Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

_A Voice from below._ Gabriel, thou Gabriel!

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

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

_Second Voice._ Question me!

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

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

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

_First Voice._ Gabriel, O Gabriel!

_Second Voice._ What wouldst _thou_ with me?

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

_Second Voice._ Lost one, it is true.

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

_Second Voice._ It is true.

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

_Second Voice._ It is true.

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

_Second Voice._ It is true.

_First Voice._ Gabriel!

_Second Voice._ I hearken.

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

_Second Voice._ It is true.

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

[_A pause. Silence in the stars._

All things grow sadder to me, one by one.

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

[C] Her maternal instinct is excited by Gemini.

THE SERAPHIM

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

GILES FLETCHER.

THE SERAPHIM.

PART THE FIRST.

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

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

_Zerah._ Of heaven!

_Ador._ Our brother hosts are gone--

_Zerah._ Are gone before.

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

_Zerah._ Silent upon the glass-sea shore!

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

_Zerah._ Our visible God, our heavenly seats!

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

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

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

_Zerah._ Thee!

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

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

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

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

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

_Zerah._ I fear, I fear--

_Ador._ What fear?

_Zerah._ The fear of earth.

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

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

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

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

_Ador._ called Death?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Ador._ Yea, peace, where He is.

_Zerah._ He! Say it again.

_Ador._ Where He is.

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

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

_Zerah._ Walks earth in clay?

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

_Who_ said man's victim was his deity?

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

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

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

_Ador._ One love is bearing us along.

PART THE SECOND.

_Mid-air, above Judæa. ADOR and ZERAH are a little apart from the visible Angelic Hosts._

_Ador._ Beloved! dost thou see?--

_Zerah._ Thee,--thee. Thy burning eyes already are Grown wild and mournful as a star Whose occupation is for aye To look upon the place of clay Whereon thou lookest now. The crown is fainting on thy brow To the likeness of a cloud, The forehead's self a little bowed From its aspect high and holy, As it would in meekness meet Some seraphic melancholy: Thy very wings that lately flung An outline clear, do flicker here And wear to each a shadow hung, Dropped across thy feet. In these strange contrasting glooms Stagnant with the scent of tombs, Seraph faces, O my brother, Show awfully to one another.

_Ador._ Dost thou see?

_Zerah._ Even so; I see Our empyreal company, Alone the memory of their brightness Left in them, as in thee. The circle upon circle, tier on tier, Piling earth's hemisphere With heavenly infiniteness, Above us and around, Straining the whole horizon like a bow: Their songful lips divorcèd from all sound, A darkness gliding down their silvery glances,-- Bowing their steadfast solemn countenances As if they heard God speak, and could not glow.

_Ador._ Look downward! dost thou see?

_Zerah._ And wouldst thou press _that_ vision on my words? Doth not earth speak enough Of change and of undoing, Without a seraph's witness? Oceans rough With tempest, pastoral swards Displaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruing The bolt fallen yesterday, That shake their piny heads, as who would say "We are too beautiful for our decay"-- Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let alone Earth to her earthly moan!

_Voice of all things._ Is there no moan but hers?

_Ador._ Hearest thou the attestation Of the rousèd universe Like a desert-lion shaking Dews of silence from its mane? With an irrepressive passion Uprising at once, Rising up and forsaking Its solemn state in the circle of suns, To attest the pain Of him who stands (O patience sweet!) In his own hand-prints of creation, With human feet?

_Voice of all things._ Is there no moan but ours?

_Zerah._ Forms, Spaces, Motions wide, O meek, insensate things, O congregated matters! who inherit, Instead of vital powers, Impulsions God-supplied; Instead of influent spirit, A clear informing beauty; Instead of creature-duty, Submission calm as rest. Lights, without feet or wings, In golden courses sliding! Glooms, stagnantly subsiding, Whose lustrous heart away was prest Into the argent stars! Ye crystal firmamental bars That hold the skyey waters free From tide or tempest's ecstasy! Airs universal! thunders lorn That wait your lightnings in cloud-cave Hewn out by the winds! O brave And subtle elements! the Holy Hath charged me by your voice with folly.[D] Enough, the mystic arrow leaves its wound. Return ye to your silences inborn, Or to your inarticulated sound!

_Ador._ Zerah!

_Zerah._ Wilt _thou_ rebuke? God hath rebuked me, brother. I am weak.

_Ador._ Zerah, my brother Zerah! could I speak Of thee, 'twould be of love to thee.