A Judgment In Heaven

Athwart the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with his

splendid eyes;

Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of

Paradise,

Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter-tangled

relucent dyes.

The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wings

rustled his guides' cymars)

Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted each

other with handfuls of stars;

And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, by

their tethered cars.

With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured, * of Saints, his

guided steps held on

To where on the far crystelline pale * of that transtellar Heaven

there shone

The immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father's Throne.

Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his great advent

driven,

Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty echoing so was

given,

As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clanged gates of Heaven.

Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars,

Went a waver of ribbed fire *--as night-seas on phosphoric bars

Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach of

crumbling stars.

At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His

aged dominions

The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their

hauberked minions,

The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involved dread of those

mounted pinions.

As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet

earth

At momentary intervals * beholds from its ragged rifts break forth

The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a

witched birth;

Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges

soon,

Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune,

Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the

moon:-

With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt

plumes so burned their charge;

Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,--disclosed from their

kindling marge,

Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God's

light lay large.

Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer's glories

clings

A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork

things,

Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs'

versicoloured wings.

A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through

Eden-ways

Into the shade of the poet's glory, * darkened under his prevalent

rays,

Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.

The angels laughed with a lovely scorning:  *--"Who has done this

sorry deed in

The garden of our Father, God? * 'mid his blossoms to sow this weed

in?

Never our fingers knew this stuff:  * not so fashion the looms of

Eden!"

The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork

through and through,

Feeling God's lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit

too:

The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come

'mid their sacred crew,

Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self

knew.

But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent

doth,

Laid them at the rhymer's feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,

Stood in a dim and shamed stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty

moth.

"Thou gav'st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are

solely Thine,

And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;

The life I textured, Thou the song *--MY handicraft is not divine!"

He wrested o'er the rhymer's head * that garmenting which wrought

him wrong;

A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers

long:-

"Better thou wov'st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy

woof of song!"

Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;

Never an eye looked mild on him * 'mid all the angel myriads ten,

Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *--the Mary titled Magdalen.

"Turn yon robe," spake Magdalen, * "of torn bright song, and see and

feel."

They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did

reveal -

All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs of

steel.

"Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head."

They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonished:

Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst and

bled.

"See his torn flesh through those rents; * see the punctures round

his hair,

As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to nourish

there -

Lord, who gav'st him robe and wreath, * WHAT was this Thou gav'st

for wear?"

"Fetch forth the Paradisal garb!" * spake the Father, sweet and low;

Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary's throne made

irised bow -

"Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, * two spirits greater than

they know."