No More Learning

_ We cannot flee.
This zodiac of the creatures' cruelty
Curls round us, like a river cold and drear,
And shuts us in, constraining us to hear.

_First Spirit. _
I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike
A sense of death to me, and undug graves!
The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling like
The ragged foam along the ocean-waves:
The restless earthquakes rock against each other;
The elements moan 'round me--"Mother, mother"--
And I wail!

_Second Spirit. _
Your melancholy looks do pierce me through;
Corruption swathes the paleness of your beauty.
Why have ye done this thing? What did we do
That we should fall from bliss as ye from duty?
Wild shriek the hawks, in waiting for their jesses,
Fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses--
And I wail!

_Adam. _ To thee, the Spirit of the harmless earth,
To thee, the Spirit of earth's harmless lives,
Inferior creatures but still innocent,
Be salutation from a guilty mouth
Yet worthy of some audience and respect
From you who are not guilty. If we have sinned,
God hath rebuked us, who is over us
To give rebuke or death, and if ye wail
Because of any suffering from our sin,
Ye who are under and not over us,
Be satisfied with God, if not with us,
And pass out from our presence in such peace
As we have left you, to enjoy revenge
Such as the heavens have made you. Verily,
There must be strife between us, large as sin.

_Eve. _ No strife, mine Adam! Let us not stand high
Upon the wrong we did to reach disdain,
Who rather should be humbler evermore
Since self-made sadder. Adam! shall I speak--
I who spake once to such a bitter end--
Shall I speak humbly now who once was proud?
I, schooled by sin to more humility
Than thou hast, O mine Adam, O my king--
_My_ king, if not the world's?

_Adam. _ Speak as thou wilt.

_Eve. _ Thus, then--my hand in thine--
. . . Sweet, dreadful Spirits!
I pray you humbly in the name of God,
Not to say of these tears, which are impure--
Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth
From clean volitions toward a spotted will,
From the wronged to the wronger, this and no more!
I do not ask more. I am 'ware, indeed,
That absolute pardon is impossible
From you to me, by reason of my sin,--
And that I cannot evermore, as once,
With worthy acceptation of pure joy,
Behold the trances of the holy hills
Beneath the leaning stars, or watch the vales
Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy,--
Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between
Two grassy uplands,--and the river-wells
Work out their bubbling mysteries underground,--
And all the birds sing, till for joy of song
They lift their trembling wings as if to heave
The too-much weight of music from their heart
And float it up the aether. I am 'ware
That these things I can no more apprehend
With a pure organ into a full delight,--
The sense of beauty and of melody
Being no more aided in me by the sense
Of personal adjustment to those heights
Of what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned,
But rather coupled darkly and made ashamed
By my percipiency of sin and fall
In melancholy of humiliant thoughts.
But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits--albeit this
Your accusation must confront my soul,
And your pathetic utterance and full gaze
Must evermore subdue me,--be content!
Conquer me gently--as if pitying me,
Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick
As watering dews of Eden, unreproached;
And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth,
Not ruffled--smooth and still with your reproof,
And peradventure better while more sad!
For look to it, sweet Spirits, look well to it,
It will not be amiss in you who kept
The law of your own righteousness, and keep
The right of your own griefs to mourn themselves,--
To pity me twice fallen, from that, and this,
From joy of place, and also right of wail,
"I wail" being not for me--only "I sin. "
Look to it, O sweet Spirits!
For was I not,
At that last sunset seen in Paradise,
When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs
Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,
All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God
Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour,
The lady of the world, princess of life,
Mistress of feast and favour? Could I touch
A rose with my white hand, but it became
Redder at once? Could I walk leisurely
Along our swarded garden, but the grass
Tracked me with greenness? Could I stand aside
A moment underneath a cornel-tree,
But all the leaves did tremble as alive
With songs of fifty birds who were made glad
Because I stood there? Could I turn to look
With these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast,
Now good for only weeping,--upon man,
Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoiced
Because I looked on him? Alas, alas!
And is not this much woe, to cry "alas! "
Speaking of joy? And is not this more shame,
To have made the woe myself, from all that joy?
To have stretched my hand, and plucked it from the tree,
And chosen it for fruit? Nay, is not this
Still most despair,--to have halved that bitter fruit,
And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have,
Turning the GREATEST to mine enemy?

_Adam. _ I will not hear thee speak so. Hearken, Spirits!
Our God, who is the enemy of none
But only of their sin, hath set your hope
And my hope, in a promise, on this Head.
Show reverence, then, and never bruise her more
With unpermitted and extreme reproach,--
Lest, passionate in anguish, she fling down
Beneath your trampling feet, God's gift to us
Of sovranty by reason and freewill,
Sinning against the province of the Soul
To rule the soulless. Reverence her estate,
And pass out from her presence with no words!

_Eve. _ O dearest Heart, have patience with my heart!
O Spirits, have patience, 'stead of reverence,
And let me speak, for, not being innocent,
It little doth become me to be proud.
And I am prescient by the very hope
And promise set upon me, that henceforth
Only my gentleness shall make me great,
My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits,
Be witness that I stand in your reproof
But one sun's length off from my happiness--
Happy, as I have said, to look around,
Clear to look up! --And now! I need not speak--
Ye see me what I am; ye scorn me so,
Because ye see me what I have made myself
From God's best making! Alas,--peace forgone,
Love wronged, and virtue forfeit, and tears wept
Upon all, vainly! Alas, me! alas,
Who have undone myself, from all that best,
Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedest
Saddest and most defiled--cast out, cast down--
What word metes absolute loss? let absolute loss
Suffice you for revenge. For _I_, who lived
Beneath the wings of angels yesterday,
Wander to-day beneath the roofless world:
_I_, reigning the earth's empress yesterday,
Put off from me, to-day, your hate with prayers:
_I_, yesterday, who answered the Lord God,
Composed and glad as singing-birds the sun,
Might shriek now from our dismal desert, "God,"
And hear him make reply, "What is thy need,
Thou whom I cursed to-day? "

_Adam. _ Eve!

_Eve. _ _I_, at last,
Who yesterday was helpmate and delight
Unto mine Adam, am to-day the grief
And curse-mete for him. And, so, pity us,
Ye gentle Spirits, and pardon him and me,
And let some tender peace, made of our pain,
Grow up betwixt us, as a tree might grow,
With boughs on both sides! In the shade of which,
When presently ye shall behold us dead,--
For the poor sake of our humility,
Breathe out your pardon on our breathless lips,
And drop your twilight dews against our brows,
And stroking with mild airs our harmless hands
Left empty of all fruit, perceive your love
Distilling through your pity over us,
And suffer it, self-reconciled, to pass!

_LUCIFER rises in the circle. _

_Lucifer. _ Who talks here of a complement of grief?
Of expiation wrought by loss and fall?
Of hate subduable to pity? Eve?
Take counsel from thy counsellor the snake,
And boast no more in grief, nor hope from pain,
My docile Eve! I teach you to despond
Who taught you disobedience. Look around:--
Earth spirits and phantasms hear you talk unmoved,
As if ye were red clay again and talked!
What are your words to them--your grief to them--
Your deaths, indeed, to them? Did the hand pause,
For _their_ sake, in the plucking of the fruit,
That they should pause for _you_, in hating you?
Or will your grief or death, as did your sin,
Bring change upon their final doom? Behold,
Your grief is but your sin in the rebound,
And cannot expiate for it.

_Adam. _ That is true.

_Lucifer. _ Ay, that is true. The clay-king testifies
To the snake's counsel,--hear him! --very true.

_Earth Spirits. _ I wail, I wail!

_Lucifer. _ And certes, _that_ is true.
Ye wail, ye all wail. Peradventure I
Could wail among you. O thou universe,
That holdest sin and woe,--more room for wail!

_Distant Starry Voice. _ Ah, ah, Heosphoros! Heosphoros!

_Adam. _ Mark Lucifer! He changes awfully.

_Eve. _ It seems as if he looked from grief to God
And could not see him. Wretched Lucifer!

_Adam. _ How he stands--yet an angel!

_Earth Spirits. _ We all wail!

_Lucifer (after a pause). _ Dost thou remember, Adam, when the curse
Took us in Eden? On a mountain-peak
Half-sheathed in primal woods and glittering
In spasms of awful sunshine at that hour,
A lion couched, part raised upon his paws,
With his calm massive face turned full on thine,
And his mane listening. When the ended curse
Left silence in the world, right suddenly
He sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff,
As if the new reality of death
Were dashed against his eyes, and roared so fierce,
(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills
Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales
Precipitately,--that the forest beasts,
One after one, did mutter a response
Of savage and of sorrowful complaint
Which trailed along the gorges. Then, at once,
He fell back, and rolled crashing from the height
Into the dusk of pines.

_Adam. _ It might have been.
I heard the curse alone.

_Earth Spirits. _ I wail, I wail!

_Lucifer. _ That lion is the type of what I am.
And as he fixed thee with his full-faced hate,
And roared, O Adam, comprehending doom,
So, gazing on the face of the Unseen,
I cry out here between the Heavens and Earth
My conscience of this sin, this woe, this wrath,
Which damn me to this depth.

_Earth Spirits. _ I wail, I wail!

_Eve. _ I wail--O God!

_Lucifer. _ I scorn you that ye wail,
Who use your petty griefs for pedestals
To stand on, beckoning pity from without,
And deal in pathos of antithesis
Of what ye _were_ forsooth, and what ye are;--
I scorn you like an angel! Yet, one cry
I, too, would drive up like a column erect,
Marble to marble, from my heart to heaven,
A monument of anguish to transpierce
And overtop your vapoury complaints
Expressed from feeble woes.

_Earth Spirits. _ I wail, I wail!

_Lucifer. _ For, O ye heavens, ye are my witnesses,
That _I_, struck out from nature in a blot,
The outcast and the mildew of things good,
The leper of angels, the excepted dust
Under the common rain of daily gifts,--
I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,--
To whom the highest and the lowest alike
Say, Go from us--we have no need of thee,--
Was made by God like others. Good and fair,
He did create me! --ask him, if not fair!
Ask, if I caught not fair and silverly
His blessing for chief angels on my head
Until it grew there, a crown crystallized!
Ask, if he never called me by my name,
_Lucifer_--kindly said as "Gabriel"--
_Lucifer_--soft as "Michael! " while serene
I, standing in the glory of the lamps,
Answered "my Father," innocent of shame
And of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think,
White angels in your niches,--I repent,
And would tread down my own offences back
To service at the footstool? _that's_ read wrong!
I cry as the beast did, that I may cry--
Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep,
Against the sides of this prodigious pit
I cry--cry--dashing out the hands of wail
On each side, to meet anguish everywhere,
And to attest it in the ecstasy
And exaltation of a woe sustained
Because provoked and chosen.
Pass along
Your wilderness, vain mortals! Puny griefs
In transitory shapes, be henceforth dwarfed
To your own conscience, by the dread extremes
Of what I am and have been. If ye have fallen,
It is but a step's fall,--the whole ground beneath
Strewn woolly soft with promise! if ye have sinned,
Your prayers tread high as angels! if ye have grieved,
Ye are too mortal to be pitiable,
The power to die disproves the right to grieve.
Go to! ye call this ruin? I half-scorn
The ill I did you! Were ye wronged by me,
Hated and tempted and undone of me,--
Still, what's your hurt to mine of doing hurt,
Of hating, tempting, and so ruining?
This sword's _hilt_ is the sharpest, and cuts through
The hand that wields it.
Go! I curse you all.
Hate one another--feebly--as ye can!
I would not certes cut you short in hate,
Far be it from me! hate on as ye can!
I breathe into your faces, spirits of earth,
As wintry blast may breathe on wintry leaves
And lifting up their brownness show beneath
The branches bare. Beseech you, spirits, give
To Eve who beggarly entreats your love
For her and Adam when they shall be dead,
An answer rather fitting to the sin
Than to the sorrow--as the heavens, I trow,
For justice' sake gave theirs.
I curse you both,
Adam and Eve. Say grace as after meat,
After my curses! May your tears fall hot
On all the hissing scorns o' the creatures here,--
And yet rejoice! Increase and multiply,
Ye in your generations, in all plagues,
Corruptions, melancholies, poverties,
And hideous forms of life and fears of death,--
The thought of death being always imminent,
Immoveable and dreadful in your life,
And deafly and dumbly insignificant
Of any hope beyond,--as death itself,
Whichever of you lieth dead the first,
Shall seem to the survivor--yet rejoice!
My curse catch at you strongly, body and soul,
And HE find no redemption--nor the wing
Of seraph move your way; and yet rejoice!
Rejoice,--because ye have not, set in you,
This hate which shall pursue you--this fire-hate
Which glares without, because it burns within--
Which kills from ashes--this potential hate,
Wherein I, angel, in antagonism
To God and his reflex beatitudes,
Moan ever, in the central universe,
With the great woe of striving against Love--
And gasp for space amid the Infinite,
And toss for rest amid the Desertness,
Self-orphaned by my will, and self-elect
To kingship of resistant agony
Toward the Good round me--hating good and love,
And willing to hate good and to hate love,
And willing to will on so evermore,
Scorning the past and damning the to-come--
Go and rejoice! I curse you.

[_LUCIFER vanishes. _

_Earth Spirits. _
And we scorn you! there's no pardon
Which can lean to you aright.
When your bodies take the guerdon
Of the death-curse in our sight,
Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you:
Then ye shall not move an eyelid
Though the stars look down your eyes;
And the earth which ye defiled
Shall expose you to the skies,--
"Lo! these kings of ours, who sought to comprehend you. "

_First Spirit. _
And the elements shall boldly
All your dust to dust constrain.
Unresistedly and coldly
I will smite you with my rain.
From the slowest of my frosts is no receding.

_Second Spirit. _
And my little worm, appointed
To assume a royal part,
He shall reign, crowned and anointed,
O'er the noble human heart.
Give him counsel against losing of that Eden!

_Adam. _ Do ye scorn us? Back your scorn
Toward your faces grey and lorn,
As the wind drives back the rain,
Thus I drive with passion-strife,
I who stand beneath God's sun,
Made like God, and, though undone,
Not unmade for love and life.
Lo! ye utter threats in vain.
By my free will that chose sin,
By mine agony within
Round the passage of the fire,
By the pinings which disclose
That my native soul is higher
Than what it chose,
We are yet too high, O Spirits, for your disdain!

_Eve. _ Nay, beloved! If these be low,
We confront them from no height.
We have stooped down to their level
By infecting them with evil,
And their scorn that meets our blow Scathes aright.
Amen. Let it be so.

_Earth Spirits. _
We shall triumph--triumph greatly
When ye lie beneath the sward.
There, our lily shall grow stately
Though ye answer not a word,
And her fragrance shall be scornful of your silence:
While your throne ascending calmly
We, in heirdom of your soul,
Flash the river, lift the palm-tree,
The dilated ocean roll,
By the thoughts that throbbed within you, round the islands.

Alp and torrent shall inherit
Your significance of will,
And the grandeur of your spirit
Shall our broad savannahs fill;
In our winds, your exultations shall be springing!
Even your parlance which inveigles,
By our rudeness shall be won.
Hearts poetic in our eagles
Shall beat up against the sun
And strike downward in articulate clear singing.
Your bold speeches our Behemoth
With his thunderous jaw shall wield.
Your high fancies shall our Mammoth
Breathe sublimely up the shield
Of Saint Michael at God's throne, who waits to speed him:
Till the heavens' smooth-grooved thunder
Spinning back, shall leave them clear,
And the angels, smiling wonder,
With dropt looks from sphere to sphere,
Shall cry "Ho, ye heirs of Adam! ye exceed him. "

_Adam. _ Root out thine eyes, Sweet, from the dreary ground!
Beloved, we may be overcome by God,
But not by these.

_Eve. _ By God, perhaps, in these.

_Adam. _ I think, not so. Had God foredoomed despair
He had not spoken hope. He may destroy
Certes, but not deceive.

_Eve. _ Behold this rose!
I plucked it in our bower of Paradise
This morning as I went forth, and my heart
Has beat against its petals all the day.
I thought it would be always red and full
As when I plucked it. _Is_ it? --ye may see!
I cast it down to you that ye may see,
All of you! --count the petals lost of it,
And note the colours fainted! ye may see!
And I am as it is, who yesterday
Grew in the same place. O ye spirits of earth,
I almost, from my miserable heart,
Could here upbraid you for your cruel heart,
Which will not let me, down the slope of death,
Draw any of your pity after me,
Or lie still in the quiet of your looks,
As my flower, there, in mine.

[_A bleak wind, quickened with indistinct Human Voices, spins around the
Earth-zodiac, filling the circle with its presence; and then, wailing
off into the East, carries the rose away with it. EVE falls upon her
face. ADAM stands erect. _

_Adam. _ So, verily,
The last departs.

_Eve. _ So Memory follows Hope,
And Life both. Love said to me, "Do not die,"
And I replied, "O Love, I will not die.
I exiled and I will not orphan Love. "
But now it is no choice of mine to die:
My heart throbs from me.

_Adam. _ Call it straightway back!
Death's consummation crowns completed life,
Or comes too early. Hope being set on thee
For others, if for others then for thee,--
For thee and me.

[_The wind revolves from the East, and round again to the East, perfumed
by the Eden rose, and full of Voices which sweep out into articulation
as they pass. _

Let thy soul shake its leaves
To feel the mystic wind--hark!

_Eve. _ I hear life.

_Infant Voices passing in the wind. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life that we receive
Is a warm thing and a new,
Which we softly bud into
From the heart and from the brain,--
Something strange that overmuch is
Of the sound and of the sight,
Flowing round in trickling touches,
With a sorrow and delight,--
Yet is it all in vain?
Rock us softly,
Lest it be all in vain.

_Youthful Voices passing. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life that we achieve
Is a loud thing and a bold
Which with pulses manifold
Strikes the heart out full and fain--
Active doer, noble liver,
Strong to struggle, sure to conquer,
Though the vessel's prow will quiver
At the lifting of the anchor:
Yet do we strive in vain?

_Infant Voices passing. _
Rock us softly,
Lest it be all in vain.

_Poet Voices passing. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life that we conceive
Is a clear thing and a fair,
Which we set in crystal air
That its beauty may be plain!
With a breathing and a flooding
Of the heaven-life on the whole,
While we hear the forests budding
To the music of the soul--
Yet is it tuned in vain?

_Infant Voices passing. _
Rock us softly,
Lest it be all in vain.

_Philosophic Voices passing. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life that we perceive
Is a great thing and a grave
Which for others' use we have,
Duty-laden to remain.
We are helpers, fellow-creatures,
Of the right against the wrong;
We are earnest-hearted teachers
Of the truth which maketh strong--
Yet do we teach in vain?

_Infant Voices passing. _
Rock us softly,
Lest it be all in vain.

_Revel Voices passing. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life that we reprieve
Is a low thing and a light,
Which is jested out of sight
And made worthy of disdain!
Strike with bold electric laughter
The high tops of things divine--
Turn thy head, my brother, after,
Lest thy tears fall in my wine!
For is all laughed in vain?

_Infant Voices passing. _
Rock us softly,
Lest it be all in vain.

_Eve. _ I hear a sound of life--of life like ours--
Of laughter and of wailing, of grave speech,
Of little plaintive voices innocent,
Of life in separate courses flowing out
Like our four rivers to some outward main.
I hear life--life!

_Adam. _ And, so, thy cheeks have snatched
Scarlet to paleness, and thine eyes drink fast
Of glory from full cups, and thy moist lips
Seem trembling, both of them, with earnest doubts
Whether to utter words or only smile.

_Eve. _ Shall I be mother of the coming life?
Hear the steep generations, how they fall
Adown the visionary stairs of Time
Like supernatural thunders--far, yet near,--
Sowing their fiery echoes through the hills.
Am I a cloud to these--mother to these?

_Earth Spirits. _ And bringer of the curse upon all these.

[_EVE sinks down again. _

_Poet Voices passing. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life that we conceive
Is a noble thing and high,
Which we climb up loftily
To view God without a stain;
Till, recoiling where the shade is,
We retread our steps again,
And descend the gloomy Hades
To resume man's mortal pain.
Shall it be climbed in vain?

_Infant Voices passing. _
Rock us softly,
Lest it be all in vain.

_Love Voices passing. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life we would retrieve,
Is a faithful thing apart
Which we love in, heart to heart,
Until one heart fitteth twain.
"Wilt thou be one with me? "
"I will be one with thee. "
"Ha, ha! --we love and live! "
Alas! ye love and die.
Shriek--who shall reply?
For is it not loved in vain?

_Infant Voices passing. _
Rock us softly,
Though it be all in vain.

_Aged Voices passing. _
O we live, O we live--
And this life we would survive,
Is a gloomy thing and brief,
Which, consummated in grief,
Leaveth ashes for all gain.
Is it not _all_ in vain?

_Infant Voices passing. _
Rock us softly,
Though it be _all_ in vain.

[_Voices die away. _

_Earth Spirits. _ And bringer of the curse upon all these.

_Eve. _ The voices of foreshown Humanity
Die off;--so let me die.

_Adam. _ So let us die,
When God's will soundeth the right hour of death.

_Earth Spirits. _ And bringer of the curse upon all these.

_Eve. _ O Spirits! by the gentleness ye use
In winds at night, and floating clouds at noon,
In gliding waters under lily-leaves,
In chirp of crickets, and the settling hush
A bird makes in her nest with feet and wings,--
Fulfil your natures now!

_Earth Spirits. _ Agreed, allowed!
We gather out our natures like a cloud,
And thus fulfil their lightnings! Thus, and thus!
Hearken, oh hearken to us!

_First Spirit. _
As the storm-wind blows bleakly from the norland,
As the snow-wind beats blindly on the moorland,
As the simoom drives hot across the desert,
As the thunder roars deep in the Unmeasured.
As the torrent tears the ocean-world to atoms,
As the whirlpool grinds it fathoms below fathoms,
Thus,--and thus!

_Second Spirit. _
As the yellow toad, that spits its poison chilly,
As the tiger, in the jungle crouching stilly,
As the wild boar, with ragged tusks of anger,
As the wolf-dog, with teeth of glittering clangour,
As the vultures, that scream against the thunder,
As the owlets, that sit and moan asunder,
Thus,--and thus!

_Eve. _ Adam! God!

_Adam. _ Cruel, unrelenting Spirits!
By the power in me of the sovran soul
Whose thoughts keep pace yet with the angel's march,
I charge you into silence--trample you
Down to obedience. I am king of you!

_Earth Spirits. _
Ha, ha! thou art king!
With a sin for a crown,
And a soul undone!
Thou, the antagonized,
Tortured and agonized,
Held in the ring
Of the zodiac!
Now, king, beware!
We are many and strong
Whom thou standest among,--
And we press on the air,
And we stifle thee back,
And we multiply where
Thou wouldst trample us down
From rights of our own
To an utter wrong--
And, from under the feet of thy scorn,
O forlorn,
We shall spring up like corn,
And our stubble be strong.
_Adam. _ God, there is power in thee! I make appeal
Unto thy kingship.

_Eve. _ There is pity in THEE,
O sinned against, great God! --My seed, my seed,
There is hope set on THEE--I cry to thee,
Thou mystic Seed that shalt be! --leave us not
In agony beyond what we can bear,
Fallen in debasement below thunder-mark,
A mark for scorning--taunted and perplext
By all these creatures we ruled yesterday,
Whom thou, Lord, rulest alway! O my Seed,
Through the tempestuous years that rain so thick
Betwixt my ghostly vision and thy face,
Let me have token! for my soul is bruised
Before the serpent's head is.

[_A vision of CHRIST appears in the midst of the Zodiac, which pales
before the heavenly light. The Earth Spirits grow greyer and fainter. _

CHRIST. I AM HERE!

_Adam. _ This is God! --Curse us not, God, any more!

_Eve. _ But gazing so--so--with omnific eyes,
Lift my soul upward till it touch thy feet!
Or lift it only,--not to seem too proud,--
To the low height of some good angel's feet,
For such to tread on when he walketh straight
And thy lips praise him!

CHRIST. Spirits of the earth,
I meet you with rebuke for the reproach
And cruel and unmitigated blame
Ye cast upon your masters. True, they have sinned;
And true their sin is reckoned into loss
For you the sinless. Yet, your innocence
Which of you praises? since God made your acts
Inherent in your lives, and bound your hands
With instincts and imperious sanctities
From self-defacement. Which of you disdains
These sinners who in falling proved their height
Above you by their liberty to fall?
And which of you complains of loss by them,
For whose delight and use ye have your life
And honour in creation? Ponder it!
This regent and sublime Humanity,
Though fallen, exceeds you! this shall film your sun,
Shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud,
Turn back your rivers, footpath all your seas,
Lay flat your forests, master with a look
Your lion at his fasting, and fetch down
Your eagle flying. Nay, without this law
Of mandom, ye would perish,--beast by beast
Devouring,--tree by tree, with strangling roots
And trunks set tuskwise. 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.