Ador.O Seraph, pause no more!Beside this gate of heaven we stand alone.Zerah.Of heaven!Ador.Our brother hosts are gone—Zerah.Are gone before.Ador.And the golden harps the angels boreTo help the songs of their desire,Still burning from their hands of fire,Lie without touch or toneUpon the glass-sea shore.Zerah.Silent upon the glass-sea shore!Ador.There the Shadow from the throneFormless with infinityHovers o'er the crystal seaAwfuller than light derived,And red with those primeval heatsWhereby all life has lived.Zerah.Our visible God, our heavenly seats!Ador.Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical,Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all,—The roar of whose descent has diedTo a still sound, as thunder into rain.Immeasurable space spreads magnifiedWith that thick life, along the planeThe worlds slid out on. What a fallAnd eddy of wings innumerous, crossedBy trailing curls that have not lostThe glitter of the God-smile shedOn every prostrate angel's head!What gleaming up of hands that flingTheir homage in retorted rays,From high instinct of worshipping,And habitude of praise!Zerah.Rapidly they drop below us:Pointed palm and wing and hairIndistinguishable show usOnly pulses in the airThrobbing with a fiery beat,As if a new creation heardSome divine and plastic word,And trembling at its new-found being,Awakened at our feet.Ador.Zerah, do not wait for seeing!Hisvoice, his, that thrills us soAs we our harpstrings, utteredGo,Behold the Holy in his woe!And all are gone, save thee and—Zerah.Thee!Ador.I stood the nearest to the throneIn hierarchical degree,What time the Voice saidGo!And whether I was moved aloneBy the storm-pathos of the toneWhich swept through heaven the alien name ofwoe,Or whether the subtle glory brokeThrough my strong and shielding wings,Bearing to my finite essenceIncapacious of their presence,Infinite imaginings,None knoweth save the Throned who spoke;But I who at creation stood uprightAnd heard the God-breath moveShaping the words that lightened, "Be there light,Nor trembled but with love,Now fell down shudderingly,My face upon the pavement whence I had towered,As if in mine immortal overpoweredBy God's eternity.Zerah.Let me wait!—let me wait!—Ador.Nay, gaze not backward through the gate!God fills our heaven with God's own solitudeTill all the pavements glow:His Godhead being no more subdued,By itself, to glories lowWhich seraphs can sustain.What if thou, in gazing so,Shouldst behold but only oneAttribute, the veil undone—Even that to which we dare to pressNearest, for its gentleness—Ay, his love!How the deep ecstatic painThy being's strength would capture!Without language for the rapture,Without music strong to comeAnd set the adoration free,For ever, ever, wouldst thou beAmid the general chorus dumb,God-stricken to seraphic agony.Or, brother, what if on thine eyesIn vision bare should riseThe life-fount whence his hand did gatherWith solitary forceOur immortalities!Straightway how thine own would wither,Falter like a human breath,And shrink into a point like death,By gazing on its source!—My words have imaged dreadMeekly hast thou bent thine head,And dropt thy wings in languishment:Overclouding foot and face,As if God's throne were eminentBefore thee, in the place.Yet not—not so,O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfilThe supreme Will.Not for obeisance but obedience,Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence!The voice said "Go!"Zerah.Beloved, I depart,His will is as a spirit within my spirit,A portion of the being I inherit.His will is mine obedience. I resembleA flame all undefilèd though it tremble;I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!O thou, who stronger art,And standest ever near the Infinite,Pale with the light of Light,Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,More feeble, more afraid;And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,As close and gentle as the loving are,That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.Ador.I am near thee and I love thee.Were I loveless, from thee gone,Love is round, beneath, above thee,God, the omnipresent one.Spread the wing and lift the brow!Well-beloved, what fearest thou?Zerah.I fear, I fear—Ador.What fear?Zerah.The fear of earth.Ador.Of earth, the God-created and God-praisedIn the hour of birth?Where every night the moon in lightDoth lead the waters silver-faced?Where every day the sun doth layA rapture to the heart of allThe leafy and reeded pastoral,As if the joyous shout which burstFrom angel lips to see him first,Had left a silent echo in his ray?Zerah.Of earth—the God-created and God-curst,Where man is, and the thorn:Where sun and moon have borneNo light to souls forlorn:Where Eden's tree of life no more uprearsIts spiral leaves and fruitage, but insteadThe yew-tree bows its melancholy headAnd all the undergrasses kills and seres.Ador.Of earth the weak,Made and unmade?Where men, that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?Where, having won the profit which they seek,They lie beside the sceptre and the goldWith fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?Zerah.Of earth the bold,Where the blind matter wringsAn awful potence out of impotence,Bowing the spiritual thingsTo the things of sense.Where the human will repliesWith ay and no,Because the human pulse is quick or slow.Where Love succumbs to Change,With only his own memories, for revenge.And the fearful mystery—Ador.called Death?Zerah.Nay, death is fearful,—but who saith"To die," is comprehensible.What's fearfuller, thou knowest well,Though the utterance be not for thee,Lest it blanch thy lips from glory—Ay! the cursed thing that movedA shadow of ill, long time ago,Across our heaven's own shining floor,And when it vanished, some who wereOn thrones of holy empire there,Did reign—were seen—were—never more.Come nearer, O beloved!Ador.I am near thee. Didst thou bear theeEver to this earth?Zerah.Before.When thrilling from His hand alongIts lustrous path with spheric songThe earth was deathless, sorrowless.Unfearing, then, pure feet might pressThe grasses brightening with their feet,For God's own voice did mix its soundIn a solemn confluence oftWith the rivers' flowing round,And the life-tree's waving soft.Beautiful new earth and strange!Ador.Hast thou seen it since—the change?Zerah.Nay, or wherefore should I fearTo look upon it now?I have beheld the ruined thingsOnly in depicturingsOf angels from an earthly mission,—Strong one, even upon thy brow,When, with task completed, givenBack to us in that transition,I have beheld thee silent stand,Abstracted in the seraph band,Without a smile in heaven.Ador.Then thou wast not one of thoseWhom the loving Father choseIn visionary pomp to sweepO'er Judæa's grassy places,O'er the shepherds and the sheep,Though thou art so tender?—dimmingAll the stars except one starWith their brighter kinder faces,And using heaven's own tune in hymning,While deep response from earth's own mountains ran,"Peace upon earth, goodwill to man."Zerah."Glory to God." I said amen afar.And those who from that earthly mission are,Within mine ears have toldThat the seven everlasting Spirits did holdWith such a sweet and prodigal constraintThe meaning yet the mystery of the songWhat time they sang it, on their natures strong,That, gazing down on earth's dark steadfastnessAnd speaking the new peace in promises,The love and pity made their voices faintInto the low and tender music, keepingThe place in heaven of what on earth is weeping.Ador."Peace upon earth." Come down to it.Zerah.Ah me!I hear thereof uncomprehendingly.Peace where the tempest, where the sighing is,And worship of the idol, 'stead of His?Ador.Yea, peace, where He is.Zerah.He!Say it again.Ador.Where He is.Zerah.Can it beThat earth retains a treeWhose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayedBy the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?Ador.There is a tree!—it hath no leaf nor root;Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:Its shadow on his head is laid.For he, the crownèd Son,Has left his crown and throne,Walks earth in Adam's clay,Eve's snake to bruise and slay—Zerah.Walks earth in clay?Ador.And walking in the clay which he created,He through it shall touch death.What do I utter? what conceive? did breathOf demon howl it in a blasphemy?Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilatedBy the seven confluent Spirits?—Speak—answer me!Whosaid man's victim was his deity?Zerah.Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee.Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous lightAbove, below, around,As putting thunder-questions without cloud,Reverberate without sound,To universal nature's depth and height.The tremor of an inexpressive thoughtToo self-amazed to shape itself aloud,O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips;And while thine hands are stretched above,As newly they had caughtSome lightning from the Throne, or showed the LordSome retributive sword,Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipseAnd radiance, with contrasted wrath and love,As God had called thee to a seraph's part,With a man's quailing heart.Ador.O heart—O heart of man!O ta'en from human clayTo be no seraph's but Jehovah's own!Made holy in the taking,And yet unseparateFrom death's perpetual ban,And human feelings sad and passionate:Still subject to the treacherous forsakingOf other hearts, and its own steadfast pain.O heart of man—of God! which God has ta'enFrom out the dust, with its humanityMournful and weak yet innocent around it,And bade its many pulses beating lieBeside that incommunicable stirOf Deity wherewith he interwound it.O man! and is thy nature so defiledThat all that holy Heart's devout law-keeping,And low pathetic beat in deserts wild,And gushings pitiful of tender weepingFor traitors who consigned it to such woe—That all could cleanse thee not, without the flowOf blood, the life-blood—His—and streamingso?O earth the thundercleft, windshaken, whereThe louder voice of "blood and blood" doth rise,Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice?O heaven! O vacant throne!O crownèd hierarchies that wear your crownWhen His is put away!Are ye unshamèd that ye cannot dimYour alien brightness to be liker him,Assume a human passion, and down-layYour sweet secureness for congenial fears,And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyesThe mystery of his tears?Zerah.I am strong, I am strong.Were I never to see my heaven again,I would wheel to earth like the tempest rainWhich sweeps there with an exultant soundTo lose its life as it reaches the ground.I am strong, I am strong.Away from mine inward vision swimThe shining seats of my heavenly birth,I see but his, I see but him—The Maker's steps on his cruel earth.Will the bitter herbs of earth grow sweetTo me, as trodden by his feet?Will the vexed, accurst humanity,As worn by him, begin to beA blessed, yea, a sacred thingFor love and awe and ministering?I am strong, I am strong.By our angel ken shall we surveyHis loving smile through his woeful clay?I am swift, I am strong,The love is bearing me along.Ador.One love is bearing us along.
Ador.O Seraph, pause no more!Beside this gate of heaven we stand alone.
Zerah.Of heaven!
Ador.Our brother hosts are gone—
Zerah.Are gone before.
Ador.And the golden harps the angels boreTo help the songs of their desire,Still burning from their hands of fire,Lie without touch or toneUpon the glass-sea shore.
Zerah.Silent upon the glass-sea shore!
Ador.There the Shadow from the throneFormless with infinityHovers o'er the crystal seaAwfuller than light derived,And red with those primeval heatsWhereby all life has lived.
Zerah.Our visible God, our heavenly seats!
Ador.Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical,Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all,—The roar of whose descent has diedTo a still sound, as thunder into rain.Immeasurable space spreads magnifiedWith that thick life, along the planeThe worlds slid out on. What a fallAnd eddy of wings innumerous, crossedBy trailing curls that have not lostThe glitter of the God-smile shedOn every prostrate angel's head!What gleaming up of hands that flingTheir homage in retorted rays,From high instinct of worshipping,And habitude of praise!
Zerah.Rapidly they drop below us:Pointed palm and wing and hairIndistinguishable show usOnly pulses in the airThrobbing with a fiery beat,As if a new creation heardSome divine and plastic word,And trembling at its new-found being,Awakened at our feet.
Ador.Zerah, do not wait for seeing!Hisvoice, his, that thrills us soAs we our harpstrings, utteredGo,Behold the Holy in his woe!And all are gone, save thee and—
Zerah.Thee!
Ador.I stood the nearest to the throneIn hierarchical degree,What time the Voice saidGo!And whether I was moved aloneBy the storm-pathos of the toneWhich swept through heaven the alien name ofwoe,Or whether the subtle glory brokeThrough my strong and shielding wings,Bearing to my finite essenceIncapacious of their presence,Infinite imaginings,None knoweth save the Throned who spoke;But I who at creation stood uprightAnd heard the God-breath moveShaping the words that lightened, "Be there light,Nor trembled but with love,Now fell down shudderingly,My face upon the pavement whence I had towered,As if in mine immortal overpoweredBy God's eternity.
Zerah.Let me wait!—let me wait!—
Ador.Nay, gaze not backward through the gate!God fills our heaven with God's own solitudeTill all the pavements glow:His Godhead being no more subdued,By itself, to glories lowWhich seraphs can sustain.What if thou, in gazing so,Shouldst behold but only oneAttribute, the veil undone—Even that to which we dare to pressNearest, for its gentleness—Ay, his love!How the deep ecstatic painThy being's strength would capture!Without language for the rapture,Without music strong to comeAnd set the adoration free,For ever, ever, wouldst thou beAmid the general chorus dumb,God-stricken to seraphic agony.Or, brother, what if on thine eyesIn vision bare should riseThe life-fount whence his hand did gatherWith solitary forceOur immortalities!Straightway how thine own would wither,Falter like a human breath,And shrink into a point like death,By gazing on its source!—My words have imaged dreadMeekly hast thou bent thine head,And dropt thy wings in languishment:Overclouding foot and face,As if God's throne were eminentBefore thee, in the place.Yet not—not so,O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfilThe supreme Will.Not for obeisance but obedience,Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence!The voice said "Go!"
Zerah.Beloved, I depart,His will is as a spirit within my spirit,A portion of the being I inherit.His will is mine obedience. I resembleA flame all undefilèd though it tremble;I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!O thou, who stronger art,And standest ever near the Infinite,Pale with the light of Light,Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,More feeble, more afraid;And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,As close and gentle as the loving are,That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.
Ador.I am near thee and I love thee.Were I loveless, from thee gone,Love is round, beneath, above thee,God, the omnipresent one.Spread the wing and lift the brow!Well-beloved, what fearest thou?
Zerah.I fear, I fear—
Ador.What fear?
Zerah.The fear of earth.
Ador.Of earth, the God-created and God-praisedIn the hour of birth?Where every night the moon in lightDoth lead the waters silver-faced?Where every day the sun doth layA rapture to the heart of allThe leafy and reeded pastoral,As if the joyous shout which burstFrom angel lips to see him first,Had left a silent echo in his ray?
Zerah.Of earth—the God-created and God-curst,Where man is, and the thorn:Where sun and moon have borneNo light to souls forlorn:Where Eden's tree of life no more uprearsIts spiral leaves and fruitage, but insteadThe yew-tree bows its melancholy headAnd all the undergrasses kills and seres.
Ador.Of earth the weak,Made and unmade?Where men, that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?Where, having won the profit which they seek,They lie beside the sceptre and the goldWith fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?
Zerah.Of earth the bold,Where the blind matter wringsAn awful potence out of impotence,Bowing the spiritual thingsTo the things of sense.Where the human will repliesWith ay and no,Because the human pulse is quick or slow.Where Love succumbs to Change,With only his own memories, for revenge.And the fearful mystery—
Ador.called Death?
Zerah.Nay, death is fearful,—but who saith"To die," is comprehensible.What's fearfuller, thou knowest well,Though the utterance be not for thee,Lest it blanch thy lips from glory—Ay! the cursed thing that movedA shadow of ill, long time ago,Across our heaven's own shining floor,And when it vanished, some who wereOn thrones of holy empire there,Did reign—were seen—were—never more.Come nearer, O beloved!
Ador.I am near thee. Didst thou bear theeEver to this earth?
Zerah.Before.When thrilling from His hand alongIts lustrous path with spheric songThe earth was deathless, sorrowless.Unfearing, then, pure feet might pressThe grasses brightening with their feet,For God's own voice did mix its soundIn a solemn confluence oftWith the rivers' flowing round,And the life-tree's waving soft.Beautiful new earth and strange!
Ador.Hast thou seen it since—the change?
Zerah.Nay, or wherefore should I fearTo look upon it now?I have beheld the ruined thingsOnly in depicturingsOf angels from an earthly mission,—Strong one, even upon thy brow,When, with task completed, givenBack to us in that transition,I have beheld thee silent stand,Abstracted in the seraph band,Without a smile in heaven.
Ador.Then thou wast not one of thoseWhom the loving Father choseIn visionary pomp to sweepO'er Judæa's grassy places,O'er the shepherds and the sheep,Though thou art so tender?—dimmingAll the stars except one starWith their brighter kinder faces,And using heaven's own tune in hymning,While deep response from earth's own mountains ran,"Peace upon earth, goodwill to man."
Zerah."Glory to God." I said amen afar.And those who from that earthly mission are,Within mine ears have toldThat the seven everlasting Spirits did holdWith such a sweet and prodigal constraintThe meaning yet the mystery of the songWhat time they sang it, on their natures strong,That, gazing down on earth's dark steadfastnessAnd speaking the new peace in promises,The love and pity made their voices faintInto the low and tender music, keepingThe place in heaven of what on earth is weeping.
Ador."Peace upon earth." Come down to it.
Zerah.Ah me!I hear thereof uncomprehendingly.Peace where the tempest, where the sighing is,And worship of the idol, 'stead of His?
Ador.Yea, peace, where He is.
Zerah.He!Say it again.
Ador.Where He is.
Zerah.Can it beThat earth retains a treeWhose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayedBy the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?
Ador.There is a tree!—it hath no leaf nor root;Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:Its shadow on his head is laid.For he, the crownèd Son,Has left his crown and throne,Walks earth in Adam's clay,Eve's snake to bruise and slay—
Zerah.Walks earth in clay?
Ador.And walking in the clay which he created,He through it shall touch death.What do I utter? what conceive? did breathOf demon howl it in a blasphemy?Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilatedBy the seven confluent Spirits?—Speak—answer me!Whosaid man's victim was his deity?
Zerah.Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee.Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous lightAbove, below, around,As putting thunder-questions without cloud,Reverberate without sound,To universal nature's depth and height.The tremor of an inexpressive thoughtToo self-amazed to shape itself aloud,O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips;And while thine hands are stretched above,As newly they had caughtSome lightning from the Throne, or showed the LordSome retributive sword,Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipseAnd radiance, with contrasted wrath and love,As God had called thee to a seraph's part,With a man's quailing heart.
Ador.O heart—O heart of man!O ta'en from human clayTo be no seraph's but Jehovah's own!Made holy in the taking,And yet unseparateFrom death's perpetual ban,And human feelings sad and passionate:Still subject to the treacherous forsakingOf other hearts, and its own steadfast pain.O heart of man—of God! which God has ta'enFrom out the dust, with its humanityMournful and weak yet innocent around it,And bade its many pulses beating lieBeside that incommunicable stirOf Deity wherewith he interwound it.O man! and is thy nature so defiledThat all that holy Heart's devout law-keeping,And low pathetic beat in deserts wild,And gushings pitiful of tender weepingFor traitors who consigned it to such woe—That all could cleanse thee not, without the flowOf blood, the life-blood—His—and streamingso?O earth the thundercleft, windshaken, whereThe louder voice of "blood and blood" doth rise,Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice?O heaven! O vacant throne!O crownèd hierarchies that wear your crownWhen His is put away!Are ye unshamèd that ye cannot dimYour alien brightness to be liker him,Assume a human passion, and down-layYour sweet secureness for congenial fears,And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyesThe mystery of his tears?
Zerah.I am strong, I am strong.Were I never to see my heaven again,I would wheel to earth like the tempest rainWhich sweeps there with an exultant soundTo lose its life as it reaches the ground.I am strong, I am strong.Away from mine inward vision swimThe shining seats of my heavenly birth,I see but his, I see but him—The Maker's steps on his cruel earth.Will the bitter herbs of earth grow sweetTo me, as trodden by his feet?Will the vexed, accurst humanity,As worn by him, begin to beA blessed, yea, a sacred thingFor love and awe and ministering?I am strong, I am strong.By our angel ken shall we surveyHis loving smile through his woeful clay?I am swift, I am strong,The love is bearing me along.
Ador.One love is bearing us along.
Mid-air, above Judæa.AdorandZerahare a little apart from the visibleAngelic Hosts.
Ador.Beloved! dost thou see?—Zerah.Thee,—thee.Thy burning eyes already areGrown wild and mournful as a starWhose occupation is for ayeTo look upon the place of clayWhereon thou lookest now.The crown is fainting on thy browTo the likeness of a cloud,The forehead's self a little bowedFrom its aspect high and holy,As it would in meekness meetSome seraphic melancholy:Thy very wings that lately flungAn outline clear, do flicker hereAnd wear to each a shadow hung,Dropped across thy feet.In these strange contrasting gloomsStagnant with the scent of tombs,Seraph faces, O my brother,Show awfully to one another.Ador.Dost thou see?Zerah.Even so; I seeOur empyreal company,Alone the memory of their brightnessLeft in them, as in thee.The circle upon circle, tier on tier,Piling earth's hemisphereWith heavenly infiniteness,Above us and around,Straining the whole horizon like a bow:Their songful lips divorcèd from all sound,A darkness gliding down their silvery glances,—Bowing their steadfast solemn countenancesAs if they heard God speak, and could not glow.Ador.Look downward! dost thou see?Zerah.And wouldst thou pressthatvision on my words?Doth not earth speak enoughOf change and of undoing,Without a seraph's witness? Oceans roughWith tempest, pastoral swardsDisplaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruingThe bolt fallen yesterday,That shake their piny heads, as who would say"We are too beautiful for our decay"—Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let aloneEarth to her earthly moan!Voice of all things.Is there no moan but hers?Ador.Hearest thou the attestationOf the rousèd universeLike a desert-lion shakingDews of silence from its mane?With an irrepressive passionUprising at once,Rising up and forsakingIts solemn state in the circle of suns,To attest the painOf him who stands (O patience sweet!)In his own hand-prints of creation,With human feet?Voice of all things.Is there no moan but ours?Zerah.Forms, Spaces, Motions wide,O meek, insensate things,O congregated matters! who inherit,Instead of vital powers,Impulsions God-supplied;Instead of influent spirit,A clear informing beauty;Instead of creature-duty,Submission calm as rest.Lights, without feet or wings,In golden courses sliding!Glooms, stagnantly subsiding,Whose lustrous heart away was prestInto the argent stars!Ye crystal firmamental barsThat hold the skyey waters freeFrom tide or tempest's ecstasy!Airs universal! thunders lornThat wait your lightnings in cloud-caveHewn out by the winds! O braveAnd subtle elements! the HolyHath charged me by your voice with folly.[D]Enough, the mystic arrow leaves its wound.Return ye to your silences inborn,Or to your inarticulated sound!Ador.Zerah!Zerah.Wiltthourebuke?God hath rebuked me, brother. I am weak.Ador.Zerah, my brother Zerah! could I speakOf thee, 'twould be of love to thee.Zerah.Thy lookIs fixed on earth, as mine upon thy face.Where shall I seek His?I have thrownOne look upon earth, but one,Over the blue mountain-lines,Over the forests of palms and pines,Over the harvest-lands golden,Over the valleys that fold inThe gardens and vines—He is not there.All these are unworthyThose footsteps to bear,Before which, bowing downI would fain quench the stars of my crownIn the dark of the earthy.Where shall I seek him?No reply?Hath language left thy lips, to placeIts vocal in thine eye?Ador, Ador! are we comeTo a double portent, thatDumb matter grows articulateAnd songful seraphs dumb?Ador, Ador!Ador.I constrainThe passion of my silence. NoneOf those places gazed uponAre gloomy enow to fit his pain.Unto Him, whose forming wordGave to Nature flower and sward.She hath given back again,For the myrtle—the thorn,For the sylvan calm—the human scorn.Still, still, reluctant seraph, gaze beneath!There is a city——Zerah.Temple and tower,Palace and purple would droop like a flower,(Or a cloud at our breath)If He neared in his stateThe outermost gate.Ador.Ah me, not soIn the state of a king did the victim go!AndThouwho hangest mute of speech'Twixt heaven and earth, with forehead yetStainèd by the bloody sweat,God! man! Thou hast forgone thy throne in each.Zerah.Thine eyes behold him?Ador.Yea, below.Track the gazing of mine eyes,Naming God within thine heartThat its weakness may departAnd the vision rise!Seest thou yet, beloved?Zerah.I seeBeyond the city, crosses threeAnd mortals three that hang thereon'Ghast and silent to the sun.Round them blacken and welter and pressStaring multitudes whose fatherAdam was, whose brows are darkWith his Cain's corroded mark,—Who curse with looks. Nay—let me ratherTurn unto the wilderness!Ador.Turn not! God dwells with men.Zerah.AboveHe dwells with angels, and they love.Can these love? With the living's prideThey stare at those who die, who hangIn their sight and die. They bear the streakOf the crosses' shadow, black not wide,To fall on their heads, as it swerves asideWhen the victims' pangMakes the dry wood creak.Ador.The cross—the cross!Zerah.A woman kneelsThe mid cross under,With white lips asunder,And motion on each.They throb, as she feels,With a spasm, not a speech;And her lids, close as sleep,Are less calm, for the eyesHave made room there to weepDrop on drop—Ador.Weep? Weep blood,All women, all men!He sweated it, He,For your pale womanhoodAnd base manhood. AgreeThat these water-tears, then,Are vain, mocking like laughter:Weep blood! Shall the floodOf salt curses, whose foam is the darkness, on rollForward, on from the strand of the storm-beaten years,And back from the rocks of the horrid hereafter,And up, in a coil, from the present's wrath-spring,Yea, down from the windows of heaven opening,Deep calling to deep as they meet on His soul—And men weep only tears?Zerah.Little drops in the lapse!And yet, Ador, perhapsIt is all that they can.Tears! the lovingest manHas no better bestowedUpon man.Ador.Nor on GodZerah.Do all-givers need gifts?If the Giver said "Give," the first motion would slayOur Immortals, the echo would ruin awayThe same worlds which he made. Why, what angel upliftsSuch a music, so clear,It may seem in God's earWorth more than a woman's hoarse weeping? And thus,Pity tender as tears, I above thee would speak,Thou woman that weepest! weep unscorned of us!I, the tearless and pure, am but loving and weak.Ador.Speak low, my brother, low,—and not of loveOr human or angelic! Rather standBefore the throne of that Supreme above,In whose infinitude the secreciesOf thine own being lie hid, and lift thine handExultant, saying, "Lord God, I am wise!"—Than utterhere, "I love."Zerah.And yet thine eyesDo utter it. They melt in tender light,The tears of heaven.Ador.Of heaven. Ah me!Zerah.Ador!Ador.Say on!Zerah.The crucified are three.Beloved, they are unlike.Ador.Unlike.Zerah.For oneIs as a man who has sinned and stillDoth wear the wicked will,The hard malign life-energy,Tossed outward, in the parting soul's disdain,On brow and lip that cannot change again.Ador.And one—Zerah.Has also sinned.And yet (O marvel!) doth the Spirit-windBlow white those waters? Death upon his faceIs rather shine than shade,A tender shine by looks beloved made:He seemeth dying in a quiet place,And less by iron wounds in hands and feetThan heart-broke by new joy too sudden and sweet.Ador.Andone!—Zerah.Andone!—Ador.Why dost thou pause?Zerah.God! God!Spirit of my spirit! who movestThrough seraph veins in burning deityTo light the quenchless pulses!—Ador.But hast trodThe depths of love in thy peculiar nature,And not in any thou hast made and lovestIn narrow seraph hearts!—Zerah.Above, Creator!Within, Upholder!Ador.And below, below,The creature's and the upholden's sacrifice!Zerah.Why do I pause?—Ador.There is a silentnessThat answers thee enow,That, like a brazen soundExcluding others, doth ensheathe us round,—Hear it. It is not from the visible skiesThough they are still,Unconscious that their own dropped dews expressThe light of heaven on every earthly hill.It is not from the hills, though calm and bareThey, since their first creation,Through midnight cloud or morning's glittering airOr the deep deluge blindness, toward the placeWhence thrilled the mystic word's creative grace,And whence again shall comeThe word that uncreates,Have lift their brows in voiceless expectation.It is not from the places that entombMan's dead, though common Silence there dilatesHer soul to grand proportions, worthilyTo fill life's vacant room.Not there: not there.Not yet within those chambers lieth He,A dead one in his living world; his southAnd west winds blowing over earth and sea,And not a breath on that creating mouth.But now,—a silence keeps(Not death's, nor sleep's)The lips whose whispered wordMight roll the thunders round reverberated.Silent art thou, O my Lord,Bowing down thy stricken head!Fearest thou, a groan of thineWould make the pulse of thy creation failAs thine own pulse?—would rend the veilOf visible things and let the floodOf the unseen Light, the essential God,Rush in to whelm the undivine?Thy silence, to my thinking, is as dread.Zerah.O silence!Ador.Doth it say to thee—thename,Slow-learning seraph?Zerah.I have learnt.Ador.The flamePerishes in thine eyes.Zerah.He opened his,And looked. I cannot bear—Ador.Their agony?Zerah.Their love. God's depth is in them. From his browsWhite, terrible in meekness, didst thou seeThe lifted eyes unclose?He is God, seraph! Look no more on me,O God—I am not God.Ador.The loving isSublimed within them by the sorrowful.In heaven we could sustain them.Zerah.Heaven is dull,Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burnsIn fluent, refluent motionAlong the crystal ocean;The springing of the golden harps betweenThe bowery wings, in fountains of sweet sound,The winding, wandering music that returnsUpon itself, exultingly self-boundIn the great spheric roundOf everlasting praises;The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene,Visibly flashing from the supreme throneFull in seraphic facesTill each astonishes the other, grownMore beautiful with worship and delight—My heaven! my home of heaven! my infiniteHeaven-choirs! what are ye to this dust and death,This cloud, this cold, these tears, this failing breath,Where God's immortal love now issuethIn thisman'swoe?Ador.His eyes are very deep yet calm.Zerah.No moreOnme, Jehovah-man—Ador.Calm-deep. They showA passion which is tranquil. They are seeingNo earth, no heaven, no men that slay and curse,No seraphs that adore;Their gaze is on the invisible, the dread,The things we cannot view or think or speak,Because we are too happy, or too weak,—The sea of ill, for which the universe,With all its pilèd space, can find no shore,With all its life, no living foot to tread.But he, accomplished in Jehovah-being,Sustains the gaze adown,Conceives the vast despair,And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown,Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished.Zerah.Thus, do I find Thee thus? My undiminishedAnd undiminishable God!—my God!The echoes are still tremulous alongThe heavenly mountains, of the latest songThy manifested glory swept abroadIn rushing past our lips: they echo aye"Creator, thou art strong!Creator, thou art blessed over all."By what new utterance shall I now recall,Unteaching the heaven-echoes? Dare I say,"Creator, thou art feebler than thy work!Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature!A worm, and not a man,Yea, no worm, but a curse?"I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse.Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork(Whose seed disordered ranFrom Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her)Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rodThat smites thee never blossoming, and thouGrief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow—I leave to men their song of Ichabod:I have an angel-tongue—I know but praise.Ador.Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raiseThe passion-song of blood.Zerah.Andwe, extendOur holy vacant hands towards the Throne,Crying "We have no music."Ador.Rather, blendBoth musics into one.The sanctities and sanctified aboveShall each to each, with lifted looks serene,Their shining faces lean,And mix the adoring breathAnd breathe the full thanksgiving.Zerah.But the love—The love, mine Ador!Ador.Do we love not?Zerah.Yea,But not as man shall! not with life for death,New-throbbing through the startled being; notWith strange astonished smiles, that ever mayGush passionate like tears and fill their place:Nor yet with speechless memories of whatEarth's winters were, enverduring the greenOf every heavenly palmWhose windless, shadeless calmMoves only at the breath of the Unseen.Oh, not with this blood on us—and this face,—Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it boreIn our behalf, and tender evermoreWith nature all our own, upon us gazing—Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraisingTheir unreproachful wounds, alone to bless!Alas, Creator! shall we love thee lessThan mortals shall?Ador.Amen! so let it be.We love in our proportion, to the boundThine infinite our finite set around,And that is finitely,—thou, infiniteAnd worthy infinite love! And our delightIs, watching the dear love poured out to theeFrom ever fuller chalice. Blessed they,Who love thee more than we do: blessed we,Viewing that love which shall exceed even this,And winning in the sight a double blissFor all so lost in love's supremacy.The bliss is better. Only on the sadCold earth there are who sayIt seemeth better to be great than glad.The bliss is better. Love him more, O man,Than sinless seraphs can!Zerah.Yea, love him more!Voices of the Angelic Multitude.Yea, more!Ador.The loving wordIs caught by those from whom we stand apart.For silence hath no deepness in her heartWhere love's low name low breathed would not be heardBy angels, clear as thunder.Angelic Voices.Love him more!Ador.Sweet voices, swooning o'erThe music which ye make!Albeit to love there were not ever givenA mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.Of love be silent now! we gaze adownUpon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.Zerah.No crown! the woe insteadIs heavy on his head,Pressing inward on his brainWith a hot and clinging painTill all tears are prest away,And clear and calm his vision mayPeruse the black abyss.No rod, no sceptre isHolden in his fingers pale;They close instead upon the nail,Concealing the sharp dole,Never stirring to put byThe fair hair peaked with blood,Drooping forward from the roodHelplessly, heavilyOn the cheek that waxeth colder,Whiter ever, and the shoulderWhere the government was laid.His glory made the heavens afraid;Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?His pity makes his piteous state;Will he be uncompassionateAlone to his proper soul?Yea, will he not lift upHis lips from the bitter cup,His brows from the dreary weight,His hand from the clenching cross,Crying, "My Father, give to meAgain the joy I had with theeOr ere this earth was made for loss?No stir no sound.The love and woe being interwoundHe cleaveth to the woe;And putteth forth heaven's strength below,To bear.Ador.And that creates his anguish now,Which made his glory there.Zerah.Shall it need be so?Awake, thou Earth! behold.Thou, uttered forth of oldIn all thy life-emotion,In all thy vernal noises,In the rollings of thine ocean,Leaping founts, and rivers running,—In thy woods' prophetic heavingEre the rains a stroke have given,In thy winds' exultant voicesWhen they feel the hills anear,—In the firmamental sunning,And the tempest which rejoicesThy full heart with an awful cheer.Thou, uttered forth of oldAnd with all thy music rolledIn a breath abroadBy the breathing God,—Awake! He is here! behold!Eventhou—beseems it goodTo thy vacant vision dim,That the deadly ruin should,For thy sake, encompass him?That the Master-word should lieA mere silence, while his ownProcessive harmony,The faintest echo of his lightest tone,Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?Awake! emit a cry!And say, albeit usedFrom Adam's ancient yearsTo falls of acrid tears,To frequent sighs unloosed,Caught back to press againOn bosoms zoned with pain—To corses still and sullenThe shine and music dullingWith closèd eyes and earsThat nothing sweet can enter,Commoving thee no lessWith that forced quietnessThan the earthquake in thy centre—Thou hast not learnt to bearThis new divine despair!These tears that sink into thee,These dying eyes that view thee,This dropping blood from lifted rood,They darken and undo thee.Thou canst not presently sustain this corse—Cry, cry, thou hast not force!Cry, thou wouldst fainer keepThy hopeless charnels deep,Thyself a general tombWhere the first and the second DeathSit gazing face to faceAnd mar each other's breath,While silent bones through all the place'Neath sun and moon do faintly glistenAnd seem to lie and listenFor the tramp of the coming Doom.Is it not meetThat they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,Should champ the ashes?That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloudShould wear it as a shroud,Perishing by its flashes?That they who vexed the lion should be rent?Cry, cry "I will sustain my punishment,The sin being mine; but take away from meThis visioned Dread—this man—this Deity!"The Earth.I have groaned; I have travailed: I am weary.I am blind with my own grief, and cannot see,As clear-eyed angels can, his agony,And what I see I also can sustain,Because his power protects me from his pain.I have groaned; I have travailed: I am dreary,Hearkening the thick sobs of my children's heart:How can I say "Depart"To that Atoner making calm and free?Am I a God as he,To lay down peace and power as willingly?Ador.He looked for some to pity. There is none.All pity is within him and not for him.His earth is iron under him, and o'er himHis skies are brass.His seraphs cry "Alas!"With hallelujah voice that cannot weep.And man, for whom the dreadful work is done ...Scornful Voices from the Earth. If verily thisbethe Eternal's son—Ador.Thou hearest. Man is grateful.Zerah.Can I hearNor darken into man and cease for everMy seraph-smile to wear?Was it for such,It pleased him to overleapHis glory with his love and severFrom the God-light and the throneAnd all angels bowing down,For whom his every look did touchNew notes of joy on the unworn stringOf an eternal worshipping?For such, he left his heaven?There, though never bought by bloodAnd tears, we gave him gratitude:We loved him there, though unforgiven.Ador.The light is rivenAbove, around,And down in lurid fragments flung,That catch the mountain-peak and streamWith momentary gleam,Then perish in the water and the ground.River and waterfall,Forest and wilderness,Mountain and city, are together wrungInto one shape, and that is shapelessness;The darkness stands for all.Zerah.The pathos hath the day undone:The death-look of His eyesHath overcome the sunAnd made it sicken in its narrow skies.Ador.Is it to death? He dieth.Zerah.Through the darkHe still, he only, is discernible—The naked hands and feet transfixèd stark,The countenance of patient anguish white,Do make themselves a lightMore dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,And therein do they shine.Ador.God! Father-God!Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!Uplift the lids of inward deity,Flashing abroadThy burning Infinite!Light up this dark where there is nought to seeExcept the unimagined agonyUpon the sinless forehead of the Son!Zerah.God, tarry not! Behold, enowHath he wandered as a stranger,Sorrowed as a victim. ThouAppear for him, O Father!Appear for him, Avenger!Appear for him, just One and holy One,For he is holy and just!At once the darkness and dishonour ratherTo the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,And hurl aback to ancient dustThese mortals that make blasphemiesWith their made breath, this earth and skiesThat only grow a little dim,Seeing their curse on him.But him, of all forsaken,Of creature and of brother,Never wilt thou forsake!Thy living and thy loving cannot slackenTheir firm essential hold upon each other,And well thou dost remember how his partWas still to lie upon thy breast and bePartaker of the light that dwelt in theeEre sun or seraph shone;And how while silence trembled round the throneThou countedst by the beatings of his heartThe moments of thine own eternity.Awaken,O right hand with the lightnings! Again gatherHis glory to thy glory! What estranger,What ill supreme in evil, can be thrustBetween the faithful Father and the Son?Appear for him, O Father!Appear for him, Avenger!Appear for him, just One and holy One,For he is holy and just!Ador.Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;Thou hast no answer, Zerah.Zerah.No reply,O unforsaking Father?Ador.Hark!Instead of downward voice, a cryIs uttered from beneath.Zerah.And by a sharper sound than death,Mine immortality is riven.The heavy darkness which doth tent the skyFloats backward as by a sudden wind:But I see no light behind,But I feel the farthest stars are allStricken and shaken,And I know a shadow sad and broadDoth fall—doth fallOn our vacant thrones in heaven.Voice from the Cross.My God, my God,Why hast Thou me forsaken?The Earth.Ah me, ah me, ah me! the dreadful Why!My sin is on thee, sinless one! Thou artGod-orphaned, for my burden on thy head.Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread!Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead;Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart.Zerah.Hehath forsakenhim. I perish.Ador.HoldUpon his name! we perish not. Of oldHis will—Zerah.I seek his will. Seek, seraphim!My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curseReverberate spare us, seraph or universe?Hehath forsakenhim.Ador.He cannot fail.Angel Voices.We faint, we droop,Our love doth tremble like fear.Voices of Fallen Angels from the Earth.Do we prevail?Or are we lost? Hath not the ill we didBeen heretofore our good?Is it not ill that one, all sinless, shouldHang heavy with all curses on a cross?Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hidWithin the empty graves which men did scoopTo hold more damnèd dead, we shudder throughWhat shall exalt us or undo,Our triumph, or our loss.Voice from the Cross.It is finished.Zerah.Hark, again!Like a victor, speaks the slain.Angel Voices.Finished be the trembling vain!Ador.Upward, like a well-loved son,Looketh he, the orphaned one.Angel Voices.Finished is the mystic pain.Voices of Fallen Angels.His deathly forehead at the word,Gleameth like a seraph sword.Angel Voices.Finished is the demon reign.Ador.His breath, as living God, createth,His breath, as dying man, completeth.Angel Voices.Finished work his hands sustain.The Earth.In mine ancient sepulchresWhere my kings and prophets freeze,Adam dead four thousand years,Unwakened by the universe'sEverlasting moan,Aye his ghastly silence mocking—Unwakened by his children's knockingAt his old sepulchral stone,"Adam, Adam, all this curse isThine and on us yet!"—Unwakened by the ceaseless tearsWherewith they made his cerement wet,"Adam, must thy curse remain?"—Starts with sudden life and hearsThrough the slow dripping of the caverned caves,—Angel Voices.Finished is his bane.Voice from the Cross.Father! my spirit to thine hands is given.Ador.Hear the wailing winds that beBy wings of unclean spirits made!They, in that last look, surveyedThe love they lost in losing heaven,And passionately fleeWith a desolate cry that cleavesThe natural storms—thoughtheyare liftingGod's strong cedar-roots like leaves,And the earthquake and the thunder,Neither keeping either under,Roar and hurtle through the glooms—And a few pale stars are driftingPast the dark, to disappear,What time, from the splitting tombsGleamingly the dead arise,Viewing with their death-calmed eyesThe elemental strategies,To witness, victory is the Lord's.Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear!Zerah.I hear alone the memory of his words.
Ador.Beloved! dost thou see?—
Zerah.Thee,—thee.Thy burning eyes already areGrown wild and mournful as a starWhose occupation is for ayeTo look upon the place of clayWhereon thou lookest now.The crown is fainting on thy browTo the likeness of a cloud,The forehead's self a little bowedFrom its aspect high and holy,As it would in meekness meetSome seraphic melancholy:Thy very wings that lately flungAn outline clear, do flicker hereAnd wear to each a shadow hung,Dropped across thy feet.In these strange contrasting gloomsStagnant with the scent of tombs,Seraph faces, O my brother,Show awfully to one another.
Ador.Dost thou see?
Zerah.Even so; I seeOur empyreal company,Alone the memory of their brightnessLeft in them, as in thee.The circle upon circle, tier on tier,Piling earth's hemisphereWith heavenly infiniteness,Above us and around,Straining the whole horizon like a bow:Their songful lips divorcèd from all sound,A darkness gliding down their silvery glances,—Bowing their steadfast solemn countenancesAs if they heard God speak, and could not glow.
Ador.Look downward! dost thou see?
Zerah.And wouldst thou pressthatvision on my words?Doth not earth speak enoughOf change and of undoing,Without a seraph's witness? Oceans roughWith tempest, pastoral swardsDisplaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruingThe bolt fallen yesterday,That shake their piny heads, as who would say"We are too beautiful for our decay"—Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let aloneEarth to her earthly moan!
Voice of all things.Is there no moan but hers?
Ador.Hearest thou the attestationOf the rousèd universeLike a desert-lion shakingDews of silence from its mane?With an irrepressive passionUprising at once,Rising up and forsakingIts solemn state in the circle of suns,To attest the painOf him who stands (O patience sweet!)In his own hand-prints of creation,With human feet?
Voice of all things.Is there no moan but ours?
Zerah.Forms, Spaces, Motions wide,O meek, insensate things,O congregated matters! who inherit,Instead of vital powers,Impulsions God-supplied;Instead of influent spirit,A clear informing beauty;Instead of creature-duty,Submission calm as rest.Lights, without feet or wings,In golden courses sliding!Glooms, stagnantly subsiding,Whose lustrous heart away was prestInto the argent stars!Ye crystal firmamental barsThat hold the skyey waters freeFrom tide or tempest's ecstasy!Airs universal! thunders lornThat wait your lightnings in cloud-caveHewn out by the winds! O braveAnd subtle elements! the HolyHath charged me by your voice with folly.[D]Enough, the mystic arrow leaves its wound.Return ye to your silences inborn,Or to your inarticulated sound!
Ador.Zerah!
Zerah.Wiltthourebuke?God hath rebuked me, brother. I am weak.
Ador.Zerah, my brother Zerah! could I speakOf thee, 'twould be of love to thee.
Zerah.Thy lookIs fixed on earth, as mine upon thy face.Where shall I seek His?I have thrownOne look upon earth, but one,Over the blue mountain-lines,Over the forests of palms and pines,Over the harvest-lands golden,Over the valleys that fold inThe gardens and vines—He is not there.All these are unworthyThose footsteps to bear,Before which, bowing downI would fain quench the stars of my crownIn the dark of the earthy.Where shall I seek him?No reply?Hath language left thy lips, to placeIts vocal in thine eye?Ador, Ador! are we comeTo a double portent, thatDumb matter grows articulateAnd songful seraphs dumb?Ador, Ador!
Ador.I constrainThe passion of my silence. NoneOf those places gazed uponAre gloomy enow to fit his pain.Unto Him, whose forming wordGave to Nature flower and sward.She hath given back again,For the myrtle—the thorn,For the sylvan calm—the human scorn.Still, still, reluctant seraph, gaze beneath!There is a city——
Zerah.Temple and tower,Palace and purple would droop like a flower,(Or a cloud at our breath)If He neared in his stateThe outermost gate.
Ador.Ah me, not soIn the state of a king did the victim go!AndThouwho hangest mute of speech'Twixt heaven and earth, with forehead yetStainèd by the bloody sweat,God! man! Thou hast forgone thy throne in each.
Zerah.Thine eyes behold him?
Ador.Yea, below.Track the gazing of mine eyes,Naming God within thine heartThat its weakness may departAnd the vision rise!Seest thou yet, beloved?
Zerah.I seeBeyond the city, crosses threeAnd mortals three that hang thereon'Ghast and silent to the sun.Round them blacken and welter and pressStaring multitudes whose fatherAdam was, whose brows are darkWith his Cain's corroded mark,—Who curse with looks. Nay—let me ratherTurn unto the wilderness!
Ador.Turn not! God dwells with men.
Zerah.AboveHe dwells with angels, and they love.Can these love? With the living's prideThey stare at those who die, who hangIn their sight and die. They bear the streakOf the crosses' shadow, black not wide,To fall on their heads, as it swerves asideWhen the victims' pangMakes the dry wood creak.
Ador.The cross—the cross!
Zerah.A woman kneelsThe mid cross under,With white lips asunder,And motion on each.They throb, as she feels,With a spasm, not a speech;And her lids, close as sleep,Are less calm, for the eyesHave made room there to weepDrop on drop—
Ador.Weep? Weep blood,All women, all men!He sweated it, He,For your pale womanhoodAnd base manhood. AgreeThat these water-tears, then,Are vain, mocking like laughter:Weep blood! Shall the floodOf salt curses, whose foam is the darkness, on rollForward, on from the strand of the storm-beaten years,And back from the rocks of the horrid hereafter,And up, in a coil, from the present's wrath-spring,Yea, down from the windows of heaven opening,Deep calling to deep as they meet on His soul—And men weep only tears?
Zerah.Little drops in the lapse!And yet, Ador, perhapsIt is all that they can.Tears! the lovingest manHas no better bestowedUpon man.
Ador.Nor on God
Zerah.Do all-givers need gifts?If the Giver said "Give," the first motion would slayOur Immortals, the echo would ruin awayThe same worlds which he made. Why, what angel upliftsSuch a music, so clear,It may seem in God's earWorth more than a woman's hoarse weeping? And thus,Pity tender as tears, I above thee would speak,Thou woman that weepest! weep unscorned of us!I, the tearless and pure, am but loving and weak.
Ador.Speak low, my brother, low,—and not of loveOr human or angelic! Rather standBefore the throne of that Supreme above,In whose infinitude the secreciesOf thine own being lie hid, and lift thine handExultant, saying, "Lord God, I am wise!"—Than utterhere, "I love."
Zerah.And yet thine eyesDo utter it. They melt in tender light,The tears of heaven.
Ador.Of heaven. Ah me!
Zerah.Ador!
Ador.Say on!
Zerah.The crucified are three.Beloved, they are unlike.
Ador.Unlike.
Zerah.For oneIs as a man who has sinned and stillDoth wear the wicked will,The hard malign life-energy,Tossed outward, in the parting soul's disdain,On brow and lip that cannot change again.
Ador.And one—
Zerah.Has also sinned.And yet (O marvel!) doth the Spirit-windBlow white those waters? Death upon his faceIs rather shine than shade,A tender shine by looks beloved made:He seemeth dying in a quiet place,And less by iron wounds in hands and feetThan heart-broke by new joy too sudden and sweet.
Ador.Andone!—
Zerah.Andone!—
Ador.Why dost thou pause?
Zerah.God! God!Spirit of my spirit! who movestThrough seraph veins in burning deityTo light the quenchless pulses!—
Ador.But hast trodThe depths of love in thy peculiar nature,And not in any thou hast made and lovestIn narrow seraph hearts!—
Zerah.Above, Creator!Within, Upholder!
Ador.And below, below,The creature's and the upholden's sacrifice!
Zerah.Why do I pause?—
Ador.There is a silentnessThat answers thee enow,That, like a brazen soundExcluding others, doth ensheathe us round,—Hear it. It is not from the visible skiesThough they are still,Unconscious that their own dropped dews expressThe light of heaven on every earthly hill.It is not from the hills, though calm and bareThey, since their first creation,Through midnight cloud or morning's glittering airOr the deep deluge blindness, toward the placeWhence thrilled the mystic word's creative grace,And whence again shall comeThe word that uncreates,Have lift their brows in voiceless expectation.It is not from the places that entombMan's dead, though common Silence there dilatesHer soul to grand proportions, worthilyTo fill life's vacant room.Not there: not there.Not yet within those chambers lieth He,A dead one in his living world; his southAnd west winds blowing over earth and sea,And not a breath on that creating mouth.But now,—a silence keeps(Not death's, nor sleep's)The lips whose whispered wordMight roll the thunders round reverberated.Silent art thou, O my Lord,Bowing down thy stricken head!Fearest thou, a groan of thineWould make the pulse of thy creation failAs thine own pulse?—would rend the veilOf visible things and let the floodOf the unseen Light, the essential God,Rush in to whelm the undivine?Thy silence, to my thinking, is as dread.
Zerah.O silence!
Ador.Doth it say to thee—thename,Slow-learning seraph?
Zerah.I have learnt.
Ador.The flamePerishes in thine eyes.
Zerah.He opened his,And looked. I cannot bear—
Ador.Their agony?
Zerah.Their love. God's depth is in them. From his browsWhite, terrible in meekness, didst thou seeThe lifted eyes unclose?He is God, seraph! Look no more on me,O God—I am not God.
Ador.The loving isSublimed within them by the sorrowful.In heaven we could sustain them.
Zerah.Heaven is dull,Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burnsIn fluent, refluent motionAlong the crystal ocean;The springing of the golden harps betweenThe bowery wings, in fountains of sweet sound,The winding, wandering music that returnsUpon itself, exultingly self-boundIn the great spheric roundOf everlasting praises;The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene,Visibly flashing from the supreme throneFull in seraphic facesTill each astonishes the other, grownMore beautiful with worship and delight—My heaven! my home of heaven! my infiniteHeaven-choirs! what are ye to this dust and death,This cloud, this cold, these tears, this failing breath,Where God's immortal love now issuethIn thisman'swoe?
Ador.His eyes are very deep yet calm.
Zerah.No moreOnme, Jehovah-man—
Ador.Calm-deep. They showA passion which is tranquil. They are seeingNo earth, no heaven, no men that slay and curse,No seraphs that adore;Their gaze is on the invisible, the dread,The things we cannot view or think or speak,Because we are too happy, or too weak,—The sea of ill, for which the universe,With all its pilèd space, can find no shore,With all its life, no living foot to tread.But he, accomplished in Jehovah-being,Sustains the gaze adown,Conceives the vast despair,And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown,Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished.
Zerah.Thus, do I find Thee thus? My undiminishedAnd undiminishable God!—my God!The echoes are still tremulous alongThe heavenly mountains, of the latest songThy manifested glory swept abroadIn rushing past our lips: they echo aye"Creator, thou art strong!Creator, thou art blessed over all."By what new utterance shall I now recall,Unteaching the heaven-echoes? Dare I say,"Creator, thou art feebler than thy work!Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature!A worm, and not a man,Yea, no worm, but a curse?"I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse.Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork(Whose seed disordered ranFrom Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her)Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rodThat smites thee never blossoming, and thouGrief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow—I leave to men their song of Ichabod:I have an angel-tongue—I know but praise.
Ador.Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raiseThe passion-song of blood.
Zerah.Andwe, extendOur holy vacant hands towards the Throne,Crying "We have no music."
Ador.Rather, blendBoth musics into one.The sanctities and sanctified aboveShall each to each, with lifted looks serene,Their shining faces lean,And mix the adoring breathAnd breathe the full thanksgiving.
Zerah.But the love—The love, mine Ador!
Ador.Do we love not?
Zerah.Yea,But not as man shall! not with life for death,New-throbbing through the startled being; notWith strange astonished smiles, that ever mayGush passionate like tears and fill their place:Nor yet with speechless memories of whatEarth's winters were, enverduring the greenOf every heavenly palmWhose windless, shadeless calmMoves only at the breath of the Unseen.Oh, not with this blood on us—and this face,—Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it boreIn our behalf, and tender evermoreWith nature all our own, upon us gazing—Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraisingTheir unreproachful wounds, alone to bless!Alas, Creator! shall we love thee lessThan mortals shall?
Ador.Amen! so let it be.We love in our proportion, to the boundThine infinite our finite set around,And that is finitely,—thou, infiniteAnd worthy infinite love! And our delightIs, watching the dear love poured out to theeFrom ever fuller chalice. Blessed they,Who love thee more than we do: blessed we,Viewing that love which shall exceed even this,And winning in the sight a double blissFor all so lost in love's supremacy.The bliss is better. Only on the sadCold earth there are who sayIt seemeth better to be great than glad.The bliss is better. Love him more, O man,Than sinless seraphs can!
Zerah.Yea, love him more!
Voices of the Angelic Multitude.Yea, more!
Ador.The loving wordIs caught by those from whom we stand apart.For silence hath no deepness in her heartWhere love's low name low breathed would not be heardBy angels, clear as thunder.
Angelic Voices.Love him more!
Ador.Sweet voices, swooning o'erThe music which ye make!Albeit to love there were not ever givenA mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.Of love be silent now! we gaze adownUpon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.
Zerah.No crown! the woe insteadIs heavy on his head,Pressing inward on his brainWith a hot and clinging painTill all tears are prest away,And clear and calm his vision mayPeruse the black abyss.No rod, no sceptre isHolden in his fingers pale;They close instead upon the nail,Concealing the sharp dole,Never stirring to put byThe fair hair peaked with blood,Drooping forward from the roodHelplessly, heavilyOn the cheek that waxeth colder,Whiter ever, and the shoulderWhere the government was laid.His glory made the heavens afraid;Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?His pity makes his piteous state;Will he be uncompassionateAlone to his proper soul?Yea, will he not lift upHis lips from the bitter cup,His brows from the dreary weight,His hand from the clenching cross,Crying, "My Father, give to meAgain the joy I had with theeOr ere this earth was made for loss?No stir no sound.The love and woe being interwoundHe cleaveth to the woe;And putteth forth heaven's strength below,To bear.
Ador.And that creates his anguish now,Which made his glory there.
Zerah.Shall it need be so?Awake, thou Earth! behold.Thou, uttered forth of oldIn all thy life-emotion,In all thy vernal noises,In the rollings of thine ocean,Leaping founts, and rivers running,—In thy woods' prophetic heavingEre the rains a stroke have given,In thy winds' exultant voicesWhen they feel the hills anear,—In the firmamental sunning,And the tempest which rejoicesThy full heart with an awful cheer.Thou, uttered forth of oldAnd with all thy music rolledIn a breath abroadBy the breathing God,—Awake! He is here! behold!Eventhou—beseems it goodTo thy vacant vision dim,That the deadly ruin should,For thy sake, encompass him?That the Master-word should lieA mere silence, while his ownProcessive harmony,The faintest echo of his lightest tone,Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?Awake! emit a cry!And say, albeit usedFrom Adam's ancient yearsTo falls of acrid tears,To frequent sighs unloosed,Caught back to press againOn bosoms zoned with pain—To corses still and sullenThe shine and music dullingWith closèd eyes and earsThat nothing sweet can enter,Commoving thee no lessWith that forced quietnessThan the earthquake in thy centre—Thou hast not learnt to bearThis new divine despair!These tears that sink into thee,These dying eyes that view thee,This dropping blood from lifted rood,They darken and undo thee.Thou canst not presently sustain this corse—Cry, cry, thou hast not force!Cry, thou wouldst fainer keepThy hopeless charnels deep,Thyself a general tombWhere the first and the second DeathSit gazing face to faceAnd mar each other's breath,While silent bones through all the place'Neath sun and moon do faintly glistenAnd seem to lie and listenFor the tramp of the coming Doom.Is it not meetThat they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,Should champ the ashes?That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloudShould wear it as a shroud,Perishing by its flashes?That they who vexed the lion should be rent?Cry, cry "I will sustain my punishment,The sin being mine; but take away from meThis visioned Dread—this man—this Deity!"
The Earth.I have groaned; I have travailed: I am weary.I am blind with my own grief, and cannot see,As clear-eyed angels can, his agony,And what I see I also can sustain,Because his power protects me from his pain.I have groaned; I have travailed: I am dreary,Hearkening the thick sobs of my children's heart:How can I say "Depart"To that Atoner making calm and free?Am I a God as he,To lay down peace and power as willingly?
Ador.He looked for some to pity. There is none.All pity is within him and not for him.His earth is iron under him, and o'er himHis skies are brass.His seraphs cry "Alas!"With hallelujah voice that cannot weep.And man, for whom the dreadful work is done ...
Scornful Voices from the Earth. If verily thisbethe Eternal's son—
Ador.Thou hearest. Man is grateful.
Zerah.Can I hearNor darken into man and cease for everMy seraph-smile to wear?Was it for such,It pleased him to overleapHis glory with his love and severFrom the God-light and the throneAnd all angels bowing down,For whom his every look did touchNew notes of joy on the unworn stringOf an eternal worshipping?For such, he left his heaven?There, though never bought by bloodAnd tears, we gave him gratitude:We loved him there, though unforgiven.
Ador.The light is rivenAbove, around,And down in lurid fragments flung,That catch the mountain-peak and streamWith momentary gleam,Then perish in the water and the ground.River and waterfall,Forest and wilderness,Mountain and city, are together wrungInto one shape, and that is shapelessness;The darkness stands for all.
Zerah.The pathos hath the day undone:The death-look of His eyesHath overcome the sunAnd made it sicken in its narrow skies.
Ador.Is it to death? He dieth.
Zerah.Through the darkHe still, he only, is discernible—The naked hands and feet transfixèd stark,The countenance of patient anguish white,Do make themselves a lightMore dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,And therein do they shine.
Ador.God! Father-God!Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!Uplift the lids of inward deity,Flashing abroadThy burning Infinite!Light up this dark where there is nought to seeExcept the unimagined agonyUpon the sinless forehead of the Son!
Zerah.God, tarry not! Behold, enowHath he wandered as a stranger,Sorrowed as a victim. ThouAppear for him, O Father!Appear for him, Avenger!Appear for him, just One and holy One,For he is holy and just!At once the darkness and dishonour ratherTo the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,And hurl aback to ancient dustThese mortals that make blasphemiesWith their made breath, this earth and skiesThat only grow a little dim,Seeing their curse on him.But him, of all forsaken,Of creature and of brother,Never wilt thou forsake!Thy living and thy loving cannot slackenTheir firm essential hold upon each other,And well thou dost remember how his partWas still to lie upon thy breast and bePartaker of the light that dwelt in theeEre sun or seraph shone;And how while silence trembled round the throneThou countedst by the beatings of his heartThe moments of thine own eternity.Awaken,O right hand with the lightnings! Again gatherHis glory to thy glory! What estranger,What ill supreme in evil, can be thrustBetween the faithful Father and the Son?Appear for him, O Father!Appear for him, Avenger!Appear for him, just One and holy One,For he is holy and just!
Ador.Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;Thou hast no answer, Zerah.
Zerah.No reply,O unforsaking Father?
Ador.Hark!Instead of downward voice, a cryIs uttered from beneath.
Zerah.And by a sharper sound than death,Mine immortality is riven.The heavy darkness which doth tent the skyFloats backward as by a sudden wind:But I see no light behind,But I feel the farthest stars are allStricken and shaken,And I know a shadow sad and broadDoth fall—doth fallOn our vacant thrones in heaven.
Voice from the Cross.My God, my God,Why hast Thou me forsaken?
The Earth.Ah me, ah me, ah me! the dreadful Why!My sin is on thee, sinless one! Thou artGod-orphaned, for my burden on thy head.Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread!Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead;Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart.
Zerah.Hehath forsakenhim. I perish.
Ador.HoldUpon his name! we perish not. Of oldHis will—
Zerah.I seek his will. Seek, seraphim!My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curseReverberate spare us, seraph or universe?Hehath forsakenhim.
Ador.He cannot fail.
Angel Voices.We faint, we droop,Our love doth tremble like fear.
Voices of Fallen Angels from the Earth.Do we prevail?Or are we lost? Hath not the ill we didBeen heretofore our good?Is it not ill that one, all sinless, shouldHang heavy with all curses on a cross?Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hidWithin the empty graves which men did scoopTo hold more damnèd dead, we shudder throughWhat shall exalt us or undo,Our triumph, or our loss.
Voice from the Cross.It is finished.
Zerah.Hark, again!Like a victor, speaks the slain.
Angel Voices.Finished be the trembling vain!
Ador.Upward, like a well-loved son,Looketh he, the orphaned one.
Angel Voices.Finished is the mystic pain.
Voices of Fallen Angels.His deathly forehead at the word,Gleameth like a seraph sword.
Angel Voices.Finished is the demon reign.
Ador.His breath, as living God, createth,His breath, as dying man, completeth.
Angel Voices.Finished work his hands sustain.
The Earth.In mine ancient sepulchresWhere my kings and prophets freeze,Adam dead four thousand years,Unwakened by the universe'sEverlasting moan,Aye his ghastly silence mocking—Unwakened by his children's knockingAt his old sepulchral stone,"Adam, Adam, all this curse isThine and on us yet!"—Unwakened by the ceaseless tearsWherewith they made his cerement wet,"Adam, must thy curse remain?"—Starts with sudden life and hearsThrough the slow dripping of the caverned caves,—
Angel Voices.Finished is his bane.
Voice from the Cross.Father! my spirit to thine hands is given.
Ador.Hear the wailing winds that beBy wings of unclean spirits made!They, in that last look, surveyedThe love they lost in losing heaven,And passionately fleeWith a desolate cry that cleavesThe natural storms—thoughtheyare liftingGod's strong cedar-roots like leaves,And the earthquake and the thunder,Neither keeping either under,Roar and hurtle through the glooms—And a few pale stars are driftingPast the dark, to disappear,What time, from the splitting tombsGleamingly the dead arise,Viewing with their death-calmed eyesThe elemental strategies,To witness, victory is the Lord's.Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear!
Zerah.I hear alone the memory of his words.