Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SERAPHIM, by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: O seraph, pause no more! Last Line: Before his heavenly throne should walk in white. Subject(s): Crucifixion; Jesus Christ - Crucifixion | ||||||||
PART THE FIRST 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 primaeval heats Whereby all life has lived. Zerah. Our visible God, our heavenly seats! Ador. Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical, Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all, -- The roar of whose descent has died To a still sound, as thunder into rain. Immeasurable space spreads magnified With that thick life, along the plane The worlds slid out on. What a fall And eddy of wings innumerous, crossed By trailing curls that have not lost The glitter of the God-smile shed On every prostrate angel's head! What gleaming up of hands that fling Their homage in retorted rays, From high instinct of worshipping, And habitude of praise! Zerah. Rapidly they drop below us: Pointed palm and wing and hair Indistinguishable show us Only pulses in the air Throbbing with a fiery beat, As if a new creation heard Some divine and plastic word, And trembling at its new-found being, Awakened at our feet. Ador. Zerah, do not wait for seeing! HIS voice, his, that thrills us so As we our harpstrings, uttered Go, Behold the Holy in his woe! And all are gone, save thee and -- Zerah. Thee! Ador. I stood the nearest to the throne In hierarchical degree, What time the Voice said Go! And whether I was moved alone By the storm-pathos of the tone Which swept through heaven the alien name of woe, Or whether the subtle glory broke Through my strong and shielding wings, Bearing to my finite essence Incapacious of their presence, Infinite imaginings None knoweth save the Throned who spoke; But I who at creation stood upright And heard the God-breath move Shaping the words that lightened, 'Be there light,' Nor trembled but with love, Now fell down shudderingly, My face upon the pavement whence I had towered, As if in mine immortal overpowered By God's eternity. Zerah. Let me wait! -- let me wait! -- Ador. Nay, gaze not backward through the gate! God fills our heaven with God's own solitude Till all the pavements glow: His Godhead being no more subdued, By itself, to glories low Which seraphs can sustain. What if thou, in gazing so, Shouldst behold but only one Attribute, the veil undone -- Even that to which we dare to press Nearest, for its gentleness -- Ay, his love! How the deep ecstatic pain Thy being's strength would capture! Without language for the rapture, Without music strong to come And set the adoration free, For ever, ever, wouldst thou be Amid the general chorus dumb, God-stricken to seraphic agony. Or, brother, what if on thine eyes In vision bare should rise The life-fount whence his hand did gather With solitary force Our immortalities! Straightway how thine own would wither, Falter like a human breath, And shrink into a point like death, By gazing on its source! -- My words have imaged dread. Meekly hast thou bent thine head, And dropt thy wings in languishment: Overclouding foot and face, As if God's throne were eminent Before thee, in the place. Yet not -- not so, O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil The supreme Will. Not for obeisance but obedience, Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence! The voice said 'Go!' Zerah. Beloved, I depart, His will is as a spirit within my spirit, A portion of the being I inherit. His will is mine obedience. I resemble A flame all undefiled though it tremble; I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved! O thou, who stronger art, And standest ever near the Infinite, Pale with the light of Light, Love me, beloved! me, more newly made, More feeble, more afraid; And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved, As close and gentle as the loving are, That love being near, heaven may not seem so far. Ador. I am near thee and I love thee. Were I loveless, from thee gone, Love is round, beneath, above thee, God, the omnipresent one. Spread the wing and lift the brow Well-beloved, what fearest thou? Zerah. I fear, I fear -- Ador. What fear? Zerah. The fear of earth. Ador. Of earth, the God-created and God-praised In the hour of birth? Where every night the moon in light Doth lead the waters silver-faced? Where every day the sun doth lay A rapture to the heart of all The leafy and reeded pastoral, As if the joyous shout which burst From angel lips to see him first, Had left a silent echo in his ray? Zerah. Of earth -- the God-created and God-curst, Where man is, and the thorn Where sun and moon have borne No light to souls forlorn: Where Eden's tree of life no more uprears Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead The yew-tree bows its melancholy head And all the undergrasses kills and seres. Ador. Of earth the weak. Made and unmade? Where men, that faint, do strive for crowns that fade? Where, having won the profit which they seek, They lie beside the sceptre and the gold With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold, And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes? Zerah. Of earth the bold, Where the blind matter wrings An awful potence out of impotence, Bowing the spiritual things To the things of sense. Where the human will replies With ay and no, Because the human pulse is quick or slow. Where Love succumbs to Change, With only his own memories, for revenge. And the fearful mystery -- Ador. Called Death? Zerah. Nay, death is fearful, -- but who saith 'To die,' is comprehensible. What's fearfuller, thou knowest well, Though the utterance be not for thee, Lest it blanch thy lips from glory -- Ay! the cursed thing that moved A shadow of ill, long time ago, Across our heaven's own shining floor, And when it vanished, some who were On thrones of holy empire there, Did reign -- were seen -- were -- never more. Come nearer, O beloved! Ador. I am near thee. Didst thou bear thee Ever to this earth? Zerah. Before. When thrilling from his hand along Its lustrous path with spheric song The earth was deathless, sorrowless. Unfearing, then, pure feet might press The grasses brightening with their feet, For God's own voice did mix its sound In a solemn confluence oft With the rivers' flowing round, And the life-tree's waving soft. Beautiful new earth and strange! Ador. Hast thou seen it since -- the change? Zerah. Nay, or wherefore should I fear To look upon it now? I have beheld the ruined things Only in depicturings Of angels from an earthly mission, -- Strong one, even upon thy brow, When, with task completed, given Back to us in that transition, I have beheld thee silent stand, Abstracted in the seraph band, Without a smile in heaven. Ador. Then thou wast not one of those Whom the loving Father chose In visionary pomp to sweep O'er Judaea's grassy places, O'er the shepherds and the sheep, Though thou art so tender? -- dimming All the stars except one star With their brighter kinder faces, And using heaven's own tune in hymning, While deep response from earth's own mountains ran, 'Peace upon earth, goodwill to man.' Zerah. 'Glory to God.' I said amen afar. And those who from that earthly mission are, Within mine ears have told That the seven everlasting Spirits did hold With such a sweet and prodigal constraint The meaning yet the mystery of the song What time they sang it, on their natures strong, That, gazing down on earth's dark steadfastness And speaking the new peace in promises, The love and pity made their voices faint Into the low and tender music, keeping The place in heaven of what on earth is weeping. Ador. 'Peace upon earth.' Come down to it. Zerah. Ah me! I hear thereof uncomprehendingly. Peace where the tempest, where the sighing is, And worship of the idol, 'stead of his? Ador. Yea, peace, where He is. Zerah. He! Say it again. Ador. Where He is. Zerah. Can it be That earth retains a tree Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed By the breathing of his voice, nor shrink and fade? Ador. There is a tree! -- it hath no leaf nor root; Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit: Its shadow on his head is laid. For he, the crowned Son, Has left his crown and throne, Walks earth in Adam's clay, Eve's snake to bruise and slay -- Zerah. Walks earth in clay? Ador. And walking in the clay which he created, He through it shall touch death. What do I utter? what conceive? did breath Of demon howl it in a blasphemy? Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilated By the seven confluent Spirits? -- Speak -- answer me! Who said man's victim was his deity? Zerah. Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee. Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous light Above, below, around, As putting thunder-questions without cloud, Reverberate without sound, To universal nature's depth and height. The tremor of an inexpressive thought Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud, O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips; And while thine hands are stretched above, As newly they had caught Some lightning from the Throne, or showed the Lord Some retributive sword, Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse And radiance, with contrasted wrath and love, As God had called thee to a seraph's part, With a man's quailing heart. Ador. O heart -- O heart of man! O ta'en from human clay To be no seraph's but Jehovah's own! Made holy in the taking, And yet unseparate From death's perpetual ban, And human feelings sad and passionate: Still subject to the treacherous forsaking Of other hearts, and its own steadfast pain. O heart of man -- of God! which God has ta'en From out the dust, with its humanity Mournful and weak yet innocent around it, And bade its many pulses beating lie Beside that incommunicable stir Of Deity wherewith He interwound it. O man! and is thy nature so defiled That all that holy Heart's devout law-keeping, And low pathetic beat in deserts wild, And gushings pitiful of tender weeping For traitors who consigned it to such woe -- That all could cleanse thee not, without the flow Of blood, the life - blood -- his -- and streaming so? O earth the thundercleft, windshaken, where The louder voice of 'blood and blood' doth rise, Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice? O heaven! O vacant throne! O crowned hierarchies that wear your crown When his is put away! Are ye unshamed that ye cannot dim Your alien brightness to be liker him, Assume a human passion, and down-lay Your sweet secureness for congenial fears, And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyes The mystery of his tears? Zerah. I am strong, I am strong. Were I never to see my heaven again, I would wheel to earth like the tempest rain Which sweeps there with an exultant sound To lose its life as it reaches the ground. I am strong, I am strong. Away from mine inward vision swim The shining seats of my heavenly birth, I see but his, I see but Him -- The Maker's steps on his cruel earth. Will the bitter herbs of earth grow sweet To me, as trodden by his feet? Will the vexed, accurst humanity, As worn by Him, begin to be A blessed, yea, a sacred thing For love and awe and ministering? I am strong, I am strong. 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 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 divorced 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 roused 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. 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, 't would be of love to thee. Zerah. Thy look Is fixed on earth, as mine upon thy face. Where shall I seek his? I have thrown One look upon earth, but one, Over the blue mountain-lines, Over the forests of palms and pines, Over the harvest-lands golden, Over the valleys that fold in The gardens and vines -- He is not there. All these are unworthy Those footsteps to bear, Before which, bowing down I would fain quench the stars of my crown In the dark of the earthy. Where shall I seek Him? No reply? Hath language left thy lips, to place Its vocal in thine eye? Ador, Ador! are we come To a double portent, that Dumb matter grows articulate And songful seraphs dumb? Ador, Ador! Ador. I constrain The passion of my silence. None Of those places gazed upon Are gloomy enow to fit his pain. Unto Him, whose forming word Gave to Nature flower and sward, She hath given back again, For the myrtle -- the thorn, For the sylvan calm -- the human scorn. Still, still, reluctant seraph, gaze beneath! There is a city -- Zerah. Temple and tower, Palace and purple would droop like a flower, (Or a cloud at our breath) If He neared in his state The outermost gate. Ador. Ah me, not so In the state of a king did the victim go! And THOU who hangest mute of speech 'Twixt heaven and earth, with forehead yet Stained by the bloody sweat, God! man! Thou hast forgone thy throne in each. Zerah. Thine eyes behold Him? Ador. Yea, below. Track the gazing of mine eyes, Naming God within thine heart That its weakness may depart And the vision rise! Seest thou yet, beloved? Zerah. I see Beyond the city, crosses three And mortals three that hang thereon 'Ghast and silent to the sun. Round them blacken and welter and press Staring multitudes whose father Adam was, whose brows are dark With his Cain's corroded mark, -- Who curse with looks. Nay -- let me rather Turn unto the wilderness! Ador. Turn not! God dwells with men. Zerah. Above He dwells with angels, and they love. Can these love? With the living's pride They stare at those who die, who hang In their sight and die. They bear the streak Of the crosses' shadow, black not wide, To fall on their heads, as it swerves aside When the victims' pang Makes the dry wood creak. Ador. The cross -- the cross! Zerah. A woman kneels The mid cross under, With white lips asunder, And motion on each. They throb, as she feels, With a spasm, not a speech; And her lids, close as sleep, Are less calm, for the eyes Have made room there to weep Drop on drop -- Ador. Weep? Weep blood, All women, all men! He sweated it, He, For your pale womanhood And base manhood. Agree That these water-tears, then, Are vain, mocking like laughter: Weep blood! Shall the flood Of salt curses, whose foam is the darkness, on roll Forward, on from the strand of the storm-beaten years, And back from the rocks of the horrid hereafter, And up, in a coil, from the present's wrath-spring, Yea, down from the windows of heaven opening, Deep calling to deep as they meet on his soul -- And men weep only tears? Zerah. Little drops in the lapse! And yet, Ador, perhaps It is all that they can. Tears! the lovingest man Has no better bestowed Upon man. Ador. Nor on God. Zerah. Do all-givers need gifts? If the Giver said 'Give,' the first motion would slay Our Immortals, the echo would ruin away The same worlds which he made. Why, what angel uplifts Such a music, so clear, It may seem in God's ear Worth more than a woman's hoarse weeping? And thus, Pity tender as tears, I above thee would speak, Thou woman that weepest! weep unscorned of us! I, the tearless and pure, am but loving and weak. Ador. Speak low, my brother, low, -- and not of love Or human or angelic! Rather stand Before the throne of that Supreme above, In whose infinitude the secrecies Of thine own being lie hid, and lift thine hand Exultant, saying, 'Lord God, I am wise!' Than utter here, 'I love.' Zerah. And yet thine eyes Do utter it. They melt in tender light, The tears of heaven. Ador. Of heaven. Ah me! Zerah. Ador! Ador. Say on! Zerah. The crucified are three. Beloved, they are unlike. Ador. Unlike. Zerah. For one Is as a man who has sinned and still Doth wear the wicked will, The hard malign life-energy, Tossed outward, in the parting soul's disdain, On brow and lip that cannot change again Ador. And one -- Zerah. Has also sinned. And yet (O marvel!) doth the Spirit-wind Blow white those waters? Death upon his face Is rather shine than shade, A tender shine by looks beloved made: He seemeth dying in a quiet place, And less by iron wounds in hands and feet Than heart-broke by new joy too sudden and sweet. Ador. And ONE! -- Zerah. And ONE! -- Ador. Why dost thou pause? Zerah. God! God! Spirit of my spirit! who movest Through seraph veins in burning deity To light the quenchless pulses! -- Ador. But hast trod The depths of love in thy peculiar nature, And not in any thou hast made and lovest In narrow seraph hearts! -- Zerah. Above, Creator! Within, Upholder! Ador. And below, below, The creature's and the upholden's sacrifice! Zerah. Why do I pause? -- Ador. There is a silentness That answers thee enow, That, like a brazen sound Excluding others, doth ensheathe us round, -- Hear it. It is not from the visible skies Though they are still, Unconscious that their own dropped dews express The light of heaven on every earthly hill. It is not from the hills, though calm and bare They, since their first creation, Through midnight cloud or morning's glittering air Or the deep deluge blindness, toward the place Whence thrilled the mystic word's creative grace, And whence again shall come The word that uncreates, Have lift their brows in voiceless expectation. It is not from the places that entomb Man's dead, though common Silence there dilates Her soul to grand proportions, worthily To fill life's vacant room. Not there: not there. Not yet within those chambers lieth he, A dead one in his living world; his south And west winds blowing over earth and sea, And not a breath on that creating mouth. But now, -- a silence keeps (Not death's, nor sleep's) The lips whose whispered word Might roll the thunders round reverberated. Silent art thou, O my Lord, Bowing down thy stricken head! Fearest thou, a groan of thine Would make the pulse of thy creation fail As thine own pulse? -- would rend the veil Of visible things and let the flood Of the unseen Light, the essential God, Rush in to whelm the undivine? Thy silence, to my thinking, is as dread. Zerah. O silence! Ador. Doth it say to thee -- the NAME, Slow-learning seraph? Zerah. I have learnt. Ador. The flame Perishes in thine eyes. Zerah. He opened his, And looked. I cannot bear -- Ador. Their agony? Zerah. Their love. God's depth is in them. From his brows White, terrible in meekness, didst thou see The lifted eyes unclose? He is God, seraph! Look no more on me, O God -- I am not God. Ador. The loving is Sublimed within them by the sorrowful. In heaven we could sustain them. Zerah. Heaven is dull, Mine Ador, to man's earth. The light that burns In fluent, refluent motion Along the crystal ocean; The springing of the golden harps between The bowery wings, in fountains of sweet sound, The winding, wandering music that returns Upon itself, exultingly self-bound In the great spheric round Of everlasting praises; The God-thoughts in our midst that intervene, Visibly flashing from the supreme throne Full in seraphic faces Till each astonishes the other, grown More beautiful with worship and delight -- My heaven! my home of heaven! my infinite Heaven-choirs! what are ye to this dust and death, This cloud, this cold, these tears, this failing breath, Where God's immortal love now issueth In this MAN'S woe? Ador. His eyes are very deep yet calm. Zerah. No more On me, Jehovah-man -- Ador. Calm-deep. They show A passion which is tranquil. They are seeing No earth, no heaven, no men that slay and curse, No seraphs that adore; Their gaze is on the invisible, the dread, The things we cannot view or think or speak, Because we are too happy, or too weak, -- The sea of ill, for which the universe, With all its piled space, can find no shore, With all its life, no living foot to tread. But he, accomplished in Jehovah-being, Sustains the gaze adown, Conceives the vast despair, And feels the billowy griefs come up to drown, Nor fears, nor faints, nor fails, till all be finished. Zerah. Thus, do I find thee thus? My undiminished And undiminishable God! -- my God! The echoes are still tremulous along The heavenly mountains, of the latest song Thy manifested glory swept abroad In rushing past our lips: they echo aye 'Creator, thou art strong! Creator, thou art blessed over all.' By what new utterance shall I now recall, Unteaching the heaven-echoes? Dare I say, 'Creator, thou art feebler than thy work! Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature! A worm, and not a man, Yea, no worm, but a curse?' I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse. Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork (Whose seed disordered ran From Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her) Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rod That smites thee never blossoming, and thou Grief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow -- I leave to men their song of Ichabod: I have an angel-tongue -- I know but praise. Ador. Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raise The passion-song of blood. Zerah. And we, extend Our holy vacant hands towards the Throne, Crying 'We have no music.' Ador. Rather, blend Both musics into one. The sanctities and sanctified above Shall each to each, with lifted looks serene, Their shining faces lean, And mix the adoring breath And breathe the full thanksgiving. Zerah. But the love -- The love, mine Ador! Ador. Do we love not? Zerah. Yea, But not as man shall! not with life for death, New-throbbing through the startled being; not With strange astonished smiles, that ever may Gush passionate like tears and fill their place: Nor yet with speechless memories of what Earth's winters were, enverduring the green Of every heavenly palm Whose windless, shadeless calm Moves only at the breath of the Unseen. Oh, not with this blood on us -- and this face, -- Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore In our behalf, and tender evermore With nature all our own, upon us gazing -- Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising Their unreproachful wounds, alone to bless! Alas, Creator! shall we love thee less Than mortals shall? Ador. Amen! so let it be. We love in our proportion, to the bound Thine infinite our finite set around, And that is finitely, -- thou, infinite And worthy infinite love! And our delight Is, watching the dear love poured out to thee From ever fuller chalice. Blessed they, Who love thee more than we do: blessed we, Viewing that love which shall exceed even this, And winning in the sight a double bliss For all so lost in love's supremacy. The bliss is better. Only on the sad Cold earth there are who say It seemeth better to be great than glad. The bliss is better. Love him more, O man, Than sinless seraphs can! Zerah. Yea, love him more! Voices of the Angelic Multitude. Yea, more! Ador. The loving word Is caught by those from whom we stand apart. For silence hath no deepness in her heart Where love's low name low breathed would not be heard By angels, clear as thunder. Angelic Voices. Love him more! Ador. Sweet voices, swooning o'er The music which ye make! Albeit to love there were not ever given A mournful sound when uttered out of heaven, That angel-sadness ye would fitly take. Of love be silent now! we gaze adown Upon the incarnate Love who wears no crown. Zerah. No crown! the woe instead Is heavy on his head, Pressing inward on his brain With a hot and clinging pain Till all tears are prest away, And clear and calm his vision may Peruse the black abyss. No rod, no sceptre is Holden in his fingers pale; They close instead upon the nail, Concealing the sharp dole, Never stirring to put by The fair hair peaked with blood, Drooping forward from the rood Helplessly, heavily On the cheek that waxeth colder, Whiter ever, and the shoulder Where the government was laid. His glory made the heavens afraid; Will he not unearth this cross from its hole? His pity makes his piteous state; Will he be uncompassionate Alone to his proper soul? Yea, will he not lift up His lips from the bitter cup, His brows from the dreary weight, His hand from the clenching cross, Crying, 'My Father, give to me Again the joy I had with thee Or ere this earth was made for loss?' No stir: no sound. The love and woe being interwound He cleaveth to the woe; And putteth forth heaven's strength below, To bear. Ador. And that creates his anguish now, Which made his glory there. Zerah. Shall it need be so? Awake, thou Earth! behold. Thou, uttered forth of old In all thy life-emotion, In all thy vernal noises, In the rollings of thine ocean, Leaping founts, and rivers running, -- In thy woods' prophetic heaving Ere the rains a stroke have given, In thy winds' exultant voices When they feel the hills anear, -- In the firmamental sunning, And the tempest which rejoices Thy full heart with an awful cheer. Thou, uttered forth of old And with all thy music rolled In a breath abroad By the breathing God, -- Awake! he is here! behold! Even thou -- Beseems it good To thy vacant vision dim, That the deadly ruin should, For thy sake, encompass him? That the Master-word should lie A mere silence, while his own Processive harmony, The faintest echo of his lightest tone, Is sweeping in a choral triumph by? Awake! emit a cry! And say, albeit used From Adam's ancient years To falls of acrid tears, To frequent sighs unloosed, Caught back to press again On bosoms zoned with pain -- To corses still and sullen The shine and music dulling With closed eyes and ears That nothing sweet can enter, Commoving thee no less With that forced quietness Than the earthquake in thy centre -- Thou hast not learnt to bear This new divine despair! These tears that sink into thee, These dying eyes that view thee, This dropping blood from lifted rood, They darken and undo thee. Thou canst not presently sustain this corse -- Cry, cry, thou hast not force! Cry, thou wouldst fainer keep Thy hopeless charnels deep, Thyself a general tomb Where the first and the second Death Sit gazing face to face And mar each other's breath, While silent bones through all the place 'Neath sun and moon do faintly glisten And seem to lie and listen For the tramp of the coming Doom. Is it not meet That they who erst the Eden fruit did eat, Should champ the ashes? That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloud Should wear it as a shroud, Perishing by its flashes? That they who vexed the lion should be rent? Cry, cry, 'I will sustain my punishment, The sin being mine; but take away from me This visioned Dread -- this man -- this Deity!' The Earth. I have groaned; I have travailed: I am weary. I am blind with my own grief, and cannot see, As clear-eyed angels can, his agony, And what I see I also can sustain, Because his power protects me from his pain. I have groaned; I have travailed: I am dreary, Hearkening the thick sobs of my children's heart: How can I say 'Depart' To that Atoner making calm and free? Am I a God as he, To lay down peace and power as willingly? Ador. He looked for some to pity. There is none. All pity is within him and not for him, His earth is iron under him, and o'er him His skies are brass. His seraphs cry 'Alas!' With hallelujah voices that cannot weep. And man, for whom the dreadful work is done ... Scornful Voices from the Earth. If verily this be the Eternal's son -- Ador. Thou hearest. Man is grateful. Zerah. Can I hear Nor darken into man and cease for ever My seraph-smile to wear? Was it for such, It pleased him to overleap His glory with his love and sever From the God-light and the throne And all angels bowing down, For whom his every look did touch New notes of joy on the unworn string Of an eternal worshipping? For such, he left his heaven? There, though never bought by blood And tears, we gave him gratitude: We loved him there, though unforgiven. Ador. The light is risen Above, around, And down in lurid fragments flung, That catch the mountain-peak and stream With momentary gleam, Then perish in the water and the ground. River and waterfall, Forest and wilderness, Mountain and city, are together wrung Into one shape, and that is shapelessness; The darkness stands for all. Zerah. The pathos hath the day undone: The death-look of his eyes Hath overcome the sun And made it sicken in its narrow skies. Ador. Is it to death? He dieth. Zerah. Through the dark He still, he only, is discernible -- The naked hands and feet transfixed stark, The countenance of patient anguish white, Do make themselves a light More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell, And therein do they shine. Ador. God! Father-God! Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne! Uplift the lids of inward deity, Flashing abroad Thy burning Infinite! Light up this dark where there is nought to see Except the unimagined agony Upon the sinless forehead of the Son! Zerah. God, tarry not! Behold, enow Hath he wandered as a stranger, Sorrowed as a victim. Thou Appear for him, O Father! Appear for him, Avenger! Appear for him, just One and holy One, For he is holy and just! At once the darkness and dishonor rather To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake, And hurl aback to ancient dust These mortals that make blasphemies With their made breath, this earth and skies That only grow a little dim, Seeing their curse on him. But him, of all forsaken, Of creature and of brother, Never wilt thou forsake! Thy living and thy loving cannot slacken Their firm essential hold upon each other, And well thou dost remember how his part Was still to lie upon thy breast and be Partaker of the light that dwelt in thee Ere sun or seraph shone; And how while silence trembled round the throne Thou countedst by the beatings of his heart The moments of thine own eternity. Awaken, O right hand with the lightnings! Again gather His glory to thy glory! What estranger, What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust Between the faithful Father and the Son? Appear for him, O Father! Appear for him, Avenger! Appear for him, just One and holy One, For he is holy and just! Ador. Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark; Thou hast no answer, Zerah. Zerah. No reply, O unforsaking Father? Ador. Hark! Instead of downward voice, a cry Is uttered from beneath. Zerah. And by a sharper sound than death, Mine immortality is riven. The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky Floats backward as by a sudden wind: But I see no light behind, But I feel the farthest stars are all Stricken and shaken, And I know a shadow sad and broad Doth fall -- doth fall On our vacant thrones in heaven. Voice from the Cross. MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU ME FORSAKEN? The Earth. Ah me, ah me, ah me! the dreadful Why! My sin is on thee, sinless one! Thou art God-orphaned, for my burden on thy head. Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread! Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead; Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart. Zerah. He hath forsaken him. I perish. Ador. Hold Upon his name! we perish not. Of old His will -- Zerah. I seek his will. Seek, seraphim! My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curse Reverberate spare us, seraph or universe? He hath forsaken him. Ador. He cannot fail. Angel Voices. We faint, we droop, Our love doth tremble like fear. Voices of Fallen Angels from the Earth. Do we prevail? Or are we lost? Hath not the ill we did Been heretofore our good? Is it not ill that one, all sinless, should Hang heavy with all curses on a cross? Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hid Within the empty graves which men did scoop To hold more damned dead, we shudder through What shall exalt us or undo, Our triumph, or our loss. Voice from the Cross. IT IS FINISHED. Zerah. Hark, again! Like a victor speaks the slain. Angel Voices. Finished be the trembling vain! Ador. Upward, like a well-loved son, Looketh he, the orphaned one. Angel Voices. Finished is the mystic pain. Voices of Fallen Angels. His deathly forehead at the word, Gleameth like a seraph sword. Angel Voices. Finished is the demon reign. Ador. His breath, as living God, createth, His breath, as dying man, completeth. Angel Voices. Finished work his hands sustain. The Earth. In mine ancient sepulchres Where my kings and prophets freeze, Adam dead four thousand years, Unwakened by the universe's Everlasting moan, Aye his ghastly silence mocking -- Unwakened by his children's knocking At his old sepulchral stone, 'Adam, Adam, all this curse is Thine and on us yet!" -- Unwakened by the ceaseless tears Wherewith they made his cerement wet, 'Adam, must thy curse remain?' -- Starts with sudden life and hears Through the slow dripping of the caverned eaves, -- Angel Voices. Finished is his bane. Voice from the Cross. FATHER! MY SPIRIT TO THINE HANDS IS GIVEN. Ador. Hear the wailing winds that be By wings of unclean spirits made! They, in that last look, surveyed The love they lost in losing heaven, And passionately flee With a desolate cry that cleaves The natural storms -- though they are lifting God's strong cedar-roots like leaves, And the earthquake and the thunder, Neither keeping either under, Roar and hurtle through the glooms -- And a few pale stars are drifting Past the dark, to disappear, What time, from the splitting tombs Gleamingly the dead arise, Viewing with their death-calmed eyes The elemental strategies, To witness, victory is the Lord's. Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear! Zerah. I hear alone the memory of his words. EPILOGUE I My song is done. My voice that long hath faltered shall be still. The mystic darkness drops from Calvary's hill Into the common light of this day's sun. II I see no more thy cross, O holy Slain! I hear no more the horror and the coil Of the great world's turmoil Feeling thy countenance too still, -- nor yell Of demons sweeping past it to their prison. The skies that turned to darkness with thy pain Make now a summer's day; And on my changed ear that sabbath bell Records how CHRIST IS RISEN. III And I -- ah! what am I To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened, Seraphic brows of light And seraph language never used nor hearkened? Ah me! what word that seraphs say, could come From mouth so used to sighs, so soon to lie Sighless, because then breathless, in the tomb? IV Bright ministers of God and grace -- of grace Because of God! whether ye bow adown In your own heaven, before the living face Of him who died and deathless wears the crown, Or whether at this hour ye haply are Anear, around me, hiding in the night Of this permitted ignorance your light, This feebleness to spare, -- Forgive me, that mine earthly heart should dare Shape images of unincarnate spirits And lay upon their burning lips a thought Cold with the weeping which mine earth inherits. And though ye find in such hoarse music, wrought To copy yours, a cadence all the while Of sin and sorrow -- only pitying smile! Ye know to pity, well. V I too may haply smile another day At the far recollection of this lay, When God may call me in your midst to dwell, To hear your most sweet music's miracle And see your wondrous faces. May it be! For his remembered sake, the Slain on rood, Who rolled his earthly garment red in blood (Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me, Before his heavenly throne should walk in white. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SOUNDS OF THE RESURRECTED DEAD MAN'S FOOTSTEPS (#3): 2. ANGEL ... by MARVIN BELL CAROL: NEW STYLE by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET THE CROSS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE SILVER TRADE by ARTHUR SZE A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING |
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