_ As it is, I know
Something of pity.
Something of pity.
Elizabeth Browning - 1
P.
for Richmond.
He had also a
sister who died young, the full-length portrait of whom by Sir Thomas
Lawrence (the first exhibited by that painter) is in the possession of
Octavius Moulton-Barrett at Westover, near Calbourne, in the Isle of
Wight. With respect to the "semi-tropical taste" of Mr. Barrett, so
characterised in the "Memoir," it may be mentioned that, on the early
death of his father, he was brought from Jamaica to England when a very
young child, as a ward of the late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr.
Scarlett, whom he frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on
Circuit. He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a
punishment for a supposed offence ("burning the toast") by the youth
whose "fag" he had become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his
mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was
sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage,
went to Northumberland. After purchasing the estate in Herefordshire, he
gave himself up assiduously to the usual duties and occupations of a
country gentleman,--farmed largely, was an active magistrate, became for
a year High Sheriff, and in all county contests busied himself as a
Liberal. He had a fine taste for landscape-gardening, planted
considerably, loved trees--almost as much as his friend, the early
correspondent of his daughter, Sir Uvedale Price--and for their sake
discontinued keeping deer in the park.
Many other particulars concerning other people, in other "Biographical
Memoirs which have appeared in England or elsewhere" for some years
past, are similarly "mistaken and misstated:" but they seem better left
without notice by anybody.
R. B.
29 DE VERE GARDENS, W.
_December 10, 1887. _
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The entry in the Parish Register of Kelloe Church is as follows:--
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett, daughter and first child of Edward
Barrett Moulton Barrett, of Coxhoe Hall, native of St James's, Jamaica,
by Mary, late Clarke, native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was born, March
6th, 1806, and baptized 10th of February, 1808.
[Illustration: COXHOE HALL, COUNTY OF DURHAM.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF MRS. BROWNING. ]
Dedication
_TO MY FATHER_
_When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see
to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off
when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you
who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection
implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither
of us to speak before the world, nor would it be possible for us to
speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough,
that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to
yours. _
_And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry
had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted
hands before this day,--that you, who have shared with me in things
bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day,--that you, who
hold with me, over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one
Name,--may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the
exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and
comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I
used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal
dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your
beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one
smile,--and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by
associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest
affection. _
_Your_
_E. B. B. _
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF MRS. BROWNING'S POEMS.
The collection here offered to the public consists of Poems which have
been written in the interim between the period of the publication of my
"Seraphim" and the present; variously coloured, or perhaps shadowed, by
the life of which they are the natural expression,--and, with the
exception of a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are
printed now for the first time.
As the first poem of this collection, the "Drama of Exile," is the
longest and most important work (to _me_! ) which I ever trusted into the
current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader's
attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after
considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the Drama rather
fastened on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of
the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under my hand, rather by force of
pleasure than of design. But when the excitement of composition had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and
strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from
Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her
womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her
offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more
expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical
emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense
of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the
recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of
the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence
of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile,
stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme
Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it
might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and
purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my
position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden
between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his
footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve
unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an
exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept
through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary
to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to
venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face
of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a
sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by
moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging
voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my
own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too
low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his
divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be
granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of
plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere
thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect
to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to
Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the
buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet
they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of
Æschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm
from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this analogy--the
more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer's
subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton's was his own
by illustration only,--I appeal. To this analogy--_not_ to this
comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger
may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the
weakest while she suggests the application.
On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my
dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the
close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the
introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most
reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same class, relating to the
frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me
with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When
the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar
fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their
earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve,
cried out "Profane. " Yet Andreini's mystery suggested Milton's epic; and
Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work
into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough
ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the
tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the
spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and
by no means to "live by faith. " There is a feeling abroad which appears
to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,
that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated
fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As
if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the
daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of God did not build a
church, by the very naming of it! As if the word God were not,
everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an
appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I
appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of
the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to
believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through
reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been
driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same
principle, have been hurried into speech.
It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being
sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the
evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened
my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know
nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that
I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of
purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a
"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the
scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that
approach them are not only of the night.
The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the
"Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary
relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the
living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he
used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and
the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper
and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may
apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the
mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great
work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has
beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie;" and of
the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering
should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the
other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a
significance.
Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than
its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults
with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something
indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and
in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or
unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and,
in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my
songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language
on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my
favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public
as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value
and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do
better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of
poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too
hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses,
let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full
of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my
heart and life in them,--they are not empty shells. If it must be said
of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by
the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and
irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life
itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no
playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the
final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have
done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart
from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling
its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured
from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence
and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some
protection with the reverent and sincere.
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This edition, including my earlier and later writings, I have
endeavoured to render as little unworthy as possible of the indulgence
of the public. Several poems I would willingly have withdrawn, if it
were not almost impossible to extricate what has been once caught and
involved in the machinery of the press. The alternative is a request to
the generous reader that he may use the weakness of those earlier
verses, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening,
less as a reproach to the writer, than as a means of marking some
progress in her other attempts.
E. B. B.
LONDON, 1856.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DRAMA OF EXILE. 1
THE SERAPHIM.
PART THE FIRST 107
PART THE SECOND 121
EPILOGUE 150
PROMETHEUS BOUND. FROM THE GREEK OR ÆSCHYLUS 153
A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION 213
A VISION OF POETS 223
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST 277
PART THE SECOND 284
PART THE THIRD 292
PART THE FOURTH 295
PART THE FIFTH 300
A DRAMA OF EXILE
_PERSONS. _
CHRIST, _in a Vision. _
ADAM.
EVE.
GABRIEL.
LUCIFER.
_Angels, Eden Spirits, Earth Spirits, and Phantasms. _
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from
the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are
seen, in the distance flying along the glare. _
LUCIFER, _alone. _
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.
[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank,
slopes up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL
descends. _
_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.
CHORUS OF EDEN SPIRITS
(_chanting from Paradise, while ADAM and EVE fly across the
Sword-glare_).
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.
[_There is silence. ADAM and EVE fly on, and never look back. Only a
colossal shadow, as of the dark Angel passing quickly, is cast upon
the Sword-glare. _
* * * * *
SCENE. --_The extremity of the Sword-glare. _
_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.
sister who died young, the full-length portrait of whom by Sir Thomas
Lawrence (the first exhibited by that painter) is in the possession of
Octavius Moulton-Barrett at Westover, near Calbourne, in the Isle of
Wight. With respect to the "semi-tropical taste" of Mr. Barrett, so
characterised in the "Memoir," it may be mentioned that, on the early
death of his father, he was brought from Jamaica to England when a very
young child, as a ward of the late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr.
Scarlett, whom he frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on
Circuit. He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a
punishment for a supposed offence ("burning the toast") by the youth
whose "fag" he had become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his
mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was
sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage,
went to Northumberland. After purchasing the estate in Herefordshire, he
gave himself up assiduously to the usual duties and occupations of a
country gentleman,--farmed largely, was an active magistrate, became for
a year High Sheriff, and in all county contests busied himself as a
Liberal. He had a fine taste for landscape-gardening, planted
considerably, loved trees--almost as much as his friend, the early
correspondent of his daughter, Sir Uvedale Price--and for their sake
discontinued keeping deer in the park.
Many other particulars concerning other people, in other "Biographical
Memoirs which have appeared in England or elsewhere" for some years
past, are similarly "mistaken and misstated:" but they seem better left
without notice by anybody.
R. B.
29 DE VERE GARDENS, W.
_December 10, 1887. _
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The entry in the Parish Register of Kelloe Church is as follows:--
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett, daughter and first child of Edward
Barrett Moulton Barrett, of Coxhoe Hall, native of St James's, Jamaica,
by Mary, late Clarke, native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was born, March
6th, 1806, and baptized 10th of February, 1808.
[Illustration: COXHOE HALL, COUNTY OF DURHAM.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF MRS. BROWNING. ]
Dedication
_TO MY FATHER_
_When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see
to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off
when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you
who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection
implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither
of us to speak before the world, nor would it be possible for us to
speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough,
that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to
yours. _
_And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry
had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted
hands before this day,--that you, who have shared with me in things
bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day,--that you, who
hold with me, over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one
Name,--may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the
exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and
comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I
used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal
dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your
beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one
smile,--and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by
associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest
affection. _
_Your_
_E. B. B. _
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF MRS. BROWNING'S POEMS.
The collection here offered to the public consists of Poems which have
been written in the interim between the period of the publication of my
"Seraphim" and the present; variously coloured, or perhaps shadowed, by
the life of which they are the natural expression,--and, with the
exception of a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are
printed now for the first time.
As the first poem of this collection, the "Drama of Exile," is the
longest and most important work (to _me_! ) which I ever trusted into the
current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader's
attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after
considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the Drama rather
fastened on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of
the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under my hand, rather by force of
pleasure than of design. But when the excitement of composition had
subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and
strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from
Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve's
allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her
womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her
offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more
expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical
emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense
of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the
recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of
the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence
of the voice of God. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile,
stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme
Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it
might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and
purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my
position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden
between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his
footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve
unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an
exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept
through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary
to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to
venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face
of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a
sudden revival of that love of manuscript which should be classed by
moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging
voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my
own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too
low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his
divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be
granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of
plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere
thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect
to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to
Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the
buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet
they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of
Æschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm
from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this analogy--the
more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer's
subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton's was his own
by illustration only,--I appeal. To this analogy--_not_ to this
comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the analogy of the stronger
may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the
weakest while she suggests the application.
On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my
dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the
close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the
introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most
reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same class, relating to the
frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me
with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When
the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar
fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their
earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve,
cried out "Profane. " Yet Andreini's mystery suggested Milton's epic; and
Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work
into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough
ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the
tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the
spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and
by no means to "live by faith. " There is a feeling abroad which appears
to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion,
that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated
fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As
if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the
daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of God did not build a
church, by the very naming of it! As if the word God were not,
everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an
appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I
appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of
the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to
believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through
reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been
driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same
principle, have been hurried into speech.
It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being
sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the
evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened
my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know
nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that
I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of
purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a
"mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" analytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the
scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that
approach them are not only of the night.
The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the
"Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary
relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the
living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he
used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and
the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper
and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may
apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the
mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great
work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has
beautifully and truly called "la patience angélique du génie;" and of
the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering
should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the
other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a
significance.
Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than
its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults
with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something
indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and
in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or
unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and,
in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my
songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language
on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my
favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public
as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value
and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do
better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of
poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too
hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses,
let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full
of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my
heart and life in them,--they are not empty shells. If it must be said
of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by
the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and
irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life
itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no
playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the
final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have
done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart
from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being
to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling
its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured
from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence
and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some
protection with the reverent and sincere.
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET,
1844.
ADVERTISEMENT.
This edition, including my earlier and later writings, I have
endeavoured to render as little unworthy as possible of the indulgence
of the public. Several poems I would willingly have withdrawn, if it
were not almost impossible to extricate what has been once caught and
involved in the machinery of the press. The alternative is a request to
the generous reader that he may use the weakness of those earlier
verses, which no subsequent revision has succeeded in strengthening,
less as a reproach to the writer, than as a means of marking some
progress in her other attempts.
E. B. B.
LONDON, 1856.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A DRAMA OF EXILE. 1
THE SERAPHIM.
PART THE FIRST 107
PART THE SECOND 121
EPILOGUE 150
PROMETHEUS BOUND. FROM THE GREEK OR ÆSCHYLUS 153
A LAMENT FOR ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION 213
A VISION OF POETS 223
THE POET'S VOW.
PART THE FIRST 277
PART THE SECOND 284
PART THE THIRD 292
PART THE FOURTH 295
PART THE FIFTH 300
A DRAMA OF EXILE
_PERSONS. _
CHRIST, _in a Vision. _
ADAM.
EVE.
GABRIEL.
LUCIFER.
_Angels, Eden Spirits, Earth Spirits, and Phantasms. _
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from
the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are
seen, in the distance flying along the glare. _
LUCIFER, _alone. _
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.
[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank,
slopes up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL
descends. _
_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.
CHORUS OF EDEN SPIRITS
(_chanting from Paradise, while ADAM and EVE fly across the
Sword-glare_).
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.
[_There is silence. ADAM and EVE fly on, and never look back. Only a
colossal shadow, as of the dark Angel passing quickly, is cast upon
the Sword-glare. _
* * * * *
SCENE. --_The extremity of the Sword-glare. _
_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.
