But what ShapesRise 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 majestySet in their wondrous faces! with no look,And yet an aspect—a significanceOf 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 wailAround the cyclic zodiac, and gains force,And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,On the wan faces of these imagesWe see before us,—whereby modified,It draws a straight line of articulate songFrom 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 dutyMight 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 complexityOf gyratory orb and intervalLost in the fluent motion of delightToward 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 measureThe sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure—Yet I wail!What a full hum of life around his lipsBore witness to the fulness of creation!How all the grand words were full-laden shipsEach sailing onward from enunciationTo separate existence,—and each bearingThe 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 songDrops from it like its fruit, and heavily fallsInto the lap of silence.Adam.Hark, again!First Spirit.I was so beautiful, so beautiful,My joy stood up within me bold to addA 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 rejoicedIn my young tumbling lions rolled together:My stag, the river at his fetlocks, poisedThen dipped his antlers through the golden weatherIn the same ripple which the alligatorLeft, 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 renderO mountain-summits, where the angels stoodAnd shook from head and wing thick dews of splendour!How, with a holy quiet, did your EarthyAccept 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 misdoersBy God's sword at your backs! I lent my clayTo make your bodies, which had grown more flowers:And now, in change for what I lent, ye give meThe thorn to vex, the tempest-fare to cleave me—And I wail!Second Spirit.I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fastenMy sorrow's fang upon your souls dishonoured?Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten,—Your crown's weight on the world, to drag it downwardUnto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scentingThe 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;Iwas obedient. Wherefore in my centreDo I thrill at this curse of death and winter?—Do I wail?Second Spirit.I wail, I wail! I wail in the assaultOf undeserved perdition, sorely wounded!My nightingale sang sweet without a fault,My gentle leopards innocently bounded.Wewere obedient. What is this convulsesOur blameless life with pangs and fever pulses?And I wail!Eve.I choose God's thunder and His angels' swordsTo die by, Adam, rather than such words.Let us pass out and flee.Adam.We cannot flee.This zodiac of the creatures' crueltyCurls 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, strikeA sense of death to me, and undug graves!The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling likeThe 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 doThat 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 mouthYet worthy of some audience and respectFrom you who are not guilty. If we have sinned,God hath rebuked us, who is over usTo give rebuke or death, and if ye wailBecause 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 peaceAs we have left you, to enjoy revengeSuch 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 highUpon the wrong we did to reach disdain,Who rather should be humbler evermoreSince 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 humilityThan thou hast, O mine Adam, O my king—Myking, 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 forthFrom 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 impossibleFrom 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 hillsBeneath the leaning stars, or watch the valesDew-pallid with their morning ecstasy,—Or hear the winds make pastoral peace betweenTwo grassy uplands,—and the river-wellsWork out their bubbling mysteries underground,—And all the birds sing, till for joy of songThey lift their trembling wings as if to heaveThe too-much weight of music from their heartAnd float it up the æther. I am 'wareThat these things I can no more apprehendWith a pure organ into a full delight,—The sense of beauty and of melodyBeing no more aided in me by the senseOf personal adjustment to those heightsOf what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned,But rather coupled darkly and made ashamedBy my percipiency of sin and fallIn melancholy of humiliant thoughts.But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits—albeit thisYour accusation must confront my soul,And your pathetic utterance and full gazeMust evermore subdue me,—be content!Conquer me gently—as if pitying me,Not to say loving! let my tears fall thickAs 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 keptThe law of your own righteousness, and keepThe 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 throngsOf sudden angel-faces, face by face,All hushed and solemn, as a thought of GodHeld them suspended,—was I not, that hour,The lady of the world, princess of life,Mistress of feast and favour? Could I touchA rose with my white hand, but it becameRedder at once? Could I walk leisurelyAlong our swarded garden, but the grassTracked me with greenness? Could I stand asideA moment underneath a cornel-tree,But all the leaves did tremble as aliveWith songs of fifty birds who were made gladBecause I stood there? Could I turn to lookWith these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast,Now good for only weeping,—upon man,Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoicedBecause 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 thisStill most despair,—to have halved that bitter fruit,And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have,Turning theGreatestto mine enemy?Adam.I will not hear thee speak so. Hearken, Spirits!Our God, who is the enemy of noneBut only of their sin, hath set your hopeAnd my hope, in a promise, on this Head.Show reverence, then, and never bruise her moreWith unpermitted and extreme reproach,—Lest, passionate in anguish, she fling downBeneath your trampling feet, God's gift to usOf sovranty by reason and freewill,Sinning against the province of the SoulTo 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 hopeAnd promise set upon me, that henceforthOnly my gentleness shall make me great,My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits,Be witness that I stand in your reproofBut 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 myselfFrom God's best making! Alas,—peace forgone,Love wronged, and virtue forfeit, and tears weptUpon all, vainly! Alas, me! alas,Who have undone myself, from all that best,Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedestSaddest and most defiled—cast out, cast down—What word metes absolute loss? let absolute lossSuffice you for revenge. ForI, who livedBeneath 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 delightUnto mine Adam, am to-day the griefAnd 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 handsLeft empty of all fruit, perceive your loveDistilling through your pity over us,And suffer it, self-reconciled, to pass!
But what ShapesRise 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 majestySet in their wondrous faces! with no look,And yet an aspect—a significanceOf 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 wailAround the cyclic zodiac, and gains force,And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,On the wan faces of these imagesWe see before us,—whereby modified,It draws a straight line of articulate songFrom 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 dutyMight 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 complexityOf gyratory orb and intervalLost in the fluent motion of delightToward 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 measureThe sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure—Yet I wail!What a full hum of life around his lipsBore witness to the fulness of creation!How all the grand words were full-laden shipsEach sailing onward from enunciationTo separate existence,—and each bearingThe 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 songDrops from it like its fruit, and heavily fallsInto the lap of silence.
Adam.Hark, again!
First Spirit.I was so beautiful, so beautiful,My joy stood up within me bold to addA 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 rejoicedIn my young tumbling lions rolled together:My stag, the river at his fetlocks, poisedThen dipped his antlers through the golden weatherIn the same ripple which the alligatorLeft, 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 renderO mountain-summits, where the angels stoodAnd shook from head and wing thick dews of splendour!How, with a holy quiet, did your EarthyAccept 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 misdoersBy God's sword at your backs! I lent my clayTo make your bodies, which had grown more flowers:And now, in change for what I lent, ye give meThe thorn to vex, the tempest-fare to cleave me—And I wail!
Second Spirit.I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fastenMy sorrow's fang upon your souls dishonoured?Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten,—Your crown's weight on the world, to drag it downwardUnto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scentingThe 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;Iwas obedient. Wherefore in my centreDo I thrill at this curse of death and winter?—Do I wail?
Second Spirit.I wail, I wail! I wail in the assaultOf undeserved perdition, sorely wounded!My nightingale sang sweet without a fault,My gentle leopards innocently bounded.Wewere obedient. What is this convulsesOur blameless life with pangs and fever pulses?And I wail!
Eve.I choose God's thunder and His angels' swordsTo die by, Adam, rather than such words.Let us pass out and flee.
Adam.We cannot flee.This zodiac of the creatures' crueltyCurls 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, strikeA sense of death to me, and undug graves!The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling likeThe 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 doThat 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 mouthYet worthy of some audience and respectFrom you who are not guilty. If we have sinned,God hath rebuked us, who is over usTo give rebuke or death, and if ye wailBecause 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 peaceAs we have left you, to enjoy revengeSuch 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 highUpon the wrong we did to reach disdain,Who rather should be humbler evermoreSince 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 humilityThan thou hast, O mine Adam, O my king—Myking, 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 forthFrom 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 impossibleFrom 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 hillsBeneath the leaning stars, or watch the valesDew-pallid with their morning ecstasy,—Or hear the winds make pastoral peace betweenTwo grassy uplands,—and the river-wellsWork out their bubbling mysteries underground,—And all the birds sing, till for joy of songThey lift their trembling wings as if to heaveThe too-much weight of music from their heartAnd float it up the æther. I am 'wareThat these things I can no more apprehendWith a pure organ into a full delight,—The sense of beauty and of melodyBeing no more aided in me by the senseOf personal adjustment to those heightsOf what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned,But rather coupled darkly and made ashamedBy my percipiency of sin and fallIn melancholy of humiliant thoughts.But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits—albeit thisYour accusation must confront my soul,And your pathetic utterance and full gazeMust evermore subdue me,—be content!Conquer me gently—as if pitying me,Not to say loving! let my tears fall thickAs 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 keptThe law of your own righteousness, and keepThe 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 throngsOf sudden angel-faces, face by face,All hushed and solemn, as a thought of GodHeld them suspended,—was I not, that hour,The lady of the world, princess of life,Mistress of feast and favour? Could I touchA rose with my white hand, but it becameRedder at once? Could I walk leisurelyAlong our swarded garden, but the grassTracked me with greenness? Could I stand asideA moment underneath a cornel-tree,But all the leaves did tremble as aliveWith songs of fifty birds who were made gladBecause I stood there? Could I turn to lookWith these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast,Now good for only weeping,—upon man,Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoicedBecause 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 thisStill most despair,—to have halved that bitter fruit,And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have,Turning theGreatestto mine enemy?
Adam.I will not hear thee speak so. Hearken, Spirits!Our God, who is the enemy of noneBut only of their sin, hath set your hopeAnd my hope, in a promise, on this Head.Show reverence, then, and never bruise her moreWith unpermitted and extreme reproach,—Lest, passionate in anguish, she fling downBeneath your trampling feet, God's gift to usOf sovranty by reason and freewill,Sinning against the province of the SoulTo 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 hopeAnd promise set upon me, that henceforthOnly my gentleness shall make me great,My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits,Be witness that I stand in your reproofBut 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 myselfFrom God's best making! Alas,—peace forgone,Love wronged, and virtue forfeit, and tears weptUpon all, vainly! Alas, me! alas,Who have undone myself, from all that best,Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedestSaddest and most defiled—cast out, cast down—What word metes absolute loss? let absolute lossSuffice you for revenge. ForI, who livedBeneath 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 delightUnto mine Adam, am to-day the griefAnd 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 handsLeft empty of all fruit, perceive your loveDistilling through your pity over us,And suffer it, self-reconciled, to pass!
Luciferrises 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 despondWho 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,Fortheirsake, in the plucking of the fruit,That they should pause foryou, 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 testifiesTo the snake's counsel,—hear him!—very true.Earth Spirits.I wail, I wail!Lucifer.And certes,thatis true.Ye wail, ye all wail. Peradventure ICould 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 GodAnd 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 curseTook us in Eden? On a mountain-peakHalf-sheathed in primal woods and glitteringIn 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 curseLeft silence in the world, right suddenlyHe sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff,As if the new reality of deathWere dashed against his eyes, and roared so fierce,(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throatTearing a passage through the wrath and fear)And roared so wild, and smote from all the hillsSuch fast keen echoes crumbling down the valesPrecipitately,—that the forest beasts,One after one, did mutter a responseOf savage and of sorrowful complaintWhich trailed along the gorges. Then, at once,He fell back, and rolled crashing from the heightInto 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 EarthMy 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 pedestalsTo stand on, beckoning pity from without,And deal in pathos of antithesisOf what yewereforsooth, and what ye are;—I scorn you like an angel! Yet, one cryI, too, would drive up like a column erect,Marble to marble, from my heart to heaven,A monument of anguish to transpierceAnd overtop your vapoury complaintsExpressed from feeble woes.Earth Spirits.I wail, I wail!Lucifer.For, O ye heavens, ye are my witnesses,ThatI, struck out from nature in a blot,The outcast and the mildew of things good,The leper of angels, the excepted dustUnder the common rain of daily gifts,—I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,—To whom the highest and the lowest alikeSay, 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 silverlyHis blessing for chief angels on my headUntil 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 sereneI, standing in the glory of the lamps,Answered "my Father," innocent of shameAnd of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think,White angels in your niches,—I repent,And would tread down my own offences backTo service at the footstool?that'sread wrong!I cry as the beast did, that I may cry—Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep,Against the sides of this prodigious pitI cry—cry—dashing out the hands of wailOn each side, to meet anguish everywhere,And to attest it in the ecstasyAnd exaltation of a woe sustainedBecause provoked and chosen.Pass alongYour wilderness, vain mortals! Puny griefsIn transitory shapes, be henceforth dwarfedTo your own conscience, by the dread extremesOf what I am and have been. If ye have fallen,It is but a step's fall,—the whole ground beneathStrewn 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-scornThe 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'shiltis the sharpest, and cuts throughThe 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 leavesAnd lifting up their brownness show beneathThe branches bare. Beseech you, spirits, giveTo Eve who beggarly entreats your loveFor her and Adam when they shall be dead,An answer rather fitting to the sinThan 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 hotOn 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 insignificantOf 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,AndHefind no redemption—nor the wingOf seraph move your way; and yet rejoice!Rejoice,—because ye have not, set in you,This hate which shall pursue you—this fire-hateWhich glares without, because it burns within—Which kills from ashes—this potential hate,Wherein I, angel, in antagonismTo 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-electTo kingship of resistant agonyToward 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.[Lucifervanishes.Earth Spirits.And we scorn you! there's no pardonWhich can lean to you aright.When your bodies take the guerdonOf the death-curse in our sight,Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you:Then ye shall not move an eyelidThough the stars look down your eyes;And the earth which ye defilèdShall expose you to the skies,—"Lo! these kings of ours, who sought to comprehend you."First Spirit.And the elements shall boldlyAll your dust to dust constrain.Unresistedly and coldlyI will smite you with my rain.From the slowest of my frosts is no receding.Second Spirit.And my little worm, appointedTo 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 scornToward 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 withinRound the passage of the fire,By the pinings which discloseThat my native soul is higherThan 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 levelBy infecting them with evil,And their scorn that meets our blowScathes aright.Amen. Let it be so.Earth Spirits.We shall triumph—triumph greatlyWhen ye lie beneath the sward.There, our lily shall grow statelyThough ye answer not a word,And her fragrance shall be scornful of your silence:While your throne ascending calmlyWe, 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 inheritYour significance of will,And the grandeur of your spiritShall 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 eaglesShall beat up against the sunAnd strike downward in articulate clear singing.Your bold speeches our BehemothWith his thunderous jaw shall wield.Your high fancies shall our MammothBreathe sublimely up the shieldOf Saint Michael at God's throne, who waits to speed him:Till the heavens' smooth-groovèd thunderSpinning 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 despairHe had not spoken hope. He may destroyCertes, but not deceive.Eve.Behold this rose!I plucked it in our bower of ParadiseThis morning as I went forth, and my heartHas beat against its petals all the day.I thought it would be always red and fullAs when I plucked it.Isit?—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 yesterdayGrew 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.
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 despondWho 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,Fortheirsake, in the plucking of the fruit,That they should pause foryou, 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 testifiesTo the snake's counsel,—hear him!—very true.
Earth Spirits.I wail, I wail!
Lucifer.And certes,thatis true.Ye wail, ye all wail. Peradventure ICould 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 GodAnd 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 curseTook us in Eden? On a mountain-peakHalf-sheathed in primal woods and glitteringIn 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 curseLeft silence in the world, right suddenlyHe sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff,As if the new reality of deathWere dashed against his eyes, and roared so fierce,(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throatTearing a passage through the wrath and fear)And roared so wild, and smote from all the hillsSuch fast keen echoes crumbling down the valesPrecipitately,—that the forest beasts,One after one, did mutter a responseOf savage and of sorrowful complaintWhich trailed along the gorges. Then, at once,He fell back, and rolled crashing from the heightInto 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 EarthMy 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 pedestalsTo stand on, beckoning pity from without,And deal in pathos of antithesisOf what yewereforsooth, and what ye are;—I scorn you like an angel! Yet, one cryI, too, would drive up like a column erect,Marble to marble, from my heart to heaven,A monument of anguish to transpierceAnd overtop your vapoury complaintsExpressed from feeble woes.
Earth Spirits.I wail, I wail!
Lucifer.For, O ye heavens, ye are my witnesses,ThatI, struck out from nature in a blot,The outcast and the mildew of things good,The leper of angels, the excepted dustUnder the common rain of daily gifts,—I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,—To whom the highest and the lowest alikeSay, 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 silverlyHis blessing for chief angels on my headUntil 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 sereneI, standing in the glory of the lamps,Answered "my Father," innocent of shameAnd of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think,White angels in your niches,—I repent,And would tread down my own offences backTo service at the footstool?that'sread wrong!I cry as the beast did, that I may cry—Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep,Against the sides of this prodigious pitI cry—cry—dashing out the hands of wailOn each side, to meet anguish everywhere,And to attest it in the ecstasyAnd exaltation of a woe sustainedBecause provoked and chosen.Pass alongYour wilderness, vain mortals! Puny griefsIn transitory shapes, be henceforth dwarfedTo your own conscience, by the dread extremesOf what I am and have been. If ye have fallen,It is but a step's fall,—the whole ground beneathStrewn 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-scornThe 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'shiltis the sharpest, and cuts throughThe 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 leavesAnd lifting up their brownness show beneathThe branches bare. Beseech you, spirits, giveTo Eve who beggarly entreats your loveFor her and Adam when they shall be dead,An answer rather fitting to the sinThan 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 hotOn 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 insignificantOf 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,AndHefind no redemption—nor the wingOf seraph move your way; and yet rejoice!Rejoice,—because ye have not, set in you,This hate which shall pursue you—this fire-hateWhich glares without, because it burns within—Which kills from ashes—this potential hate,Wherein I, angel, in antagonismTo 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-electTo kingship of resistant agonyToward 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.[Lucifervanishes.
Earth Spirits.And we scorn you! there's no pardonWhich can lean to you aright.When your bodies take the guerdonOf the death-curse in our sight,Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you:Then ye shall not move an eyelidThough the stars look down your eyes;And the earth which ye defilèdShall expose you to the skies,—"Lo! these kings of ours, who sought to comprehend you."
First Spirit.And the elements shall boldlyAll your dust to dust constrain.Unresistedly and coldlyI will smite you with my rain.From the slowest of my frosts is no receding.
Second Spirit.And my little worm, appointedTo 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 scornToward 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 withinRound the passage of the fire,By the pinings which discloseThat my native soul is higherThan 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 levelBy infecting them with evil,And their scorn that meets our blowScathes aright.Amen. Let it be so.
Earth Spirits.We shall triumph—triumph greatlyWhen ye lie beneath the sward.There, our lily shall grow statelyThough ye answer not a word,And her fragrance shall be scornful of your silence:While your throne ascending calmlyWe, 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 inheritYour significance of will,And the grandeur of your spiritShall 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 eaglesShall beat up against the sunAnd strike downward in articulate clear singing.
Your bold speeches our BehemothWith his thunderous jaw shall wield.Your high fancies shall our MammothBreathe sublimely up the shieldOf Saint Michael at God's throne, who waits to speed him:Till the heavens' smooth-groovèd thunderSpinning 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 despairHe had not spoken hope. He may destroyCertes, but not deceive.
Eve.Behold this rose!I plucked it in our bower of ParadiseThis morning as I went forth, and my heartHas beat against its petals all the day.I thought it would be always red and fullAs when I plucked it.Isit?—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 yesterdayGrew 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.Evefalls upon her face.Adamstands 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 theeFor others, if for others then for thee,—For thee and me.
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 theeFor 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 leavesTo 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 receiveIs a warm thing and a new,Which we softly bud intoFrom the heart and from the brain,—Something strange that overmuch isOf 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 achieveIs a loud thing and a boldWhich with pulses manifoldStrikes the heart out full and fain—Active doer, noble liver,Strong to struggle, sure to conquer,Though the vessel's prow will quiverAt 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 conceiveIs a clear thing and a fair,Which we set in crystal airThat its beauty may be plain!With a breathing and a floodingOf the heaven-life on the whole,While we hear the forests buddingTo 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 perceiveIs a great thing and a graveWhich for others' use we have,Duty-laden to remain.We are helpers, fellow-creatures,Of the right against the wrong;We are earnest-hearted teachersOf 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 reprieveIs a low thing and a light,Which is jested out of sightAnd made worthy of disdain!Strike with bold electric laughterThe 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 outLike our four rivers to some outward main.I hear life—life!Adam.And, so, thy cheeks have snatchedScarlet to paleness, and thine eyes drink fastOf glory from full cups, and thy moist lipsSeem trembling, both of them, with earnest doubtsWhether to utter words or only smile.Eve.Shall I be mother of the coming life?Hear the steep generations, how they fallAdown the visionary stairs of TimeLike 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.
Let thy soul shake its leavesTo 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 receiveIs a warm thing and a new,Which we softly bud intoFrom the heart and from the brain,—Something strange that overmuch isOf 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 achieveIs a loud thing and a boldWhich with pulses manifoldStrikes the heart out full and fain—Active doer, noble liver,Strong to struggle, sure to conquer,Though the vessel's prow will quiverAt 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 conceiveIs a clear thing and a fair,Which we set in crystal airThat its beauty may be plain!With a breathing and a floodingOf the heaven-life on the whole,While we hear the forests buddingTo 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 perceiveIs a great thing and a graveWhich for others' use we have,Duty-laden to remain.We are helpers, fellow-creatures,Of the right against the wrong;We are earnest-hearted teachersOf 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 reprieveIs a low thing and a light,Which is jested out of sightAnd made worthy of disdain!Strike with bold electric laughterThe 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 outLike our four rivers to some outward main.I hear life—life!
Adam.And, so, thy cheeks have snatchedScarlet to paleness, and thine eyes drink fastOf glory from full cups, and thy moist lipsSeem trembling, both of them, with earnest doubtsWhether to utter words or only smile.
Eve.Shall I be mother of the coming life?Hear the steep generations, how they fallAdown the visionary stairs of TimeLike 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.
[Evesinks down again.