After Paradise or Legends of Exile :: :: University of Virginia Library

In that dread instant when Eternity
Was by the Angel's sword asunder riven,
There sounded from the starry deep a cry
That shook the constellated poles of heaven:

“Elohim! Elohim! what hast thou done,
Whose sword hath hewn Eternity in twain?
One part of it is now the Past, and one
The Future (phantoms both, exempt from pain
By lifeless unreality alone!)
And the pang'd Present, like an open wound,
Between them gapes, lest aught should close again
What thou hast cloven.”

To this poignant sound
The Seraph, leaning on his sword down-slanted,
Listen'd, and in compassion or disdain
Smiled gravely, as he murmur'd “It is well.
The Reign of Time begins, man's prayer is granted.”

Then loud he call'd to the Abyss of Hell,
“Stunn'd rebels, rouse your swooning hosts, and rise,
Tho' thunder-smitten, from the Penal Pit!
Time's ravageable realm wide open lies
For your invasion, and the spoils of it
To you no more Eternity denies.
Find in its painful fields your pasture fit,
Be every pulse of consciousness your prey,
And chase the panting moment as it flies!”
Hell to the invocation answer'd “Yea!”
And, pour'd in surge on surge of flame-pulsed cries,
The fervid rush of her Infernal Powers

Sounded like roaring fire, tho' sightless they
As midnight storms.

“Eternity is dead!
And Time, the quivering corpse of it, is ours!
And from Eternity's death-wound,” they said,
“Fast, fast, the life-drops fall—days, minutes, hours,
Drop after drop, with world on world, away—
Into the final nothingness at last!
To-day sinks swooning into yesterday,
The future disappears into the past.
Eternity lies lost in what hath been
And is no more, or in what is not yet;
For all the rest is but a sigh between
A hovering fear and a forlorn regret.
And every moment but begins in vain
A world that is with every moment ended;
For broken is Eternity in twain,
And never shall Eternity be mended.”

This sullen pœan waked, where'er it went
Around the rolling world, responsive sounds
Of wrath and pain; as if all passions pent
In some titanic soul had burst the bounds
Of individuality, and blent
Their personal essence with the mindless might
Of universal forces. First, there came
Ominous suspirations, tremours slight
Of sleepy terror, from the shuddering pores
And joints and sockets of earth's giant frame;
Anon, Behemoth, bellowing, with fierce roars
Shook all his chains. The mountains, rack'd and pang'd
By earthquake, thunder'd from their fiery cores;
From smitten crag to crag the cataracts clang'd;
The sharp rain hiss'd; the ocean howl'd; the shores
Shriek'd; and the woods tumultuously twang'd
Their wailing harps. But what was felt and heard

Thro' all that uproar's dissonant hurricane
Was not the inarticulate noise alone
Of winds and waves and woods and mountains stirr'd
To screaming storm; there was a mystic strain
Of spiritual agony, a tone
Of conscious torment, mingled with the train
Of those unconscious sounds,—the personal moan
Of some invisible being's passionate pain.

Wild as the roar of an uprooted world
Wrench'd from its orbit, round the Dream of Man
This swarm of demon discords roll'd and swirl'd.
Thro' Adam's slumber, as it hurtled by,
Its sounds were scatter'd; and his dream began
Dimly to shape beneath his sleep-shut eye
Weird wavering images that were, or seem'd,
The echoes of those sounds made visible.
So that to Adam's soul the dream he dream'd

Was even as if on some vast curtain fell
Troops of stupendous shadows in the glare
Shed o'er it from a mighty furnace, lit
Behind the back of one who, to his chair
Fast chain'd, with wistful eyes peruses it,
Wondering what sort of unseen beings are those
Whose phantoms thro' the glory come and go:
For of them nothing more the watcher knows
Than the huge shadows they, in passing, throw
Athwart the lurid curtain; nor whence flows
The light those shadows darken, doth he know.

Still smiled the Seraph. Slow, in circuit wide,
Around the sphere of Adam's dream he drew
The solemn splendours of his sword, and cried
“Thus far, no farther!” The Infernal Crew
In vain to storm that aëry circle tried,

And round it hoarse their grovelling hubbub grew,
Reluctantly beginning to subside
In sullen howls and stifled bellowings.

Then cried the Angel, “Waken, also, you
That slumber in the silence of sweet things,
Voices of Consolation! and pursue
From hour to hour with your fond welcomings
That promise fair the fleeting hours renew!
Come hither from the hidden heavens that are
Your homes on earth! Come, with the south winds, hither
From rosy kingdoms of the Vesper Star!
Come, with the sunrise, from the golden ether!
Come with the cushat's goodnight coo, from bowers
Bathed in the tender dews of eventide,
Or with the hymn that to the matin hours
The laverock sings in glory unespied!

Ripple light music of the restless breeze
Thro' murmurous haunts of sylvan oracles,
And loose the secrets lisp'd by summer seas
Into the husht pink ears of blushing shells!
Come, with remember'd sounds of warbling stream,
And whispering bough, from woodland cloisters! Come,
Consolers! Enter here, and let the Dream
That Man is dreaming be henceforth your home!”

To this appeal the answer linger'd long,
And not a sound upon the darkness stirr'd
Save the faint moanings of the Demon Throng.
But a strange note, not theirs, at length was heard,
A single timorous note of distant song,
Like the first chirrup of a callow bird.
Then, one by one, from here and there, arose
Clear in the far-off stillness of the night

(As from the bosom of the twilight grows
Star after star) a multitude of light
But thrilling tones, a choral harmony
Of silvery voices in symphonious scale;
Whose heavenward anthem peal'd from sky to sky,
As “Hail!” they sang, “Benignant Elohim, hail!
The living soul of dead Eternity
Thy rescuing sword hath free'd. From its dark prison
Released at last, on pinions glorious
Behold, that radiant Spirit is now arisen!
And hark, how sweet the song it sings to us!
How sweet the song, how fair the face! for fled
The hovering frown erewhile its aspect wore,
And lo, the frigid features of the dead
Are flusht with spiritual life! No more
Those eyes are cold, no more those lips are dumb,
And ‘Fear no more,’ they sing, ‘to gaze on me!
Ye call'd me Fate when I was frozen numb

In the cold silence of Eternity,
And then ye fear'd me: but my living home
Henceforth is in the hearts of all who live.
Fear me no more, then, for to you I come
With an eternal gift that shall survive
Fate's despot rule o'er Time's brief horoscope:
Eternity is still the gift I give
To all who trust me, and my name is Hope.’”

And “Ave! ave!” sang the Voices. “Thee
We welcome, holy Hope, that from afar
Dost bring the promise of sweet things to be,
Forever sweeter than all things that are!
Born flying, thy fair flight thou canst not stop,
But into the sad hearts it leaves behind
Thou dost, in passing, from thy pinions drop
One spotless plume that, cherisht, keeps in mind
The dear remembrance of its passage. We,

What can we give thee in return for this?
Take at their best, to save them, take with thee
Our sweetest joys, our holiest hours; whose bliss,
To thy far kingdom borne away, shall be
Better and brighter, holier still, and higher!
Take also, Spirit of Eternity,
What Time made ours, to make it thine—Desire!”

Closer and clearer the sweet Voices grew,
Borne floating on their own song's rhythmic stream,
Flutter'd round Adam's slumber, downward flew,
And settled in the bosom of his dream.
“Rest there, Consolers!” the Archangel said,
“And you, Disturbers, strive as you have striven,
And thou—dream on, poor Dreamer!”

Then he spread
His spacious pinions, and return'd to heaven.

Out of the depths of Adam's dream, and clear
All round it, those Consoling Voices pour'd
Pure strains of silver sound, that fill'd the sphere
Traced by the circuit of the Angel's sword.
The Demon Powers, resentful, roused again
Their turbulent cohorts to the overthrow
Of this melodious bulwark, but in vain;
For there Hell's surges broke, and hoarse below
Roll'd in tumultuary undertones
Their weltering waves of passion and of pain,
Goaded and groaning, as the smit sea groans
When the storm's lash is on its livid mane.

Those sounds were heard in Heaven; and, down the light
Of all the listening stars, celestial streams
Of song flow'd, mingling with the troubled flight
Of their fierce tones—as, while the torrent screams,

The calm moon, shining thro' a cloudless night,
Belts his tost bosom with her tranquil beams.

And all these Voices, with the sounds that were
Their instrumental slaves,—the Voices sweet
Of Man's Consolers, hymning praise and prayer,
The Voices of the Passions of the Pit,
Earth's dread disturbers, clarions of despair,
And the pure Voices of the Stars—contending
With one another, pour'd the importunate tide
Of their sonorous strife, in strains ascending
Beyond the visible spheres, to where it sigh'd
About the elemental boundary wall
Which never, to the other unseen side,
The swarming senses that man's soul enthral
May overpass. For shrouded there, serene
And irresponsive to the strife of all
The worlds of passion and of sense—unseen,

Unheard—He dwells, Who is, and wills, and knows.
And there, its clamour calm'd, its vehement play
Of contradictions quench'd in the repose
Of a sublime accord whose spacious sway
Husht its wild course to an harmonious close,
Slowly the sounding tumult died away.

So, when all storms are spent, and Ocean's sleep
Leviathan's loud voice invades no more,
The wearied winds into the silent deep
Drop the last echoes of his dying roar,
And fold their heavy wings, and faintly creep
To rest on some lone island's desert shore;
Where the huge billows in low waves subside,
And the low waves in rippling shallows cease,
While the lull'd halcyon on the slumbrous tide
Broods, and the breathing stillness whispers “Peace!”

Plato.—Republic. Book vii.