The Judgement of the Flood :: :: University of Virginia Library

Whereto thus Hori, low of tone, and mild:
‘But God, Zateel, had of the better law
Provided him a witness, in a Brother.
In concert, would together both had worked,
Mutual defect had mutual been supplied,
And unreluctant Abel—’

Suddenly
Zateel drew up, exclaiming: ‘Son of Abel:
Nature is proud of her priority.
The spiritual but succeeds her; and she scorns
To yield to second comer; nor e'er yet
Submitted, Hori, without agony.
This I have felt, and so may testify.
Nor would his natural delights man yield,
But that short of the infinite they fall,
(Whereto the senses would their organs task,
Being spiritual,) and so of happiness,
(Which must for infinite capacity
Be infinite, or fail to satisfy,)
And soon expire in pain Him to redeem
From their indulgence, fatal even to death;
By labour God suspended it, and raised
Man to exert high faculty of skill,

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To vanquish Nature in the outer world,
And inner.’

Hori, thus reproved, more meek
Responded: ‘O'er the outer world, as first,
Was Cain appointed victor, blessed to eat
Bread by his brow's sweat; and to Abel was,
As second, given that inner world to rule.
But aye the sensual is averse from toil,
Moral, or carnal; yet would be divine,
In knowledge absolute, obtained by theft,
Not earned; and, stretching beyond bounds desire,
Leaps the abyss of space; and what finds there?’

Whereto Zateel replied, in kindlier tone:
‘Ay, Hori; what, indeed, but utter Chaos?
O Reason's self oft wanders there unwise.
And thither led the Fiend the First-born Man;
Beyond the habitable world, into
The Abyss of Space; there, with one sudden flight,
To learn at once the story of all worlds,
Past, present, and to come, and of them ask
Questions that might experience supersede,
And please imagination indolent,
With phantasms, and vagaries; to the realms,
Anon, of Death arriving, Space surpassed,
And Hades entered, yet at length to earth
Returning, all as ignorant as before.
—So, much perplexed and maddened, Cain came back,
Wearied with speculation, uninformed,
And troubled with the Mystery of Blood;
But, in his phrenzy, shedding what he loathed,
Giving to God the victim he misdeemed
Wroth Heaven of Earth demanded.’

To such words
Hori these gravely added: ‘Still the race
Of Cain present in worship but earth's fruits,
And shudder at the life-blood, which the seed

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Of Abel offer.’

Meditative, then,
Zateel spake, mildly: ‘To the sense still chained,
The race of Cain, though grown in diligence,
Read no high meaning in the life of man,
No revelation in the sealèd book,
Which God has written in the things he made.
The stars to them, indeed, a language speak
For seasons, and for years; but not as signs.
Good workmen are they; and, with cunning hand,
Controul material substance, and employ
In uses, worthy deemed. Even thus instruct
Fathers their sons; but unintelligent
Of scientific principle, and rule,
And only careful of the body's good.
Hence, Cain could understand not, in the blood,
Aught more than victim slain to Wrath Divine;
Not that the merely animal was doomed,
For man's perfection, to be sacrificed;
And carnal death despised, so that the soul
Be quickened, rising glorious from the grave
Of mortifièd flesh.’

While Hori listened,
His brow grew heavy with the weight of thought,
Which found in these relief:—‘And Abel's blood,
Zateel, thus shed, reveals an earnest truth;
That he who would redemption for himself,
Or for his race, accomplish, must be brave,
In patience to endure the deadly hate
Of man, from nature undelivered yet;
Content, if so salvation come, to be,
First, an Ensample; next, a Sacrifice.’