Part 4

_Second Spirit._ I wail, I wail! I wail in the assault Of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded! My nightingale sang sweet without a fault, My gentle leopards innocently bounded. _We_ were obedient. What is this convulses Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses? And I wail!

_Eve._ I choose God's thunder and His angels' swords To die by, Adam, rather than such words. Let us pass out and flee.

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

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

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

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

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

_Adam._ Speak as thou wilt.

_Eve._ Thus, then--my hand in thine-- ... Sweet, dreadful Spirits! I pray you humbly in the name of God, Not to say of these tears, which are impure-- Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth From clean volitions toward a spotted will, From the wronged to the wronger, this and no more! I do not ask more. I am 'ware, indeed, That absolute pardon is impossible From you to me, by reason of my sin,-- And that I cannot evermore, as once, With worthy acceptation of pure joy, Behold the trances of the holy hills Beneath the leaning stars, or watch the vales Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy,-- Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between Two grassy uplands,--and the river-wells Work out their bubbling mysteries underground,-- And all the birds sing, till for joy of song They lift their trembling wings as if to heave The too-much weight of music from their heart And float it up the æther. I am 'ware That these things I can no more apprehend With a pure organ into a full delight,-- The sense of beauty and of melody Being no more aided in me by the sense Of personal adjustment to those heights Of what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned, But rather coupled darkly and made ashamed By my percipiency of sin and fall In melancholy of humiliant thoughts. But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits--albeit this Your accusation must confront my soul, And your pathetic utterance and full gaze Must evermore subdue me,--be content! Conquer me gently--as if pitying me, Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick As watering dews of Eden, unreproached; And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth, Not ruffled--smooth and still with your reproof, 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 defilèd 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-groovèd 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.