_ Thy face
upturned
toward the throne is dark;
Thou hast no answer, Zerah.
Thou hast no answer, Zerah.
Elizabeth Browning
_ God!
God!
Spirit of my spirit! who movest
Through seraph veins in burning deity
To light the quenchless pulses! --
_Ador. _ But hast trod
The depths of love in thy peculiar nature,
And not in any thou hast made and lovest
In narrow seraph hearts! --
_Zerah. _ Above, Creator!
Within, Upholder!
_Ador. _ And below, below,
The creature's and the upholden's sacrifice!
_Zerah. _ Why do I pause? --
_Ador. _ There is a silentness
That answers thee enow,
That, like a brazen sound
Excluding others, doth ensheathe us round,--
Hear it. It is not from the visible skies
Though they are still,
Unconscious that their own dropped dews express
The light of heaven on every earthly hill.
It is not from the hills, though calm and bare
They, since their first creation,
Through midnight cloud or morning's glittering air
Or the deep deluge blindness, toward the place
Whence thrilled the mystic word's creative grace,
And whence again shall come
The word that uncreates,
Have lift their brows in voiceless expectation.
It is not from the places that entomb
Man's dead, though common Silence there dilates
Her soul to grand proportions, worthily
To fill life's vacant room.
Not there: not there.
Not yet within those chambers lieth He,
A dead one in his living world; his south
And west winds blowing over earth and sea,
And not a breath on that creating mouth.
But now,--a silence keeps
(Not death's, nor sleep's)
The lips whose whispered word
Might roll the thunders round reverberated.
Silent art thou, O my Lord,
Bowing down thy stricken head!
Fearest thou, a groan of thine
Would make the pulse of thy creation fail
As thine own pulse? --would rend the veil
Of visible things and let the flood
Of the unseen Light, the essential God,
Rush in to whelm the undivine?
Thy silence, to my thinking, is as dread.
_Zerah. _ O silence!
_Ador. _ Doth it say to thee--the NAME,
Slow-learning seraph?
_Zerah. _ I have learnt.
_Ador. _ The flame
Perishes in thine eyes.
_Zerah. _ He opened his,
And looked. I cannot bear--
_Ador. _ Their agony?
_Zerah. _ Their love. God's depth is in them. From his brows
White, terrible in meekness, didst thou see
The lifted eyes unclose?
He is God, seraph! Look no more on me,
O God--I am not God.
_Ador. _ The loving is
Sublimed within them by the sorrowful.
In heaven we could sustain them.
_Zerah. _ Heaven is dull,
Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burns
In fluent, refluent motion
Along the crystal ocean;
The springing of the golden harps between
The bowery wings, in fountains of sweet sound,
The winding, wandering music that returns
Upon itself, exultingly self-bound
In the great spheric round
Of everlasting praises;
The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene,
Visibly flashing from the supreme throne
Full in seraphic faces
Till each astonishes the other, grown
More beautiful with worship and delight--
My heaven! my home of heaven! my infinite
Heaven-choirs! what are ye to this dust and death,
This cloud, this cold, these tears, this failing breath,
Where God's immortal love now issueth
In this MAN'S woe?
_Ador. _ His eyes are very deep yet calm.
_Zerah. _ No more
On _me_, Jehovah-man--
_Ador. _ Calm-deep. They show
A passion which is tranquil. They are seeing
No earth, no heaven, no men that slay and curse,
No seraphs that adore;
Their gaze is on the invisible, the dread,
The things we cannot view or think or speak,
Because we are too happy, or too weak,--
The sea of ill, for which the universe,
With all its piled space, can find no shore,
With all its life, no living foot to tread.
But he, accomplished in Jehovah-being,
Sustains the gaze adown,
Conceives the vast despair,
And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown,
Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished.
_Zerah. _ Thus, do I find Thee thus? My undiminished
And undiminishable God! --my God!
The echoes are still tremulous along
The heavenly mountains, of the latest song
Thy manifested glory swept abroad
In rushing past our lips: they echo aye
"Creator, thou art strong!
Creator, thou art blessed over all. "
By what new utterance shall I now recall,
Unteaching the heaven-echoes? Dare I say,
"Creator, thou art feebler than thy work!
Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature!
A worm, and not a man,
Yea, no worm, but a curse? "
I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse.
Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork
(Whose seed disordered ran
From Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her)
Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rod
That smites thee never blossoming, and thou
Grief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow--
I leave to men their song of Ichabod:
I have an angel-tongue--I know but praise.
_Ador. _ Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raise
The passion-song of blood.
_Zerah. _ And _we_, extend
Our holy vacant hands towards the Throne,
Crying "We have no music. "
_Ador. _ Rather, blend
Both musics into one.
The sanctities and sanctified above
Shall each to each, with lifted looks serene,
Their shining faces lean,
And mix the adoring breath
And breathe the full thanksgiving.
_Zerah. _ But the love--
The love, mine Ador!
_Ador. _ Do we love not?
_Zerah. _ Yea,
But not as man shall! not with life for death,
New-throbbing through the startled being; not
With strange astonished smiles, that ever may
Gush passionate like tears and fill their place:
Nor yet with speechless memories of what
Earth's winters were, enverduring the green
Of every heavenly palm
Whose windless, shadeless calm
Moves only at the breath of the Unseen.
Oh, not with this blood on us--and this face,--
Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore
In our behalf, and tender evermore
With nature all our own, upon us gazing--
Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising
Their unreproachful wounds, alone to bless!
Alas, Creator! shall we love thee less
Than mortals shall?
_Ador. _ Amen! so let it be.
We love in our proportion, to the bound
Thine infinite our finite set around,
And that is finitely,--thou, infinite
And worthy infinite love! And our delight
Is, watching the dear love poured out to thee
From ever fuller chalice. Blessed they,
Who love thee more than we do: blessed we,
Viewing that love which shall exceed even this,
And winning in the sight a double bliss
For all so lost in love's supremacy.
The bliss is better. Only on the sad
Cold earth there are who say
It seemeth better to be great than glad.
The bliss is better. Love him more, O man,
Than sinless seraphs can!
_Zerah. _ Yea, love him more!
_Voices of the Angelic Multitude. _ Yea, more!
_Ador. _ The loving word
Is caught by those from whom we stand apart.
For silence hath no deepness in her heart
Where love's low name low breathed would not be heard
By angels, clear as thunder.
_Angelic Voices. _ Love him more!
_Ador. _ Sweet voices, swooning o'er
The music which ye make!
Albeit to love there were not ever given
A mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,
That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.
Of love be silent now! we gaze adown
Upon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.
_Zerah. _ No crown! the woe instead
Is heavy on his head,
Pressing inward on his brain
With a hot and clinging pain
Till all tears are prest away,
And clear and calm his vision may
Peruse the black abyss.
No rod, no sceptre is
Holden in his fingers pale;
They close instead upon the nail,
Concealing the sharp dole,
Never stirring to put by
The fair hair peaked with blood,
Drooping forward from the rood
Helplessly, heavily
On the cheek that waxeth colder,
Whiter ever, and the shoulder
Where the government was laid.
His glory made the heavens afraid;
Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?
His pity makes his piteous state;
Will he be uncompassionate
Alone to his proper soul?
Yea, will he not lift up
His lips from the bitter cup,
His brows from the dreary weight,
His hand from the clenching cross,
Crying, "My Father, give to me
Again the joy I had with thee
Or ere this earth was made for loss?
No stir no sound.
The love and woe being interwound
He cleaveth to the woe;
And putteth forth heaven's strength below,
To bear.
_Ador. _ And that creates his anguish now,
Which made his glory there.
_Zerah. _ Shall it need be so?
Awake, thou Earth! behold.
Thou, uttered forth of old
In all thy life-emotion,
In all thy vernal noises,
In the rollings of thine ocean,
Leaping founts, and rivers running,--
In thy woods' prophetic heaving
Ere the rains a stroke have given,
In thy winds' exultant voices
When they feel the hills anear,--
In the firmamental sunning,
And the tempest which rejoices
Thy full heart with an awful cheer.
Thou, uttered forth of old
And with all thy music rolled
In a breath abroad
By the breathing God,--
Awake! He is here! behold!
Even _thou_--
beseems it good
To thy vacant vision dim,
That the deadly ruin should,
For thy sake, encompass him?
That the Master-word should lie
A mere silence, while his own
Processive harmony,
The faintest echo of his lightest tone,
Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?
Awake! emit a cry!
And say, albeit used
From Adam's ancient years
To falls of acrid tears,
To frequent sighs unloosed,
Caught back to press again
On bosoms zoned with pain--
To corses still and sullen
The shine and music dulling
With closed eyes and ears
That nothing sweet can enter,
Commoving thee no less
With that forced quietness
Than the earthquake in thy centre--
Thou hast not learnt to bear
This new divine despair!
These tears that sink into thee,
These dying eyes that view thee,
This dropping blood from lifted rood,
They darken and undo thee.
Thou canst not presently sustain this corse--
Cry, cry, thou hast not force!
Cry, thou wouldst fainer keep
Thy hopeless charnels deep,
Thyself a general tomb
Where the first and the second Death
Sit gazing face to face
And mar each other's breath,
While silent bones through all the place
'Neath sun and moon do faintly glisten
And seem to lie and listen
For the tramp of the coming Doom.
Is it not meet
That they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,
Should champ the ashes?
That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloud
Should wear it as a shroud,
Perishing by its flashes?
That they who vexed the lion should be rent?
Cry, cry "I will sustain my punishment,
The sin being mine; but take away from me
This visioned Dread--this man--this Deity! "
_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 him
His 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 this _be_ the Eternal's son--
_Ador. _ Thou hearest. Man is grateful.
_Zerah. _ Can I hear
Nor darken into man and cease for ever
My seraph-smile to wear?
Was it for such,
It pleased him to overleap
His glory with his love and sever
From the God-light and the throne
And all angels bowing down,
For whom his every look did touch
New notes of joy on the unworn string
Of an eternal worshipping?
For such, he left his heaven?
There, though never bought by blood
And tears, we gave him gratitude:
We loved him there, though unforgiven.
_Ador. _ The light is riven
Above, around,
And down in lurid fragments flung,
That catch the mountain-peak and stream
With momentary gleam,
Then perish in the water and the ground.
River and waterfall,
Forest and wilderness,
Mountain and city, are together wrung
Into one shape, and that is shapelessness;
The darkness stands for all.
_Zerah. _ The pathos hath the day undone:
The death-look of His eyes
Hath overcome the sun
And made it sicken in its narrow skies.
_Ador. _ Is it to death? He dieth.
_Zerah. _ Through the dark
He still, he only, is discernible--
The naked hands and feet transfixed stark,
The countenance of patient anguish white,
Do make themselves a light
More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,
And therein do they shine.
_Ador. _ God! Father-God!
Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!
Uplift the lids of inward deity,
Flashing abroad
Thy burning Infinite!
Light up this dark where there is nought to see
Except the unimagined agony
Upon the sinless forehead of the Son!
_Zerah. _ God, tarry not! Behold, enow
Hath he wandered as a stranger,
Sorrowed as a victim. Thou
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
At once the darkness and dishonour rather
To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,
And hurl aback to ancient dust
These mortals that make blasphemies
With their made breath, this earth and skies
That only grow a little dim,
Seeing their curse on him.
But him, of all forsaken,
Of creature and of brother,
Never wilt thou forsake!
Thy living and thy loving cannot slacken
Their firm essential hold upon each other,
And well thou dost remember how his part
Was still to lie upon thy breast and be
Partaker of the light that dwelt in thee
Ere sun or seraph shone;
And how while silence trembled round the throne
Thou countedst by the beatings of his heart
The moments of thine own eternity.
Awaken,
O right hand with the lightnings! Again gather
His glory to thy glory! What estranger,
What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust
Between the faithful Father and the Son?
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
_Ador.
_ Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;
Thou hast no answer, Zerah.
_Zerah. _ No reply,
O unforsaking Father?
_Ador. _ Hark!
Instead of downward voice, a cry
Is uttered from beneath.
_Zerah. _ And by a sharper sound than death,
Mine immortality is riven.
The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky
Floats backward as by a sudden wind:
But I see no light behind,
But I feel the farthest stars are all
Stricken and shaken,
And I know a shadow sad and broad
Doth fall--doth fall
On our vacant thrones in heaven.
_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 art
God-orphaned, for my burden on thy head.
Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread!
Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead;
Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart.
_Zerah. _ _He_ hath forsaken _him_. I perish.
_Ador. _ Hold
Upon his name! we perish not. Of old
His will--
_Zerah. _ I seek his will. Seek, seraphim!
My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curse
Reverberate spare us, seraph or universe?
_He_ hath forsaken _him_.
_Ador. _ He cannot fail.
_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 did
Been heretofore our good?
Is it not ill that one, all sinless, should
Hang heavy with all curses on a cross?
Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hid
Within the empty graves which men did scoop
To hold more damned dead, we shudder through
What shall exalt us or undo,
Our triumph, or our loss.
_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 sepulchres
Where my kings and prophets freeze,
Adam dead four thousand years,
Unwakened by the universe's
Everlasting moan,
Aye his ghastly silence mocking--
Unwakened by his children's knocking
At his old sepulchral stone,
"Adam, Adam, all this curse is
Thine and on us yet! "--
Unwakened by the ceaseless tears
Wherewith they made his cerement wet,
"Adam, must thy curse remain? "--
Starts with sudden life and hears
Through the slow dripping of the caverned caves,--
_Angel Voices. _ Finished is his bane.
_Voice from the Cross. _ FATHER! MY SPIRIT TO THINE HANDS IS GIVEN.
_Ador. _ Hear the wailing winds that be
By wings of unclean spirits made!
They, in that last look, surveyed
The love they lost in losing heaven,
And passionately flee
With a desolate cry that cleaves
The natural storms--though _they_ are lifting
God's strong cedar-roots like leaves,
And the earthquake and the thunder,
Neither keeping either under,
Roar and hurtle through the glooms--
And a few pale stars are drifting
Past the dark, to disappear,
What time, from the splitting tombs
Gleamingly the dead arise,
Viewing with their death-calmed eyes
The elemental strategies,
To witness, victory is the Lord's.
Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear!
_Zerah. _ I hear alone the memory of his words.
EPILOGUE.
I.
My song is done.
My voice that long hath faltered shall be still.
The mystic darkness drops from Calvary's hill
Into the common light of this day's sun.
II.
I see no more thy cross, O holy Slain!
I hear no more the horror and the coil
Of the great world's turmoil
Feeling thy countenance _too still_,--nor yell
Of demons sweeping past it to their prison.
The skies that turned to darkness with thy pain
Make now a summer's day;
And on my changed ear that sabbath bell
Records how CHRIST IS RISEN.
III.
And I--ah! what am I
To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened,
Seraphic brows of light
And seraph language never used nor hearkened?
Ah me! what word that seraphs say, could come
From mouth so used to sighs, so soon to lie
Sighless, because then breathless, in the tomb?
IV.
Bright ministers of God and grace--of grace
Because of God! whether ye bow adown
In your own heaven, before the living face
Of him who died and deathless wears the crown,
Or whether at this hour ye haply are
Anear, around me, hiding in the night
Of this permitted ignorance your light,
This feebleness to spare,--
Forgive me, that mine earthly heart should dare
Shape images of unincarnate spirits
And lay upon their burning lips a thought
Cold with the weeping which mine earth inherits.
And though ye find in such hoarse music, wrought
To copy yours, a cadence all the while
Of sin and sorrow--only pitying smile!
Ye know to pity, well.
V.
_I_ too may haply smile another day
At the far recollection of this lay,
When God may call me in your midst to dwell,
To hear your most sweet music's miracle
And see your wondrous faces. May it be!
For his remembered sake, the Slain on rood,
Who rolled his earthly garment red in blood
(Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me,
Before his heavenly throne should walk in white.
FOOTNOTE:
[D] "His angels he charged with folly. "--_Job_ iv. 18.
PROMETHEUS BOUND
FROM THE GREEK OF AESCHYLUS
_PERSONS. _
PROMETHEUS.
OCEANUS.
HERMES.
HEPHAESTUS.
IO, _daughter of_ Inachus.
STRENGTH _and_ FORCE.
_Chorus of Sea Nymphs. _
PROMETHEUS BOUND
SCENE. --_STRENGTH and FORCE, HEPHAESTUS and PROMETHEUS, at the
Rocks. _
_Strength. _ We reach the utmost limit of the earth,
The Scythian track, the desert without man.
And now, Hephaestus, thou must needs fulfil
The mandate of our Father, and with links
Indissoluble of adamantine chains
Fasten against this beetling precipice
This guilty god. Because he filched away
Thine own bright flower, the glory of plastic fire,
And gifted mortals with it,--such a sin
It doth behove he expiate to the gods,
Learning to accept the empery of Zeus
And leave off his old trick of loving man.
_Hephaestus. _ O Strength and Force, for you, our Zeus's will
Presents a deed for doing, no more! --but _I_,
I lack your daring, up this storm-rent chasm
To fix with violent hands a kindred god,
Howbeit necessity compels me so
That I must dare it, and our Zeus commands
With a most inevitable word. Ho, thou!
High-thoughted son of Themis who is sage!
Thee loth, I loth must rivet fast in chains
Against this rocky height unclomb by man,
Where never human voice nor face shall find
Out thee who lov'st them, and thy beauty's flower,
Scorched in the sun's clear heat, shall fade away.
Night shall come up with garniture of stars
To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun
Disperse with retrickt beams the morning-frosts,
But through all changes sense of present woe
Shall vex thee sore, because with none of them
There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked
From love of man! and in that thou, a god,
Didst brave the wrath of gods and give away
Undue respect to mortals, for that crime
Thou art adjudged to guard this joyless rock,
Erect, unslumbering, bending not the knee,
And many a cry and unavailing moan
To utter on the air. For Zeus is stern
And new-made kings are cruel.
_Strength. _ Be it so.
Why loiter in vain pity? Why not hate
A god the gods hate? one too who betrayed
Thy glory unto men?
_Hephaestus. _ An awful thing
Is kinship joined to friendship.
_Strength. _ Grant it be;
Is disobedience to the Father's word
A possible thing? Dost quail not more for that?
_Hephaestus. _ Thou, at least, art a stern one: ever bold.
_Strength. _ Why, if I wept, it were no remedy;
And do not _thou_ spend labour on the air
To bootless uses.
_Hephaestus. _ Cursed handicraft!
I curse and hate thee, O my craft!
_Strength. _ Why hate
Thy craft most plainly innocent of all
These pending ills?
_Hephaestus. _ I would some other hand
Were here to work it!
_Strength. _ All work hath its pain,
Except to rule the gods. There is none free
Except King Zeus.
_Hephaestus. _ I know it very well:
I argue not against it.
_Strength. _ Why not, then,
Make haste and lock the fetters over HIM
Lest Zeus behold thee lagging?
_Hephaestus. _ Here be chains.
Zeus may behold these.
_Strength. _ Seize him: strike amain:
Strike with the hammer on each side his hands--
Rivet him to the rock.
_Hephaestus. _ The work is done,
And thoroughly done.
_Strength. _ Still faster grapple him;
Wedge him in deeper: leave no inch to stir.
He's terrible for finding a way out
From the irremediable.
_Hephaestus. _ Here's an arm, at least,
Grappled past freeing.
_Strength. _ Now then, buckle me
The other securely. Let this wise one learn
He's duller than our Zeus.
_Hephaestus. _ Oh, none but he
Accuse me justly.
_Strength. _ Now, straight through the chest,
Take him and bite him with the clenching tooth
Of the adamantine wedge, and rivet him.
_Hephaestus. _ Alas, Prometheus, what thou sufferest here
I sorrow over.
_Strength. _ Dost thou flinch again
And breathe groans for the enemies of Zeus?
Beware lest thine own pity find thee out.
_Hephaestus. _ Thou dost behold a spectacle that turns
The sight o' the eyes to pity.
_Strength. _ I behold
A sinner suffer his sin's penalty.
But lash the thongs about his sides.
_Hephaestus. _ So much,
I must do. Urge no farther than I must.
_Strength. _ Ay, but I _will_ urge! --and, with shout on shout,
Will hound thee at this quarry. Get thee down
And ring amain the iron round his legs.
_Hephaestus. _ That work was not long doing.
_Strength. _ Heavily now
Let fall the strokes upon the perforant gyves:
For He who rates the work has a heavy hand.
_Hephaestus. _ Thy speech is savage as thy shape.
_Strength. _ Be thou
Gentle and tender! but revile not me
For the firm will and the untruckling hate.
_Hephaestus. _ Let us go.
Spirit of my spirit! who movest
Through seraph veins in burning deity
To light the quenchless pulses! --
_Ador. _ But hast trod
The depths of love in thy peculiar nature,
And not in any thou hast made and lovest
In narrow seraph hearts! --
_Zerah. _ Above, Creator!
Within, Upholder!
_Ador. _ And below, below,
The creature's and the upholden's sacrifice!
_Zerah. _ Why do I pause? --
_Ador. _ There is a silentness
That answers thee enow,
That, like a brazen sound
Excluding others, doth ensheathe us round,--
Hear it. It is not from the visible skies
Though they are still,
Unconscious that their own dropped dews express
The light of heaven on every earthly hill.
It is not from the hills, though calm and bare
They, since their first creation,
Through midnight cloud or morning's glittering air
Or the deep deluge blindness, toward the place
Whence thrilled the mystic word's creative grace,
And whence again shall come
The word that uncreates,
Have lift their brows in voiceless expectation.
It is not from the places that entomb
Man's dead, though common Silence there dilates
Her soul to grand proportions, worthily
To fill life's vacant room.
Not there: not there.
Not yet within those chambers lieth He,
A dead one in his living world; his south
And west winds blowing over earth and sea,
And not a breath on that creating mouth.
But now,--a silence keeps
(Not death's, nor sleep's)
The lips whose whispered word
Might roll the thunders round reverberated.
Silent art thou, O my Lord,
Bowing down thy stricken head!
Fearest thou, a groan of thine
Would make the pulse of thy creation fail
As thine own pulse? --would rend the veil
Of visible things and let the flood
Of the unseen Light, the essential God,
Rush in to whelm the undivine?
Thy silence, to my thinking, is as dread.
_Zerah. _ O silence!
_Ador. _ Doth it say to thee--the NAME,
Slow-learning seraph?
_Zerah. _ I have learnt.
_Ador. _ The flame
Perishes in thine eyes.
_Zerah. _ He opened his,
And looked. I cannot bear--
_Ador. _ Their agony?
_Zerah. _ Their love. God's depth is in them. From his brows
White, terrible in meekness, didst thou see
The lifted eyes unclose?
He is God, seraph! Look no more on me,
O God--I am not God.
_Ador. _ The loving is
Sublimed within them by the sorrowful.
In heaven we could sustain them.
_Zerah. _ Heaven is dull,
Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burns
In fluent, refluent motion
Along the crystal ocean;
The springing of the golden harps between
The bowery wings, in fountains of sweet sound,
The winding, wandering music that returns
Upon itself, exultingly self-bound
In the great spheric round
Of everlasting praises;
The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene,
Visibly flashing from the supreme throne
Full in seraphic faces
Till each astonishes the other, grown
More beautiful with worship and delight--
My heaven! my home of heaven! my infinite
Heaven-choirs! what are ye to this dust and death,
This cloud, this cold, these tears, this failing breath,
Where God's immortal love now issueth
In this MAN'S woe?
_Ador. _ His eyes are very deep yet calm.
_Zerah. _ No more
On _me_, Jehovah-man--
_Ador. _ Calm-deep. They show
A passion which is tranquil. They are seeing
No earth, no heaven, no men that slay and curse,
No seraphs that adore;
Their gaze is on the invisible, the dread,
The things we cannot view or think or speak,
Because we are too happy, or too weak,--
The sea of ill, for which the universe,
With all its piled space, can find no shore,
With all its life, no living foot to tread.
But he, accomplished in Jehovah-being,
Sustains the gaze adown,
Conceives the vast despair,
And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown,
Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished.
_Zerah. _ Thus, do I find Thee thus? My undiminished
And undiminishable God! --my God!
The echoes are still tremulous along
The heavenly mountains, of the latest song
Thy manifested glory swept abroad
In rushing past our lips: they echo aye
"Creator, thou art strong!
Creator, thou art blessed over all. "
By what new utterance shall I now recall,
Unteaching the heaven-echoes? Dare I say,
"Creator, thou art feebler than thy work!
Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature!
A worm, and not a man,
Yea, no worm, but a curse? "
I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse.
Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork
(Whose seed disordered ran
From Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her)
Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rod
That smites thee never blossoming, and thou
Grief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow--
I leave to men their song of Ichabod:
I have an angel-tongue--I know but praise.
_Ador. _ Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raise
The passion-song of blood.
_Zerah. _ And _we_, extend
Our holy vacant hands towards the Throne,
Crying "We have no music. "
_Ador. _ Rather, blend
Both musics into one.
The sanctities and sanctified above
Shall each to each, with lifted looks serene,
Their shining faces lean,
And mix the adoring breath
And breathe the full thanksgiving.
_Zerah. _ But the love--
The love, mine Ador!
_Ador. _ Do we love not?
_Zerah. _ Yea,
But not as man shall! not with life for death,
New-throbbing through the startled being; not
With strange astonished smiles, that ever may
Gush passionate like tears and fill their place:
Nor yet with speechless memories of what
Earth's winters were, enverduring the green
Of every heavenly palm
Whose windless, shadeless calm
Moves only at the breath of the Unseen.
Oh, not with this blood on us--and this face,--
Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore
In our behalf, and tender evermore
With nature all our own, upon us gazing--
Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising
Their unreproachful wounds, alone to bless!
Alas, Creator! shall we love thee less
Than mortals shall?
_Ador. _ Amen! so let it be.
We love in our proportion, to the bound
Thine infinite our finite set around,
And that is finitely,--thou, infinite
And worthy infinite love! And our delight
Is, watching the dear love poured out to thee
From ever fuller chalice. Blessed they,
Who love thee more than we do: blessed we,
Viewing that love which shall exceed even this,
And winning in the sight a double bliss
For all so lost in love's supremacy.
The bliss is better. Only on the sad
Cold earth there are who say
It seemeth better to be great than glad.
The bliss is better. Love him more, O man,
Than sinless seraphs can!
_Zerah. _ Yea, love him more!
_Voices of the Angelic Multitude. _ Yea, more!
_Ador. _ The loving word
Is caught by those from whom we stand apart.
For silence hath no deepness in her heart
Where love's low name low breathed would not be heard
By angels, clear as thunder.
_Angelic Voices. _ Love him more!
_Ador. _ Sweet voices, swooning o'er
The music which ye make!
Albeit to love there were not ever given
A mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,
That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.
Of love be silent now! we gaze adown
Upon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.
_Zerah. _ No crown! the woe instead
Is heavy on his head,
Pressing inward on his brain
With a hot and clinging pain
Till all tears are prest away,
And clear and calm his vision may
Peruse the black abyss.
No rod, no sceptre is
Holden in his fingers pale;
They close instead upon the nail,
Concealing the sharp dole,
Never stirring to put by
The fair hair peaked with blood,
Drooping forward from the rood
Helplessly, heavily
On the cheek that waxeth colder,
Whiter ever, and the shoulder
Where the government was laid.
His glory made the heavens afraid;
Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?
His pity makes his piteous state;
Will he be uncompassionate
Alone to his proper soul?
Yea, will he not lift up
His lips from the bitter cup,
His brows from the dreary weight,
His hand from the clenching cross,
Crying, "My Father, give to me
Again the joy I had with thee
Or ere this earth was made for loss?
No stir no sound.
The love and woe being interwound
He cleaveth to the woe;
And putteth forth heaven's strength below,
To bear.
_Ador. _ And that creates his anguish now,
Which made his glory there.
_Zerah. _ Shall it need be so?
Awake, thou Earth! behold.
Thou, uttered forth of old
In all thy life-emotion,
In all thy vernal noises,
In the rollings of thine ocean,
Leaping founts, and rivers running,--
In thy woods' prophetic heaving
Ere the rains a stroke have given,
In thy winds' exultant voices
When they feel the hills anear,--
In the firmamental sunning,
And the tempest which rejoices
Thy full heart with an awful cheer.
Thou, uttered forth of old
And with all thy music rolled
In a breath abroad
By the breathing God,--
Awake! He is here! behold!
Even _thou_--
beseems it good
To thy vacant vision dim,
That the deadly ruin should,
For thy sake, encompass him?
That the Master-word should lie
A mere silence, while his own
Processive harmony,
The faintest echo of his lightest tone,
Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?
Awake! emit a cry!
And say, albeit used
From Adam's ancient years
To falls of acrid tears,
To frequent sighs unloosed,
Caught back to press again
On bosoms zoned with pain--
To corses still and sullen
The shine and music dulling
With closed eyes and ears
That nothing sweet can enter,
Commoving thee no less
With that forced quietness
Than the earthquake in thy centre--
Thou hast not learnt to bear
This new divine despair!
These tears that sink into thee,
These dying eyes that view thee,
This dropping blood from lifted rood,
They darken and undo thee.
Thou canst not presently sustain this corse--
Cry, cry, thou hast not force!
Cry, thou wouldst fainer keep
Thy hopeless charnels deep,
Thyself a general tomb
Where the first and the second Death
Sit gazing face to face
And mar each other's breath,
While silent bones through all the place
'Neath sun and moon do faintly glisten
And seem to lie and listen
For the tramp of the coming Doom.
Is it not meet
That they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,
Should champ the ashes?
That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloud
Should wear it as a shroud,
Perishing by its flashes?
That they who vexed the lion should be rent?
Cry, cry "I will sustain my punishment,
The sin being mine; but take away from me
This visioned Dread--this man--this Deity! "
_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 him
His 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 this _be_ the Eternal's son--
_Ador. _ Thou hearest. Man is grateful.
_Zerah. _ Can I hear
Nor darken into man and cease for ever
My seraph-smile to wear?
Was it for such,
It pleased him to overleap
His glory with his love and sever
From the God-light and the throne
And all angels bowing down,
For whom his every look did touch
New notes of joy on the unworn string
Of an eternal worshipping?
For such, he left his heaven?
There, though never bought by blood
And tears, we gave him gratitude:
We loved him there, though unforgiven.
_Ador. _ The light is riven
Above, around,
And down in lurid fragments flung,
That catch the mountain-peak and stream
With momentary gleam,
Then perish in the water and the ground.
River and waterfall,
Forest and wilderness,
Mountain and city, are together wrung
Into one shape, and that is shapelessness;
The darkness stands for all.
_Zerah. _ The pathos hath the day undone:
The death-look of His eyes
Hath overcome the sun
And made it sicken in its narrow skies.
_Ador. _ Is it to death? He dieth.
_Zerah. _ Through the dark
He still, he only, is discernible--
The naked hands and feet transfixed stark,
The countenance of patient anguish white,
Do make themselves a light
More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,
And therein do they shine.
_Ador. _ God! Father-God!
Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!
Uplift the lids of inward deity,
Flashing abroad
Thy burning Infinite!
Light up this dark where there is nought to see
Except the unimagined agony
Upon the sinless forehead of the Son!
_Zerah. _ God, tarry not! Behold, enow
Hath he wandered as a stranger,
Sorrowed as a victim. Thou
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
At once the darkness and dishonour rather
To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,
And hurl aback to ancient dust
These mortals that make blasphemies
With their made breath, this earth and skies
That only grow a little dim,
Seeing their curse on him.
But him, of all forsaken,
Of creature and of brother,
Never wilt thou forsake!
Thy living and thy loving cannot slacken
Their firm essential hold upon each other,
And well thou dost remember how his part
Was still to lie upon thy breast and be
Partaker of the light that dwelt in thee
Ere sun or seraph shone;
And how while silence trembled round the throne
Thou countedst by the beatings of his heart
The moments of thine own eternity.
Awaken,
O right hand with the lightnings! Again gather
His glory to thy glory! What estranger,
What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust
Between the faithful Father and the Son?
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
_Ador.
_ Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;
Thou hast no answer, Zerah.
_Zerah. _ No reply,
O unforsaking Father?
_Ador. _ Hark!
Instead of downward voice, a cry
Is uttered from beneath.
_Zerah. _ And by a sharper sound than death,
Mine immortality is riven.
The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky
Floats backward as by a sudden wind:
But I see no light behind,
But I feel the farthest stars are all
Stricken and shaken,
And I know a shadow sad and broad
Doth fall--doth fall
On our vacant thrones in heaven.
_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 art
God-orphaned, for my burden on thy head.
Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread!
Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead;
Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart.
_Zerah. _ _He_ hath forsaken _him_. I perish.
_Ador. _ Hold
Upon his name! we perish not. Of old
His will--
_Zerah. _ I seek his will. Seek, seraphim!
My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curse
Reverberate spare us, seraph or universe?
_He_ hath forsaken _him_.
_Ador. _ He cannot fail.
_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 did
Been heretofore our good?
Is it not ill that one, all sinless, should
Hang heavy with all curses on a cross?
Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hid
Within the empty graves which men did scoop
To hold more damned dead, we shudder through
What shall exalt us or undo,
Our triumph, or our loss.
_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 sepulchres
Where my kings and prophets freeze,
Adam dead four thousand years,
Unwakened by the universe's
Everlasting moan,
Aye his ghastly silence mocking--
Unwakened by his children's knocking
At his old sepulchral stone,
"Adam, Adam, all this curse is
Thine and on us yet! "--
Unwakened by the ceaseless tears
Wherewith they made his cerement wet,
"Adam, must thy curse remain? "--
Starts with sudden life and hears
Through the slow dripping of the caverned caves,--
_Angel Voices. _ Finished is his bane.
_Voice from the Cross. _ FATHER! MY SPIRIT TO THINE HANDS IS GIVEN.
_Ador. _ Hear the wailing winds that be
By wings of unclean spirits made!
They, in that last look, surveyed
The love they lost in losing heaven,
And passionately flee
With a desolate cry that cleaves
The natural storms--though _they_ are lifting
God's strong cedar-roots like leaves,
And the earthquake and the thunder,
Neither keeping either under,
Roar and hurtle through the glooms--
And a few pale stars are drifting
Past the dark, to disappear,
What time, from the splitting tombs
Gleamingly the dead arise,
Viewing with their death-calmed eyes
The elemental strategies,
To witness, victory is the Lord's.
Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear!
_Zerah. _ I hear alone the memory of his words.
EPILOGUE.
I.
My song is done.
My voice that long hath faltered shall be still.
The mystic darkness drops from Calvary's hill
Into the common light of this day's sun.
II.
I see no more thy cross, O holy Slain!
I hear no more the horror and the coil
Of the great world's turmoil
Feeling thy countenance _too still_,--nor yell
Of demons sweeping past it to their prison.
The skies that turned to darkness with thy pain
Make now a summer's day;
And on my changed ear that sabbath bell
Records how CHRIST IS RISEN.
III.
And I--ah! what am I
To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened,
Seraphic brows of light
And seraph language never used nor hearkened?
Ah me! what word that seraphs say, could come
From mouth so used to sighs, so soon to lie
Sighless, because then breathless, in the tomb?
IV.
Bright ministers of God and grace--of grace
Because of God! whether ye bow adown
In your own heaven, before the living face
Of him who died and deathless wears the crown,
Or whether at this hour ye haply are
Anear, around me, hiding in the night
Of this permitted ignorance your light,
This feebleness to spare,--
Forgive me, that mine earthly heart should dare
Shape images of unincarnate spirits
And lay upon their burning lips a thought
Cold with the weeping which mine earth inherits.
And though ye find in such hoarse music, wrought
To copy yours, a cadence all the while
Of sin and sorrow--only pitying smile!
Ye know to pity, well.
V.
_I_ too may haply smile another day
At the far recollection of this lay,
When God may call me in your midst to dwell,
To hear your most sweet music's miracle
And see your wondrous faces. May it be!
For his remembered sake, the Slain on rood,
Who rolled his earthly garment red in blood
(Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me,
Before his heavenly throne should walk in white.
FOOTNOTE:
[D] "His angels he charged with folly. "--_Job_ iv. 18.
PROMETHEUS BOUND
FROM THE GREEK OF AESCHYLUS
_PERSONS. _
PROMETHEUS.
OCEANUS.
HERMES.
HEPHAESTUS.
IO, _daughter of_ Inachus.
STRENGTH _and_ FORCE.
_Chorus of Sea Nymphs. _
PROMETHEUS BOUND
SCENE. --_STRENGTH and FORCE, HEPHAESTUS and PROMETHEUS, at the
Rocks. _
_Strength. _ We reach the utmost limit of the earth,
The Scythian track, the desert without man.
And now, Hephaestus, thou must needs fulfil
The mandate of our Father, and with links
Indissoluble of adamantine chains
Fasten against this beetling precipice
This guilty god. Because he filched away
Thine own bright flower, the glory of plastic fire,
And gifted mortals with it,--such a sin
It doth behove he expiate to the gods,
Learning to accept the empery of Zeus
And leave off his old trick of loving man.
_Hephaestus. _ O Strength and Force, for you, our Zeus's will
Presents a deed for doing, no more! --but _I_,
I lack your daring, up this storm-rent chasm
To fix with violent hands a kindred god,
Howbeit necessity compels me so
That I must dare it, and our Zeus commands
With a most inevitable word. Ho, thou!
High-thoughted son of Themis who is sage!
Thee loth, I loth must rivet fast in chains
Against this rocky height unclomb by man,
Where never human voice nor face shall find
Out thee who lov'st them, and thy beauty's flower,
Scorched in the sun's clear heat, shall fade away.
Night shall come up with garniture of stars
To comfort thee with shadow, and the sun
Disperse with retrickt beams the morning-frosts,
But through all changes sense of present woe
Shall vex thee sore, because with none of them
There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked
From love of man! and in that thou, a god,
Didst brave the wrath of gods and give away
Undue respect to mortals, for that crime
Thou art adjudged to guard this joyless rock,
Erect, unslumbering, bending not the knee,
And many a cry and unavailing moan
To utter on the air. For Zeus is stern
And new-made kings are cruel.
_Strength. _ Be it so.
Why loiter in vain pity? Why not hate
A god the gods hate? one too who betrayed
Thy glory unto men?
_Hephaestus. _ An awful thing
Is kinship joined to friendship.
_Strength. _ Grant it be;
Is disobedience to the Father's word
A possible thing? Dost quail not more for that?
_Hephaestus. _ Thou, at least, art a stern one: ever bold.
_Strength. _ Why, if I wept, it were no remedy;
And do not _thou_ spend labour on the air
To bootless uses.
_Hephaestus. _ Cursed handicraft!
I curse and hate thee, O my craft!
_Strength. _ Why hate
Thy craft most plainly innocent of all
These pending ills?
_Hephaestus. _ I would some other hand
Were here to work it!
_Strength. _ All work hath its pain,
Except to rule the gods. There is none free
Except King Zeus.
_Hephaestus. _ I know it very well:
I argue not against it.
_Strength. _ Why not, then,
Make haste and lock the fetters over HIM
Lest Zeus behold thee lagging?
_Hephaestus. _ Here be chains.
Zeus may behold these.
_Strength. _ Seize him: strike amain:
Strike with the hammer on each side his hands--
Rivet him to the rock.
_Hephaestus. _ The work is done,
And thoroughly done.
_Strength. _ Still faster grapple him;
Wedge him in deeper: leave no inch to stir.
He's terrible for finding a way out
From the irremediable.
_Hephaestus. _ Here's an arm, at least,
Grappled past freeing.
_Strength. _ Now then, buckle me
The other securely. Let this wise one learn
He's duller than our Zeus.
_Hephaestus. _ Oh, none but he
Accuse me justly.
_Strength. _ Now, straight through the chest,
Take him and bite him with the clenching tooth
Of the adamantine wedge, and rivet him.
_Hephaestus. _ Alas, Prometheus, what thou sufferest here
I sorrow over.
_Strength. _ Dost thou flinch again
And breathe groans for the enemies of Zeus?
Beware lest thine own pity find thee out.
_Hephaestus. _ Thou dost behold a spectacle that turns
The sight o' the eyes to pity.
_Strength. _ I behold
A sinner suffer his sin's penalty.
But lash the thongs about his sides.
_Hephaestus. _ So much,
I must do. Urge no farther than I must.
_Strength. _ Ay, but I _will_ urge! --and, with shout on shout,
Will hound thee at this quarry. Get thee down
And ring amain the iron round his legs.
_Hephaestus. _ That work was not long doing.
_Strength. _ Heavily now
Let fall the strokes upon the perforant gyves:
For He who rates the work has a heavy hand.
_Hephaestus. _ Thy speech is savage as thy shape.
_Strength. _ Be thou
Gentle and tender! but revile not me
For the firm will and the untruckling hate.
_Hephaestus. _ Let us go.
