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

Hear now the Words that Wisdom spake to me.
‘Before his Works of Old, thus ere the earths,
And heavens, ere the hills, and skies, and floods,
In the Beginning of his Mystery,
I Wisdom dwell with him, and with his Word,
Whenas his Law gives Order to the Heavens,
And his Commandment binds the Waters in,
And his Decree establishes the Earths,
Rejoicing in the Fountain of all Love,
Who still becomes Intelligence, and Life,
In Angels, Man, and creatures still express.

Nor Earth to me is not, nor void of Man,
Its habitable parts unpopulous.
But with the Sons of Men I still delight,
Partaking my Divinity with them,
Even to self-utterance.’ Wisdom, while Man speaks,
Prompts the pleased mind, and Beauty charms the soul—
Whence Eden, with her smile irradiate, blooms
A Paradise of joy; the common earth
Blossoms into a Garden sanctified,
Whose streams are nectar, whereat Angels drink,
Ornate with Trees whose fruit is food for gods—
Charms all too much. In her Immortal Form,
Man seeks Eternal Substance; and desire,
Creative in subsistent Loveliness,
Fruition finds. So twain becomes of One,
And Male, and Female rule the World of Life,
The Image that of Love; of Wisdom this.

One Being Woman, communed with by Man,
High Knowledge gaining, and, therewith, desire
To contemplate the Beautiful that should
Reflect herself, the Beauty in all Forms—
Thereto by the Atoning Cherub led,
The radiant Lucifer, thence Satan called,

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Whose heart by his own brightness now seduced,
To make division in the works of God,
Would with his own ambition prompt the Eve,
So name the Woman, of all women type.

Fresh from the feast of Knowledge, and of Death,
With more than nectar, or with food divine,
Filled, elevate, sublimed, enrapt, inspired,
To full voluptuous joy; Eve aimed at Heaven,
Nor less than Wisdom's self, the Bride of God,
Felt in her own esteem—spiritual pride,
Wherewith the soul reels drunken in excess;
And in her beauty thus, serene, severe,
With loveliest invitation, dalliance soft,
Wooes to the banquet rare her yielding lord.
Spell-bound by her desire—her will made his—
His life within her lap dissolves away,
She dying in his arms; from which sweet death
Both rise again, she teeming with new life,
Conceived in sin, but born to be redeemed.

Hence Many of the Twain. Hence All the Forms,
In Men, and Women, of the Wise, and Fair—
Emblem of very man, not very man,
Emblem of woman, not true woman, each;
Such as their everlasting archetypes,
The Word, and Wisdom that with God abide.

Distinction first, then Separation comes,
But not Expulsion; till the Cherub dares
To lure the loving Will to outward act
Of Knowledge mixed for pure, both good, and ill.
Distant from Paradise, two Sexes then,
Of earthly generatours earthly heirs,
Sad exiles to a world that travails still,
By Labour win a Garden from the Wild,
And die—to know, what else can not be known.