SONG OF THE MORNING STAR TO LUCIFER.

Mine orbed image sinks

Back from thee, back from thee,

As thou art fallen, methinks,

Back from me, back from me.

O my light-bearer,

Could another fairer

Lack to thee, lack to thee?

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

I loved thee with the fiery love of stars

Who love by burning, and by loving move,

Too near the throned Jehovah not to love.

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Their brows flash fast on me from gliding cars,

Pale-passioned for my loss.

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Mine orbed heats drop cold

Down from thee, down from thee,

As fell thy grace of old

Down from me, down from me,

O my light-bearer,

Is another fairer

Won to thee, won to thee?

Ah, ah, Heosphoros,

Great love preceded loss,

Known to thee, known to thee.

Ah, ah!

Thou, breathing thy communicable grace

Of life into my light,

Mine astral faces, from thine angel face,

Hast inly fed,

And flooded me with radiance overmuch

From thy pure height.

Ah, ah!

Thou, with calm, floating pinions both ways spread,

Erect, irradiated,

Didst sting my wheel of glory

On, on before thee

Along the Godlight by a quickening touch!

Ha, ha!

Around, around the firmamental ocean

I swam expanding with delirious fire!

Around, around, around, in blind desire

To be drawn upward to the Infinite —

Ha, ha!

Until, the motion flinging out the motion

To a keen whirl of passion and avidity,

To a dim whirl of languor and delight,

I wound in gyrant orbits smooth and white

With that intense rapidity.

Around, around,

I wound and interwound,

While all the cyclic heavens about me spun.

Stars, planets, suns, and moons dilated broad,

Then flashed together into a single sun,

And wound, and wound in one:

And as they wound I wound,— around, around,

In a great fire I almost took for God.

Ha, ha, Heosphoros!

Thine angel glory sinks

Down from me, down from me —

My beauty falls, methinks,

Down from thee, down from thee!

O my light-bearer,

O my path-preparer,

Gone from me, gone from me!

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

I cannot kindle underneath the brow

Of this new angel here, who is not thou.

All things are altered since that time ago,—

And if I shine at eve, I shall not know.

I am strange — I am slow.

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Henceforward, human eyes of lovers be

The only sweetest sight that I shall see,

With tears between the looks raised up to me.

Ah, ah!

When, having wept all night, at break of day

Above the folded hills they shall survey

My light, a little trembling, in the grey.

Ah, ah!

And gazing on me, such shall comprehend,

Through all my piteous pomp at morn or even

And melancholy leaning out of heaven,

That love, their own divine, may change or end,

That love may close in loss!

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Adam. How doth the wide and melancholy earth

Gather her hills around us, grey and ghast,

And stare with blank significance of loss

Right in our faces! Is the wind up?

Eve. Nay.

Adam. And yet the cedars and the junipers

Rock slowly through the mist, without a sound,

And shapes which have no certainty of shape

Drift duskly in and out between the pines,

And loom along the edges of the hills,

And lie flat, curdling in the open ground —

Shadows without a body, which contract

And lengthen as we gaze on them.

Eve. O life

Which is not man's nor angel's! What is this?

Adam. No cause for fear. The circle of God's life

Contains all life beside.

Eve. I think the earth

Is crazed with curse, and wanders from the sense

Of those first laws affixed to form and space

Or ever she knew sin.

Adam. We will not fear;

We were brave sinning.

Eve. Yea, I plucked the fruit

With eyes upturned to heaven and seeing there

Our god-thrones, as the tempter said,— not GOD.

My heart, which beat then, sinks. The sun hath sunk

Out of sight with our Eden.

Adam. Night is near.

Eve. And God's curse, nearest. Let us travel back

And stand within the sword-glare till we die,

Believing it is better to meet death

Than suffer desolation.

Adam. Nay, beloved!

We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand,

As erst we plucked the apple: we must wait

Until he gives death as he gave us life,

Nor murmur faintly o'er the primal gift

Because we spoilt its sweetness with our sin.

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

Adam. I see all. How the spirits in thine eyes

From their dilated orbits bound before

To meet the spectral Dread!

Eve. I am afraid —

Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes

Of intermittent motion, aspect vague

And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,

Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.

How near they reach... and far! How grey they move —

Treading upon the darkness without feet,

And fluttering on the darkness without wings!

Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;

Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees;

Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on

Copious as rivers.

Adam. Some spring up like fire;

And some coil...

Eve. Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say

Like what?— coil like the serpent, when he fell

From all the emerald splendour of his height

And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,

Not a ring's length. I am afraid — afraid —

I think it is God's will to make me afraid,—

Permitting THESE to haunt us in the place

Of his beloved angels — gone from us

Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God,

That didst permit the angels to go home

And live no more with us who are not pure,

Save us too from a loathly company —

Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps,

As we are in the purest! Pity us —

Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away

From verity and from stability,

Or what we name such through the precedence

Of earth's adjusted uses,— leave us not

To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,

Which are the more distraught and full of pain

And weak of apprehension!

Adam. Courage, Sweet!

The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop

With slow concentric movement, each on each,—

Expressing wider spaces,— and collapsed

In lines more definite for imagery

And clearer for relation, till the throng

Of shapeless spectra merge into a few

Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand

Which sweep out and around us vastily

And hold us in a circle and a calm.

Eve. Strange phantasms of pale shadow! there are twelve.

Thou who didst name all lives, hast names for these?

Adam. Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth,

Which rounds us with a visionary dread,

Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,

In fantasque apposition and approach,

To those celestial, constellated twelve

Which palpitate adown the silent nights

Under the pressure of the hand of God

Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour,

Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven:

But, girdling close our nether wilderness,

The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow,—

Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time,

In twelve colossal shades instead of stars,

Through which the ecliptic line of mystery

Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope,

Foreshowing life and death.

Eve. By dream or sense,

Do we see this?

Adam. Our spirits have climbed high

By reason of the passion of our grief,

And, from the top of sense, looked over sense

To the significance and heart of things

Rather than things themselves.

Eve. And the dim twelve....

Adam. Are dim exponents of the creature-life

As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved!

By stricter apprehension of the sight,

Suggestions of the creatures shall assuage

The terror of the shadows,— what is known

Subduing the unknown and taming it

From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there,

Presents a lion, albeit twenty times

As large as any lion — with a roar

Set soundless in his vibratory jaws,

And a strange horror stirring in his mane.

And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh —

Good against ill, perchance; and there, a crab

Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws,

Like a slow blot that spreads,— till all the ground,

Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself.

A bull stands horned here with gibbous glooms;

And a ram likewise: and a scorpion writhes

Its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark.

This way a goat leaps with wild blank of beard;

And here, fantastic fishes duskly float,

Using the calm for waters, while their fins

Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.

While images more human ——

Eve. How he stands,

That phantasm of a man — who is not thou!

Two phantasms of two men!

Adam. One that sustains,

And one that strives,— resuming, so, the ends

Of manhood's curse of labour. Dost thou see

That phantasm of a woman?

Eve. I have seen;

But look off to those small humanities

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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?

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.

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!

Your melancholy looks do pierce me through;

Corruption swathes the paleness of your beauty.

Why have ye done this thing? What did we do

That we should fall from bliss as ye from duty?

Wild shriek the hawks, in waiting for their jesses,

Fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses —

And I wail!

Adam. To thee, the Spirit of the harmless earth,

To thee, the Spirit of earth's harmless lives,

Inferior creatures but still innocent,

Be salutation from a guilty mouth

Yet worthy of some audience and respect

From you who are not guilty. If we have sinned,

God hath rebuked us, who is over us

To give rebuke or death, and if ye wail

Because of any suffering from our sin,

Ye who are under and not over us,

Be satisfied with God, if not with us,

And pass out from our presence in such peace

As we have left you, to enjoy revenge

Such as the heavens have made you. Verily,

There must be strife between us, large as sin.

Eve. No strife, mine Adam! Let us not stand high

Upon the wrong we did to reach disdain,

Who rather should be humbler evermore

Since self-made sadder. Adam! shall I speak —

I who spake once to such a bitter end —

Shall I speak humbly now who once was proud?

I, schooled by sin to more humility

Than thou hast, O mine Adam, O my king —

My king, if not the world's?

Adam. Speak as thou wilt.

Eve. Thus, then — my hand in thine —

... Sweet, dreadful Spirits!

I pray you humbly in the name of God,

Not to say of these tears, which are impure —

Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth

From clean volitions toward a spotted will,

From the wronged to the wronger, this and no more!

I do not ask more. I am‘ ware, indeed,

That absolute pardon is impossible

From you to me, by reason of my sin,—

And that I cannot evermore, as once,

With worthy acceptation of pure joy,

Behold the trances of the holy hills

Beneath the leaning stars, or watch the vales

Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy,—

Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between

Two grassy uplands,— and the river-wells

Work out their bubbling mysteries underground,—

And all the birds sing, till for joy of song

They lift their trembling wings as if to heave

The too-much weight of music from their heart

And float it up the aether. I am‘ ware

That these things I can no more apprehend

With a pure organ into a full delight,—

The sense of beauty and of melody

Being no more aided in me by the sense

Of personal adjustment to those heights

Of what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned,

But rather coupled darkly and made ashamed

By my percipiency of sin and fall

In melancholy of humiliant thoughts.

But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits — albeit this

Your accusation must confront my soul,

And your pathetic utterance and full gaze

Must evermore subdue me,— be content!

Conquer me gently — as if pitying me,

Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick

As watering dews of Eden, unreproached;

And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth,

Not ruffled — smooth and still with your reproof,

And peradventure better while more sad!

For look to it, sweet Spirits, look well to it,

It will not be amiss in you who kept

The law of your own righteousness, and keep

The right of your own griefs to mourn themselves,—

To pity me twice fallen, from that, and this,

From joy of place, and also right of wail,

“I wail” being not for me — only “I sin.”

Look to it, O sweet Spirits!

For was I not,

At that last sunset seen in Paradise,

When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs

Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,

All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God

Held them suspended,— was I not, that hour,

The lady of the world, princess of life,

Mistress of feast and favour? Could I touch

A rose with my white hand, but it became

Redder at once? Could I walk leisurely

Along our swarded garden, but the grass

Tracked me with greenness? Could I stand aside

A moment underneath a cornel-tree,

But all the leaves did tremble as alive

With songs of fifty birds who were made glad

Because I stood there? Could I turn to look

With these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast,

Now good for only weeping,— upon man,

Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoiced

Because I looked on him? Alas, alas!

And is not this much woe, to cry “alas!”

Speaking of joy? And is not this more shame,

To have made the woe myself, from all that joy?

To have stretched my hand, and plucked it from the tree,

And chosen it for fruit? Nay, is not this

Still most despair,— to have halved that bitter fruit,

And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have,

Turning the GREATEST to mine enemy?

Adam. I will not hear thee speak so. Hearken, Spirits!

Our God, who is the enemy of none

But only of their sin, hath set your hope

And my hope, in a promise, on this Head.

Show reverence, then, and never bruise her more

With unpermitted and extreme reproach,—

Lest, passionate in anguish, she fling down

Beneath your trampling feet, God's gift to us

Of sovranty by reason and freewill,

Sinning against the province of the Soul

To rule the soulless. Reverence her estate,

And pass out from her presence with no words!

Eve. O dearest Heart, have patience with my heart!

O Spirits, have patience,‘ stead of reverence,

And let me speak, for, not being innocent,

It little doth become me to be proud.

And I am prescient by the very hope

And promise set upon me, that henceforth

Only my gentleness shall make me great,

My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits,

Be witness that I stand in your reproof

But one sun's length off from my happiness —

Happy, as I have said, to look around,

Clear to look up!— And now! I need not speak —

Ye see me what I am; ye scorn me so,

Because ye see me what I have made myself

From God's best making! Alas,— peace forgone,

Love wronged, and virtue forfeit, and tears wept

Upon all, vainly! Alas, me! alas,

Who have undone myself, from all that best,

Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedest

Saddest and most defiled — cast out, cast down —

What word metes absolute loss? let absolute loss

Suffice you for revenge. For I, who lived

Beneath the wings of angels yesterday,

Wander to-day beneath the roofless world:

I, reigning the earth's empress yesterday,

Put off from me, to-day, your hate with prayers:

I, yesterday, who answered the Lord God,

Composed and glad as singing-birds the sun,

Might shriek now from our dismal desert, “God,”

And hear him make reply, “What is thy need,

Thou whom I cursed to-day?”

Adam. Eve!

Eve. I, at last,

Who yesterday was helpmate and delight

Unto mine Adam, am to-day the grief

And curse-mete for him. And, so, pity us,

Ye gentle Spirits, and pardon him and me,

And let some tender peace, made of our pain,

Grow up betwixt us, as a tree might grow,

With boughs on both sides! In the shade of which,

When presently ye shall behold us dead,—

For the poor sake of our humility,

Breathe out your pardon on our breathless lips,

And drop your twilight dews against our brows,

And stroking with mild airs our harmless hands

Left empty of all fruit, perceive your love

Distilling through your pity over us,

And suffer it, self-reconciled, to pass!

Lucifer. 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.

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!

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!

We all wail!

Lucifer . 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.

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.

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.

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.

And we scorn you! there's no pardon

Which can lean to you aright.

When your bodies take the guerdon

Of the death-curse in our sight,

Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you:

Then ye shall not move an eyelid

Though the stars look down your eyes;

And the earth which ye defiled

Shall expose you to the skies,—

“Lo! these kings of ours, who sought to comprehend you.”

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.

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.

We shall triumph — triumph greatly

When ye lie beneath the sward.

There, our lily shall grow stately

Though ye answer not a word,

And her fragrance shall be scornful of your silence:

While your throne ascending calmly

We, in heirdom of your soul,

Flash the river, lift the palm-tree,

The dilated ocean roll,

By the thoughts that throbbed within you, round the islands.

Alp and torrent shall inherit

Your significance of will,

And the grandeur of your spirit

Shall our broad savannahs fill;

In our winds, your exultations shall be springing!

Even your parlance which inveigles,

By our rudeness shall be won.

Hearts poetic in our eagles

Shall beat up against the sun

And strike downward in articulate clear singing.

Your bold speeches our Behemoth

With his thunderous jaw shall wield.

Your high fancies shall our Mammoth

Breathe sublimely up the shield

Of Saint Michael at God's throne, who waits to speed him:

Till the heavens’ smooth-grooved thunder

Spinning back, shall leave them clear,

And the angels, smiling wonder,

With dropt looks from sphere to sphere,

Shall cry “Ho, ye heirs of Adam! ye exceed him.”

Adam. Root out thine eyes, Sweet, from the dreary ground!

Beloved, we may be overcome by God,

But not by these.

Eve. By God, perhaps, in these.

Adam. I think, not so. Had God foredoomed despair

He had not spoken hope. He may destroy

Certes, but not deceive.

Eve. Behold this rose!

I plucked it in our bower of Paradise

This morning as I went forth, and my heart

Has beat against its petals all the day.

I thought it would be always red and full

As when I plucked it. Is it?— ye may see!

I cast it down to you that ye may see,

All of you!— count the petals lost of it,

And note the colours fainted! ye may see!

And I am as it is, who yesterday

Grew in the same place. O ye spirits of earth,

I almost, from my miserable heart,

Could here upbraid you for your cruel heart,

Which will not let me, down the 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.

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.

Let thy soul shake its leaves

To feel the mystic wind — hark!

Eve. I hear life.

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.

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?

Rock us softly,

Lest it be all in vain.

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?

Rock us softly,

Lest it be all in vain.

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?

Rock us softly,

Lest it be all in vain.

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?

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?

And bringer of the curse upon all these.

[ EVE sinks down again.

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?

Rock us softly,

Lest it be all in vain.

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?

Rock us softly,

Though it be all in vain.

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?

Rock us softly,

Though it be all in vain.

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.

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!

Agreed, allowed!

We gather out our natures like a cloud,

And thus fulfil their lightnings! Thus, and thus!

Hearken, oh hearken to us!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

Adam. Thy speech is of the Heavenlies, yet, O Christ,

Awfully human are thy voice and face!

Eve. My nature overcomes me from thine eyes.

CHRIST. In the set noon of time shall one from Heaven,

An angel fresh from looking upon God,

Descend before a woman, blessing her

With perfect benediction of pure love,

For all the world in all its elements,

For all the creatures of earth, air, and sea,

For all men in the body and in the soul,

Unto all ends of glory and sanctity.

Eve. O pale, pathetic Christ — I worship thee!

I thank thee for that woman!

CHRIST. Then, at last,

I, wrapping round me your humanity,

Which, being sustained, shall neither break nor burn

Beneath the fire of Godhead, will tread earth,

And ransom you and it, and set strong peace

Betwixt you and its creatures. With my pangs

I will confront your sins; and since those sins

Have sunken to all Nature's heart from yours,

The tears of my clean soul shall follow them

And set a holy passion to work clear

Absolute consecration. In my brow

Of kingly whiteness shall be crowned anew

Your discrowned human nature. Look on me!

As I shall be uplifted on a cross

In darkness of eclipse and anguish dread,

So shall I lift up in my pierced hands,

Not into dark, but light — not unto death,

But life,— beyond the reach of guilt and grief,

The whole creation. Henceforth in my name

Take courage, O thou woman,— man, take hope!

Your grave shall be as smooth as Eden's sward,

Beneath the steps of your prospective thoughts,

And, one step past it, a new Eden-gate

Shall open on a hinge of harmony

And let you through to mercy. Ye shall fall

No more, within that Eden, nor pass out

Any more from it. In which hope, move on,

First sinners and first mourners! Live and love,—

Doing both nobly because lowlily!

Live and work, strongly because patiently!

And, for the deed of death, trust it to God

That it be well done, unrepented of,

And not to loss! And thence, with constant prayers,

Fasten your souls so high, that constantly

The smile of your heroic cheer may float

Above all floods of earthly agonies,

Purification being the joy of pain!

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.