University of Virginia Library

BOOK II.

THANATOS ATHANATOU.

The Ninth Hour—Darkness over Calvary.
VOICES FROM ABOVE.
How long, O Lord, our God?

VOICES FROM BENEATH.
O Lord, how long?

[A pause.
VOICES FROM ABOVE AND BENEATH.
No answer yet?—Woe! woe! no answer yet!

SPIRITS
(sinking).
Wild in the windless dark, what sullen song
Rolls this way from the waste? Our wings be wet
With dismal dews, bloody and salt.

SPIRITS
(rising).
The strong
Grief o' the grey old Earth these drops doth sweat.
The moan of old Earth's wrong
Mounts: and we mount with it.

A VOICE FROM THE EARTH.
I have nourish'd my numbers of nations
On a hope that hath never been blest:
And the ghosts of my gone generations
Vex me yet with reproachful unrest.
Worn by long unrequited endeavour,
As I roll thro' my ages of pain,
I have listen'd, I listen for ever,
For a word that is waited in vain!

AN ECHO.
In vain!

VOICE FROM THE EARTH.
In temple and palace
The bread and the chalice,
Bitter with brotherless pride,
Are eaten and drunken by Murder and Malice
Crown'd, mitred, and mantled, and magnified,
While brute-born Hunger, in hovel and den,
Is smiting and biting the bones of men
In whose bodies their souls have died.
One Misery goeth in gold:
And one Misery goeth acold:
And there is no difference beside,
However their dust be drest:
For the flourishing Evil is sad,
Because it is Evil at best:
And the fading Good is not glad,
Because it is Good opprest:
And their wretchedness knoweth no rest
From a hope that is ever belied
In a blessing not ever possest.
The children cry at the birth,
Buds cursing a canker'd stem!
Shall they live or die? What strength have I,
The mother of miseries, Earth,
To bear, or to bury them?
From pitiless city to city,
Passion hath hunted Pity:
Love feedeth his funeral pyre
On the flame of his own heart's fire:
My altars gurgle with groans,
Soak'd black are my temple stones
With the blood of my whitest ones.
Surely, surely O Lord,
It is time to utter the word,
And deliver Thyself, and Thy sons.

AN ECHO.
Deliver Thyself and Thy sons!

VOICES FROM HUMANITY.
Tristis nostra est conditio:
Qui parentis, ab initio,
Protoplasti vim in vitio,
Dum spiramus, propagamus
Usque ad finem hominum
Nec suplicio nec exitio
Nostra subtrahit petitio
Multum quidem nos luentes,
Ob parentes, heu! solventes
Dirum debitum hominum
Prima mali labes crescit:
Unde hominum marcescit
Genus omne. Sicut fumus
Fugit dies. Ægri sumus:
Cor humanum nihil corrigit:
Nemo nobis manum porrigit:
Quin et etiam vincit fortis
Inexpletoe hasta mortis
Dominorum Dominum.

VOICES FROM THE GRAVE.
Of yesterday's joy and its sorrow,
Of the hopes and the fears of to-morrow,
Of misery, madness, and mirth,
Of the bright and the sable spheres
Where the treasures of space are stored,
Of the wonderful world they engirth,
Azure-roof'd, emerald-floor'd,
Of the monuments Memory rears,
And Pride, with a gory sword,
Graves, forging the name of Worth,
Of the scrolls of singers and seers
With the words of promise scored,
Words written to lull the pain
Of Doubt, from Doubt's dictating,
We have sought, and sought again,
The meaning of Life and of Birth.
We have waited—waited in vain,
For an answer, a token, a word;
Waited—waited for years,
Waiting, weeping, and waiting,
Till Death, to be rid of our tears,
Hid us under this handful of earth,
Where still the old hopes, the old fears,
Wait in vain for an answer, O Lord.

AN ECHO.
Answer, O Lord!

A VOICE FROM THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
Mortui non laudabunt te,
Neque in infernum
Qui descendunt, Domine!
Exibit nam spiritus:
Revertetur animus
Subter humum. Venit hora:
Sistit opus: silent ora:
Non auditur vox clamantis:
Non respondet cor amantis:
Et amores et labores
Pereunt in eternum!

A VOICE FROM THE SEA.
Slave of the Spirit of Might
Have I been in my own despite,
For ages, and ages;
But a memory yet of a ruin'd right
To a something lost of divine delight
Thro' my mid-inmost rages
For ages, for ages!
I have struck with a struggling shoulder
The sides of this stubborn star,
Till old promontories, older
Than its oldest memories are,
Began to crumble and moulder
And drop under my prison bar.
I have tumbled my sands and shells
Over cities and citadels;
Thro' ages and ages,
Ever moving, moaning ever;
Ever seeking, finding never,
Answer to the deep endeavour
Of the spirit that in me dwells,
Which no rest assuages
Thro' ages and ages.
With the voice of my waves and storms
I have question'd the million forms
That float in the molten thunder,
And drop with a voice of wonder
Down the red-litten
Ruin-smitten
Hollow and hissing dark,
When 'tis suddenly, terribly, torn asunder
By the leap of the lightning-spark:
My voice the sun's mid noon,
My voice the midnight moon,
By whose silver sceptre cold
With strong moanings manifold
Are my wishful waters drawn,
Long hath heard; and the white Dawn;
And the wistful Even, too;
What time round his pavilion
Of blue, amber, and vermilion,
He, with a stealthy finger
That doth ever love to linger,
Softly disengages
From out their azure cages,
To float in fervid heights,
All those wingèd lights
That soar on winking pinions
Of white fire, and wander thro'
Their newly-gain'd dominions
Of divinest blue;
Still lifted up, long ages,
Still vainly, to enquire
(For man, whose mind makes choice
Of mine, to be the voice
Of his own pining pain)
Wherefore infinite desire
Finite power doth enchain?
But, unanswer'd by the ages
Wherewith man's passion wages
Weary war, that doth but tire,
Waste, and break him, I again
To the sorrow of his sages
Fling their question back; in vain
Forced upon me; never nigher
To the knowledge they would gain
Of the meaning of man's pain.

AN ECHO.
Pain!

VOICES FROM THE AIR.
Hourly in a crystal cup
Do we Spirits gather up
The sounds of all the sorrows
Of the yesterdays and morrows
Of man's measured misery.
But never yet, O Lord,
Have we ever heard
On Sorrow's lip the word
That might set Sorrow free.

AN ECHO FROM THE AEONS.
Set Sorrow free!

A VOICE ON CALVARY.
Himself, that savèd others, let him save!

ANOTHER VOICE.
Thou, if thou be the Son of God, come down!

AN ECHO FROM GEHENNA.
Son of God, come down!

A MULTITUDE OF VOICES.
Art thou a Prophet? Prophesy, we crave,

A MULTITUDE OF ECHOES.
Prophesy, we crave!

THE VOICES.
What thorns mean in thy crown.

A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE.
Put forth thy strength now, Thou that wouldest burst
The doors of my dominion! Doth the First
Daunt thee? The Second Death is yet. The worst
Hath evermore a worse beyond.

A VOICE FROM THE CROSS.
I thirst!

VOICES BELOW THE CROSS.
Mix the hyssop with the myrrh!

DÆMONS OF THE OUTER DEEP.
A cup of deadly wine
Be it ours to minister
To a thirst divine!
We are the Cruelties of Nature,
That swarm to overwhelm
The spirit in the creature
That invades her realm.
Horror, stolen from the lips
Of the livid-faced eclipse;
Terror, from the scorch'd earth under
The swift transit of the thunder;
Wrath from the enormous ocean;
Madness from the earthquake's motion:

DÆMONS OF THE INNER DEEP.
Pallid fears, heart-harrowing cares,
From invincible night-mares;
And the stealthy day-by-day
Of what turns men's hair to grey;
And the sudden, sharp collapse
Of Courage, when the vast Perhaps
Springs at unawares in sight;
And the whisper in the night
That breaks a noble heart:

OF THE OUTER DEEP.
Deep awe
From the abysses: vulture's claw,
Serpent's fang, and scorpion's sting,
Tiger's tooth, and dragon's wing:
All that's hideous and unholy
Mix we here, to make the wine
Of our mighty melancholy,
Meet for lips divine.

TOGETHER.
Fleshly pang, and ghostly woe:
Let him drain it! Let men know
What of God's Divinity
Dwells in Man's Humanity!

DÆMONS OF THE OUTER DEEP.
Weave the web of agony,
Softly! softly and silently
Wind the web of agony
Round about his heart!
Delicately let it lie
On the spirit and the eye,
Mesh'd with finest misery,
And in every part
Strung, by choicest cruelty,
Strong with subtlest smart!
Draw the tightening threads together,
Stronger each than adamant,
Lighter each than powdery feather
Fall'n upon the florid plant
Where, all faint from fervid ether,
To his inmost honied haunt
Summer's fond and wanton rover,
The fine-wingèd moth doth creep.
Let the film of anguish hover
O'er his senses, like the sleep
Of sick fear that settles over
Stifled lands in lurid weather,
When, beneath, pent earthquakes gather
Forces for a sudden leap!
Let him break it, if he can,
And reveal the God in Man!

DÆMONS OF THE INNER DEEP.
Thro' and thro' the strangling weft,
Drive the knife home to the heft!
Turn it in his inmost heart!
Turn it! Let him feel the smart
Of the sharpness of the whole
Of the iron in the soul!
Let him bear it, if he can,
And avenge the God in Man!

TOGETHER.
Probe the wound unto the core!
Burn and bite into the bone!
Prove we, if this man be more
Than the men that went before,
And were swiftly overthrown.
Let him feel it all he can,
Feel as God may feel for Man:
Fleshly pang, and ghostly woe!
It is fit that men should know
What of God's Divinity
Dwells in Man's Humanity!

THE VOICE OF SATAN ON THE HEIGHTS.
Make good thy double title, Son of Man,
Or Son of God! If Son of God thou beest
More than all other sons of man that be,
Then is thy solitary deed, tho' done
In man's disguise, not man's: whose life remains
No loftier and no lovelier than before
His flesh was filch'd to test the transient play
Of a god's power which, tho' in him put forth,
Leaves man's self helpless as that hollow heap
Of trophied harness from whose lifeless clutch
Some passionate hero plucks the brand, to prove
How living hands may wield it. Son of God
If thou beest only but as all men be,
Then, more than all men can thou canst not. Named
By either title,—son of Man or God,—
I do defy thee, by surpassing pangs,
To snatch from me my old supremacy
In sorrow, my Divinity of Pain.
Vainly with me in misery dost thou vie,
Prophet of Pity!—whom I pity most,
That thou should'st deem it possible to force
Far recompense from transient torment spent
On what thou addest to a million more
And mightier woes,—or, that oblivious Time,
Who, as he marches, all behind him burns,
Will halt his wasteful course, to count and keep
(Once dropt into the measureless abyss
Of anguish, and the homelessness of things)
The few red drippings of that dolorous brow.
Why, how now, O mine Enemy? Behold!
There is not one of thy lost children here,—
Thy children by lost heritage in Hope,
Mine by adoption and the curse of Sin,—
There is not one of these that hath not groan'd
Beneath some throe as sharp as at this hour
Racks the God in thee! Count the ages up
By all their aching pulses, and consider
What power is thine,—even to contemplate
The congregated anguish and despair,
Grim ignorance, wrath, execration, fierce
Brute wrongs, and purblind drudging wretchedness,
The heart-broken memory, the trampled hope,
The slow, cold, suffocating creeping care,
The cankering doubt, choked longing, livid hate,
The stabbing shame, the stark, gaunt, naked need,
The weary struggle of the strangled will,
The whirling frenzy, and the wild regret,
The dim, inexplicable shapeless dread,
The intense torture unendurable,
The sick self-loathing, and the crusht revolt
Of the excruciated flesh—all, all
The myriad miseries cramm'd into the curse
Not of man only, but of all that lives:
Whose several sufferings, separate discontents,
And special curses, are summ'd up in man,
As man's in me, that of man's miseries all
Am the unanswer'd Protest against Him
That made us what, for being, we are plagued:
From puling infancy to pining youth,
From life's mid fever to its last faint gasp,
From the worm trodden by the heedless foot
To the man broken by the heavy years
He staggers under, or else caught and crusht
By the strong sudden hand in the first fray,
And trampled by his fellows: Fate's blind fool
Upon whose borrow'd image he himself
Now wreaks the rabid fury of his race
Rear'd into endless enmity with all
That to upraise it doth in vain aspire.
What I endure,—I call, to testify,
All creatures, and all things inanimate,
Which are as pasture to my pain. Respond
From your abysses and sublunar haunts,
From viewless dens, or public paths of pain,
In earth, or air, or sea,—whatever creeps
Or flies, or swims, or with inanimate woe
Makes inarticulate protest,—blighted growths,
Canker'd, corrupted, curst!—ye prisoners all
That populate this penitential star,
And know my voice! thou ocean, from thy deeps
Where Desolation dwells, thou realm of air
Whereof I am the prince,—and all ye winds
That waft and mock the moanings of the world,—
Thou ancient earth,—and all ye habitants
Of this old lodge of anger!—Listen God!

AN INORGANIC VOICE.
I suffer!

ORGANIC VOICES.
And we suffer!

HUMAN VOICES.
And we suffer!

SATAN.
Enough! Ye suffer for my sake, as He
Suffers for yours, and suffering hath no end!
Thou Lord of Love, dost thou these voices hear?
What are thy pangs to those which these endure,
And have endured for ages, and must yet
For ages more, moan under? Lord of Love
Thou knowest what Love can suffer, and no more!
But men were born to hate themselves, and thee:
Love is not of their nature. Dost thou deem
That any tear thou weepest can blot out
The curse that's scrawl'd across a universe
Condemn'd from the beginning to the end?
Few were thy mortal years, and counted soon:
In thine Immortal,—nothing! Short thy strife,
Soon quench'd its agony! Yet, if the thirst
Of this soul-parching Hour might drain the dregs
Of all the tears of all the centuries,
Lost were thy labour! For, if man thou art,
More than all men have done thou canst not do;
But more than all must fail, who more than all
Hast dared. If thou beest God, why then, as God,
Conquer thou canst: but in that conquest, man,
That hath no part, can no more profit claim
Than some poor savage, in a barbarous isle
Half brutish born, could boast of, did he know
That otherwhere, in Athens or in Rome,
Some being, like himself, of woman born,
Form'd, like himself, of flesh and blood, like him
Mortal, hath learn'd the lore of Samian seers,
Or won the Cæsar's crown. God's strength is god's:
Man's at the best, can be but man's; who fails
Tho' God, as God, succeed: and thy success
(If thou succeedest) is not man's, but His
Whose power, in thee, is but superfluous proof
Of a foregone conclusion. Man, or God,
If man, hope nothing to man's hope denied,
If God, tho' thou God's conquest claim, I claim
Man's failure: most in thee: who mock'st him most
With what he might be, if, like thee, he had
A god's strength in him, by a god's will plied.

A VOICE FROM THE CROSS.
Wherefore, my God, hast thou forsaken Me?

[A pause.
INORGANIC VOICES.
Is God no longer in Humanity?
Then masters of Man's godless world are we,
Peopling its pale impersonality.

EVIL SPIRITS
(gathering).
Darknesses, Silences, Strangenesses, waken!
Ye, that forsake not whom God hath forsaken,
Take the Untaken!

THE SILENCES.
By the sweetness of music slain
Is the soul of our silence fed
On a pang surpassing sound.

THE DARKNESSES.
And our darkness' dearest gain
By the ghost of a glory dead
With a sharper shade is crown'd.

THE DEEDLESS ONES.
From the lonesome places,
Unseen, untrod,
Where no life traces
In seed or sod
The love that chases
The steps of God;

THE DEFEATED ONES.
From the twilights sunk in the nether dens,
Where Madness and Death are denizens;
From the wildernesses of wasted dreams,
Where pale-faced Failure strays, and feeds
Her footless flocks by the frenzied streams
Of desires dragg'd down among broken deeds;
From the shipless shore where no bird flies,
But old wrecks choke the sobbing tide,
And the stranded wretch, that beheld our eyes
Where the storm-wave cast him, crazed and died;
From the red high road to the sudden end,
Which the blood of its lone wayfarer streaks,
Who, dogg'd by the fear of himself, doth wend
Till the suicide findeth the knife he seeks;
From the flint-bound cells, where a strong heart breaks
When the maniac's chain in his last gasp shakes;
Where from milkless nipples unmated mothers
Pluck the nameless babes the unblest earth smothers,
And the Memories God remembers not
In the charnel houses of Hope do rot;

TOGETHER.
We come! we come!
In the frustrate strife
Of the vanquisht life,
On the course misrun
To the goal unwon
By the faith, self-cheated
Of the deed defeated,
To claim our home.

DENOUNCING VOICES.
Thus far rose the race of man,
Thus low doth it lie.
Worlds that in man's faith began
In man's failure die.

EVIL SPIRITS OF THE HEIGHTS
(descending).
The plain we have left unmolested
Where low things low lie, still.
The dust in the dust lay, and rested
Where the wind had wreak'd on it his will;
Tho' the plumes of the purple-crested
Thunder throbb'd on the hill.
For what can be done, or undone,
With the filth that is filth for ever?
So we spared our pain
To ruin the plain,
And, leaving it safe in its baseness alone,
Made wing for the higher endeavour.
It is but an atom of earth,
A grain, a speck most small;
But the place of it gave it worth,
For this summit was highest of all.
So for ages and ages long
We Spirits had no such bliss
As to watch, with our eyes upon it,
Waiting to do it wrong:
Since the devil had need of this.
And, lo you! at last we have won it.
A grain,—no more: but it grew
Where all things fall if it fall.
A speck: but a summit too,
—The highest summit of all!

EVIL SPIRITS OF THE DEPTHS
(ascending).
In the deepest deeps of Night
Swam the star of a far off day.
A Spirit in bondage there,
Chain'd fast to the sullen slope,
Sat watching the lonesome ray
Of that star's incertain light,
With an agonising stare.
Let him grieve and grope as he may
Henceforth, that Spirit blind,
Whose name, not Patience now,
Shall by men be call'd Despair;
But he never again shall find,
However he grieve or grope,
'Neath Night's eternal Nay,
Any light on the deeps below.
For the star he was watching is Hope,
And that star we have stolen away.

DENOUNCING VOICES.
Tempters of the height,
Darkners of the deep,
Midway now unite,
Man from God to keep.
Thus far rose the race of man,
Thus low doth it lie.
All that in man's life began
In man's death doth die.

SPIRITS UNITING.
Where bare of sepulture
It hangs on the rock,
To the carcass the vulture
And eagle do flock:
Scenting the carrion,
The raven and kite
Follow the clarion,
And feast on the fight:
To his prey leaps the leopard:
The wolf on the lamb
That is left by the shepherd
His hunger doth cram:
Round the spent swimmer,
With eyes peering pale
Thro' the green glimmer
The lean shark doth sail;
The owlet by night spoils the nest in the tree:
The bat tears the moth: God, that seëth it done,
Sayeth never a word: as He made us are we:
And so seize we our own!

THE VOICES APPROACHING.
Ye that forsake not whom God hath forsaken,
Spirits of evil, awaken! awaken!
Shake the Unshaken?

SATAN.
Mine Enemy, could I accuse thee now
Hell from her deep foundations should send forth
A shout to shake the highest porch of Heaven
With most infernal thunder! Enemy,
Could I accuse thee, all the Potentates
Of Pain would rise to welcome to his throne
My peer in condemnation!
Harken all,
You sightless Essences that have no voice
Under the silence of Eternal God,
Till Nature cries—“Too late!”—and Hell responds
With all her echoes! You that spy on man,
Sit in his heart, and count its pulses up,
People the silent places of his mind,
And set your secret sign upon his thoughts,
Dog all his steps from wicked woes to woes,
Gather his deeds, and lay them in the lap
Of Accusation,—Destinies, and Fates,
Dooms, Witnesses, Informers against man,
Angels of Reprobation!—you that keep
The record-book of wrongs for future wrath,
Accusers all,—that are my ministers,
As I am God's—in Hate, not Love—attend!
Answer me, now, What fault is in this man?

VOICES.
We find not any fault within this Man.

A VOICE FROM HEAVEN.
Within this Man not any fault is found!

ECHO FROM THE ABYSS OF NATURE.
Fault is found.

VOICES FROM THE DEPTHS OF HUMANITY.
Is ours their fault who fail'd ere we began?
Born to the woes we wrought not, are we bound
By a plan we did not plan?

VOICES OF EVIL SPIRITS.
Woe to the offspring of the Fault of Man!
Woe!

ECHO FROM GEHENNA.
Woe, the offspring of the Fault of Man!

THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL.
Dance we around! around!
Man hath forsaken God: God hath forsaken Man!
The sun is dark in heaven: there is no light from above:
We must be merry meanwhile,—merry as long as we can,
Tho' Nature is sick to the heart, and the Angels are weeping for Love!
Hand in hand, a heedless band,
Round about the Tree,
Purple-gown'd, and golden-crown'd,
Merrily dance We Three!
One of us Three hath a cloven foot
That will peep out, whatever the boot
That Use or Wont may fashion to't;—
Which of us can it be?
One of us three hath a leering eye,
And a slippery step, and a parching sigh
On a red lip, draining men's hearts dry,—
And the Witch knows which it must be.
One of us three hath a royal gait,
And a heart of scorn, and a brow of hate,
And nath'less he lifteth his head elate
Tho' he looketh upon the Tree.
This is an ancient dance:
And long ago we danced it,
Round a god of another stamp:
In the heart of the Chosen Camp,
Heedless whatever the chance,
We danced it, and we pranced it,
With a mad and a merry tramp,
While nobody heeded what God said,
Tho' the thunder was talking overhead,
And the sun turn'd sick as a languish'd lamp
Whose last light sinks unfed.
With a merry song, and a merry laugh
Round about the Golden Calf,
We danced it all together,
And the populace, at as merry a pace,
High and low, all join'd the race,
In turban, robe, and feather:
Women, as mad as mad could be,
Little children, bare to the knee,
Priests and elders of high degree,
All in the stormy weather!

VOICES FROM BENEATH THE THRONE.
How long, O Lord, must we endure? How long?
Avenge the perfect patience of Thy Saints
Whose blood cries out o' the earth against Earth's Wrong.

A VOICE FROM THE EARTH.
Avenge not, God, thy Holy One on me,
Whose latest hope in His life's darkness faints.

VOICES FROM HADES.
Release, O Lord, Thy prisoners, that to Thee
Make moan, long-fetter'd in the bonds of Night,
Unransom'd captives of unconquer'd Sin!

SPIRITS IN THE BOSOM-OF-ABRAHAM.
Celestial Shepherd of the Flocks of Light,
Descend, descend the moaning deeps among,
And draw Thy lost sheep in!

THE VOICES IN HADES.
How long shall Darkness hide us, Lord? How long?
When shall the Dawn begin?

[A pause.
A MULTITUDE OF VOICES.
Alas! no answer yet!

VOICES OF ANGELS, WATCHING ROUND THE CROSS.
By the awe on Olivet,
By the darkness on the day,
By the earth that now is wet
With the blood of Him they slay
Knowing not,—by all the debt
Which Thy Son doth die to pay,
Lord, no more thine oath forget,
Nor Thy right hand stay!
Ransom, Lord, Thy quick and dead,
By the blood which now is shed
For them . . . .

A VOICE FROM THE CROSS.
It is finishèd!

A VOICE FROM THE ABYSS OF NATURE.
Amen!

EVIL SPIRITS.
Haste! Away!

[Thunder and earthquake.
ANGELS, BEARING UP THE WORD.
Earth has heard, and Heaven hath heard,
And the Ever-living Lord,
What was utter'd doth record!
Caught upon the blacken'd lips
Of the lightning-seam'd eclipse,
Echoed by infernal thunder
From the earthquake groaning under,
Answer'd from the hearts of men
By a yet unvoiced Amen,
Bear we up the Word!

A VOICE FROM THE TEMPLE.
The Mystery of the Vail is rent! is rent!

EVIL SPIRITS DEPARTING.
Ariel! Ariel!
Thou Lion of the Lord armipotent,
Tried and invincible!

VOICE FROM THE TEMPLE.
The Mystery of the Vail is rent! is rent!

ANGELS IN AIR.
Ariel! Ariel!
The covenant whereto He did assent
Our God hath disannull'd with Death and Hell.
Thou Lion of the Lord Omnipotent
In thee henceforth the heart o' the world shall dwell!

VOICE FROM THE TEMPLE.
The Mystery of the Vail is rent! is rent!

ANGEL VOICES.
Ariel! Ariel!

ELDERS BEFORE THE THRONE.
Blessing, blessing, and thanksgiving,
Glory, glory, rule and reign,
To the Dead One that is living,
The Death-slayer that was slain!
In the Life is sown the seed:
From the Death the fruit is wrought:
Beauty buried in the deed
Re-arises in the thought:
From the transitory Act,
Which shall perish with the past,
Springs the Faith, the Living Fact,
That for evermore shall last.
To the teaching of the Word,—
To the Utter'd Law,—succeed
Yet a Second and a Third.
First, the teaching of the Deed:
—Of the Deed, which is the Example,
In the Life which is the Love:
These ennoble and make ample
What to perfect and to prove,
(Heir of all) doth man inherit
Help of Him that cometh Third:
And the teaching of the Spirit
Shall complete the Deed and Word.
Amen! blessing and thanksgiving.
Amen! glory rule and reign
To the Slain One by the living
Of whose dying Death is slain!

A VOICE OUT OF THE SANCTUARY.
The earth doth quake,
But cannot shake
This corner stone of mine:
The steadfast stone,
The only one
That never shall be overthrown,
For, graved by God, doth shine
His Name thereon
That is the Son
Of God and Man; whose Name alone
Is Human and Divine.

THE ELDERS ABOVE.
Amen! Amen! God that gazest
On Thine image in Man's Son!
Man that man to God upraisest,
Human and Divine in one!

SAINTS ARISING.
Sing ye, singing out of dust,
Buried Spirits of the Just,
For now i' the deadest dark of Death the light of Life doth shine.
We arise, each bidden guest,
From the chambers of our rest.
Open, Zion, open to us, all those solemn gates of thine!
A sound, a sound of voices, and of harpings, and a light
As when a great solemnity is holden in the night!
For the vintage of the vineyard, for the gathering of the vine!
And sing ye, and sing ye to the Lord a holy ditty:
The song that David sung to us upon the harp with might:
A vineyard, a vineyard, a vineyard of red wine!
The lord thereof is Lord of Life, whose love is infinite:
For deeper than the plummet drops in Him are depths of pity,
And in Him is mercy more than may be measured by the line,
And the judgment that is in Him is not reckon'd by the rod.

A VOICE FROM JERUSALEM.
Enter, ye Saints, into the Holy City!

VOICE OF A CENTURION.
Verily, this man was the Son of God!

VOICES OF ARISEN SAINTS
(growing fainter as they pass).
[The voices dic out in the passing of the eclipsc—Evening falls, and moonlight, over Calvary. Joseph of Arimathea, the two Marys, other Women, and Disciples, bearing away the body of Christ.

VOICES OF ANGELS PASSING.
Blessèd are ye forlorn,
For whom The Lord is dead!
Rejoice all ye that mourn,
Ye shall be comforted!

[The Mourners move down the hill with the body of Christ. The Angel of the Watch descends.
THE ANGEL OF THE WATCH.
Peace upon earth! Good will to men. All's well!
[Satan approaches.
THE ANGEL.
Satan, I warn thee hence. Whence comest thou?

SATAN.
From walking to and fro upon the earth.
Thou liest, Angel! Nothing here is well,
For I am here.

ANGEL OF THE WATCH.
Yet must thou hence.

SATAN.
“Must,” Cherub?
I will not.

ANGEL OF THE WATCH.
Not thy will, nor mine, decides
Our places. Here, I guard the Cross of Christ.

SATAN.
I also. Hearken, Angel of the Watch!
Hath Sorrow any right unto this Cross?
If so, I claim it by my right in Sorrow.
Or Sin, thou Angel, hath it any right
Unto this Cross? Then, by my right in Sin,
I claim it. If not Sorrow, if not Sin,
What, then, hath rights upon this Cross? Not thou,
Nor all the hosts that share with thee God's joy;
For these He died not, and for these no cross
Was needed. Sorrow's place, and Sin's, is here.
Therefore my place is here, with Sin and Sorrow.
The body of thy lord, Humanity
Hath taken to itself. O I have heard
Those woman-wailings! Verily I have heard,
And laugh'd to think what sort of love was theirs
That sang of love so loudly!
Mark me, Angel!
Already I foresee, in the new time,
How men will crucify this Christ again
Daily and hourly, in their hours and days:
How they will crucify him in their faith,
As, in their doubt too, they will crucify him!
How, in their knowledge and their ignorance,
How in their love as in their hate, their hope
And their despair, their wisdom and their folly,
Still they will crucify him!
Enemy!
Thou knowest that the mind of man is warp'd
From the beginning of the world. Thou knowest
That men will choose the evil, not the good,
Their nature being evil, and the True
Still crucify, still crown the False, and still
Shape knowledge into ignorance.
Henceforth,
This stone of stumbling, where it falls, shall grind
All things to powder. Neither day, nor hour,
Shall pass, but what, disputing to the death
Thy substance, and thine elements, man's mind
Shall waste man's life about a wilderness
Of miserable, innumerable folly.
Pedants, and pedagogues, and busybodies,
Schools, councils, doctors, disputants, divines,
Shall stretch contentious hands to scribble still
Even as erewhile, their Hebrew, Greek, and Latin
Over thy murder'd head, and write thee wrong
In every language learn'd by Ignorance!
In thy name, men shall slaughter, and torment,
Desolate, ruin, and destroy each other!
In thy name, scaffolds shall be smear'd with gore;
In thy name, dungeons shall be cramm'd with groans;
The bloody whip, the branding-iron, the stake,
The faggot, and the sharp two-handed axe,
The torturing engine, and the toothèd wheel,
Shall owe thy name no lack of work to do.
In thy name, men shall brutalise God's gift
Of life, ill-comprehended, till they rot
Howling, or, mad with stupid silence, pass
Out of Humanity, to crawl to death,
Beast-like, thro' bestial filth, foul sores, and scum
Of self-neglect, in desert dens and holes!
In thy name, men shall utter blasphemies
Undream'd-of yet by devils damn'd in Hell!
In thy name, Fraud, and Force, and Violence
Shall prosper in the prejudice of all
That hath till yet made patience possible
Under huge wrongs! . . . . Till thou, mine Enemy,
The infinitely-often crucified,
Even in the heights of thy felicity
Yonder, and by the right hand of high God,
Shalt drain the cup of bitterness,—erewhile
Half-tasted only,—to so deep a depth
Of wrath and anguish, that thyself shalt curse
Thy new-adopted, even as they curse thee!
Meanwhile, my place is here, beside this Cross,
With Sin and Sorrow. Therefore stand aside,
Thou Angel of the Watch! Here will I rest.

ANGEL OF THE WATCH.
Angel of Accusation, here or elsewhere
Neither thy power, nor mine, prevails, but His
That suffers us,—each in his several sphere,
Me to obey, and thee to contradict,
And both to serve His purpose equally.
The meaning of thy mystery, and the end
Foreseen from the beginning, and foreseen
By wisdom infinite for endless good,
Thyself, thou knowest not. Neither do I know
The meaning of my own. Thou canst but view
The single act of God's eternity,
Which is to partial senses sensible
In partial action only, by the eye
Of thine own nature, as by mine I view it.
And, thy perception being limited
To evil only, to thee only evil
Is still perceptible, as still to me
Good only, and good everywhere.

SATAN.
Enough,
Angel, I know, at what I know to mock,
And marvel at this huge ado for that
Which, when 'tis done, is nothing,—or, at least,
Nothing in the diminishment of all
The misery and the wretchedness in man,
To which God said—“Encrease and multiply!”
The ages to the ages, and the hours
Unto the hours, shall add themselves, and men
Shall multiply, and ever with more men
More misery! Meanwhile, my place is here,
And here I stand,—beside this Cross of Christ;
Where Sin shall come, and Sorrow come with Sin,
And Sin and Sorrow still shall find me here,
Still ready to accuse them. And, when men
Shall learn, like thee, to talk theology
Most eloquently with the Devil himself,
Dispute with him his nature, proper place
And fit relation, in the latest plan
Of general self-complacency,—at least,
His presence shall they feel, as thou dost now,
Here, in the shadow of this Cross of Christ!

ANGEL OF THE WATCH.
Mocker! Scorn ever was the sign assured
Of impotency.

SATAN.
And of ignorance,
Such tearless self-complacency as thine.
Is man's praise challenged? Be man's right to blame
Thereby accorded! What is changed for man?
Or how is man's case better'd? What man was
He is, and shall be, and so must have been,
So being made. The mutable images
Of Good and Evil in the minds of men
May change from age to age. But man himself
No nearer and no farther than before
Stands, where he stood, between them. What man names
Evil to-day, to-morrow he names good:
And, contrary, what he names good to-day,
To-morrow he names evil. What of that?
He changes not his nature, but a name.
Good men, or men so call'd, have been ere now,
And evil men, or men so call'd, shall be,
In like proportion, to the end of time.
At one time this thing, at another that,
Man studies to become, and calls it good:
His power to be it, whatsoe'er it be,
Is thro' all time the same as it hath been;
In the strong somewhat, nothing in the weak,
Not much in any.
Cherub, know me. Prince
Of this world, thou hast heard it, am I called.
Prince of this world I am. But in this world
I have no power save on the mind of man;
Whereby whatever God for man made good
I for man turn to evil. Storm, eclipse,
Deluge, and the exterminating fire,
Earthquake, and pestilence—God's works, not mine—
Obey me not. But me my works obey,
Which are the fears these fashion in men's minds,
The fearful deeds which, thro' man's life, those fears
Shape themselves into. Look on me. I am
Man's mind's eternal protest against Law,
—Man's life's eternal protest against Love.
A time there may be, tho' it must be far,
When men, by Knowledge reconciled to Law
In things material, shall convert to good
All that for ages I have made to them
Material evil. In that time my voice
Shall no more in man's life, as now, be heard
Protesting against God's material law.
But what of that? Still heard my voice shall be
In man's heart, still against himself protesting.
And, till that protest hath in man no place,
Where man's place, mine is, Cherub; nor canst thou
Here, or wherever else man comes, to me
Cry ‘Enter not!’

THE ANGEL.
Nor needs it, bitter fiend,
That I forbid thee. For thou canst not pass
The limit of thy nature, which God's love
Surpasses, here. Obey not me: thou still
Obeyest God.

SATAN.
Cherub, what more dost thou?

THE ANGEL.
Love Him.

SATAN.
Thou lovest, hypocrite, the gain
That's got for loving.

THE ANGEL.
Ay. Love's gain is love.

SATAN.
Hated or loved, here will I rest. Away!

THE ANGEL.
Not by the length of my authority,
But by the narrowness of thine, is fixt
Thy kingdom, Satan. But when He, by whom
Thy passing protest against permanent power
Is heard i' the incompleteness of man's life,
Shall, in man's life completed, have vouchsafed
Its complete refutation, then . . .

SATAN.
Ay! then?
Count me, prophetic Spirit, if thou canst,
How many wrinkles to the brow of Time
Shall ere that Then be added? And what then?
Thou knowest no more than I. When man no more
My work provides, thine own shall lack provision;
Whose task on earth is but the consequence
Of my procedure: temporary both.
Enough! I stand by my necessity,
Which is not of eternity, but time.
I know no Then nor There. I am Here and Now.
Standing beneath the glory of God, not in it,
Man casts upon this earth, whereon he stands,
The formidable shadow of himself:
The Spirit of that Shadow, which, where'er
Man goes, goes with him, darkening earth, am I.
Unto what end man's steps are bound, whose course,
Making it mark'd by darkness, everywhere
I dog protesting against light, or when
That end may be, I know not. But I know,
Nor care I to know more, that he and I,
I with my protest in man's life, and man,
Man in God's glory, in man's shadow I,
Have yet thro' time no journey short to make
Together; taking with us this day's deed,
Which yet is mine to deal with.

THE ANGEL.
If, in truth,
Spirit of Discontent, the unknown time
Of God's endurance doth, as thou dost boast,
Accord such leisure thine to meditate
Thy place in His incalculable scheme
Of pure perfection, and thy power thereon,
By Him permitted,—study this first law
To which all power is made conditional:—
Hate creates nothing.

SATAN.
Nay, but Hate destroys.

THE ANGEL.
For Love to still create.

SATAN.
And Love creates
For Hate to still destroy. Paid eulogist
Of unintelligible authorship,
I am the only critic of God's works
That do not praise them. And, for this, I think
It likes Him well enough to let me be,
And give me hearing with a certain zest
Which mere monotony of praise like thine
Would surfeit else. Moreover in this world
We tolerate each other, He and I,
Better than you surmise. I set men's wits
To question what they scarce would notice else,
And so find out what, having so found out,
They all the more admire. I keep alert
The Maker's pleasure in His works thereby,
To prove me bungler. Yet I praise Him best,
In my own way; and unto me He owes
Man's worship, which was ever born of fear.
Do I not manifest to men His power,
Whereof a part, nor that the least, in me
Put forth, completes the vast Two-fronted Will,
Against whose everlasting Yes and No
Man's frenzied being breaks, and moaningly
Grovels in abject terror? Which to Him
Is joy—the joy of feeling Himself felt
By what He made to feel Him; therefore made
Weak in all ways, but not withal so weak
But it can bear His foot upon its neck,
And, feeling what His strength is, worship it,
While the bruised head the bruising heel adores.
We rule, then, each,—both He and I,—by fear:
And He is strongest: but I still am strong.
Spake He not to His Prophet of old time,
“I form the light, and I the darkness: I
Make peace, and create evil: I, the Lord,
Do all these things?” But half of all these things,
What hand but mine the doing of them moves?
The Evil I, and I the Darkness! Both
His work and will: then of His will and work
The great one half, made manifest, am I!
If I could be aught other than I am,
I would be He: and in that wish, methinks,
I own Him for my God, and worship Him—
Him—not this Other; that resembles not
In aught the God I am content to serve.
Nor serve I only, but I honour Him;
Keeping in honour those that serve Him here,
Strong kings, shrewd priests, and mighty men of war,
And all that upon earth is honourable.
But I can neither praise nor tolerate,
What I protest against—this latest change
Of purpose in the Ever-changing One.
Here, for the first time, I seem set aside;
And, could I ever weep, I should weep now
For the perversity of this new plan,
Perceiving what must happen presently.
Like some long-trusted counseller, displaced
And discontented with the times, am I;
Who sees the young prince pulling down the props
He spent his utmost pains on, to uphold,
Based on the popular fear, the father's throne.
I, that have been about the world so long,
Methinks should know it: and, if aught I know,
Men are not to be govern'd but by fear.
When they shall lose the wholesome dread, now theirs,
Of kings and priests, what next? Why, men will cease
To fear me even; and, ceasing to fear me,
Will cease to fear Jehovah. Heed the event!
But meanwhile men shall win their licence hard,
To laugh at what now scares them. I remain
In spite of the new comers. Long shall Love
Red-handed walk the world with Hate's own sword,
Nor plant one forward footstep, save in blood.
Therefore I stand here, Angel of the Watch,
Watching with thee. Whose watch I grudge not. Wait.
For vigil long must be both thine and mine,
And we will watch together.—

THE ANGEL.
Wild, as waves
That wash no shore, words wander. If between
You throbbing lights that round us roll and burn,
No radiant interelemental thrill
Made response to their restless hearts, perchance
The leaping lightsprings of the sun himself
Might blaze in sempiternal blackness, dark
To orbs beyond the never-beaten bound
And blank engulphment of his barren globe:
And all the kindred sovereignties of space,
His starry peers whose now-fraternal fires
Flash mutual rapture, then would wanly ply
Pale incommunicable pulses, fill'd
With ineffectual fervour. Even so,
Between us twain—spirits of spheres that move
In no same elemental sense of things,
No corresponsive impulse interchanging
From simultaneous impact of the Power
That keeps in commune all the souls it sways,
—Thought, like a beam that heats not, lights not, beating
On unimpressive absolute nothingness,
Visits in vain the waste and void of what
Holds thee and me asunder.
Obscure Power,
Which, in the ever-fleeting substance pent
Of all that passes, all that perishes,
The Eternal Fire eternally consumes,
What time from age to age, from hour to hour,
From soul to soul, burning, it proves itself
And all things else that Time, as fuel, flings
Into the furnace of transforming Love,
Leaving Hate's pile in ashes—pass thy way,
And ply thy transitory task! Which is
To feed the fervour of the fire of God,
And speed its issue thro' the body and form
Of all experience, which it animates.
Ply thou thy task! accumulating Time's
Perversenesses, obstructions, enmities,
And unintelligent antagonisms;
Therewith, as faggots for the burning, bound,
To satisfy the everlasting flame
Whose altars are the ages: whence it glows
To spirits of men,—a beacon light; to thee,
Whose ever-dwindling substance, in that heat
Of Heavenly Love, from age to age assumes
Slow transformation,—thine own funeral pyre!
Dull Fiend, the more thou on this Fire of Love
Hast leave to heap all hideous hatreds, all
Denials, contradictions, cruelties,
Fables, and fears, and frenzied shames,—the more
Shall it, by all such stimulations stung
To intenser force, burn from the souls of men
Those multitudinous mischiefs that are made
Its sacrificial sustenance.
Enough!
Put forth thy hand.

SATAN.
Where art thou? feebly sounds
Thy voice, vain Angel: strong in word, but weak
In act to hold what now I seize. Thy voice
Floats to me, fainter, fainter! and thy form
Fades further, further, further, from my ken.
Thou flyest, Cherub!

THE ANGEL.
Self-deceiver, no!
Here, where I was, I am: and what I held
I hold. But thee thine ever-changing place
Hath changed already. Prince of passing ills,
Already in the Past thy footstep strays,
Seeking the Future.

SATAN.
What I seek I find
In thy despite: and what I find I win,
This Cross of Christ.

THE ANGEL.
The Cross of Christ wins thee.
As suns draw forth the vapours they dissolve,
So Love draws Hate, Truth, Falsehood, to itself
Whose touch annuls them; ever doom'd to seek
Their destined dissolution. Take thy road,
Destroyer, to destruction! Seize thy time,
And all thy power expend; whose time is brief.
Brief shall thy time be, Satan, by so much
As most thy power is in that time put forth.
Do thou This Tree the dismal standard make
Of all the hosts of Darkness. Hither call
The legion'd lies, and wraths, and wrongs, that lurk
In life's yet dubious twilight. Here, where Christ,
For man's sake, was by man's hand crucified,
Let Christless churches crucify man's heart:
Where pity bled, let pitiless priests proclaim
Bloody dominion: man's oppressors all,
Where hung man's saviour, here their sceptres hang.
What then? O all unwise in wickedness!
The faster thou, to quench this kindled fire
Of deathless love, devouring deathful ills,
Shalt heap together from the tangled tracts
Of thorny Time all stubborn-hearted hates,
So much the sooner, Satan, shall all these
Be blasted, burn'd, obliterated, borne
Into oblivion—and, with these, thyself
(The fleeting shadow of a faded shape
Of darkness in a universe of light,
Like Sodom's burn'd-out guilt in gather'd smoke
Above her smouldering ashes, which anon
Left stainless the eternal heavens) depart
I know not to what place of unreveal'd
Employment in the Perfectness of Power
That perfects all things.
Thou, and what is thine,
All pomps, all powers, not legalised by love,
All forms of faith that fall as faith exceeds,
All bonds that bind, all burthens that oppress,
Conventions, sects, exclusions, enmities,
Earth, as Hate makes it—but the porch of Hell;
Heaven, as Fear sees it—but a heartless eye
Fixt in the forehead of a frowning Fate,
Shall surely pass, and haply pass away:
But not the Word that Heaven and Earth this day
Recorded. Therefore, All is well, I say.
Peace and good will—God's Will—to man! Amen.
God's will be done on Earth—good will to men—
Even as in Heaven.

SATAN.
Angel, ay! But when?
[Human voices of those that bear the body of Christ faintly heard in the distance, dying away.
Courage, O friends! endure:
Bear all things: even as He:
Live—as He taught us—pure:
Die—as He left us—free.
Freed from the world that bound us,
Let the new life begin!
What know we of aught around us?
We know but what is within.
Not of the world was He
When out of the world He chose us:
And not of the world are we:
And what, if the world oppose us?
Struggle we must, and strive,
Sorrow, and suffer pain:
Die ever that we may live:
Lose often that we may gain.
Say ye not unto the soul
‘Rest, soul! it is over.’ Lo,
Beyond us is ever the goal,
And for ever before us the foe!
The strife that on earth is begun,
Not on earth is it ended, sure.
The cause is eternal, one
With the Godhead. Wherefore endure.
By the evil here and there
Try we, and test we, the good:
And O what if the evil were
Good, only misunderstood?
For, knowing not what is below,
We know not what is above:
But that all is well we know,
Knowing that all is love.