has entered in
  The place of rest which is not sin.

  "And while he rests, his songs in troops
  Walk up and down our earthly <DW72>s,
  Companioned by diviner hopes."

  "But _thou_," I murmured to engage
  The child's speech farther--"hast an age
  Too tender for this orphanage."

  "Glory to God--to God!" he saith:
  "KNOWLEDGE BY SUFFERING ENTERETH,
  AND LIFE IS PERFECTED BY DEATH."




THE POET'S VOW


                       O be wiser thou,
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.

                                    WORDSWORTH.




THE POET'S VOW.


PART THE FIRST.

SHOWING WHEREFORE THE VOW WAS MADE.


  I.

  Eve is a twofold mystery;
    The stillness Earth doth keep,
  The motion wherewith human hearts
    Do each to either leap
  As if all souls between the poles
    Felt "Parting comes in sleep."


  II.

  The rowers lift their oars to view
    Each other in the sea;
  The landsmen watch the rocking boats
    In a pleasant company;
  While up the hill go gladlier still
    Dear friends by two and three.


  III.

  The peasant's wife hath looked without
    Her cottage door and smiled,
  For there the peasant drops his spade
    To clasp his youngest child
  Which hath no speech, but its hand can reach
    And stroke his forehead mild.


  IV.

  A poet sate that eventide
    Within his hall alone,
  As silent as its ancient lords
    In the coffined place of stone,
  When the bat hath shrunk from the praying monk,
    And the praying monk is gone.


  V.

  Nor wore the dead a stiller face
    Beneath the cerement's roll:
  His lips refusing out in words
    Their mystic thoughts to dole,
  His steadfast eye burnt inwardly,
    As burning out his soul.


  VI.

  You would not think that brow could e'er
    Ungentle moods express,
  Yet seemed it, in this troubled world,
    Too calm for gentleness,
  When the very star that shines from far
    Shines trembling ne'ertheless.


  VII.

  It lacked, all need, the softening light
    Which other brows supply:
  We should conjoin the scathed trunks
    Of our humanity,
  That each leafless spray entwining may
    Look softer 'gainst the sky.


  VIII.

  None gazed within the poet's face,
    The poet gazed in none;
  He threw a lonely shadow straight
    Before the moon and sun,
  Affronting nature's heaven-dwelling creatures
    With wrong to nature done:


  IX.

  Because this poet daringly,
    --The nature at his heart,
  And that quick tune along his veins
    He could not change by art,--
  Had vowed his blood of brotherhood
    To a stagnant place apart.


  X.

  He did not vow in fear, or wrath,
    Or grief's fantastic whim,
  But, weights and shows of sensual things
    Too closely crossing him,
  On his soul's eyelid the pressure slid
    And made its vision dim.


  XI.

  And darkening in the dark he strove
    'Twixt earth and sea and sky
  To lose in shadow, wave and cloud,
    His brother's haunting cry:
  The winds were welcome as they swept,
  God's five-day work he would accept,
    But let the rest go by.


  XII.

  He cried, "O touching, patient Earth
    That weepest in thy glee,
  Whom God created very good,
    And very mournful, we!
  Thy voice of moan doth reach His throne,
    As Abel's rose from thee.


  XIII.

  "Poor crystal sky with stars astray!
    Mad winds that howling go
  From east to west! perplexed seas
    That stagger from their blow!
  O motion wild! O wave defiled!
    Our curse hath made you so.


  XIV.

  '_We!_ and _our_ curse! do _I_ partake
    The desiccating sin?
  Have _I_ the apple at my lips?
    The money-lust within?
  Do _I_ human stand with the wounding hand,
    To the blasting heart akin?


  XV.

  "Thou solemn pathos of all things
    For solemn joy designed!
  Behold, submissive to your cause,
    A holy wrath I find
  And, for your sake, the bondage break
    That knits me to my kind.


  XVI.

  "Hear me forswear man's sympathies,
    His pleasant yea and no,
  His riot on the piteous earth
   Whereon his thistles grow,
  His changing love--with stars above,
    His pride--with graves below.


  XVII.

  "Hear me forswear his roof by night,
    His bread and salt by day,
  His talkings at the wood-fire hearth,
    His greetings by the way,
  His answering looks, his systemed books,
    All man, for aye and aye.


  XVIII.

  "That so my purged, once human heart,
    From all the human rent,
  May gather strength to pledge and drink
    Your wine of wonderment,
  While you pardon me all blessingly
    The woe mine Adam sent.


  XIX.

  "And I shall feel your unseen looks
    Innumerous, constant, deep
  And soft as haunted Adam once,
    Though sadder, round me creep,--
  As slumbering men have mystic ken
    Of watchers on their sleep.


  XX.

  "And ever, when I lift my brow
    At evening to the sun,
  No voice of woman or of child
    Recording 'Day is done.'
  Your silences shall a love express,
    More deep than such an one."


PART THE SECOND.

SHOWING TO WHOM THE VOW WAS DECLARED.


  I.

  The poet's vow was inly sworn,
    The poet's vow was told.
  He shared among his crowding friends
    The silver and the gold,
  They clasping bland his gift,--his hand
    In a somewhat slacker hold.


  II.

  They wended forth, the crowding friends,
    With farewells smooth and kind.
  They wended forth, the solaced friends,
    And left but twain behind:
  One loved him true as brothers do,
    And one was Rosalind.


  III.

  He said, "My friends have wended forth
    With farewells smooth and kind;
  Mine oldest friend, my plighted bride,
    Ye need not stay behind:
  Friend, wed my fair bride for my sake,
  And let my lands ancestral make
    A dower for Rosalind.


  IV.

  "And when beside your wassail board
    Ye bless your social lot,
  I charge you that the giver be
    In all his gifts forgot,
  Or alone of all his words recall
    The last,--Lament me not."


  V.

  She looked upon him silently
    With her large, doubting eyes,
  Like a child that never knew but love
    Whom words of wrath surprise,
  Till the rose did break from either cheek
    And the sudden tears did rise.


  VI.

  She looked upon him mournfully,
    While her large eyes were grown
  Yet larger with the steady tears,
    Till, all his purpose known,
  She turned slow, as she would go--
    The tears were shaken down.


  VII.

  She turned slow, as she would go,
    Then quickly turned again,
  And gazing in his face to seek
    Some little touch of pain,
  "I thought," she said,--but shook her head,--
    She tried that speech in vain.


  VIII.

  "I thought--but I am half a child
    And very sage art thou--
  The teachings of the heaven and earth
    Should keep us soft and low:
  They have drawn _my_ tears in early years,
    Or ere I wept--as now.


  IX.

  "But now that in thy face I read
    Their cruel homily,
  Before their beauty I would fain
    Untouched, unsoftened be,--
  If I indeed could look on even
  The senseless, loveless earth and heaven
    As thou canst look on me!


  X.

  "And couldest thou as coldly view
    Thy childhood's far abode,
  Where little feet kept time with thine
    Along the dewy sod,
  And thy mother's look from holy book
    Rose like a thought of God?


  XI.

  "O brother,--called so, ere her last
    Betrothing words were said!
  O fellow-watcher in her room,
    With hushed voice and tread!
  Rememberest thou how, hand in hand
  O friend, O lover, we did stand,
    And knew that she was dead?


  XII.

  "I will not live Sir Roland's bride,
    That dower I will not hold;
  I tread below my feet that go,
    These parchments bought and sold:
  The tears I weep are mine to keep,
    And worthier than thy gold."


  XIII.

  The poet and Sir Roland stood
    Alone, each turned to each,
  Till Roland brake the silence left
    By that soft-throbbing speech--
  "Poor heart!" he cried, "it vainly tried
    The distant heart to reach.


  XIV.

  "And thou, O distant, sinful heart
    That climbest up so high
  To wrap and blind thee with the snows
    That cause to dream and die,
  What blessing can, from lips of man,
    Approach thee with his sigh?


  XV.

  "Ay, what from earth--create for man
    And moaning in his moan?
  Ay, what from stars--revealed to man
    And man-named one by one?
  Ay, more! what blessing can be given
  Where the Spirits seven do show in heaven
    A MAN upon the throne?


  XVI.

  "A man on earth HE wandered once,
    All meek and undefiled,
  And those who loved Him said 'He wept'--
    None ever said He smiled;
  Yet there might have been a smile unseen,
  When He bowed his holy face, I ween,
    To bless that happy child.


  XVII.

  "And now HE pleadeth up in heaven
    For our humanities,
  Till the ruddy light on seraphs' wings
    In pale emotion dies.
  They can better bear their Godhead's glare
    Than the pathos of his eyes.


  XVIII.

  "I will go pray our God to-day
    To teach thee how to scan
  His work divine, for human use
    Since earth on axle ran,--
  To teach thee to discern as plain
  His grief divine, the blood-drop's stain
    He left there, MAN for man.


  XIX.

  "So, for the blood's sake shed by Him
    Whom angels God declare,
  Tears like it, moist and warm with love,
    Thy reverent eyes shall wear
  To see i' the face of Adam's race
    The nature God doth share."


  XX.

  "I heard," the poet said, "thy voice
    As dimly as thy breath:
  The sound was like the noise of life
    To one anear his death,--
  Or of waves that fail to stir the pale
    Sere leaf they roll beneath.


  XXI.

  "And still between the sound and me
    White creatures like a mist
  Did interfloat confusedly,
    Mysterious shapes unwist:
  Across my heart and across my brow
  I felt them droop like wreaths of snow,
    To still the pulse they kist.


  XXII.

  "The castle and its lands are thine--
    The poor's--it shall be done.
  Go, _man_, to love! I go to live
    In Courland hall, alone:
  The bats along the ceilings cling,
  The lizards in the floors do run,
  And storms and years have worn and reft
  The stain by human builders left
    In working at the stone."


PART THE THIRD.

SHOWING HOW THE VOW WAS KEPT.


  I.

  He dwelt alone, and sun and moon
    Were witness that he made
  Rejection of his humanness
    Until they seemed to fade;
  His face did so, for he did grow
    Of his own soul afraid.


  II.

  The self-poised God may dwell alone
    With inward glorying,
  But God's chief angel waiteth for
    A brother's voice, to sing;
  And a lonely creature of sinful nature
    It is an awful thing.


  III.

  An awful thing that feared itself;
    While many years did roll,
  A lonely man, a feeble man,
    A part beneath the whole,
  He bore by day, he bore by night
  That pressure of God's infinite
    Upon his finite soul.


  IV.

  The poet at his lattice sate,
    And downward looked he.
  Three Christians wended by to prayers,
    With mute ones in their ee;
  Each turned above a face of love
    And called him to the far chapelle
  With voice more tuneful than its bell:
    But still they wended three.


  V.

  There journeyed by a bridal pomp,
    A bridegroom and his dame;
  He speaketh low for happiness,
    She blusheth red for shame:
  But never a tone of benison
    From out the lattice came.


  VI.

  A little child with inward song,
    No louder noise to dare,
  Stood near the wall to see at play
    The lizards green and rare--
  Unblessed the while for his childish smile
    Which cometh unaware.


PART THE FOURTH.

SHOWING HOW ROSALIND FARED BY THE KEEPING OF THE VOW.


  I.

  In death-sheets lieth Rosalind
    As white and still as they;
  And the old nurse that watched her bed
    Rose up with "Well-a-day!"
  And oped the casement to let in
  The sun, and that sweet doubtful din
  Which droppeth from the grass and bough
  Sans wind and bird, none knoweth how--
    To cheer her as she lay.


  II.

  The old nurse started when she saw
    Her sudden look of woe:
  But the quick wan tremblings round her mouth
    In a meek smile did go,
  And calm she said, "When I am dead,
    Dear nurse it shall be so.


  III.

  "Till then, shut out those sights and sounds,
    And pray God pardon me
  That I without this pain no more
    His blessed works can see!
  And lean beside me, loving nurse,
  That thou mayst hear, ere I am worse,
    What thy last love should be."


  IV.

  The loving nurse leant over her,
    As white she lay beneath;
  The old eyes searching, dim with life,
    The young ones dim with death,
  To read their look if sound forsook
    The trying, trembling breath.


  V.

  "When all this feeble breath is done,
    And I on bier am laid,
  My tresses smoothed for never a feast,
    My body in shroud arrayed,
  Uplift each palm in a saintly calm,
    As if that still I prayed.


  VI.

  "And heap beneath mine head the flowers
    You stoop so low to pull,
  The little white flowers from the wood
    Which grow there in the cool,
  Which _he_ and I, in childhood's games,
  Went plucking, knowing not their names,
    And filled thine apron full.


  VII.

  "Weep not! _I_ weep not. Death is strong,
    The eyes of Death are dry!
  But lay this scroll upon my breast
    When hushed its heavings lie,
  And wait awhile for the corpse's smile
    Which shineth presently.


  VIII.

  "And when it shineth, straightway call
    Thy youngest children dear,
  And bid them gently carry me
    All barefaced on the bier;
  But bid them pass my kirkyard grass
    That waveth long anear.


  IX.

  "And up the bank where I used to sit
    And dream what life would be,
  Along the brook with its sunny look
    Akin to living glee,--
  O'er the windy hill, through the forest still,
    Let them gently carry me.


  X.

  "And through the piny forest still,
    And down the open moorland
  Round where the sea beats mistily
    And blindly on the foreland;
  And let them chant that hymn I know,
  Bearing me soft, bearing me slow,
    To the ancient hall of Courland.


  XI.

  "And when withal they near the hall,
    In silence let them lay
  My bier before the bolted door,
    And leave it for a day:
  For I have vowed, though I am proud,
  To go there as a guest in shroud,
    And not be turned away."


  XII.

  The old nurse looked within her eyes
    Whose mutual look was gone;
  The old nurse stooped upon her mouth,
    Whose answering voice was done;
  And nought she heard, till a little bird
    Upon the casement's woodbine swinging
  Broke out into a loud sweet singing
    For joy o' the summer sun:
  "Alack! alack!"--she watched no more,
    With head on knee she wailed sore,
  And the little bird sang o'er and o'er
    For joy o' the summer sun.


PART THE FIFTH.

SHOWING HOW THE VOW WAS BROKEN.


  I.

  The poet oped his bolted door
    The midnight sky to view;
  A spirit-feel was in the air
  Which seemed to touch his spirit bare
    Whenever his breath he drew;
  And the stars a liquid softness had,
  As alone their holiness forbade
    Their falling with the dew.


  II.

  They shine upon the steadfast hills,
    Upon the swinging tide,
  Upon the narrow track of beach
    And the murmuring pebbles pied:
  They shine on every lovely place,
  They shine upon the corpse's face,
    As _it_ were fair beside.


  III.

  It lay before him, humanlike,
    Yet so unlike a thing!
  More awful in its shrouded pomp
    Than any crowned king:
  All calm and cold, as it did hold
    Some secret, glorying.


  IV.

  A heavier weight than of its clay
    Clung to his heart and knee:
  As if those folded palms could strike
    He staggered groaningly,
  And then o'erhung, without a groan,
  The meek close mouth that smiled alone,
    Whose speech the scroll must be.

       *       *       *       *       *


  THE WORDS OF ROSALIND'S SCROLL.

  "I left thee last, a child at heart,
    A woman scarce in years.
  I come to thee, a solemn corpse
    Which neither feels nor fears.
  I have no breath to use in sighs;
  They laid the dead-weights on mine eyes
    To seal them safe from tears.

  "Look on me with thine own calm look:
    I meet it calm as thou.
  No look of thine can change _this_ smile,
    Or break thy sinful vow:
  I tell thee that my poor scorned heart
  Is of thine earth--thine earth, a part:
    It cannot vex thee now.

  "But out, alas! these words are writ
    By a living, loving one,
  Adown whose cheeks, the proofs of life
    The warm quick tears do run:
  Ah, let the unloving corpse control
  Thy scorn back from the loving soul
    Whose place of rest is won.

  "I have prayed for thee with bursting sob
    When passion's course was free;
  I have prayed for thee with silent lips,
    In the anguish none could see:
  They whispered oft, 'She sleepeth soft'--
    But I only prayed for thee.

  "Go to! I pray for thee no more:
    The corpse's tongue is still,
  Its folded fingers point to heaven,
    But point there stiff and chill:
  No farther wrong, no farther woe
  Hath license from the sin below
    Its tranquil heart to thrill.

  "I charge thee, by the living's prayer,
    And the dead's silentness,
  To wring from out thy soul a cry
    Which God shall hear and bless!
  Lest Heaven's own palm droop in my hand,
  And pale among the saints I stand,
    A saint companionless."

       *       *       *       *       *


  V.

  Bow lower down before the throne,
    Triumphant Rosalind!
  He boweth on thy corpse his face,
    And weepeth as the blind:
  'Twas a dread sight to see them so,
  For the senseless corpse rocked to and fro
    With the wail of his living mind.


  VI.

  But dreader sight, could such be seen,
    His inward mind did lie,
  Whose long-subjected humanness
    Gave out its lion-cry,
  And fiercely rent its tenement
    In a mortal agony.


  VII.

  I tell you, friends, had you heard his wail,
    'Twould haunt you in court and mart,
  And in merry feast until you set
    Your cup down to depart--
  That weeping wild of a reckless child
    From a proud man's broken heart.


  VIII.

  O broken heart, O broken vow,
    That wore so proud a feature!
  God, grasping as a thunderbolt
    The man's rejected nature,
  Smote him therewith i' the presence high
  Of his so worshipped earth and sky
  That looked on all indifferently--
    A wailing human creature.


  IX.

  A human creature found too weak
    To bear his human pain--
  (May Heaven's dear grace have spoken peace
     To his dying heart and brain!)
  For when they came at dawn of day
  To lift the lady's corpse away,
    Her bier was holding twain.


  X.

  They dug beneath the kirkyard grass,
    For born one dwelling deep;
  To which, when years had mossed the stone,
  Sir Roland brought his little son
    To watch the funeral heap:
  And when the happy boy would rather
    Turn upward his blithe eyes to see
    The wood-doves nodding from the tree,
  "Nay, boy, look downward," said his father,
  "Upon this human dust asleep.
  And hold it in thy constant ken
  That God's own unity compresses
    (One into one) the human many,
  And that his everlastingness is
    The bond which is not loosed by any:
  That thou and I this law must keep,
    If not in love, in sorrow then,--
    Though smiling not like other men,
  Still, like them we must weep."


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

  +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
  | Transcriber's Notes:                                            |
  |                                                                 |
  | Words surrounded by _ are italicized.                           |
  |                                                                 |
  | Words encased in = are in Hebrew. Due to the restriction of the |
  | latin-1 font, they have been converted into latin characters.   |
  |                                                                 |
  | The author's punctuations have been kept, except on page 221,   |
  | a fullstop added to the end of the poem (thee for weeping.)     |
  |                                                                 |
  | On page xx (Contents), page number "155" for Epilogue corrected |
  | to be "150."                                                    |
  |                                                                 |
  | All apparent printer's errors and variable spellings retained.  |
  | This includes:                                                  |
  | - The use of both modern and archaic spellings of the same      |
  |   word, for example:                                            |
  |   "corpse" and "corse"                                          |
  |   "like" and "liker"                                            |
  |   "obtain" and "obtayne"                                        |
  | - The variable use of accent in the same word, for example:     |
  |   "Aphrodite" and "Aphrodite"                                   |
  |   "Here" and "Here"                                             |
  |   "wailed" and "wailed"                                         |
  | - The use of phrases with and without hyphen, for example:      |
  |   "full-length" and "full length"                               |
  |   "God-light" and "Godlight"                                    |
  |   "red-clay" and "red clay"                                     |
  |                                                                 |
  +-----------------------------------------------------------------+





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poetical Works of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, Vol. I, by Elizabeth  Barrett Browning

*** 