PART THE SECOND.

Ador. Beloved! dost thou see?—

Zerah. Thee,— thee.

Thy burning eyes already are

Grown wild and mournful as a star

Whose occupation is for aye

To look upon the place of clay

Whereon thou lookest now.

The crown is fainting on thy brow

To the likeness of a cloud,

The forehead's self a little bowed

From its aspect high and holy,

As it would in meekness meet

Some seraphic melancholy:

Thy very wings that lately flung

An outline clear, do flicker here

And wear to each a shadow hung,

Dropped across thy feet.

In these strange contrasting glooms

Stagnant with the scent of tombs,

Seraph faces, O my brother,

Show awfully to one another.

Ador. Dost thou see?

Zerah. Even so; I see

Our empyreal company,

Alone the memory of their brightness

Left in them, as in thee.

The circle upon circle, tier on tier,

Piling earth's hemisphere

With heavenly infiniteness,

Above us and around,

Straining the whole horizon like a bow:

Their songful lips divorced from all sound,

A darkness gliding down their silvery glances,—

Bowing their steadfast solemn countenances

As if they heard God speak, and could not glow.

Ador. Look downward! dost thou see?

Zerah. And wouldst thou press that vision on my words?

Doth not earth speak enough

Of change and of undoing,

Without a seraph's witness? Oceans rough

With tempest, pastoral swards

Displaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruing

The bolt fallen yesterday,

That shake their piny heads, as who would say

“We are too beautiful for our decay” —

Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let alone

Earth to her earthly moan!

Is there no moan but hers?

Ador. Hearest thou the attestation

Of the roused universe

Like a desert-lion shaking

Dews of silence from its mane?

With an irrepressive passion

Uprising at once,

Rising up and forsaking

Its solemn state in the circle of suns,

To attest the pain

Of him who stands ( O patience sweet! )

In his own hand-prints of creation,

With human feet?

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.

Enough, the mystic arrow leaves its wound.

Return ye to your silences inborn,

Or to your inarticulated sound!

Ador. Zerah!

Zerah. Wilt thou rebuke?

God hath rebuked me, brother. I am weak.

Ador. Zerah, my brother Zerah! could I speak

Of thee,‘ twould be of love to thee.

Zerah. Thy look

Is fixed on earth, as mine upon thy face.

Where shall I seek His?

I have thrown

One look upon earth, but one,

Over the blue mountain-lines,

Over the forests of palms and pines,

Over the harvest-lands golden,

Over the valleys that fold in

The gardens and vines —

He is not there.

All these are unworthy

Those footsteps to bear,

Before which, bowing down

I would fain quench the stars of my crown

In the dark of the earthy.

Where shall I seek him?

No reply?

Hath language left thy lips, to place

Its vocal in thine eye?

Ador, Ador! are we come

To a double portent, that

Dumb matter grows articulate

And songful seraphs dumb?

Ador, Ador!

Ador. I constrain

The passion of my silence. None

Of those places gazed upon

Are gloomy enow to fit his pain.

Unto Him, whose forming word

Gave to Nature flower and sward.

She hath given back again,

For the myrtle — the thorn,

For the sylvan calm — the human scorn.

Still, still, reluctant seraph, gaze beneath!

There is a city ——

Zerah. Temple and tower,

Palace and purple would droop like a flower,

( Or a cloud at our breath )

If He neared in his state

The outermost gate.

Ador. Ah me, not so

In the state of a king did the victim go!

And THOU who hangest mute of speech

‘ Twixt heaven and earth, with forehead yet

Stained by the bloody sweat,

God! man! Thou hast forgone thy throne in each.

Zerah. Thine eyes behold him?

Ador. Yea, below.

Track the gazing of mine eyes,

Naming God within thine heart

That its weakness may depart

And the vision rise!

Seest thou yet, beloved?

Zerah. I see

Beyond the city, crosses three

And mortals three that hang thereon

‘ Ghast and silent to the sun.

Round them blacken and welter and press

Staring multitudes whose father

Adam was, whose brows are dark

With his Cain's corroded mark,—

Who curse with looks. Nay — let me rather

Turn unto the wilderness!

Ador. Turn not! God dwells with men.

Zerah. Above

He dwells with angels, and they love.

Can these love? With the living's pride

They stare at those who die, who hang

In their sight and die. They bear the streak

Of the crosses’ shadow, black not wide,

To fall on their heads, as it swerves aside

When the victims’ pang

Makes the dry wood creak.

Ador. The cross — the cross!

Zerah. A woman kneels

The mid cross under,

With white lips asunder,

And motion on each.

They throb, as she feels,

With a spasm, not a speech;

And her lids, close as sleep,

Are less calm, for the eyes

Have made room there to weep

Drop on drop —

Ador. Weep? Weep blood,

All women, all men!

He sweated it, He,

For your pale womanhood

And base manhood. Agree

That these water-tears, then,

Are vain, mocking like laughter:

Weep blood! Shall the flood

Of salt curses, whose foam is the darkness, on roll

Forward, on from the strand of the storm-beaten years,

And back from the rocks of the horrid hereafter,

And up, in a coil, from the present's wrath-spring,

Yea, down from the windows of heaven opening,

Deep calling to deep as they meet on His soul —

And men weep only tears?

Zerah. Little drops in the lapse!

And yet, Ador, perhaps

It is all that they can.

Tears! the lovingest man

Has no better bestowed

Upon man.

Ador. Nor on God.

Zerah. Do all-givers need gifts?

If the Giver said “Give,” the first motion would slay

Our Immortals, the echo would ruin away

The same worlds which he made. Why, what angel uplifts

Such a music, so clear,

It may seem in God's ear

Worth more than a woman's hoarse weeping? And thus,

Pity tender as tears, I above thee would speak,

Thou woman that weepest! weep unscorned of us!

I, the tearless and pure, am but loving and weak.

Ador. Speak low, my brother, low,— and not of love

Or human or angelic! Rather stand

Before the throne of that Supreme above,

In whose infinitude the secrecies

Of thine own being lie hid, and lift thine hand

Exultant, saying, “Lord God, I am wise!” —

Than utter here, “I love.”

Zerah. And yet thine eyes

Do utter it. They melt in tender light,

The tears of heaven.

Ador. Of heaven. Ah me!

Zerah. Ador!

Ador. Say on!

Zerah. The crucified are three.

Beloved, they are unlike.

Ador. Unlike.

Zerah. For one

Is as a man who has sinned and still

Doth wear the wicked will,

The hard malign life-energy,

Tossed outward, in the parting soul's disdain,

On brow and lip that cannot change again.

Ador. And one —

Zerah. Has also sinned.

And yet ( O marvel! ) doth the Spirit-wind

Blow white those waters? Death upon his face

Is rather shine than shade,

A tender shine by looks beloved made:

He seemeth dying in a quiet place,

And less by iron wounds in hands and feet

Than heart-broke by new joy too sudden and sweet.

Ador. And ONE!—

Zerah. And ONE!—

Ador. Why dost thou pause?

Zerah. God! God!

Spirit of my spirit! who movest

Through seraph veins in burning deity

To light the quenchless pulses!—

Ador. But hast trod

The depths of love in thy peculiar nature,

And not in any thou hast made and lovest

In narrow seraph hearts!—

Zerah. Above, Creator!

Within, Upholder!

Ador. And below, below,

The creature's and the upholden's sacrifice!

Zerah. Why do I pause?—

Ador. There is a silentness

That answers thee enow,

That, like a brazen sound

Excluding others, doth ensheathe us round,—

Hear it. It is not from the visible skies

Though they are still,

Unconscious that their own dropped dews express

The light of heaven on every earthly hill.

It is not from the hills, though calm and bare

They, since their first creation,

Through midnight cloud or morning's glittering air

Or the deep deluge blindness, toward the place

Whence thrilled the mystic word's creative grace,

And whence again shall come

The word that uncreates,

Have lift their brows in voiceless expectation.

It is not from the places that entomb

Man's dead, though common Silence there dilates

Her soul to grand proportions, worthily

To fill life's vacant room.

Not there: not there.

Not yet within those chambers lieth He,

A dead one in his living world; his south

And west winds blowing over earth and sea,

And not a breath on that creating mouth.

But now,— a silence keeps

( Not death's, nor sleep's )

The lips whose whispered word

Might roll the thunders round reverberated.

Silent art thou, O my Lord,

Bowing down thy stricken head!

Fearest thou, a groan of thine

Would make the pulse of thy creation fail

As thine own pulse?— would rend the veil

Of visible things and let the flood

Of the unseen Light, the essential God,

Rush in to whelm the undivine?

Thy silence, to my thinking, is as dread.

Zerah. O silence!

Ador. Doth it say to thee — the NAME,

Slow-learning seraph?

Zerah. I have learnt.

Ador. The flame

Perishes in thine eyes.

Zerah. He opened his,

And looked. I cannot bear —

Ador. Their agony?

Zerah. Their love. God's depth is in them. From his brows

White, terrible in meekness, didst thou see

The lifted eyes unclose?

He is God, seraph! Look no more on me,

O God — I am not God.

Ador. The loving is

Sublimed within them by the sorrowful.

In heaven we could sustain them.

Zerah. Heaven is dull,

Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burns

In fluent, refluent motion

Along the crystal ocean;

The springing of the golden harps between

The bowery wings, in fountains of sweet sound,

The winding, wandering music that returns

Upon itself, exultingly self-bound

In the great spheric round

Of everlasting praises;

The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene,

Visibly flashing from the supreme throne

Full in seraphic faces

Till each astonishes the other, grown

More beautiful with worship and delight —

My heaven! my home of heaven! my infinite

Heaven-choirs! what are ye to this dust and death,

This cloud, this cold, these tears, this failing breath,

Where God's immortal love now issueth

In this MAN'S woe?

Ador. His eyes are very deep yet calm.

Zerah. No more

On me, Jehovah-man —

Ador. Calm-deep. They show

A passion which is tranquil. They are seeing

No earth, no heaven, no men that slay and curse,

No seraphs that adore;

Their gaze is on the invisible, the dread,

The things we cannot view or think or speak,

Because we are too happy, or too weak,—

The sea of ill, for which the universe,

With all its piled space, can find no shore,

With all its life, no living foot to tread.

But he, accomplished in Jehovah-being,

Sustains the gaze adown,

Conceives the vast despair,

And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown,

Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished.

Zerah. Thus, do I find Thee thus? My undiminished

And undiminishable God!— my God!

The echoes are still tremulous along

The heavenly mountains, of the latest song

Thy manifested glory swept abroad

In rushing past our lips: they echo aye

“Creator, thou art strong!

Creator, thou art blessed over all.”

By what new utterance shall I now recall,

Unteaching the heaven-echoes? Dare I say,

“Creator, thou art feebler than thy work!

Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature!

A worm, and not a man,

Yea, no worm, but a curse?”

I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse.

Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork

( Whose seed disordered ran

From Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her )

Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rod

That smites thee never blossoming, and thou

Grief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow —

I leave to men their song of Ichabod:

I have an angel-tongue — I know but praise.

Ador. Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raise

The passion-song of blood.

Zerah. And we, extend

Our holy vacant hands towards the Throne,

Crying “We have no music.”

Ador. Rather, blend

Both musics into one.

The sanctities and sanctified above

Shall each to each, with lifted looks serene,

Their shining faces lean,

And mix the adoring breath

And breathe the full thanksgiving.

Zerah. But the love —

The love, mine Ador!

Ador. Do we love not?

Zerah. Yea,

But not as man shall! not with life for death,

New-throbbing through the startled being; not

With strange astonished smiles, that ever may

Gush passionate like tears and fill their place:

Nor yet with speechless memories of what

Earth's winters were, enverduring the green

Of every heavenly palm

Whose windless, shadeless calm

Moves only at the breath of the Unseen.

Oh, not with this blood on us — and this face,—

Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore

In our behalf, and tender evermore

With nature all our own, upon us gazing —

Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising

Their unreproachful wounds, alone to bless!

Alas, Creator! shall we love thee less

Than mortals shall?

Ador. Amen! so let it be.

We love in our proportion, to the bound

Thine infinite our finite set around,

And that is finitely,— thou, infinite

And worthy infinite love! And our delight

Is, watching the dear love poured out to thee

From ever fuller chalice. Blessed they,

Who love thee more than we do: blessed we,

Viewing that love which shall exceed even this,

And winning in the sight a double bliss

For all so lost in love's supremacy.

The bliss is better. Only on the sad

Cold earth there are who say

It seemeth better to be great than glad.

The bliss is better. Love him more, O man,

Than sinless seraphs can!

Zerah. Yea, love him more!

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.

Love him more!

Ador. Sweet voices, swooning o'er

The music which ye make!

Albeit to love there were not ever given

A mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,

That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.

Of love be silent now! we gaze adown

Upon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.

Zerah. No crown! the woe instead

Is heavy on his head,

Pressing inward on his brain

With a hot and clinging pain

Till all tears are prest away,

And clear and calm his vision may

Peruse the black abyss.

No rod, no sceptre is

Holden in his fingers pale;

They close instead upon the nail,

Concealing the sharp dole,

Never stirring to put by

The fair hair peaked with blood,

Drooping forward from the rood

Helplessly, heavily

On the cheek that waxeth colder,

Whiter ever, and the shoulder

Where the government was laid.

His glory made the heavens afraid;

Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?

His pity makes his piteous state;

Will he be uncompassionate

Alone to his proper soul?

Yea, will he not lift up

His lips from the bitter cup,

His brows from the dreary weight,

His hand from the clenching cross,

Crying, “My Father, give to me

Again the joy I had with thee

Or ere this earth was made for loss?

No stir no sound.

The love and woe being interwound

He cleaveth to the woe;

And putteth forth heaven's strength below,

To bear.

Ador. And that creates his anguish now,

Which made his glory there.

Zerah. Shall it need be so?

Awake, thou Earth! behold.

Thou, uttered forth of old

In all thy life-emotion,

In all thy vernal noises,

In the rollings of thine ocean,

Leaping founts, and rivers running,—

In thy woods’ prophetic heaving

Ere the rains a stroke have given,

In thy winds’ exultant voices

When they feel the hills anear,—

In the firmamental sunning,

And the tempest which rejoices

Thy full heart with an awful cheer.

Thou, uttered forth of old

And with all thy music rolled

In a breath abroad

By the breathing God,—

Awake! He is here! behold!

Even thou — beseems it good

To thy vacant vision dim,

That the deadly ruin should,

For thy sake, encompass him?

That the Master-word should lie

A mere silence, while his own

Processive harmony,

The faintest echo of his lightest tone,

Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?

Awake! emit a cry!

And say, albeit used

From Adam's ancient years

To falls of acrid tears,

To frequent sighs unloosed,

Caught back to press again

On bosoms zoned with pain —

To corses still and sullen

The shine and music dulling

With closed eyes and ears

That nothing sweet can enter,

Commoving thee no less

With that forced quietness

Than the earthquake in thy centre —

Thou hast not learnt to bear

This new divine despair!

These tears that sink into thee,

These dying eyes that view thee,

This dropping blood from lifted rood,

They darken and undo thee.

Thou canst not presently sustain this corse —

Cry, cry, thou hast not force!

Cry, thou wouldst fainer keep

Thy hopeless charnels deep,

Thyself a general tomb

Where the first and the second Death

Sit gazing face to face

And mar each other's breath,

While silent bones through all the place

‘ Neath sun and moon do faintly glisten

And seem to lie and listen

For the tramp of the coming Doom.

Is it not meet

That they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,

Should champ the ashes?

That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloud

Should wear it as a shroud,

Perishing by its flashes?

That they who vexed the lion should be rent?

Cry, cry “I will sustain my punishment,

The sin being mine; but take away from me

This visioned Dread — this man — this Deity!”

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...

If verily this be the Eternal's son —

Ador. Thou hearest. Man is grateful.

Zerah. Can I hear

Nor darken into man and cease for ever

My seraph-smile to wear?

Was it for such,

It pleased him to overleap

His glory with his love and sever

From the God-light and the throne

And all angels bowing down,

For whom his every look did touch

New notes of joy on the unworn string

Of an eternal worshipping?

For such, he left his heaven?

There, though never bought by blood

And tears, we gave him gratitude:

We loved him there, though unforgiven.

Ador. The light is riven

Above, around,

And down in lurid fragments flung,

That catch the mountain-peak and stream

With momentary gleam,

Then perish in the water and the ground.

River and waterfall,

Forest and wilderness,

Mountain and city, are together wrung

Into one shape, and that is shapelessness;

The darkness stands for all.

Zerah. The pathos hath the day undone:

The death-look of His eyes

Hath overcome the sun

And made it sicken in its narrow skies.

Ador. Is it to death? He dieth.

Zerah. Through the dark

He still, he only, is discernible —

The naked hands and feet transfixed stark,

The countenance of patient anguish white,

Do make themselves a light

More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,

And therein do they shine.

Ador. God! Father-God!

Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!

Uplift the lids of inward deity,

Flashing abroad

Thy burning Infinite!

Light up this dark where there is nought to see

Except the unimagined agony

Upon the sinless forehead of the Son!

Zerah. God, tarry not! Behold, enow

Hath he wandered as a stranger,

Sorrowed as a victim. Thou

Appear for him, O Father!

Appear for him, Avenger!

Appear for him, just One and holy One,

For he is holy and just!

At once the darkness and dishonour rather

To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,

And hurl aback to ancient dust

These mortals that make blasphemies

With their made breath, this earth and skies

That only grow a little dim,

Seeing their curse on him.

But him, of all forsaken,

Of creature and of brother,

Never wilt thou forsake!

Thy living and thy loving cannot slacken

Their firm essential hold upon each other,

And well thou dost remember how his part

Was still to lie upon thy breast and be

Partaker of the light that dwelt in thee

Ere sun or seraph shone;

And how while silence trembled round the throne

Thou countedst by the beatings of his heart

The moments of thine own eternity.

Awaken,

O right hand with the lightnings! Again gather

His glory to thy glory! What estranger,

What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust

Between the faithful Father and the Son?

Appear for him, O Father!

Appear for him, Avenger!

Appear for him, just One and holy One,

For he is holy and just!

Ador. Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;

Thou hast no answer, Zerah.

Zerah. No reply,

O unforsaking Father?

Ador. Hark!

Instead of downward voice, a cry

Is uttered from beneath.

Zerah. And by a sharper sound than death,

Mine immortality is riven.

The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky

Floats backward as by a sudden wind:

But I see no light behind,

But I feel the farthest stars are all

Stricken and shaken,

And I know a shadow sad and broad

Doth fall — doth fall

On our vacant thrones in heaven.

MY GOD, MY GOD,

WHY HAST THOU ME FORSAKEN?

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.

We faint, we droop,

Our love doth tremble like fear.

Do we prevail?

Or are we lost? Hath not the ill we did

Been heretofore our good?

Is it not ill that one, all sinless, should

Hang heavy with all curses on a cross?

Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hid

Within the empty graves which men did scoop

To hold more damned dead, we shudder through

What shall exalt us or undo,

Our triumph, or our loss.

IT IS FINISHED.

Zerah. Hark, again!

Like a victor, speaks the slain.

Finished be the trembling vain!

Ador. Upward, like a well-loved son,

Looketh he, the orphaned one.

Finished is the mystic pain.

His deathly forehead at the word,

Gleameth like a seraph sword.

Finished is the demon reign.

Ador. His breath, as living God, createth,

His breath, as dying man, completeth.

Finished work his hands sustain.

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,—

Finished is his bane.

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.