No More Learning

Ye would gaze on God
With imperceptive blankness up the stars,
And mutter, "Why, God, hast thou made us thus? "
And pining to a sallow idiocy
Stagger up blindly against the ends of life,
Then stagnate into rottenness and drop
Heavily--poor, dead matter--piecemeal down
The abysmal spaces--like a little stone
Let fall to chaos. Therefore over you
Receive man's sceptre! --therefore be content
To minister with voluntary grace
And melancholy pardon, every rite
And function in you, to the human hand!
Be ye to man as angels are to God,
Servants in pleasure, singers of delight,
Suggesters to his soul of higher things
Than any of your highest! So at last,
He shall look round on you with lids too straight
To hold the grateful tears, and thank you well,
And bless you when he prays his secret prayers,
And praise you when he sings his open songs
For the clear song-note he has learnt in you
Of purifying sweetness, and extend
Across your head his golden fantasies
Which glorify you into soul from sense.
Go, serve him for such price! That not in vain
Nor yet ignobly ye shall serve, I place
My word here for an oath, mine oath for act
To be hereafter. In the name of which
Perfect redemption and perpetual grace,
I bless you through the hope and through the peace
Which are mine,--to the Love, which is myself.

_Eve. _ Speak on still, Christ! Albeit thou bless me not
In set words, I am blessed in hearkening thee--
Speak, Christ!

CHRIST. Speak, Adam! Bless the woman, man!
It is thine office.

_Adam. _ Mother of the world,
Take heart before this Presence! Lo, my voice,
Which, naming erst the creatures, did express
(God breathing through my breath) the attributes
And instincts of each creature in its name,
Floats to the same afflatus,--floats and heaves
Like a water-weed that opens to a wave,--
A full leaved prophecy affecting thee,
Out fairly and wide. Henceforward, arise, aspire
To all the calms and magnanimities,
The lofty uses and the noble ends,
The sanctified devotion and full work,
To which thou art elect for evermore,
First woman, wife, and mother!

_Eve. _ And first in sin.

_Adam. _ And also the sole bearer of the Seed
Whereby sin dieth. Raise the majesties
Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with level eyelids the To-come,
And all the dark o' the world! Rise, woman, rise
To thy peculiar and best altitudes
Of doing good and of enduring ill,
Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,
And reconciling all that ill and good
Unto the patience of a constant hope,--
Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
And by sin, death,--the ransom-righteousness,
The heavenly life and compensative rest
Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the woe thou didst achieve,
Found acceptable to the world instead
Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied;
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood,
Peculiar suffering answering to the sin,--
Some pang paid down for each new human life,
Some weariness in guarding such a life,
Some coldness from the guarded, some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served, from those beloved
Too loyally some treason; feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without,
And pressures of an alien tyranny
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews. But, go to! thy love
Shall chant itself its own beatitudes
After its own life-working. A child's kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown
I set upon thy head,--Christ witnessing
With looks of prompting love--to keep thee clear
Of all reproach against the sin forgone,
From all the generations which succeed.
Thy hand which plucked the apple I clasp close,
Thy lips which spake wrong counsel I kiss close,
I bless thee in the name of Paradise
And by the memory of Edenic joys
Forfeit and lost,--by that last cypress tree,
Green at the gate, which thrilled as we came out,
And by the blessed nightingale which threw
Its melancholy music after us,--
And by the flowers, whose spirits full of smells
Did follow softly, plucking us behind
Back to the gradual banks and vernal bowers
And fourfold river-courses. --By all these,
I bless thee to the contraries of these,
I bless thee to the desert and the thorns,
To the elemental change and turbulence,
And to the roar of the estranged beasts,
And to the solemn dignities of grief,--
To each one of these ends,--and to their END
Of Death and the hereafter.

_Eve. _ I accept
For me and for my daughters this high part
Which lowly shall be counted. Noble work
Shall hold me in the place of garden-rest,
And in the place of Eden's lost delight
Worthy endurance of permitted pain;
While on my longest patience there shall wait
Death's speechless angel, smiling in the east,
Whence cometh the cold wind. I bow myself
Humbly henceforward on the ill I did,
That humbleness may keep it in the shade.
Shall it be so? shall I smile, saying so?
O Seed! O King! O God, who _shalt_ be seed,--
What shall I say? As Eden's fountains swelled
Brightly betwixt their banks, so swells my soul
Betwixt thy love and power!
And, sweetest thoughts
Of forgone Eden! now, for the first time
Since God said "Adam," walking through the trees,
I dare to pluck you as I plucked erewhile
The lily or pink, the rose or heliotrope
So pluck I you--so largely--with both hands,
And throw you forward on the outer earth,
Wherein we are cast out, to sweeten it.

_Adam. _ As thou, Christ, to illume it, holdest Heaven
Broadly over our heads.

[_The CHRIST is gradually transfigured, during the following phrases of
dialogue, into humanity and suffering. _

_Eve. _ O Saviour Christ,
Thou standest mute in glory, like the sun!

_Adam. _ We worship in Thy silence, Saviour Christ!

_Eve. _ Thy brows grow grander with a forecast woe,--
Diviner, with the possible of death.
We worship in Thy sorrow, Saviour Christ!

_Adam. _ How do Thy clear, still eyes transpierce our souls,
As gazing _through_ them toward the Father-throne
In a pathetical, full Deity,
Serenely as the stars gaze through the air
Straight on each other!

_Eve. _ O pathetic Christ,
Thou standest mute in glory, like the moon!

CHRIST. Eternity stands alway fronting God;
A stern colossal image, with blind eyes
And grand dim lips that murmur evermore
God, God, God! while the rush of life and death,
The roar of act and thought, of evil and good,
The avalanches of the ruining worlds
Tolling down space,--the new worlds' genesis
Budding in fire,--the gradual humming growth
Of the ancient atoms and first forms of earth,
The slow procession of the swathing seas
And firmamental waters,--and the noise
Of the broad, fluent strata of pure airs,--
All these flow onward in the intervals
Of that reiterated sound of--GOD!
Which WORD innumerous angels straightway lift
Wide on celestial altitudes of song
And choral adoration, and then drop
The burden softly, shutting the last notes
In silver wings. Howbeit in the noon of time
Eternity shall wax as dumb as Death,
While a new voice beneath the spheres shall cry,
"God! why hast thou forsaken me, my God? "
And not a voice in Heaven shall answer it.

[_The transfiguration is complete in sadness. _

_Adam. _ Thy speech is of the Heavenlies, yet, O Christ,
Awfully human are thy voice and face!

_Eve. _ My nature overcomes me from thine eyes.

CHRIST. In the set noon of time shall one from Heaven,
An angel fresh from looking upon God,
Descend before a woman, blessing her
With perfect benediction of pure love,
For all the world in all its elements,
For all the creatures of earth, air, and sea,
For all men in the body and in the soul,
Unto all ends of glory and sanctity.

_Eve. _ O pale, pathetic Christ--I worship thee!
I thank thee for that woman!

CHRIST. Then, at last,
I, wrapping round me your humanity,
Which, being sustained, shall neither break nor burn
Beneath the fire of Godhead, will tread earth,
And ransom you and it, and set strong peace
Betwixt you and its creatures. With my pangs
I will confront your sins; and since those sins
Have sunken to all Nature's heart from yours,
The tears of my clean soul shall follow them
And set a holy passion to work clear
Absolute consecration. In my brow
Of kingly whiteness shall be crowned anew
Your discrowned human nature. Look on me!
As I shall be uplifted on a cross
In darkness of eclipse and anguish dread,
So shall I lift up in my pierced hands,
Not into dark, but light--not unto death,
But life,--beyond the reach of guilt and grief,
The whole creation. Henceforth in my name
Take courage, O thou woman,--man, take hope!
Your grave shall be as smooth as Eden's sward,
Beneath the steps of your prospective thoughts,
And, one step past it, a new Eden-gate
Shall open on a hinge of harmony
And let you through to mercy. Ye shall fall
No more, within that Eden, nor pass out
Any more from it. In which hope, move on,
First sinners and first mourners! Live and love,--
Doing both nobly because lowlily!
Live and work, strongly because patiently!
And, for the deed of death, trust it to God
That it be well done, unrepented of,
And not to loss! And thence, with constant prayers,
Fasten your souls so high, that constantly
The smile of your heroic cheer may float
Above all floods of earthly agonies,
Purification being the joy of pain!

[_The vision of CHRIST vanishes. ADAM and EVE stand in an ecstasy. The
Earth-zodiac pales away shade by shade, as the stars, star by star,
shine out in the sky; and the following chant from the two Earth
Spirits (as they sweep back into the Zodiac and disappear with it)
accompanies the process of change. _

_Earth Spirits. _
By the mighty word thus spoken
Both for living and for dying,
We our homage-oath, once broken,
Fasten back again in sighing,
And the creatures and the elements renew their covenanting.

Here, forgive us all our scorning;
Here, we promise milder duty:
And the evening and the morning
Shall re-organize in beauty
A sabbath day of sabbath joy, for universal chanting.

And if, still, this melancholy
May be strong to overcome us,
If this mortal and unholy
We still fail to cast out from us,
If we turn upon you, unaware, your own dark influences,--

If ye tremble when surrounded
By our forest pine and palm trees,
If we cannot cure the wounded
With our gum trees and our balm trees,
And if your souls all mournfully sit down among your senses,--

Yet, O mortals, do not fear us!
We are gentle in our languor;
Much more good ye shall have near us
Than any pain or anger,
And our God's refracted blessing in our blessing shall be given.

By the desert's endless vigil
We will solemnize your passions,
By the wheel of the black eagle
We will teach you exaltations,
When he sails against the wind, to the white spot up in heaven.

Ye shall find us tender nurses
To your weariness of nature,
And our hands shall stroke the curse's
Dreary furrows from the creature,
Till your bodies shall lie smooth in death and straight and slumberful.

Then, a couch we will provide you
Where no summer heats shall dazzle,
Strewing on you and beside you
Thyme and rosemary and basil,
And the yew-tree shall grow overhead to keep all safe and cool.

Till the Holy Blood awaited
Shall be chrism around us running,
Whereby, newly-consecrated,
We shall leap up in God's sunning,
To join the spheric company which purer worlds assemble:

While, renewed by new evangels,
Soul-consummated, made glorious,
Ye shall brighten past the angels,
Ye shall kneel to Christ victorious,
And the rays around his feet beneath your sobbing lips shall tremble.

[_The phantastic Vision has all passed; the Earth-zodiac has broken like
a belt, and is dissolved from the Desert. The Earth Spirits vanish,
and the stars shine out above. _


CHORUS OF INVISIBLE ANGELS,

_while ADAM and EVE advance into the Desert, hand in hand. _

Hear our heavenly promise
Through your mortal passion!
Love, ye shall have from us,
In a pure relation.
As a fish or bird
Swims or flies, if moving,
We unseen are heard
To live on by loving.
Far above the glances
Of your eager eyes,
Listen! we are loving.
Listen, through man's ignorances--
Listen, through God's mysteries--
Listen down the heart of things,
Ye shall hear our mystic wings
Murmurous with loving.
Through the opal door
Listen evermore
How we live by loving!

_First Semichorus. _
When your bodies therefore
Reach the grave their goal,
Softly will we care for
Each enfranchised soul.
Softly and unlothly
Through the door of opal
Toward the heavenly people,
Floated on a minor fine
Into the full chant divine,
We will draw you smoothly,--
While the human in the minor
Makes the harmony diviner.
Listen to our loving!

_Second Semichorus. _
There, a sough of glory
Shall breathe on you as you come,
Ruffling round the doorway
All the light of angeldom.
From the empyrean centre
Heavenly voices shall repeat,
"Souls redeemed and pardoned, enter,
For the chrism on you is sweet! "
And every angel in the place
Lowlily shall bow his face,
Folded fair on softened sounds,
Because upon your hands and feet
He images his Master's wounds.
Listen to our loving!

_First Semichorus. _
So, in the universe's
Consummated undoing,
Our seraphs of white mercies
Shall hover round the ruin.
Their wings shall stream upon the flame
As if incorporate of the same
In elemental fusion;
And calm their faces shall burn out
With a pale and mastering thought,
And a steadfast looking of desire
From out between the clefts of fire,--
While they cry, in the Holy's name,
To the final Restitution.
Listen to our loving!

_Second Semichorus. _
So, when the day of God is
To the thick graves accompted,
Awaking the dead bodies,
The angel of the trumpet
Shall split and shatter the earth
To the roots of the grave--
Which never before were slackened--
And quicken the charnel birth
With his blast so clear and brave
That the Dead shall start and stand erect,
And every face of the burial-place
Shall the awful, single look reflect
Wherewith he them awakened.
Listen to our loving!

_First Semichorus. _
But wild is the horse of Death!
He will leap up wild at the clamour
Above and beneath.
And where is his Tamer
On that last day,
When he crieth Ha, ha!
To the trumpet's blare,
And paweth the earth's Aceldama?
When he tosseth his head,
The drear-white steed,
And ghastlily champeth the last moon-ray--
What angel there
Can lead him away,
That the living may rule for the Dead?

_Second Semichorus. _
Yet a TAMER shall be found!
One more bright than seraph crowned,
And more strong than cherub bold,
Elder, too, than angel old,
By his grey eternities.
He shall master and surprise
The steed of Death.
For He is strong, and He is fain.
He shall quell him with a breath,
And shall lead him where He will,
With a whisper in the ear,
Full of fear,
And a hand upon the mane,
Grand and still.

_First Semichorus. _
Through the flats of Hades where the souls assemble
He will guide the Death-steed calm between their ranks,
While, like beaten dogs, they a little moan and tremble
To see the darkness curdle from the horse's glittering flanks.
Through the flats of Hades where the dreary shade is,
Up the steep of heaven will the Tamer guide the steed,--
Up the spheric circles, circle above circle,
We who count the ages shall count the tolling tread--
Every hoof-fall striking a blinder blanker sparkle
From the stony orbs, which shall show as they were dead.

_Second Semichorus. _
All the way the Death-steed with tolling hoofs shall travel,
Ashen-grey the planets shall be motionless as stones,
Loosely shall the systems eject their parts coaeval,
Stagnant in the spaces shall float the pallid moons:
Suns that touch their apogees, reeling from their level,
Shall run back on their axles, in wild low broken tunes.

_Chorus. _
Up against the arches of the crystal ceiling,
From the horse's nostrils shall steam the blurting breath:
Up between the angels pale with silent feeling
Will the Tamer calmly lead the horse of Death.

_Semichorus. _
Cleaving all that silence, cleaving all that glory,
Will the Tamer lead him straightway to the Throne:
"Look out, O Jehovah, to this I bring before Thee,
With a hand nail-pierced, I who am thy Son. "
Then the Eye Divinest, from the Deepest, flaming,
On the mystic courser shall look out in fire:
Blind the beast shall stagger where It overcame him,
Meek as lamb at pasture, bloodless in desire.
Down the beast shall shiver,--slain amid the taming,--
And, by Life essential, the phantasm Death expire.

_Chorus. _
Listen, man, through life and death,
Through the dust and through the breath,
Listen down the heart of things!
Ye shall hear our mystic wings
Murmurous with loving.

_A Voice from below. _ Gabriel, thou Gabriel!

_A Voice from above. _ What wouldst _thou_ with me?

_First Voice. _ I heard thy voice sound in the angels' song,
And I would give thee question.

_Second Voice. _ Question me!

_First Voice. _ Why have I called thrice to my Morning Star
And had no answer? All the stars are out,
And answer in their places. Only in vain
I cast my voice against the outer rays
Of _my_ Star shut in light behind the sun.
No more reply than from a breaking string,
Breaking when touched. Or is she _not_ my star?
Where _is_ my Star--my Star? Have ye cast down
Her glory like my glory? Has she waxed
Mortal, like Adam? Has she learnt to hate
Like any angel?

_Second Voice. _ She is sad for thee.
All things grow sadder to thee, one by one.

_Angel Chorus. _
Live, work on, O Earthy!
By the Actual's tension,
Speed the arrow worthy
Of a pure ascension!
From the low earth round you,
Reach the heights above you:
From the stripes that wound you,
Seek the loves that love you!
God's divinest burneth plain
Through the crystal diaphane
Of our loves that love you.

_First Voice. _ Gabriel, O Gabriel!

_Second Voice. _ What wouldst _thou_ with me?

_First Voice. _ Is it true, O thou Gabriel, that the crown
Of sorrow which I claimed, another claims?
That HE claims THAT too?

_Second Voice. _ Lost one, it is true.

_First Voice. _ That HE will be an exile from his heaven,
To lead those exiles homeward?

_Second Voice. _ It is true.

_First Voice. _ That HE will be an exile by his will,
As I by mine election?

_Second Voice. _ It is true.

_First Voice.
_ That _I_ shall stand sole exile finally,--
Made desolate for fruition?

_Second Voice. _ It is true.

_First Voice. _ Gabriel!

_Second Voice. _ I hearken.

_First Voice. _ Is it true besides--
Aright true--that mine orient Star will give
Her name of "Bright and Morning-Star" to HIM,--
And take the fairness of his virtue back
To cover loss and sadness?

_Second Voice. _ It is true.

_First Voice. _ UNtrue, UNtrue! O Morning Star, O MINE,
Who sittest secret in a veil of light
Far up the starry spaces, say--_Untrue! _
Speak but so loud as doth a wasted moon
To Tyrrhene waters. I am Lucifer.

[_A pause. Silence in the stars. _

All things grow sadder to me, one by one.

_Angel Chorus. _
Exiled human creatures,
Let your hope grow larger!
Larger grows the vision
Of the new delight.
From this chain of Nature's
God is the Discharger,
And the Actual's prison
Opens to your sight.

_Semichorus. _
Calm the stars and golden
In a light exceeding:
What their rays have measured
Let your feet fulfil!
These are stars beholden
By your eyes in Eden,
Yet, across the desert,
See them shining still!

_Chorus. _
Future joy and far light
Working such relations,
Hear us singing gently
_Exiled is not lost! _
God, above the starlight,
God, above the patience,
Shall at last present ye
Guerdons worth the cost.
Patiently enduring,
Painfully surrounded,
Listen how we love you,
Hope the uttermost!
Waiting for that curing
Which exalts the wounded,
Hear us sing above you--
EXILED, BUT NOT LOST!

[_The stars shine on brightly while ADAM and EVE pursue their way into
the far wilderness. There is a sound through the silence, as of the
falling tears of an angel. _

FOOTNOTES:

[B] Adam recognizes in _Aquarius_, the Water-bearer, and _Sagittarius_,
the Archer, distinct types of the man bearing and the man
combating,--the passive and active forms of human labour. I hope that
the preceding zodiacal signs--transferred to the earthly shadow and
representative purpose--of Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio,
Capricornus, and Pisces, are sufficiently obvious to the reader.

[C] Her maternal instinct is excited by Gemini.




THE SERAPHIM


I look for Angels' songs, and hear Him cry.

GILES FLETCHER.




THE SERAPHIM.


PART THE FIRST.

[_It is the time of the Crucifixion; and the Angels of Heaven have
departed towards the Earth, except the two Seraphim, ADOR the Strong
and ZERAH the Bright One. _
_The place is the outer side of the shut Heavenly Gate. _]

_Ador. _ O Seraph, pause no more!
Beside this gate of heaven we stand alone.

_Zerah. _ Of heaven!

_Ador. _ Our brother hosts are gone--

_Zerah. _ Are gone before.

_Ador. _ And the golden harps the angels bore
To help the songs of their desire,
Still burning from their hands of fire,
Lie without touch or tone
Upon the glass-sea shore.

_Zerah. _ Silent upon the glass-sea shore!

_Ador. _ There the Shadow from the throne
Formless with infinity
Hovers o'er the crystal sea
Awfuller than light derived,
And red with those primeval heats
Whereby all life has lived.

_Zerah. _ Our visible God, our heavenly seats!

_Ador. _ Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical,
Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all,--
The roar of whose descent has died
To a still sound, as thunder into rain.
Immeasurable space spreads magnified
With that thick life, along the plane
The worlds slid out on. What a fall
And eddy of wings innumerous, crossed
By trailing curls that have not lost
The glitter of the God-smile shed
On every prostrate angel's head!
What gleaming up of hands that fling
Their homage in retorted rays,
From high instinct of worshipping,
And habitude of praise!

_Zerah. _ Rapidly they drop below us:
Pointed palm and wing and hair
Indistinguishable show us
Only pulses in the air
Throbbing with a fiery beat,
As if a new creation heard
Some divine and plastic word,
And trembling at its new-found being,
Awakened at our feet.

_Ador. _ Zerah, do not wait for seeing!
HIS voice, his, that thrills us so
As we our harpstrings, uttered _Go_,
_Behold the Holy in his woe! _
And all are gone, save thee and--

_Zerah. _ Thee!

_Ador. _ I stood the nearest to the throne
In hierarchical degree,
What time the Voice said _Go_!
And whether I was moved alone
By the storm-pathos of the tone
Which swept through heaven the alien name of _woe_,
Or whether the subtle glory broke
Through my strong and shielding wings,
Bearing to my finite essence
Incapacious of their presence,
Infinite imaginings,
None knoweth save the Throned who spoke;
But I who at creation stood upright
And heard the God-breath move
Shaping the words that lightened, "Be there light,
Nor trembled but with love,
Now fell down shudderingly,
My face upon the pavement whence I had towered,
As if in mine immortal overpowered
By God's eternity.

_Zerah. _ Let me wait! --let me wait! --

_Ador. _ Nay, gaze not backward through the gate!
God fills our heaven with God's own solitude
Till all the pavements glow:
His Godhead being no more subdued,
By itself, to glories low
Which seraphs can sustain.
What if thou, in gazing so,
Shouldst behold but only one
Attribute, the veil undone--
Even that to which we dare to press
Nearest, for its gentleness--
Ay, his love!
How the deep ecstatic pain
Thy being's strength would capture!
Without language for the rapture,
Without music strong to come
And set the adoration free,
For ever, ever, wouldst thou be
Amid the general chorus dumb,
God-stricken to seraphic agony.
Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
In vision bare should rise
The life-fount whence his hand did gather
With solitary force
Our immortalities!
Straightway how thine own would wither,
Falter like a human breath,
And shrink into a point like death,
By gazing on its source! --
My words have imaged dread
Meekly hast thou bent thine head,
And dropt thy wings in languishment:
Overclouding foot and face,
As if God's throne were eminent
Before thee, in the place.
Yet not--not so,
O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil
The supreme Will.
Not for obeisance but obedience,
Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence!
The voice said "Go! "

_Zerah. _ Beloved, I depart,
His will is as a spirit within my spirit,
A portion of the being I inherit.
His will is mine obedience. I resemble
A flame all undefiled though it tremble;
I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!
O thou, who stronger art,
And standest ever near the Infinite,
Pale with the light of Light,
Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,
More feeble, more afraid;
And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,
As close and gentle as the loving are,
That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.

_Ador. _ I am near thee and I love thee.
Were I loveless, from thee gone,
Love is round, beneath, above thee,
God, the omnipresent one.
Spread the wing and lift the brow!
Well-beloved, what fearest thou?

_Zerah. _ I fear, I fear--

_Ador. _ What fear?

_Zerah. _ The fear of earth.

_Ador. _ Of earth, the God-created and God-praised
In the hour of birth?
Where every night the moon in light
Doth lead the waters silver-faced?
Where every day the sun doth lay
A rapture to the heart of all
The leafy and reeded pastoral,
As if the joyous shout which burst
From angel lips to see him first,
Had left a silent echo in his ray?

_Zerah. _ Of earth--the God-created and God-curst,
Where man is, and the thorn:
Where sun and moon have borne
No light to souls forlorn:
Where Eden's tree of life no more uprears
Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead
The yew-tree bows its melancholy head
And all the undergrasses kills and seres.

_Ador. _ Of earth the weak,
Made and unmade?
Where men, that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?
Where, having won the profit which they seek,
They lie beside the sceptre and the gold
With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,
And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?

_Zerah. _ Of earth the bold,
Where the blind matter wrings
An awful potence out of impotence,
Bowing the spiritual things
To the things of sense.
Where the human will replies
With ay and no,
Because the human pulse is quick or slow.
Where Love succumbs to Change,
With only his own memories, for revenge.
And the fearful mystery--

_Ador. _ called Death?

_Zerah. _ Nay, death is fearful,--but who saith
"To die," is comprehensible.
What's fearfuller, thou knowest well,
Though the utterance be not for thee,
Lest it blanch thy lips from glory--
Ay! the cursed thing that moved
A shadow of ill, long time ago,
Across our heaven's own shining floor,
And when it vanished, some who were
On thrones of holy empire there,
Did reign--were seen--were--never more.
Come nearer, O beloved!

_Ador. _ I am near thee. Didst thou bear thee
Ever to this earth?

_Zerah. _ Before.
When thrilling from His hand along
Its lustrous path with spheric song
The earth was deathless, sorrowless.
Unfearing, then, pure feet might press
The grasses brightening with their feet,
For God's own voice did mix its sound
In a solemn confluence oft
With the rivers' flowing round,
And the life-tree's waving soft.
Beautiful new earth and strange!

_Ador. _ Hast thou seen it since--the change?

_Zerah. _ Nay, or wherefore should I fear
To look upon it now?
I have beheld the ruined things
Only in depicturings
Of angels from an earthly mission,--
Strong one, even upon thy brow,
When, with task completed, given
Back to us in that transition,
I have beheld thee silent stand,
Abstracted in the seraph band,
Without a smile in heaven.

_Ador. _ Then thou wast not one of those
Whom the loving Father chose
In visionary pomp to sweep
O'er Judaea's grassy places,
O'er the shepherds and the sheep,
Though thou art so tender? --dimming
All the stars except one star
With their brighter kinder faces,
And using heaven's own tune in hymning,
While deep response from earth's own mountains ran,
"Peace upon earth, goodwill to man. "

_Zerah. _ "Glory to God. " I said amen afar.
And those who from that earthly mission are,
Within mine ears have told
That the seven everlasting Spirits did hold
With such a sweet and prodigal constraint
The meaning yet the mystery of the song
What time they sang it, on their natures strong,
That, gazing down on earth's dark steadfastness
And speaking the new peace in promises,
The love and pity made their voices faint
Into the low and tender music, keeping
The place in heaven of what on earth is weeping.

_Ador. _ "Peace upon earth. " Come down to it.

_Zerah. _ Ah me!
I hear thereof uncomprehendingly.
Peace where the tempest, where the sighing is,
And worship of the idol, 'stead of His?

_Ador. _ Yea, peace, where He is.

_Zerah. _ He!
Say it again.

_Ador. _ Where He is.

_Zerah. _ Can it be
That earth retains a tree
Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed
By the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?

_Ador. _ There is a tree! --it hath no leaf nor root;
Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:
Its shadow on his head is laid.
For he, the crowned Son,
Has left his crown and throne,
Walks earth in Adam's clay,
Eve's snake to bruise and slay--

_Zerah. _ Walks earth in clay?

_Ador. _ And walking in the clay which he created,
He through it shall touch death.
What do I utter? what conceive? did breath
Of demon howl it in a blasphemy?
Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilated
By the seven confluent Spirits? --Speak--answer me!

_Who_ said man's victim was his deity?

_Zerah. _ Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee.
Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous light
Above, below, around,
As putting thunder-questions without cloud,
Reverberate without sound,
To universal nature's depth and height.
The tremor of an inexpressive thought
Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud,
O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips;
And while thine hands are stretched above,
As newly they had caught
Some lightning from the Throne, or showed the Lord
Some retributive sword,
Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse
And radiance, with contrasted wrath and love,
As God had called thee to a seraph's part,
With a man's quailing heart.

_Ador. _ O heart--O heart of man!
O ta'en from human clay
To be no seraph's but Jehovah's own!
Made holy in the taking,
And yet unseparate
From death's perpetual ban,
And human feelings sad and passionate:
Still subject to the treacherous forsaking
Of other hearts, and its own steadfast pain.
O heart of man--of God! which God has ta'en
From out the dust, with its humanity
Mournful and weak yet innocent around it,
And bade its many pulses beating lie
Beside that incommunicable stir
Of Deity wherewith he interwound it.
O man! and is thy nature so defiled
That all that holy Heart's devout law-keeping,
And low pathetic beat in deserts wild,
And gushings pitiful of tender weeping
For traitors who consigned it to such woe--
That all could cleanse thee not, without the flow
Of blood, the life-blood--_His_--and streaming _so_?
O earth the thundercleft, windshaken, where
The louder voice of "blood and blood" doth rise,
Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice?
O heaven! O vacant throne!
O crowned hierarchies that wear your crown
When His is put away!
Are ye unshamed that ye cannot dim
Your alien brightness to be liker him,
Assume a human passion, and down-lay
Your sweet secureness for congenial fears,
And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyes
The mystery of his tears?

_Zerah. _ I am strong, I am strong.
Were I never to see my heaven again,
I would wheel to earth like the tempest rain
Which sweeps there with an exultant sound
To lose its life as it reaches the ground.
I am strong, I am strong.
Away from mine inward vision swim
The shining seats of my heavenly birth,
I see but his, I see but him--
The Maker's steps on his cruel earth.
Will the bitter herbs of earth grow sweet
To me, as trodden by his feet?
Will the vexed, accurst humanity,
As worn by him, begin to be
A blessed, yea, a sacred thing
For love and awe and ministering?
I am strong, I am strong.