A DRAMA OF EXILE.

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.

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.