University of Virginia Library

“ The dim world of the dead is all alive;
All busy as the bees in summer hive;
More living than of old; a life so deep,
To you its swifter motion looks like sleep.
Whether in bliss they breathe, in bale they burn,
His own eternal living each must earn.
We suck no honeycomb in drowsy peace,
Because ennobling natural cares all cease;
We live no life, as many dream, caressed
By some vast lazy sea of endless rest—
For there, as here, unbusy is unblest.

“Man is the wrestling-place of Heaven and Hell,
Where, foot to foot, Angel and Devil dwell,
With both attractions drawing him. This gives
The perfect poise in which his freedom lives.
No one so near to heaven to lack for scope;
No one so near to hell to lose all hope.
Whichever way he wills, to left or right,
Lets in a flood of supernatural might.
He flames out hellward, and all hell is free,
Rejoicing in the gust of liberty,
To rush in on him, work its devilry!
In strength of faith, or feebleness of fear,
He bows and bends the highest heavens near.
The brightness upon Prayer's uplifted face
Reflects some spirit-presence in the place.

“Each impure nature hath its parasites,
That live and revel in unclean delights.
Like moths around a flame they float and swarm;
Like flies about a horse, they ride the warm
And reeking air which is their atmosphere,
Their breath of life, the ranker the more dear.
They glory in the grossness of the blood,
For, reptile-like, they lay their eggs in mud.
In every darksome corner of the mind
They hang their webs, the wingèd life to bind;
Weaving the shadow of the Evil One
To darken 'twixt the spirit and its sun.

“If those blind Unbelievers did but know
Through what a perilous Unknown they go
By light of day; what furtive eyes do mark
Them fiercely from their ambush of the dark;
What motes of spirit dance in every beam;
What grim realities mix with their dream;
What serpents try to pull down fallen souls,
As earth-worms drag the dead leaves through their holes;
What cunning sowers scatter seed by night
That flames to fatal flower in broad daylight;
And rub their hands at having danced it in
Ere the sun rise to ripen it in sin!
What foul birds drop their eggs in innocent nests,
To win their heat from warmth of innocent breasts:
What snaky thieves surmount each garden wall;
On life's fresh leaves what caterpillars crawl;
What cool green pleasaunces and brooding bowers
Are set with soul-snares hid among the flowers;
What Tempters in the Chamber of Sleep will break,
And with insidious whisperings keep awake
The Soul! How, toad-like, at the ear will lurk
The squatted Satan, wickedly at work:
What evil spirits hover in amorous hate
Round him who nibbles at the devil's bait,
Or him who dallies, fingering the sharp edge
Of peril, or sits with feet beyond the ledge,
By some dark water, with his face ash-wan,
Until they urge him over: a doomed Man!
What cruel demons try to break a way,
Through weak brains, back to their lost world of day,
Till from some little rift in nature yawns
A black abysm of madness, and Hell dawns:
What starvelings seek to drink Corruption's breath
From rosy life, more rich than rot of death;
What ghosts of drinkers old would quench their drouth
At the wine-bibber's dreaming stertorous mouth;
What Sirens seek to kindle at your fire
Of passion some live spark of dead desire—
They would be ready even to doubt God's power
To shield their little life from hour to hour,
And many would be going, with idiot-grin,
Out of their mind to let the marvel in.

“But do not think the Devil hath his will.
Whate'er he doth he is God's servant still.
And in the larger light of day divine
The spark of his hell-fire shall cease to shine.
God maketh use of him; what he intends
For evil Heaven will turn to its own ends.
With subtle wile he tries to circumvent
The Lord, and works just what the Master meant.
He hangs the dark cloud round this world of yours;
God smileth, and a rain of good down-pours.
He strove to found the Empire of the Slave,
It crumbled in: he had but delved its grave.

“He stole upon a Nation, in disguise
Of thieves that prowled by night; day-lurking spies;
Plotters who privily set their eyes to mark
Her weakness, and garrotted her i' the dark!
The face of Freedom frightfully they scarred,
That men might know her not, so sadly marred,
And, seeing her in the dust, misjudge her stature;
And, finding she grew calm, mistake her nature!
They built about her; dreamed not she would stand
Up, terribly tall once more; and, in her hand—
Clenched, till the knuckles whiten with their grip—
And the blood blackens 'neath the nails that nip—
The sword set sharp as is her red-edged lip:
And in her eyes the lightnings that should break
In blinding, black, irreparable wreck:—
Rending their roof to heaven, their walls to earth,
(The sorer travail the more glorious birth!)
An Earthquake crash! the edifice is crowned,
And there's a heap of ruin on the ground!—
Arise, to sweep them from her onward path,
Stern as the Spectre of God's whitest wrath.
Even while they clutched the gains of their foul play
And parted them, I heard the Avengers say—
‘They plant in dust a breath will blow away,
Although they wet it well with blood to-day.

“‘Ay, Traitor, mount your topmost pinnacle.
The merry-making Heavens would mark you well,
Where all the gazers of the world may see
You throned upon the peak of infamy!’
So crooned the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait.

“‘Well done. Now place the crown upon your brow,
With its brave glitter all eyes dazzle now:
Lost in its splendour is that frightful stain
Branded beneath; the murder-mark of Cain!’
So crooned the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait.

“‘Well done. Now fold the Imperial Purple round,
And let a Pope's Anointed, robed and crowned,
Thus glorify the blood so basely spilt;
Thus image to all time the loftiest guilt.’
So crooned the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait.

“‘Well done, thou faithful servant. Hell shall rise
From half her thrones to offer you their prize,
And meet you coming; greet you with a kiss
Of benison, for such a deed as this!’
So crooned the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait.”

“Was Satan sent from heaven to ruin earth?”
I asked, “or what the story of his birth?”

“Both heaven and hell are from the human race,
And every soul projects its future place:
Long shadows of ourselves are thrown before,
To wait our coming on the eternal shore.
These either clothe us with eclipse and night,
Or, as we enter them, are lost in light.

“We look on Evil as the shadow dark
Of the reflected bridge; the nether Arc,
That makes some perfect circle of night and day,
Through which our river of life runs on its way
To that wide sea where, all Time-shadows past,
It shall but mirror one clear heaven at last.

“There is no Devil such as Milton saw;
No fallen Angel's eyes divined the flaw
In God's work, whereby Man might be accursed.
The Devil was a murderer from the first,
Was said of old. But it was softly nursed
Up from a babe in arms. A little seed
Of sin was sown that grew with little heed.
By door or window little sins will win
A way that widens for the larger sin,
As tiniest lichens, climbing up the wall,
May lend a hand to help the Ivy crawl
That is to tower a conqueror over all
The house in ruin, crumbling to the fall.
Once life is set in motion there upspring
Infinite issues to the smallest thing.
A finger's breadth in swerving as we start
May land us in the end two worlds apart.

“Our parents were not tempted by a Tree
That hung out luscious fruitage, visibly
Held in God's hand, on purpose to beguile
Their simpleness with its suggesting smile.
Take this as symbol of a world within;
There was the serpent born, there bred the sin.
The trees that midmost in the Garden stood,
Took root in soul and blossomed in the blood.
Nor were they left without the inward light,
The starry presence shining through your night,
That shows the wrong while it reveals the right:
The magnet in the soul that points on through
All tempests and still trembles to be true.
“The still small voice within cried

‘Do not this,
Or it will lead from me, and ye will miss
The innocent brightness of your morning bliss,
And long in a wild wilderness will stray,
Farther and farther from the primal way,
Until ye lose me, darkling in a cloud
Of your own making, winding like a shroud
About the life I gave; nor feel me near
When ye do call and think there's none to hear.’

“And yet men dally with the thought of wrong
Until they do it: looking down too long,
Like him who, on a perilous mountain ledge,
Gazes upon the gulf, dark o'er the edge,
Till he grows dizzy, and, with brain a-swim,
Forgetting to look up—drops! Or, like him
Who stood and watched that Titan, face to face,
The vast Steam-Hammer, with its monster mace,
Until the blows of its recurrent sound
Snapped his last trembling hold of things around;
Mazed him and drew him nigher, slip by slip,
To thrust his hand into its crushing grip.

“They dallied with wrong-doing, and it grew
Too strong to wrestle with, and overthrew.
Eyes play with Pleasure! Looking overmuch
Sets all the blood a-tingle for the touch!
How the fruit smiles, delicious to the eyes;
How quietly the Snake behind it lies,—
The Beast that in the man erect and crowned
Tends ever to go grovelling on the ground,—
With all his weight bending the branch down near;
The reptile music, sliding through the ear,
Winds round the soul, makes it a-tiptoe stand
With love-sick longing till it lifts the hand
To pluck, and feel, and smell, and taste just one
Ripe Apple, whose gold glistens so i' the sun!
But one step over the forbidden marge;
The sin so little, the delight so large!

“Thus is the Devil born: born every day,
Harmless at first as toothless whelps at play;
Is born in thoughts which are the quick live seeds
That will be striving to take shape in deeds;
So would be born could any race begin
Afresh; so form the protoplasm of Sin,
The pustule raised at just a prick of pin;
The nest-egg which the Devil is hatched in.
For Man, the outcome of Creation's past,
Is flower of all earth's life from first to last:
No lower life hath ever passed away
But left its larvæ in the human clay.
No reptile of the slime, no beast of prey,
But human passions personate to-day.
And these break loose to rend in deadly strife,
And will break loose, till, in the higher life,
The soul arisen to her immortal stature
Leads, Una-like, these grim necessities of Nature.

“To picture what I mean: see here, a Wife,
With bosom just a-brood o'er life-in-life,
Who in a fury-fit snatched up a knife
And hurled it at her husband. 'Twas a miss,
Though near enough to hear Death's arrow hiss!
She had not dyed her hand in human blood,
But she had dipped her Unborn in a flood
Of wrath that surged and smoked and flashed hell-flame;
Given her babe baptism in the Devil's name:
Stained the pure thing of heaven a lurid hue
With fume o' the pit, the white star reddened through.
And from that Mother-stricken life there grew
A Murderer whose own hand that Mother slew.

“The ghosts of our own crimes long-buried will
Live after us and haunt our children still.
Our vices, hid for generations past,
Break out and blab their secret tale at last.