Читать книгу The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 1 - Browning Elizabeth Barrett - Страница 6

Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna,

My exiled, my host!

Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a

Heaven's empire was lost.

Through the seams of her shaken foundations,

Smoke up in great joy!

With the smoke of your fierce exultations

Deform and destroy!

Smoke up with your lurid revenges,

And darken the face

Of the white heavens and taunt them with changes

From glory and grace.

We, in falling, while destiny strangles,

Pull down with us all.

Let them look to the rest of their angels!

Who's safe from a fall?

HE saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon

Requicken that sod?

Unkinged is the King of the Garden,

The image of God.

Other exiles are cast out of Eden, —

More curse has been hurled:

Come up, O my locusts, and feed in

The green of the world!

Come up! we have conquered by evil;

Good reigns not alone:

I prevail now, and, angel or devil,

Inherit a throne.

Lucifer. Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!

Now that the fruit is plucked, prince Gabriel,

I hold that Eden is impregnable

Under thy keeping.

Gabriel. Angel of the sin,

Such as thou standest, – pale in the drear light

Which rounds the rebel's work with Maker's wrath

Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls,

A monumental melancholy gloom

Seen down all ages, whence to mark despair

And measure out the distances from good.

Go from us straightway!

Lucifer. Wherefore?

Gabriel. Lucifer,

Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up.

Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.

Lucifer. Angels are in the world – wherefore not I?

Exiles are in the world – wherefore not I?

The cursed are in the world – wherefore not I?

Gabriel. Depart!

Lucifer. And where's the logic of 'depart'?

Our lady Eve had half been satisfied

To obey her Maker, if I had not learnt

To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream

Of guarding some monopoly in heaven

Instead of earth? Why, I can dream with thee

To the length of thy wings.

Gabriel. I do not dream.

This is not heaven, even in a dream, nor earth,

As earth was once, first breathed among the stars,

Articulate glory from the mouth divine,

To which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly,

Touched like a lute-string, and the sons of God

Said Amen, singing it. I know that this

Is earth not new created but new cursed —

This, Eden's gate not opened but built up

With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream?

Alas, not so! this is the Eden lost

By Lucifer the serpent; this the sword

(This sword alive with justice and with fire)

That smote, upon the forehead, Lucifer

The angel. Wherefore, angel, go – depart!

Enough is sinned and suffered.

Lucifer. By no means.

Here's a brave earth to sin and suffer on.

It holds fast still – it cracks not under curse;

It holds like mine immortal. Presently

We'll sow it thick enough with graves as green

Or greener certes, than its knowledge-tree.

We'll have the cypress for the tree of life,

More eminent for shadow: for the rest,

We'll build it dark with towns and pyramids,

And temples, if it please you: – we'll have feasts

And funerals also, merrymakes and wars,

Till blood and wine shall mix and run along

Right o'er the edges. And, good Gabriel

(Ye like that word in heaven), I too have strength —

Strength to behold Him and not worship Him,

Strength to fall from Him and not cry on Him,

Strength to be in the universe and yet

Neither God nor his servant. The red sign

Burnt on my forehead, which you taunt me with,

Is God's sign that it bows not unto God,

The potter's mark upon his work, to show

It rings well to the striker. I and the earth

Can bear more curse.

Gabriel. O miserable earth,

O ruined angel!

Lucifer. Well, and if it be!

I chose this ruin, I elected it

Of my will, not of service. What I do,

I do volitient, not obedient,

And overtop thy crown with my despair

My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to heaven,

And leave me to the earth, which is mine own

In virtue of her ruin, as I hers

In virtue of my revolt! Turn thou from both

That bright, impassive, passive angelhood,

And spare to read us backward any more

Of the spent hallelujahs!

Gabriel. Spirit of scorn,

I might say, of unreason! I might say,

That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives

With God's relations set in time and space;

That who elects, assumes a something good

Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys

The law of a Life-maker …

Lucifer. Let it pass!

No more, thou Gabriel! What if I stand up

And strike my brow against the crystalline

Roofing the creatures, – shall I say, for that,

My stature is too high for me to stand, —

Henceforward I must sit? Sit thou!

Gabriel. I kneel.

Lucifer. A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven,

And leave my earth to me!

Gabriel. Through heaven and earth

God's will moves freely, and I follow it,

As colour follows light. He overflows

The firmamental walls with deity,

Therefore with love; his lightnings go abroad,

His pity may do so, his angels must,

Whene'er he gives them charges.

Lucifer. Verily,

I and my demons, who are spirits of scorn,

Might hold this charge of standing with a sword

'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well

As the benignest angel of you all.

Gabriel. Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change.

If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God

This morning for a moment, thou hadst known

That only pity fitly can chastise:

Hate but avenges.

Lucifer. As it is, I know

Something of pity. When I reeled in heaven,

And my sword grew too heavy for my grasp,

Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce

So much as the first shell of, – toward the throne;

When I fell back, down, – staring up as I fell, —

The lightnings holding open my scathed lids,

And that thought of the infinite of God,

Hurled after to precipitate descent;

When countless angel faces still and stern

Pressed out upon me from the level heavens

Adown the abysmal spaces, and I fell

Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind

By the sight within your eyes, – 'twas then I knew

How ye could pity, my kind angelhood!

Gabriel. Alas, discrowned one, by the truth in me

Which God keeps in me, I would give away

All – save that truth and his love keeping it, —

To lead thee home again into the light

And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars,

When their rays tremble round them with much song

Sung in more gladness!

Lucifer. Sing, my Morning Star!

Last beautiful, last heavenly, that I loved!

If I could drench thy golden locks with tears,

What were it to this angel?

Gabriel. What love is.

And now I have named God.

Lucifer. Yet, Gabriel,

By the lie in me which I keep myself,

Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise,

What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts

To that earth-angel or earth-demon – which,

Thou and I have not solved the problem yet

Enough to argue, – that fallen Adam there, —

That red-clay and a breath, – who must, forsooth,

Live in a new apocalypse of sense,

With beauty and music waving in his trees

And running in his rivers, to make glad

His soul made perfect? – is it not for hope,

A hope within thee deeper than thy truth,

Of finally conducting him and his

To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine,

Which affront heaven with their vacuity?

Gabriel. Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven

To suit thy empty words. Glory and life

Fulfil their own depletions; and if God

Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in

A compensative splendour up the vast,

Flushing the starry arteries.

Lucifer. What a change!

So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too

Fill as may please you! – and be pitiful,

As ye translate that word, to the dethroned

And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,

That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,

Am here and will not go; while there, along

The light to which ye flash the desert out,

Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay

In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?

Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?

Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,

I am not a fallen angel!

Gabriel. Dost thou know

Aught of those exiles?

Lucifer. Ay: I know they have fled

Silent all day along the wilderness:

I know they wear, for burden on their backs,

The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,

And faces of the marshalled cherubim

Shining against, not for them; and I know

They dare not look in one another's face, —

As if each were a cherub!

Gabriel. Dost thou know

Aught of their future?

Lucifer. Only as much as this:

That evil will increase and multiply

Without a benediction.

Gabriel. Nothing more?

Lucifer. Why so the angels taunt! What should be more?

Gabriel. God is more.

Lucifer. Proving what?

Gabriel. That he is God,

And capable of saving. Lucifer,

I charge thee by the solitude he kept

Ere he created, – leave the earth to God!

Lucifer. My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin.

Gabriel. I charge thee by the memory of heaven

Ere any sin was done, – leave earth to God!

Lucifer. My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon.

Gabriel. I charge thee by the choral song we sang,

When up against the white shore of our feet

The depths of the creation swelled and brake, —

And the new worlds, the beaded foam and flower

Of all that coil, roared outward into space

On thunder-edges, – leave the earth to God!

Lucifer. My woe is on the earth, to curse thereby.

Gabriel. I charge thee by that mournful Morning Star

Which trembles …

Lucifer. Enough spoken. As the pine

In norland forest drops its weight of snows

By a night's growth, so, growing toward my ends

I drop thy counsels. Farewell, Gabriel!

Watch out thy service; I achieve my will.

And peradventure in the after years,

When thoughtful men shall bend their spacious brows

Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere

To ruffle their smooth manhood and break up

With lurid lights of intermittent hope

Their human fear and wrong, – they may discern

The heart of a lost angel in the earth.

Hearken, oh hearken! let your souls behind you

Turn, gently moved!

Our voices feel along the Dread to find you,

O lost, beloved!

Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels,

They press and pierce:

Our requiems follow fast on our evangels, —

Voice throbs in verse.

We are but orphaned spirits left in Eden

A time ago:

God gave us golden cups, and we were bidden

To feed you so.

But now our right hand hath no cup remaining,

No work to do,

The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining

The whole earth through.

Most ineradicable stains, for showing

(Not interfused!)

That brighter colours were the world's forgoing,

Than shall be used.

Hearken, oh hearken! ye shall hearken surely

For years and years,

The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely,

Of spirits' tears.

The yearning to a beautiful denied you

Shall strain your powers;

Ideal sweetnesses shall overglide you,

Resumed from ours.

In all your music, our pathetic minor

Your ears shall cross;

And all good gifts shall mind you of diviner,

With sense of loss.

We shall be near you in your poet-languors

And wild extremes,

What time ye vex the desert with vain angers,

Or mock with dreams.

And when upon you, weary after roaming,

Death's seal is put,

By the foregone ye shall discern the coming,

Through eyelids shut.

Spirits of the Trees.

Hark! the Eden trees are stirring,

Soft and solemn in your hearing!

Oak and linden, palm and fir,

Tamarisk and juniper,

Each still throbbing in vibration

Since that crowning of creation

When the God-breath spake abroad,

Let us make man like to God!

And the pine stood quivering

As the awful word went by,

Like a vibrant music-string

Stretched from mountain-peak to sky;

And the platan did expand

Slow and gradual, branch and head;

And the cedar's strong black shade

Fluttered brokenly and grand:

Grove and wood were swept aslant

In emotion jubilant.

Voice of the same, but softer.

Which divine impulsion cleaves

In dim movements to the leaves

Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted,

In the sunlight greenly sifted, —

In the sunlight and the moonlight

Greenly sifted through the trees.

Ever wave the Eden trees

In the nightlight and the noonlight,

With a ruffling of green branches

Shaded off to resonances,

Never stirred by rain or breeze.

Fare ye well, farewell!

The sylvan sounds, no longer audible,

Expire at Eden's door.

Each footstep of your treading

Treads out some murmur which ye heard before.

Farewell! the trees of Eden

Ye shall hear nevermore.

River Spirits.

Hark! the flow of the four rivers —

Hark the flow!

How the silence round you shivers,

While our voices through it go,

Cold and clear.

A softer Voice.

Think a little, while ye hear,

Of the banks

Where the willows and the deer

Crowd in intermingled ranks,

As if all would drink at once

Where the living water runs! —

Of the fishes' golden edges

Flashing in and out the sedges;

Of the swans on silver thrones,

Floating down the winding streams

With impassive eyes turned shoreward

And a chant of undertones, —

And the lotos leaning forward

To help them into dreams!

Fare ye well, farewell!

The river-sounds, no longer audible,

Expire at Eden's door.

Each footstep of your treading

Treads out some murmur which ye heard before.

Farewell! the streams of Eden

Ye shall hear nevermore.

Bird Spirit.

I am the nearest nightingale

That singeth in Eden after you;

And I am singing loud and true,

And sweet, – I do not fail.

I sit upon a cypress bough,

Close to the gate, and I fling my song

Over the gate and through the mail

Of the warden angels marshalled strong, —

Over the gate and after you.

And the warden angels let it pass,

Because the poor brown bird, alas,

Sings in the garden, sweet and true.

And I build my song of high pure notes,

Note over note, height over height,

Till I strike the arch of the Infinite,

And I bridge abysmal agonies

With strong, clear calms of harmonies, —

And something abides, and something floats,

In the song which I sing after you.

Fare ye well, farewell!

The creature-sounds, no longer audible,

Expire at Eden's door.

Each footstep of your treading

Treads out some cadence which ye heard before.

Farewell! the birds of Eden,

Ye shall hear nevermore.

Flower Spirits.

We linger, we linger,

The last of the throng,

Like the tones of a singer

Who loves his own song.

We are spirit-aromas

Of blossom and bloom.

We call your thoughts home, – as

Ye breathe our perfume, —

To the amaranth's splendour

Afire on the slopes;

To the lily-bells tender,

And grey heliotropes;

To the poppy-plains keeping

Such dream-breath and blee

That the angels there stepping

Grew whiter to see:

To the nook, set with moly,

Ye jested one day in,

Till your smile waxed too holy

And left your lips praying:

To the rose in the bower-place,

That dripped o'er you sleeping;

To the asphodel flower-place,

Ye walked ankle-deep in.

We pluck at your raiment,

We stroke down your hair,

We faint in our lament

And pine into air.

Fare ye well, farewell!

The Eden scents, no longer sensible,

Expire at Eden's door.

Each footstep of your treading

Treads out some fragrance which ye knew before.

Farewell! the flowers of Eden,

Ye shall smell nevermore.

Adam. Pausing a moment on this outer edge

Where the supernal sword-glare cuts in light

The dark exterior desert, – hast thou strength,

Beloved, to look behind us to the gate?

Eve. Have I not strength to look up to thy face?

Adam. We need be strong: yon spectacle of cloud

Which seals the gate up to the final doom,

Is God's seal manifest. There seem to lie

A hundred thunders in it, dark and dead;

The unmolten lightnings vein it motionless;

And, outward from its depth, the self-moved sword

Swings slow its awful gnomon of red fire

From side to side, in pendulous horror slow,

Across the stagnant ghastly glare thrown flat

On the intermediate ground from that to this.

The angelic hosts, the archangelic pomps,

Thrones, dominations, princedoms, rank on rank,

Rising sublimely to the feet of God,

On either side and overhead the gate,

Show like a glittering and sustainèd smoke

Drawn to an apex. That their faces shine

Betwixt the solemn clasping of their wings

Clasped high to a silver point above their heads, —

We only guess from hence, and not discern.

Eve. Though we were near enough to see them shine,

The shadow on thy face were awfuller,

To me, at least, – to me – than all their light.

Adam. What is this, Eve? thou droppest heavily

In a heap earthward, and thy body heaves

Under the golden floodings of thine hair!

Eve. O Adam, Adam! by that name of Eve —

Thine Eve, thy life – which suits me little now,

Seeing that I now confess myself thy death

And thine undoer, as the snake was mine, —

I do adjure thee, put me straight away,

Together with my name! Sweet, punish me!

O Love, be just! and, ere we pass beyond

The light cast outward by the fiery sword,

Into the dark which earth must be to us,

Bruise my head with thy foot, – as the curse said

My seed shall the first tempter's! strike with curse,

As God struck in the garden! and as he,

Being satisfied with justice and with wrath,

Did roll his thunder gentler at the close, —

Thou, peradventure, mayst at last recoil

To some soft need of mercy. Strike, my lord!

I, also, after tempting, writhe on the ground,

And I would feed on ashes from thine hand,

As suits me, O my tempted!

Adam. My beloved,

Mine Eve and life – I have no other name

For thee or for the sun than what ye are,

My utter life and light! If we have fallen,

It is that we have sinned, – we: God is just;

And, since his curse doth comprehend us both,

It must be that his balance holds the weights

Of first and last sin on a level. What!

Shall I who had not virtue to stand straight

Among the hills of Eden, here assume

To mend the justice of the perfect God,

By piling up a curse upon his curse,

Against thee – thee?

Eve. For so, perchance, thy God,

Might take thee into grace for scorning me;

Thy wrath against the sinner giving proof

Of inward abrogation of the sin:

And so, the blessed angels might come down

And walk with thee as erst, – I think they would, —

Because I was not near to make them sad

Or soil the rustling of their innocence.

Adam. They know me. I am deepest in the guilt,

If last in the transgression.

Eve. Thou!

Adam. If God,

Who gave the right and joyaunce of the world

Both unto thee and me, – gave thee to me,

The best gift last, the last sin was the worst,

Which sinned against more complement of gifts

And grace of giving. God! I render back

Strong benediction and perpetual praise

From mortal feeble lips (as incense-smoke,

Out of a little censer, may fill heaven),

That thou, in striking my benumbèd hands

And forcing them to drop all other boons

Of beauty and dominion and delight, —

Hast left this well-beloved Eve, this life

Within life, this best gift between their palms,

In gracious compensation!

Eve. Is it thy voice?

Or some saluting angel's – calling home

My feet into the garden?

Adam. O my God!

I, standing here between the glory and dark, —

The glory of thy wrath projected forth

From Eden's wall, the dark of our distress

Which settles a step off in that drear world —

Lift up to thee the hands from whence hath fallen

Only creation's sceptre, – thanking thee

That rather thou hast cast me out with her

Than left me lorn of her in Paradise,

With angel looks and angel songs around

To show the absence of her eyes and voice,

And make society full desertness

Without her use in comfort!

Eve. Where is loss?

Am I in Eden? can another speak

Mine own love's tongue?

Adam. Because with her, I stand

Upright, as far as can be in this fall,

And look away from heaven which doth accuse,

And look away from earth which doth convict,

Into her face, and crown my discrowned brow

Out of her love, and put the thought of her

Around me, for an Eden full of birds,

And lift her body up – thus – to my heart,

And with my lips upon her lips, – thus, thus, —

Do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath

Which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides

But overtops this grief.

Eve. I am renewed.

My eyes grow with the light which is in thine;

The silence of my heart is full of sound.

Hold me up – so! Because I comprehend

This human love, I shall not be afraid

Of any human death; and yet because

I know this strength of love, I seem to know

Death's strength by that same sign. Kiss on my lips,

To shut the door close on my rising soul, —

Lest it pass outwards in astonishment

And leave thee lonely!

Adam. Yet thou liest, Eve,

Bent heavily on thyself across mine arm,

Thy face flat to the sky.

Eve. Ay, and the tears

Running, as it might seem, my life from me,

They run so fast and warm. Let me lie so,

And weep so, as if in a dream or prayer,

Unfastening, clasp by clasp, the hard tight thought

Which clipped my heart and showed me evermore

Loathed of thy justice as I loathe the snake,

And as the pure ones loathe our sin. To-day,

All day, beloved, as we fled across

This desolating radiance cast by swords

Not suns, – my lips prayed soundless to myself,

Striking against each other – "O Lord God!"

('Twas so I prayed) "I ask Thee by my sin,

"And by thy curse, and by thy blameless heavens,

"Make dreadful haste to hide me from thy face

"And from the face of my beloved here

"For whom I am no helpmeet, quick away

"Into the new dark mystery of death!

"I will lie still there, I will make no plaint,

"I will not sigh, nor sob, nor speak a word,

"Nor struggle to come back beneath the sun

"Where peradventure I might sin anew

"Against thy mercy and his pleasure. Death,

"O death, whatever it be, is good enough

"For such as I am: while for Adam here,

"No voice shall say again, in heaven or earth,

"It is not good for him to be alone."

Adam. And was it good for such a prayer to pass,

My unkind Eve, betwixt our mutual lives?

If I am exiled, must I be bereaved?

Eve. 'Twas an ill prayer: it shall be prayed no more;

And God did use it like a foolishness,

Giving no answer. Now my heart has grown

Too high and strong for such a foolish prayer,

Love makes it strong and since I was the first

In the transgression, with a steady foot

I will be first to tread from this sword-glare

Into the outer darkness of the waste, —

And thus I do it.

Adam. Thus I follow thee,

As erewhile in the sin. – What sounds! what sounds!

I feel a music which comes straight from heaven,

As tender as a watering dew.

Eve. I think

That angels – not those guarding Paradise, —

But the love-angels, who came erst to us,

And when we said 'God,' fainted unawares

Back from our mortal presence unto God,

(As if he drew them inward in a breath)

His name being heard of them, – I think that they

With sliding voices lean from heavenly towers,

Invisible but gracious. Hark – how soft!

Mortal man and woman,

Go upon your travel!

Heaven assist the human

Smoothly to unravel

All that web of pain

Wherein ye are holden.

Do ye know our voices

Chanting down the Golden?

Do ye guess our choice is,

Being unbeholden,

To be hearkened by you yet again?

This pure door of opal

God hath shut between us, —

Us, his shining people,

You, who once have seen us

And are blinded new!

Yet, across the doorway,

Past the silence reaching,

Farewells evermore may,

Blessing in the teaching,

Glide from us to you.

First Semichorus.

Think how erst your Eden,

Day on day succeeding,

With our presence glowed.

We came as if the Heavens were bowed

To a milder music rare.

Ye saw us in our solemn treading,

Treading down the steps of cloud,

While our wings, outspreading

Double calms of whiteness,

Dropped superfluous brightness

Down from stair to stair.

Second Semichorus.

Or oft, abrupt though tender,

While ye gazed on space,

We flashed our angel-splendour

In either human face.

With mystic lilies in our hands,

From the atmospheric bands

Breaking with a sudden grace,

We took you unaware!

While our feet struck glories

Outward, smooth and fair,

Which we stood on floorwise,

Platformed in mid-air.

First Semichorus.

Or oft, when Heaven-descended,

Stood we in our wondering sight

In a mute apocalypse

With dumb vibrations on our lips

From hosannas ended,

And grand half-vanishings

Of the empyreal things

Within our eyes belated,

Till the heavenly Infinite

Falling off from the Created,

Left our inward contemplation

Opened into ministration.

Chorus.

Then upon our axle turning

Of great joy to sympathy,

We sang out the morning

Broadening up the sky,

Or we drew

Our music through

The noontide's hush and heat and shine,

Informed with our intense Divine:

Interrupted vital notes

Palpitating hither, thither,

Burning out into the æther,

Sensible like fiery motes.

Or, whenever twilight drifted

Through the cedar masses,

The globèd sun we lifted,

Trailing purple, trailing gold

Out between the passes

Of the mountains manifold,

To anthems slowly sung:

While he, – aweary, half in swoon

For joy to hear our climbing tune

Transpierce the stars' concentric rings, —

The burden of his glory flung

In broken lights upon our wings.

Lucifer. Now may all fruits be pleasant to thy lips,

Beautiful Eve! The times have somewhat changed

Since thou and I had talk beneath a tree,

Albeit ye are not gods yet.

Eve. Adam! hold

My right hand strongly! It is Lucifer —

And we have love to lose.

Adam. I' the name of God,

Go apart from us, O thou Lucifer!

And leave us to the desert thou hast made

Out of thy treason. Bring no serpent-slime

Athwart this path kept holy to our tears!

Or we may curse thee with their bitterness.

Lucifer. Curse freely! curses thicken. Why, this Eve

Who thought me once part worthy of her ear

And somewhat wiser than the other beasts, —

Drawing together her large globes of eyes,

The light of which is throbbing in and out

Their steadfast continuity of gaze, —

Knots her fair eyebrows in so hard a knot,

And down from her white heights of womanhood

Looks on me so amazed, – I scarce should fear

To wager such an apple as she plucked

Against one riper from the tree of life,

That she could curse too – as a woman may —

Smooth in the vowels.

Eve. So – speak wickedly!

I like it best so. Let thy words be wounds, —

For, so, I shall not fear thy power to hurt.

Trench on the forms of good by open ill —

For, so, I shall wax strong and grand with scorn,

Scorning myself for ever trusting thee

As far as thinking, ere a snake ate dust,

He could speak wisdom.

Lucifer. Our new gods, it seems,

Deal more in thunders than in courtesies.

And, sooth, mine own Olympus, which anon

I shall build up to loud-voiced imagery

From all the wandering visions of the world,

May show worse railing than our lady Eve

Pours o'er the rounding of her argent arm.

But why should this be? Adam pardoned Eve.

Adam. Adam loved Eve. Jehovah pardon both!

Eve. Adam forgave Eve – because loving Eve.

Lucifer. So, well. Yet Adam was undone of Eve,

As both were by the snake. Therefore forgive,

In like wise, fellow-temptress, the poor snake —

Who stung there, not so poorly! [Aside.

Eve. Hold thy wrath,

Beloved Adam! let me answer him;

For this time he speaks truth, which we should hear,

And asks for mercy, which I most should grant,

In like wise, as he tells us – in like wise!

And therefore I thee pardon, Lucifer,

As freely as the streams of Eden flowed

When we were happy by them. So, depart;

Leave us to walk the remnant of our time

Out mildly in the desert. Do not seek

To harm us any more or scoff at us,

Or ere the dust be laid upon our face,

To find there the communion of the dust

And issue of the dust, – Go!

Adam. At once, go!

Lucifer. Forgive! and go! Ye images of clay,

Shrunk somewhat in the mould, – what jest is this?

What words are these to use? By what a thought

Conceive ye of me? Yesterday – a snake!

To-day – what?

Adam. A strong spirit.

Eve. A sad spirit.

Adam. Perhaps a fallen angel. – Who shall say!

Lucifer. Who told thee, Adam?

Adam. Thou! The prodigy

Of thy vast brows and melancholy eyes

Which comprehend the heights of some great fall.

I think that thou hast one day worn a crown

Under the eyes of God.

Lucifer. And why of God?

Adam. It were no crown else. Verily, I think

Thou'rt fallen far. I had not yesterday

Said it so surely, but I know to-day

Grief by grief, sin by sin.

Lucifer. A crown, by a crown.

Adam. Ay, mock me! now I know more than I knew:

Now I know that thou art fallen below hope

Of final re-ascent.

Lucifer. Because?

Adam. Because

A spirit who expected to see God

Though at the last point of a million years,

Could dare no mockery of a ruined man

Such as this Adam.

Lucifer. Who is high and bold —

Be it said passing! – of a good red clay

Discovered on some top of Lebanon,

Or haply of Aornus, beyond sweep

Of the black eagle's wing! A furlong lower

Had made a meeker king for Eden. Soh!

Is it not possible, by sin and grief

(To give the things your names) that spirits should rise

Instead of falling?

Adam. Most impossible.

The Highest being the Holy and the Glad,

Whoever rises must approach delight

And sanctity in the act.

Lucifer. Ha, my clay-king!

Thou wilt not rule by wisdom very long

The after generations. Earth, methinks,

Will disinherit thy philosophy

For a new doctrine suited to thine heirs,

And class these present dogmas with the rest

Of the old-world traditions, Eden fruits

And Saurian fossils.

Eve. Speak no more with him,

Beloved! it is not good to speak with him.

Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more!

We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn,

Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting,

Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft,

We would be alone. – Go!

Lucifer. Ah! ye talk the same,

All of you – spirits and clay – go, and depart!

In Heaven they said so, and at Eden's gate,

And here, reiterant, in the wilderness.

None saith, Stay with me, for thy face is fair!

None saith, Stay with me, for thy voice is sweet!

And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.

Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?

Eve. Thou hast a glorious darkness.

Lucifer. Nothing more?

Eve. I think, no more.

Lucifer. False Heart – thou thinkest more!

Thou canst not choose but think, as I praise God,

Unwillingly but fully, that I stand

Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves

Were fashioned very good at best, so we

Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word

Which thrilled behind us, God himself being moved

When that august work of a perfect shape,

His dignities of sovran angel-hood,

Swept out into the universe, – divine

With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods,

And silver-solemn clash of cymbal wings.

Whereof was I, in motion and in form,

A part not poorest. And yet, – yet, perhaps,

This beauty which I speak of, is not here,

As God's voice is not here, nor even my crown —

I do not know. What is this thought or thing

Which I call beauty? Is it thought, or thing?

Is it a thought accepted for a thing?

Or both? or neither? – a pretext – a word?

Its meaning flutters in me like a flame

Under my own breath, my perceptions reel

For evermore around it, and fall off,

As if it too were holy.

Eve. Which it is.

Adam. The essence of all beauty, I call love.

The attribute, the evidence, and end,

The consummation to the inward sense,

Of beauty apprehended from without,

I still call love. As form, when colourless,

Is nothing to the eye, – that pine-tree there,

Without its black and green, being all a blank, —

So, without love, is beauty undiscerned

In man or angel. Angel! rather ask

What love is in thee, what love moves to thee,

And what collateral love moves on with thee;

Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.

Lucifer. Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love

I darken to the image. Beauty – love!

Adam. Thou art pale, Eve.

Eve. The precipice of ill

Down this colossal nature, dizzies me:

And, hark! the starry harmony remote

Seems measuring the heights from whence he fell.

Adam. Think that we have not fallen so! By the hope

And aspiration, by the love and faith,

We do exceed the stature of this angel.

Eve. Happier we are than he is, by the death.

Adam. Or rather, by the life of the Lord God!

How dim the angel grows, as if that blast

Of music swept him back into the dark.

Eve. It throbs in on us like a plaintive heart,

Pressing, with slow pulsations, vibrative,

Its gradual sweetness through the yielding air,

To such expression as the stars may use,

Most starry-sweet and strange! With every note

That grows more loud, the angel grows more dim,

Receding in proportion to approach,

Until he stand afar, – a shade.

Adam. Now, words.

Mine orbèd image sinks

Back from thee, back from thee,

As thou art fallen, methinks,

Back from me, back from me.

O my light-bearer,

Could another fairer

Lack to thee, lack to thee?

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

I loved thee with the fiery love of stars

Who love by burning, and by loving move,

Too near the throned Jehovah not to love.

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Their brows flash fast on me from gliding cars,

Pale-passioned for my loss.

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Mine orbèd heats drop cold

Down from thee, down from thee,

As fell thy grace of old

Down from me, down from me,

O my light-bearer,

Is another fairer

Won to thee, won to thee?

Ah, ah, Heosphoros,

Great love preceded loss,

Known to thee, known to thee.

Ah, ah!

Thou, breathing thy communicable grace

Of life into my light,

Mine astral faces, from thine angel face,

Hast inly fed,

And flooded me with radiance overmuch

From thy pure height.

Ah, ah!

Thou, with calm, floating pinions both ways spread,

Erect, irradiated,

Didst sting my wheel of glory

On, on before thee

Along the Godlight by a quickening touch!

Ha, ha!

Around, around the firmamental ocean

I swam expanding with delirious fire!

Around, around, around, in blind desire

To be drawn upward to the Infinite —

Ha, ha!

Until, the motion flinging out the motion

To a keen whirl of passion and avidity,

To a dim whirl of languor and delight,

I wound in gyrant orbits smooth and white

With that intense rapidity.

Around, around,

I wound and interwound,

While all the cyclic heavens about me spun.

Stars, planets, suns, and moons dilated broad,

Then flashed together into a single sun,

And wound, and wound in one:

And as they wound I wound, – around, around,

In a great fire I almost took for God.

Ha, ha, Heosphoros!

Thine angel glory sinks

Down from me, down from me —

My beauty falls, methinks,

Down from thee, down from thee!

O my light-bearer,

O my path-preparer,

Gone from me, gone from me!

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

I cannot kindle underneath the brow

Of this new angel here, who is not thou.

All things are altered since that time ago, —

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

I am strange – I am slow.

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Henceforward, human eyes of lovers be

The only sweetest sight that I shall see,

With tears between the looks raised up to me.

Ah, ah!

When, having wept all night, at break of day

Above the folded hills they shall survey

My light, a little trembling, in the grey.

Ah, ah!

And gazing on me, such shall comprehend,

Through all my piteous pomp at morn or even

And melancholy leaning out of heaven,

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

That love may close in loss!

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Adam. How doth the wide and melancholy earth

Gather her hills around us, grey and ghast,

And stare with blank significance of loss

Right in our faces! Is the wind up?

Eve. Nay.

Adam. And yet the cedars and the junipers

Rock slowly through the mist, without a sound,

And shapes which have no certainty of shape

Drift duskly in and out between the pines,

And loom along the edges of the hills,

And lie flat, curdling in the open ground —

Shadows without a body, which contract

And lengthen as we gaze on them.

Eve. O life

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

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

Contains all life beside.

Eve. I think the earth

Is crazed with curse, and wanders from the sense

Of those first laws affixed to form and space

Or ever she knew sin.

Adam. We will not fear;

We were brave sinning.

Eve. Yea, I plucked the fruit

With eyes upturned to heaven and seeing there

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

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

Out of sight with our Eden.

Adam. Night is near.

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

And stand within the sword-glare till we die,

Believing it is better to meet death

Than suffer desolation.

Adam. Nay, beloved!

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

As erst we plucked the apple: we must wait

Until he gives death as he gave us life,

Nor murmur faintly o'er the primal gift

Because we spoilt its sweetness with our sin.

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

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

From their dilated orbits bound before

To meet the spectral Dread!

Eve. I am afraid —

Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes

Of intermittent motion, aspect vague

And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,

Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.

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

Treading upon the darkness without feet,

And fluttering on the darkness without wings!

Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;

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

Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on

Copious as rivers.

Adam. Some spring up like fire;

And some coil …

Eve. Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say

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

From all the emerald splendour of his height

And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,

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

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

Permitting these to haunt us in the place

Of his belovèd angels – gone from us

Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God,

That didst permit the angels to go home

And live no more with us who are not pure,

Save us too from a loathly company —

Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps,

As we are in the purest! Pity us —

Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away

From verity and from stability,

Or what we name such through the precedence

Of earth's adjusted uses, – leave us not

To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,

Which are the more distraught and full of pain

And weak of apprehension!

Adam. Courage, Sweet!

The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop

With slow concentric movement, each on each, —

Expressing wider spaces, – and collapsed

In lines more definite for imagery

And clearer for relation, till the throng

Of shapeless spectra merge into a few

Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand

Which sweep out and around us vastily

And hold us in a circle and a calm.

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

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

Adam. Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth,

Which rounds us with a visionary dread,

Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,

In fantasque apposition and approach,

To those celestial, constellated twelve

Which palpitate adown the silent nights

Under the pressure of the hand of God

Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour,

Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven:

But, girdling close our nether wilderness,

The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow, —

Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time,

In twelve colossal shades instead of stars,

Through which the ecliptic line of mystery

Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope,

Foreshowing life and death.

Eve. By dream or sense,

Do we see this?

Adam. Our spirits have climbed high

By reason of the passion of our grief,

And, from the top of sense, looked over sense

To the significance and heart of things

Rather than things themselves.

Eve. And the dim twelve…

Adam. Are dim exponents of the creature-life

As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved!

By stricter apprehension of the sight,

Suggestions of the creatures shall assuage

The terror of the shadows, – what is known

Subduing the unknown and taming it

From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there,

Presents a lion, albeit twenty times

As large as any lion – with a roar

Set soundless in his vibratory jaws,

And a strange horror stirring in his mane.

And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh —

Good against ill, perchance; and there, a crab

Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws,

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

Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself.

A bull stands hornèd here with gibbous glooms;

And a ram likewise: and a scorpion writhes

Its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark.

This way a goat leaps with wild blank of beard;

And here, fantastic fishes duskly float,

Using the calm for waters, while their fins

Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.

While images more human —

Eve. How he stands,

That phantasm of a man – who is not thou!

Two phantasms of two men!

Adam. One that sustains,

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

Of manhood's curse of labour.2 Dost thou see

That phantasm of a woman?

Eve. I have seen;

But look off to those small humanities3

Which draw me tenderly across my fear, —

Lesser and fainter than my womanhood,

Or yet thy manhood – with strange innocence

Set in the misty lines of head and hand.

They lean together! I would gaze on them

Longer and longer, till my watching eyes,

As the stars do in watching anything,

Should light them forward from their outline vague

To clear configuration.

But what Shapes

Rise up between us in the open space,

And thrust me into horror, back from hope!

Adam. Colossal Shapes – twin sovran images,

With a disconsolate, blank majesty

Set in their wondrous faces! with no look,

And yet an aspect – a significance

Of individual life and passionate ends,

Which overcomes us gazing.

O bleak sound,

O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound!

How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels,

Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail

Around the cyclic zodiac, and gains force,

And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,

On the wan faces of these images

We see before us, – whereby modified,

It draws a straight line of articulate song

From out that spiral faintness of lament,

And, by one voice, expresses many griefs.

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 duty

Might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty —

Yet I wail!

I drave on with the worlds exultingly,

Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall;

Individual aspect and complexity

Of gyratory orb and interval

Lost in the fluent motion of delight

Toward the high ends of Being beyond sight —

Yet I wail!

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 measure

The sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure —

Yet I wail!

What a full hum of life around his lips

Bore witness to the fulness of creation!

How all the grand words were full-laden ships

Each sailing onward from enunciation

To separate existence, – and each bearing

The creature's power of joying, hoping, fearing!

Yet I wail!

Eve. They wail, beloved! they speak of glory and God,

And they wail – wail. That burden of the song

Drops from it like its fruit, and heavily falls

Into the lap of silence.

Adam. Hark, again!

First Spirit.

I was so beautiful, so beautiful,

My joy stood up within me bold to add

A word to God's, – and, when His work was full,

To "very good" responded "very glad!"

Filtered through roses did the light enclose me,

And bunches of the grape swam blue across me —

Yet I wail!

Second Spirit.

I bounded with my panthers: I rejoiced

In my young tumbling lions rolled together:

My stag, the river at his fetlocks, poised

Then dipped his antlers through the golden weather

In the same ripple which the alligator

Left, in his joyous troubling of the water —

Yet I wail!

First Spirit.

O my deep waters, cataract and flood,

What wordless triumph did your voices render

O mountain-summits, where the angels stood

And shook from head and wing thick dews of splendour!

How, with a holy quiet, did your Earthy

Accept that Heavenly, knowing ye were worthy!

Yet I wail!

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 misdoers

By God's sword at your backs! I lent my clay

To make your bodies, which had grown more flowers:

And now, in change for what I lent, ye give me

The thorn to vex, the tempest-fare to cleave me —

And I wail!

Second Spirit.

I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fasten

My sorrow's fang upon your souls dishonoured?

Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten, —

Your crown's weight on the world, to drag it downward

Unto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scenting

The blood of wars, roar hoarse and unrelenting —

And I wail!

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;

I was obedient. Wherefore in my centre

Do I thrill at this curse of death and winter? —

Do I wail?

Second Spirit.

I wail, I wail! I wail in the assault

Of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded!

My nightingale sang sweet without a fault,

My gentle leopards innocently bounded.

We were obedient. What is this convulses

Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses?

And I wail!

Eve. I choose God's thunder and His angels' swords

To die by, Adam, rather than such words.

Let us pass out and flee.

Adam. We cannot flee.

This zodiac of the creatures' cruelty

Curls round us, like a river cold and drear,

And shuts us in, constraining us to hear.

First Spirit.

I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike

A sense of death to me, and undug graves!

The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling like

The ragged foam along the ocean-waves:

The restless earthquakes rock against each other;

The elements moan 'round me – "Mother, mother" —

And I wail!

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 do

That we should fall from bliss as ye from duty?

Wild shriek the hawks, in waiting for their jesses,

Fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses —

And I wail!

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

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

Inferior creatures but still innocent,

Be salutation from a guilty mouth

Yet worthy of some audience and respect

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

God hath rebuked us, who is over us

To give rebuke or death, and if ye wail

Because of any suffering from our sin,

Ye who are under and not over us,

Be satisfied with God, if not with us,

And pass out from our presence in such peace

As we have left you, to enjoy revenge

Such as the heavens have made you. Verily,

There must be strife between us, large as sin.

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

Upon the wrong we did to reach disdain,

Who rather should be humbler evermore

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

I who spake once to such a bitter end —

Shall I speak humbly now who once was proud?

I, schooled by sin to more humility

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

My king, if not the world's?

Adam. Speak as thou wilt.

Eve. Thus, then – my hand in thine —

… Sweet, dreadful Spirits!

I pray you humbly in the name of God,

Not to say of these tears, which are impure —

Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth

From clean volitions toward a spotted will,

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

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

That absolute pardon is impossible

From you to me, by reason of my sin, —

And that I cannot evermore, as once,

With worthy acceptation of pure joy,

Behold the trances of the holy hills

Beneath the leaning stars, or watch the vales

Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy, —

Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between

Two grassy uplands, – and the river-wells

Work out their bubbling mysteries underground, —

And all the birds sing, till for joy of song

They lift their trembling wings as if to heave

The too-much weight of music from their heart

And float it up the æther. I am 'ware

That these things I can no more apprehend

With a pure organ into a full delight, —

The sense of beauty and of melody

Being no more aided in me by the sense

Of personal adjustment to those heights

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

But rather coupled darkly and made ashamed

By my percipiency of sin and fall

In melancholy of humiliant thoughts.

But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits – albeit this

Your accusation must confront my soul,

And your pathetic utterance and full gaze

Must evermore subdue me, – be content!

Conquer me gently – as if pitying me,

Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick

As watering dews of Eden, unreproached;

And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth,

Not ruffled – smooth and still with your reproof,