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Title: The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 1

Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Release Date: September 18, 2011 [EBook #37452]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Thierry Alberto, Judith Wirawan, Henry Craig and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

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.

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett.

at the age of nine.

Engraved by G. Cooke from a Drawing by Charles Hayter.

London: Published by Smith, Elder & Co. 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.

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 coloured, 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 Æschylus, 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 angélique du génie;" 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 ÆSCHYLUS

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, slopes 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 slopes;

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 sustainèd 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 benumbèd 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 æther,

Sensible like fiery motes.

Or, whenever twilight drifted

Through the cedar masses,

The globèd 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 orbèd 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 orbèd 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 belovèd 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 hornèd 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 æther. 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 defilèd

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-groovèd 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 slope 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 piercèd 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 coæval,

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-piercèd, 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.

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 undefilèd 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 Judæa'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 crownèd 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 crownèd hierarchies that wear your crown

When His is put away!

Are ye unshamèd 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 Judæa. 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 divorcèd 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 rousèd 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

Stainèd 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 pilèd 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 closèd 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 transfixèd 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 damnèd 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 changèd 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.

PROMETHEUS BOUND

FROM THE GREEK OF ÆSCHYLUS

PERSONS.

PROMETHEUS.

OCEANUS.

HERMES.

HEPHÆSTUS.

IO, daughter of Inachus.

STRENGTH and FORCE.

Chorus of Sea Nymphs.

PROMETHEUS BOUND

SCENE.—STRENGTH and FORCE, HEPHÆSTUS and PROMETHEUS, at the Rocks.

Strength. We reach the utmost limit of the earth,

The Scythian track, the desert without man.

And now, Hephæstus, 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.

Hephæstus. 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?

Hephæstus.         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?

Hephæstus. 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.

Hephæstus.      Cursed handicraft!

I curse and hate thee, O my craft!

Strength.                           Why hate

Thy craft most plainly innocent of all

These pending ills?

Hephæstus.         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.

Hephæstus.         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?

Hephæstus.                     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.

Hephæstus.            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.

Hephæstus.            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.

Hephæstus.               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.

Hephæstus. 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.

Hephæstus. 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.

Hephæstus.                        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.

Hephæstus. 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.

Hephæstus. 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.

Hephæstus. 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 Dæmons 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 Æther, and swift-wingèd 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 Ætna; high upon whose tops

Hephæstus 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, Mæotis' 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, coloured 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 Herè'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 Herè 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 Hephæstus.

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 Lerné'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 changèd and distraught,

And, hornèd as ye see, and spurred along

By the fanged insect, with a maniac leap

I rushed on to Cenchrea's limpid stream

And Lerné'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 Herè. 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 Mæotis. 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 Gorgonæan flats

Beside Cisthené. 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 Æthiops; 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 perplexèd 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 Heré, 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, loathèd 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 æther 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 Até 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 Até, 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 æther 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 Æther, 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

A LAMENT FOR ADONIS.

FROM 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 Aphrodité, 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

Aphrodité'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 Persephoné, 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 Hymenæus 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 Hymenæus!"

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 Dioné's.

The Fates mourn aloud for Adonis, Adonis,

Deep chanting; he hears not a word that they say:

He would hear, but Persephoné 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 wanderèd

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 dishevellèd

In her sleek tresses manifold

Like Danaë'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 archèd 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 nichèd 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 Æschylus, 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 calmèd 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 engenderèd)

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 Aphroditè 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 Æschylus, 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 finishèd;

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 Æolian 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!" resumèd 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 slopes,

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 scathèd 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! perplexèd 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 turnèd slow, as she would go—

The tears were shaken down.

VII.

She turnèd 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 hushèd 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 lookèd 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 chapèlle

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 wailèd 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 crownèd 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

FOOTNOTES:

[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.

[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.

[D] "His angels he charged with folly."—Job iv. 18.

Transcriber's Notes:

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: "Aphrodité" and "Aphroditè;" "Heré" and "Herè;" "wailèd" 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."

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Table of Contents

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.

PREFATORY NOTE.

Dedication

TO MY FATHER

PREFACE

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

ADVERTISEMENT.

CONTENTS.

A DRAMA OF EXILE

A DRAMA OF EXILE.

THE SERAPHIM

THE SERAPHIM.

PART THE FIRST.

PART THE SECOND.

EPILOGUE.

PROMETHEUS BOUND

FROM THE GREEK OF ÆSCHYLUS

PROMETHEUS BOUND

A LAMENT FOR ADONIS

FROM THE GREEK OF BION

A LAMENT FOR ADONIS.

FROM BION.

A VISION OF POETS

A VISION OF POETS.

CONCLUSION.

THE POET'S VOW

THE POET'S VOW.

PART THE FIRST.

SHOWING WHEREFORE THE VOW WAS MADE.

PART THE SECOND.

SHOWING TO WHOM THE VOW WAS DECLARED.

PART THE THIRD.

SHOWING HOW THE VOW WAS KEPT.

PART THE FOURTH.

SHOWING HOW ROSALIND FARED BY THE KEEPING OF THE VOW.

PART THE FIFTH.

SHOWING HOW THE VOW WAS BROKEN.

THE WORDS OF ROSALIND'S SCROLL.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

FOOTNOTES:

Transcriber's Notes:

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