Chronicles and Characters :: :: University of Virginia Library

The garden of a villa near Alexandria, overlooking the sea. Noon. Zozomen, Euphorbos, and Ben Enoch, meeting each other.
ZOZOMEN.
Welcome, Euphorbos! Welcome, learnèd Jew!

EUPHORBOS and BEN ENOCH.
Zozomen, hail!

ZOZOMEN.
Here, while we keep in view
The striving city, we evade the strife
Which, pleased, we witness. In the webs of life
Hark to the hum of those unhappy swarms
That cannot disengage their legs and arms
From out the meshes, more than flies that sing,
Caught by the crafty many-handed thing

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That in the unperceived impalpable snare
Squats, spins, spies, and devours.

EUPHORBOS.
Ay, the air
Of Summer's strongest noon is ever cool
Under these myrtle boughs,—our sylvan school.
Here breathe we Spring, while, all beneath our gaze,
The grass burns white against the stubborn blaze,
And the bruised day on rocky anvils steams,
Beat by incessant strokes of strong sunbeams.

ZOZOMEN.
Look yonder, friends, and laugh to see those four
Brown wretches sweating down the stifled shore,
To where, between the wharves, the sea-folk swarm
Round yonder galley; each with brawny arm
And straining neck outthrust, on bended back
Uppropping as he plods, his heavy pack
Of parti-colour'd stuff. I oft have stood
Still by the hour, and in like mirthful mood,
To watch brown beetles o'er a sandy road
Uprolling stoutly each his cumbrous load,
—(White balls of dust, they pack their eggs therein,
I fancy)—each with hairy chest and chin
Smother'd and choking 'neath the earthy globe
It costs so much to stir so feebly. Probe

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The satisfaction which it causes you
(Standing in midst of their minute ado)
To watch these creatures toiling, and you'll find
It comes not from superior strength of mind
So much, nor strength of body, as from these
Converted into consciousness of ease
By the supreme disdain with which you view
The thing that tasks the toiling, moiling crew.
Your nothing done, because of much perceived,
Is worth more, doubtless, than the much achieved
Towards their little seen, by creatures born
Beneath you, whom benignantly you scorn
Too much to hurt or help them.

BEN ENOCH.
The chief gain
Of life is, certes, theirs that can abstain,
And stand apart. Man first grows something, then
When first he separates himself from men.
Life's lowest and least choice results we know
And recognise in what the Many do
Together: life's augustest grace alone
Is witness'd in the achievement of the One.
Bees, emmets, beavers, to each other seem
As helpful, in their life's collective scheme,
As men to men. In this alone alone doth lie
Man's difference from the beasts: that man saith “I,”
Naming himself, but those “We” only.

192

EUPHORBOS.
Well,
The insects yet do yonder slaves excel.
For they (the insects at their toil) at least
Toil for themselves, and furnish their own feast.
But those men toil for others, whom, indeed,
They know not, or not love. Fagg'd hands that feed
Mouths not their own. True, Zozomen (alack
That so it is!), well-pleased, the sense comes back
From chance employment on such dusty scene,
To find meanwhile, among these branches green,
His fellow senses, in full ease, supplied
By cool sounds and sweet smells with all the pride
Of a most perfect idleness. But see!
The white half-moon, by yonder old pine tree,
In keener curve of clearer crescent now
Bites the blue air. Time to begin, I trow!
And Enoch brings us treasures in his sleeve.
Is it the scroll, Ben Enoch?

BEN ENOCH.
By your leave.
My mother's great-great-grandsire, as you know,
In your renown'd Librarium, long ago,
Had charge of those three chambers, where were stored
The Hebrew and Assyrian rolls. The sword
Of the first Cæsar on this city lay
Not lightly: but ere Rome's revolted prey,

193

Recaptured thus, her wrath was pastured on,
This great-great-grandsire of my mother, gone
To Thebes, in search of knowledge,—his life's end,
Was by an old Egyptian seer, his friend,
Forewarn'd of what was doing. Wherefore he
Return'd not, knowing that which was to be.
And in the farthest East he died at last,
Leaving this scroll. Which to explain surpass'd
Even his skill, though least among the seers
He was not. Natheless I, nigh fourscore years
Searching out truth, have in myself found light
Whereby to see, and set in all men's sight,
The meaning of this mystery. It is writ
All in straight strokes, like thorns. Perusing it,
I find the sense runs, not alone from left
To right, but right to left, as in a weft
Of cross-spun threads, and also vertical:
The text alliterated, duplex, all
Instinct with double import; and the tongue
That antique Syrian which survives among
Some parts of Ezra's scripture, where he cites
The letter which the Persic king indites.
Such is the text. Upon the marge thereof
I find a commentary cramp and tough
In Hebrew with no vowel points, by a hand
Unknown, which I surmise Ben Shishak's. And
All this I have unriddled, and writ out,
—The essence of it,—not the form, no doubt;

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For all made up of sounds too volatile
For transmutation is the antique style:
. . . . Even your elastic language locks not these
In its clear limbec, whence their light troop flees
In brilliance, bursting swift the brittle bond,
To fade i' the boundless infinite beyond,
Dispersed like falling stars. But what I deem,—
Nay, hold for certain,—the substantial theme
Of thought that underlies the illusive text,
Here in my hand I hold,—plain, unperplext,
Set forth in current Greek.

EUPHORBOS and ZOZOMEN.
Read, prithee read,
Ben Enoch!

BEN ENOCH.
Then, to please you . . . Since, indeed,
I know that, not alone, in earlier age,
Milesian Thales, and that Samian sage,
Anaximander, and Parmenides,
But not long since, Plotinus, and with these
(Not to name all those Greeks that follow them)
Latins no few, who tho' of Rome, condemn
No less the dull inapprehensive scorn
Of their o'erweening West for Knowledge born
Beyond the palms, before the pyramids,

195

Where Earth's first Morn first oped her ardent lids,
Were fain to slake their thirst of things divine
At that same urn whence now I pour this wine
O' the old bright East. . . . . .

EUPHORBOS and ZOZOMEN.
Read, Enoch! read to us
The parchment with less preface.

BEN ENOCH.
Well then, thus:
(He reads.)

I.

“In the Beginning, God, the Unbegun,
(Dread Doer of the Deed that's never Done!)
Made Matter: that the glory of His pure
Perfection, thro' this element obscure
Passing, and being thereby, as it were,
Temper'd to what the strength of souls can bear,
Might make rich colours in the lives of men,
His cared-for, but yet-unborn, children.

II.

“Then
What He had made God gave unto The Night,
To keep till He reclaim'd it.

III.

“Far from Light

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Night took, and hid, God's gift. And spread thereon
Her mantle, murmuring ‘Mine!’ And slept.

IV.

“Anon
The æons of the Day that hath no rise
Nor setting in the scope of mortal eyes
Flow'd round about the circle of God's Will,
I' the orbit of Eternity.

V.

“Until
The Word,—which is the perfect probola
Of Power, forth issuing from the depths of Day,
Summon'd The Night to God to render back
What God had made.

VI.

“Under Night's mantle black
The embryons heard, and shudder'd thro' and thro.

VII.

“Night answer'd with the everlasting No
Of nothing-knowing Silence. And outspread
Her sullen solitary wings, and fled
Further, and further from the Light, before
The Voice of God.

197

VIII.

“In her brute heart she bore
Natheless, the Word, that cried inexorable
‘Obey!’ whereto Night answer'd mute ‘Compel!’

IX.

“So that by disobedience she obey'd,
Not knowing. Unintelligently made
By lawless deed the lawful instrument
Of love she loved not. For where'er she went
Deeper, and deeper, with her went her doom,
—To bring about God's glory in the gloom:
Flying with what she fled from unaware,
Compell'd in her inconscious breast to bear
The conscious burthen of the utter'd Word,
Whose syllables are acts.

X.

“Stark Matter stirr'd,
Put forth a pining impulse, and 'gan rouse
Revolt all round its gloomy prison-house,
Yearning to get back to the hand of Him
That made it. Fitful in each monstrous limb
The thick life throbb'd, the formidable face
Twitch'd, and the enormous frame in helpless case
Heaved: for, not dead, but dreaming heavily,
The giant infant breathed. But blind of eye,
Callous of ear, Darkness with Silence old

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Crouch'd by the cradle; and their dismal hold
Held fast Night's prey, and theirs.

XI.

“To break whose thrall,
He that is All in One, being One in All,
Raised up Auxiliar Forces: they that be,
Since man hath been, dwellers on earth, in sea,
And in the fire, the air; tho' whence of old
These first had birth not even was it told
To Moses on the mountain. This alone
Is certain: not among the Angels known
Nor Elohim; but rather of this earth,
Or elsewhere under Heaven had these their birth.”

(He says.)

Rabbi Ben Shishak thinks, and I with him,
These should be number'd of those Teraphim,
—Inferior forces, visible to man,
Of the Invisible Will,—the Syrian
Worshipp'd as gods; whose images, when she
With Jacob fled to Gilead, privily
Rachel from Laban stole.

(He reads.)

XII.

“Then forth, at length,
To conflict came he that in subtle strength
Is mightiest of those ministers that serve

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The Maker's Will in Matter. Every nerve
O' the intense Nature vibrated beneath
His burning impulse when, as sword from sheath,
Forth flash'd the Spirit of Fire unto his aim;
Impetuous, thunder-bolted, fledged with flame.

XIII.

“He, that himself is never still, whose pride
Of prowess is not ever satisfied,
In his immitigable scorn of rest,
With searching challenge to swift Change addrest,
To do his bidding on the dangerous Deep
Roused to reluctant motion from dull sleep
Full many more and mighty ones beside,
In warfare, waged on Night, with him allied;
Whereby Night's realm was shaked and sunder'd thro'
With an interminable to and fro.
For whatsoe'er that Spirit loathes, or loves,
To seek, or shun, his ardent contact, moves.

XIV.

“To run whose errands then uprose the Wind,
That sightless seeker of what none shall find,
And moved on the vext Deep, and strove with might
To rend the vesture vast o' the antique Night.

XV.

“Albeit in vain. For everywhere the deep

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Enduring Darkness,—steadfast, even as Sleep
Is steadfast round about, above, and under
The tumult of some Dream that cannot sunder
The slumber it makes terrible,—clung fast.
And thro' the hollow dark the whirlwind pass'd,
As a thought passes thro' a soul,—which, go
Where'er it will, that soul still holds. Even so
The darkness held the whirlwind. And Night's pall
Floated thereon, forever, over all.

XVI.

“Then roll'd the Waters; labouring to the light
That was not: struck the stubborn sides of Night,
And grovell'd: for the wilful-hearted world
Of waters all its frenzied forces hurl'd,
To meet but blind bewildering reverse,
Against the solid of the universe:
And hung the hissing torrent on the arch
Of hollows drench'd, wherethro' the dismal march
Of Deluge, bellowing, burst, and, with cold claw
Of clammy greed, into the hungry maw
Of monstrous movement scraped the confused wrecks
Of broken opposition. But, to vex
Itself in vain, the purblind element,
A rude and ravenous monster, came and went;
And, mad, with uncongenial substance mix'd,
Disorder'd worse disorder wild; unfix'd
The hinges of the gateways of the floods,

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And shifted their far-fleeting solitudes
Endlessly to no end.

XVII.

“For, evermore,
The enormous Night, still motionless on shore,
Still moving upon sea, was everywhere:
Inexorable, ignorant, unaware,
But mistress still of Matter.

XVIII.

“Last, in wrath
Forth rush'd Fire's self upon his reckless path.
Night's mutilated mantle kindled, shrank,
Suck'd up the seething heat, and rose and sank
Tormented, yet tenacious. For, where'er
The scorching Spirit slid thro', did Night repair
With instantaneously-returning dark
Her ravaged shade. As when spark after spark
Runs over trembling tinder; which anon
To every fibre whence the flame hath gone
Doth,—tho' calcined, yet unconsumed,—restore
The swift-reverting blackness as before.
But thro' the havoc and the breach he wrought,
In rush'd the audacious Force, intense as thought,
Right to the core of what Night strove to hide.
There,—swallow'd soon in the abysmal tide
Of Darkness,—caught a prisoner by the thing

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He came to capture,—made, not Matter's king,
But Matter's slave,—thereafter, might not he
From this material any more be free.
Tho', discontented, unresign'd to abide
Fetter'd in darkness and to cold allied,
The radiant captive strove, till Night was fain,
Cramp'd, and diminish'd of her dismal reign,
To camp far off upon the cloudy tract,
Half conquer'd, in a sort of sullen pact
With light she loved not.”

(He says.)

XIX.

Thus, the Principle
Of Fire, materialised, and made to dwell
Distributed in all things,—being thereby
In each confounded irrecoverably,
To all things, interpenetrating each,
Gave his own leaping life; that yearns to reach
Upward, and outward.

(He reads.)

XX.

“From the depths uprose
Gaping volcanos, that with violent throes
Gasp'd against heaven. The strong earthquake's spasm
Jarr'd underneath; and split from chasm to chasm
The granite flanks of dizzy hills and isles,
And promontories rock'd on tottering piles.

203

About whose base the round sea, rolling, went
To wrap the world with its blue element,
Lock'd in the calm light of the crystal air.
The buried Force, still seeking everywhere
Fresh forms of freedom in new layers of life,
Still from each hot and hidden seedling, rife
With the enraptured consciousness of power,
Put forth fantastic pomps of plant and flower
To deck the palace of his new-born world.

XXI.

“Then first the centenary palm unfurl'd
Broad in blue air his emerald diadem,
And throng'd with feathery shafts his quiver'd stem.
Then spread the pillar'd plantain, a dim house
Of happy leaves, with shadows populous.
Then first in blaze of bloom the aloe burst
Bold-faced, and sank, and rose renew'd. Then first
Slant stoop'd the cedars from their mountain height.
And over all the lands, in lone delight,
The forests murmuring to themselves, the seas
Sounding together, and the melodies
Of old Earth's morning song made music sweet;
Whereto the white stars, dancing with faint feet
Far off, rejoiced in golden companies.

XXII.

“And still, in glad and serious self-surprise,

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The conscious being of the beauteous world,
With breath on breath, thro' bloom on bloom, unfurl'd,
Grew fair, and fairer, gathering grace, from high
To higher life.

XXIII.

“Wings wander'd the warm sky.
The eagle from his mountain pinnacle
Faced the full sun, his neighbour; proud to dwell
Alone in light. The brooding vulture bald
Peer'd out of unsunn'd crags. The curlew call'd
From breezy bays. Crop-full in marshy haunts
Stalk'd the high-shoulder'd pouch-beak'd cormorants.
The stilted stork to guard her airy nest
Stood sentinel. Down flash'd with flamy breast
The red flamingo. Scream'd the scornful jay.
The trotting ostrich scudded swift away.
Cold-coated wyverns flapp'd with spiky wing
Waste fens, in air forlornly wayfaring.
And merry bills wax'd loud in leafy groves.

XXIV.

“The briny sounds began to swarm with droves
Of silent finny shapes, whose startled eyes
Peruse the serious deeps in dim surprise.
The tunny, with his troop of uncouth kin,
Tumbled all night in moony deeps. The thin
Flat-finger'd starfish on the shelly sand

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Sunn'd his slow life, or launch'd him loose from land,
Buoy'd on blotch'd tangles of the salt sea-moss.
Grey squadrons of adventurous crabs across
Wind-beaten beaches crawl'd. I' the hollow stone
The hermit limpit lived his life alone.
Where blush'd the coral branch, with unshut eye
Xiphias, in silentness, sail'd, sworded, by.

XXV.

“Nor less the green earth's populace rejoiced,
Each after his own fashion. The hoarse-voiced
Hyæna laugh'd at nothing all night long
In lonesome lands below the moon: the strong
Unwieldy unicorns, about the brink
Of reedy rivers trampling, troop'd to drink:
The jumping gerboa in her wallet warm'd
Her suckling brood with beaded eyes: long-arm'd
The lean ape chatter'd on the branch, and swung:
Gamboll'd the frolick squirrel: gaily rung
With spleenful neighings many a herded lawn
Of happy grass, where roam'd at dewy dawn
The wanton horses: with embattled mane,
A citadel of strength, in grave disdain,
Majestic march'd the lion: lissom leapt,
Or crouch'd, the wary tiger: cumbrous stept
The mountainous elephant: on sandy couch
Supine beneath the palm, with provender'd pouch,
Mused the mild camel at mid-noon.

206

XXVI.

“The things
That sail on sunny air, with splendid wings,
Sparkled and humm'd: the frugal emmets troop'd
To store their sandy citadel: moles scoop'd
Blind chambers in the clod: the scorpion sprawl'd
At ease i' the hollow wood: in patience crawl'd
The many-colour'd caterpillars: bees,
The busy builders, around resinous trees
Sung ardent in the shade: the sleek smooth-oil'd
And silvery-spotted serpent, slumbrous, coil'd
In grassy twine of tangled growths: and swift
Darted the vivid lizard to her rift.

XXVII.

“For swimming thing to creeping thing was changed,
And creeping thing to flying. Life rose, and ranged
Like ripples of running water in the sun,
Whose mirths are many, but their movement one.
And every creature, doing what the need
Of its own nature prompted—in that deed
Delighting—did by its particular joy
Make more the general felicity:
And, living its own life in great or small,
Promote, in part, life's purpose, summ'd in all:
As units in a scale of numbers stand
So placed that each gives out on either hand
His value to all others.”

(He says.)

207

I opine
The text implies that all which was, in fine,
On each particular part imperative,
As Power's tributary, to contrive
For contribution to the Life o' the Whole
(Which, tho' in many bodies, is one soul)
Was by the separate will that works alone
In each part (conscious solely of its own
Especial want or purpose, whatsoe'er
That chance to be) accorded, as it were,
In prosecution of its proper joy,
Serving itself. Moreover, that the employ
Of every function requisite thereto
Was so contrived, in all God's creatures do,
As that the creature's action should produce
Pleasure,—the aim and stimulant of Use,
The motive of Life's movement. You would say
Life, wanting such things done, devised this way
Of winning all that lives to serve her end,
Serving its own;—by joy in means that mend
The salutary sense of some distress,
Which is dictatress of that happiness
The creature's faculties were form'd to find.
And therefore man, that is in one combined
Both animal and intellectual,
Most specially behoves it that he shall
Secure the complex happiness of each:

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Whose business, for this reason, is to teach
Himself, first to imagine and conceive
The highest happiness, and next to leave
To his soul's scorn all happiness that seems
A lesser happiness than that he deems
The highest: sparing piecemeal to employ
His faculties on fragmentary joy.
Since great joy must, greatly to be enjoy'd,
Be nourish'd upon lesser joys destroy'd.
I also deem they err who hold that Good
Is Life's aim: rather is it—to my mood—
Life's aim's benign condition: for Life's aim,
In fact, is simply Happiness. The same
Is Good i' the consequence. I say again
What of Life's end, if all the means were pain?
What if rest, sustenance, activity
Were needful and yet hateful? if the eye,
Compell'd to see, were scorch'd by sight? the ear
Made sore by sound, tho' still required to hear?
And Life's necessities imposed, in scorn,
Not love, a curse to sense? The insect born,
Even while I speak, where yon stark aloes throw
Their scanty shades,—is born with skill to know
The food, and where to find the food, he needs.
What if 'twere otherwise? The leaf that feeds
Might all as well destroy him. It does not.
Wherefore, perceiving how this Life doth plot
To bring her ends round,—get herself obeyed,—

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By ministering to all that she hath made
To be her minister in turn,—what care,
What shrewdly-shaped contrivance everywhere,
—Seeing, I say, her means all good, I must
Infer the end good also,—to be just.
Albeit not failing to observe, in all,
The means of pleasure made conditional
To a capacity for pain as well.
A possible Heaven and a possible Hell
In the employment of all faculties:
Mysterious Ezdads, welcome to the wise,
Tho' fearful to the fool. One asks me, Why
Is Evil everywhere? and I reply,
That everywhere there may be growth of Good.
Would I forego that growth, even if I could?
By no means. I resume the text.

(He reads.)

XXVIII.

“There were
Two beings—of the realm that is not air,
But form'd of finer element afar,
Which floweth round about 'twixt star and star,
And feeds with heat and light all orbs we view
Thro' æther rolling.

XXIX.

“Brothers were they, two:

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Loving each other, living in God's love,
As in them God's love liveth: born above
Mortality: of burning Essence bright:
One all pure heat; the other all pure light:
Whose nature may be realised by men
Vaguely—in moments rare—and only then
When, by the Thinking-power upward brought,
Or by the Feeling outward, in his thought
Or his emotion, man approaches close
To Truth,—knows what he loves, loves what he knows.

XXX.

“Of this etherial and seraphic Twain
The names be Zefyr, Zafyr . . .”

(He says.)

I retain
The antique nomenclature, as most fit.
Tho', for the meaning,—could one render it
In the Greek tongue, 'twere simpler doubtlessly
To hellenise what these two names imply,
(If my conjecture be not all at loss)
Calling them Thermos and Selasphoros.
He that illumes of him that warms being brother
Spirits,—of Wisdom one, of Love the other.

(He reads.)

XXXI.

“Now Zefyr, looking down the light of God,

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Beheld this earth; and saw it the abode
Of beings beauteous, but unconscious yet
Of beauty: each life limited, and set
Apart from That which is the Life of All,
Shut in itself; so, fixt from rise or fall
To its own type of beauty:—there the end
And bourne of all its being.

XXXII.

“Strong to rend
And roam, the lion: bright in bloom, the rose,
And sweet in odour: where the water flows
Swift slides the fish: the bird in buoyant air
Springs blithe: each creature acting unaware
Of all the beauty in all others, meant
Mixt with its own, to perfect the content
Of the Creator in His creatures all.

XXXIII.

“But, what if it were possible to call
And gather up into some central soul
(The conscious consummation of the whole)
All separate strengths and beauties stored in each?
Some crowning nature graced with force to reach
Out of itself on all sides round,—return
Into itself anon,—and so discern
Its fit relation to Life's other parts;
Whereto, in each, Life tends, wherefrom it starts;

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The fit relation of all parts to it;
And last its own, and their, relation fit
To the One wherefrom all come, whereto all tend,
In Whom is the beginning and the end?

XXXIV.

“Could some such soul beget itself,—suppose,—
The lion's strength, the beauty of the rose,
The joy that in the sea-born creature swims
The deep, the bird's delight that soars and skims
The boundless heavens;—by power in it, as 'twere,
To put its proper life forth everywhere
Beyond itself, and bring it back again
Triumphant, with a tributary train
Of other lives, made captive to its own
By the imagining of what alone
Sense notices, but knows not. . . . . .

XXXV.

“Such a being
Might be i' the world the Eye of Nature, seeing
Before and after. Consecrating so
All creatures in one creature, crown'd, below,
As the world's seer, conspicuous might he stand
'Twixt Earth and Heaven, upholding in his hand
The censer of the praise of all, encreast
By his own joy therein: the great High Priest
Of all God's creatures before God!

213

XXXVI.

“‘'Twere well.’
So Zefyr deem'd.

XXXVII.

“Whereat, on him there fell
Thro' all the solemn and symphonious psalm
Of seraphim that sing 'twixt palm and palm
Of Paradise, a sadness, soft, profound,
As of a silence hid within a sound.

XXXVIII.

“Zafyr, perceiving that, where'er they went
Together, Zefyr's brow was downward bent,
Not upward, as of old, in council drew
His brother forth.

XXXIX.

“'Twas when the evening dew
Was on the silent summer woods, the Star
Of Even smiling fair, serene, and far
Over the lone bright lands and waters wide
Of the young world. All-spying, unespied
Of beast or bird, in midst of bird and beast,
On a mountain summit in the furthest East
These Spirits sat in converse.

214

XL.

“Zefyr said
To Zafyr, answering as the heart to the head
Makes answer prompt, with no dull need of speech,
In some full-natured man:

XLI.

“‘Look forth! and reach
With me, where runs my thought around the rim
Of this green world, that in the light of Him
That made it, lyeth sleeping with shut eye
And but half-beating heart; not knowing why
It is, nor in whose Hand it lieth there.
How fair to spiritual sight! so fair
That we, God's Seraphs, from our sphere descend
To bathe us in its beauty, and so send
The fuller strain of a refreshen'd praise
To Him that made, and grants it to our gaze.

XLII.

“‘And yet how ignorant! how blind! so blind
Of being, that,—albeit we, that wind
Where'er the Maker's Will thro' Matter moves,
Delight, therewith, to wander these warm groves,
Or from the meditative mountain tops
At morn or even, when the sweet light drops
Or rises, watch the wondrous going on
Of God's great work therein,—means hath it none,

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Nor knowledge, nor desire of any way
To speak with us, to answer what we say,
Rise and respond to that supernal sphere
Whereto, not knowing this, it lieth so near.
Of it we know: it knoweth not of us.

XLIII.

“‘What keeps the beauteous exile cancell'd thus
From all communion with the Life that's whole
In Spirit only? Surely 'tis a soul
Yet wanting.’

XLIV.

“Then, an answer from Above
Was utter'd unto Zefyr: ‘Spirit of Love
That lookest downward, to all souls of Mine
That, looking, loving, downward,—as doth thine,—
Love that which is beneath them, it is given
To follow where love leadeth: down from Heaven
To Earth, from Earth to Hell: and there, made one
With what they love, to employ their love thereon,
Living their life therein. That love may so
Fill all creation, up and down. Whereto
Is this condition fixt: That, never more
The loftier nature may its life restore,
Nor place resume, at that first point assign'd
Its process in My purpose, till it find
Strength in itself to uplift there,—not alone

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Itself,—but, with itself, that lowlier one
Whereto its love allies it. If in this
It triumph, then the sphere it soars to is
Diviner, loftier, lovelier than before;
Enlarged by life, not single any more,
But twofold. For, what strength the spirit needs
To painfully recover, by slow deeds
Accumulated from the clutch of Time
And Circumstance, in action, that sublime
First starting-point of Love's self-sought career,
Impels its upward impulse to a sphere
Superior even to that which, in descent,
It for Love's sake surrender'd. In the event
Such spirits, My participators, win
At the Right Hand of Greatness, highest within
High Heaven's secret sanctuary, a throne
Reserved for those Experiences alone
That have advanced My Purpose: which doth move
Not only to create, but to improve
Life in the highest and lowest,—life in all:
Whereof the progress is perpetual.
But if the lord o' the loftier sphere do fail,
Bound to base engines, upward to prevail
With the low consort of his choice, twofold
Shall be his failure; failing to uphold
Himself where first he 'lighted from above,
And failing to uplift what he doth love;
And they shall sink together. And, because

217

What Is is infinite, all power, that draws
Upward or downward, urges up or down
Whate'er it meets with and can make its own,
Forever and forever.’

XLV.

“Zefyr heard
Glowing: and answer'd, ‘Good, O Lord, Thy word
To him that hears it, ever! Let mine be
The task with Matter to return to Thee.’

XLVI.

“But Zafyr cried, ‘O Brother, go not thou!
What of the load laid on thee canst thou know?
Or of thy power to lift it from beneath?
Behold! it lieth, sleeping in the breath
Of its own beauty, as thyself hast said,
This world, whose blind brute heart-without-a-head
Dreameth not aught between itself and God.
Once wake it,—make it 'ware that in the sod,
Now smiling all unconscious, stirs a soul,
And will not Matter murtherously dole
To such a troublous tenant,—if not death,—
Pain, dreadfully prolong'd on every breath
That troubles Matter? What Earth's dwellers be
Is best unbetter'd. Bid such beings see
A life above them, better than their own,
—A constantly-receding splendour shown

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Never to be secured—a point i' the play
Of power, perpetually drawn away,
Albeit perpetually present still
To life's unsatisfied pursuit—how ill
Even to themselves must all they be and do
Then seem, confronted with the maddening view
Of such a prospect, endlessly at hand,
Endlessly distant. What contrivance, plann'd
For pain, more potent than such gift, whereby
The Better seen must needs incessantly
Condemn the Good possess'd?’

XLVII.

“Zefyr, meanwhile,
Saw, watching wistful with a serious smile,
Among her lucid orbs, the pallid Night
Returning softly, in sad peace with light,
Over the waters to the west: and said—

XLVIII.

“‘Lo, everywhere, tho’ pent and prostrated,
How Fire, forerunner of the force in me,
Hath vindicated in his own degree
A noble nature in base circumstance;
Whose very pain doth yet his power enhance!
What was this world, ere in it waken'd those
Stupendous pangs, those passionate birth-throes
Of Beauty, the predestined fruit of Power?

219

Even to make possible yon bell-prankt flower
That trembles sweet i' the solitary air,
What earthquakes quicken'd, what mad mountains were
Cast up, crusht down: of whose so difficult
And dismal labour, lo, the last result,
—A little flower that knows not its own worth!
Ay, but the flower's mere beauty wins to earth
A Seraph. What, now, if that Serpaph's heart,
Hid in this world, had place to play its part,
Express its passion, vent its vehemence?
What—of a nature nobler, more intense,
More beautiful, more complex, more complete—
Might rise therefrom the gaze of God to greet?
Perchance, some lovelier flower, of statelier life,
Sprung, not from Matter's toil, but Spirit's strife,
Might, breathing beauty from its native sod,
Win down to earth,—no seraph, but a god!
Belovèd, I descend. I shall return.’

XLIX.

“‘When?’
“‘When God wills. I know not. I shall learn.’
“‘Too late, perchance. Thou goest alone?’
“‘Not lonely.
Strong helpmates have I with me.’
“‘Whom?’

L.

“‘Two only:

220

Faith-in-the-Future, Memory-of-the-Past.
And, doubt not, these Two shall beget me fast
New families of Spirits, born to know
(God granting) whence I am, whither I go:
Poets, and Martyrs. But, since I must needs
Pass lone from where thy placid Essence feeds
Its intellectual life, to lower forms,
Thee, Brother, thee,—tho' housed in dust, with worms,
Still let me feel not far,—where'er perchance,
Cramp'd in cold clasp of clay-born Circumstance,
I, from my new probationary toil,
Look upward with the love earth cannot soil;
—Still as of old, dear Spirit, in our august
And grand communion, lifting, tho' from dust,
Looks that in thine the love that lights them now
Shall find unchanged! And, if God's grace allow
This long-pent passion to attain in time
Some eminence of Nature, more sublime
Than Earth yet holds,—there, Spirit, if that may be,
Stoop thou to meet me, who shall rise to thee,
Nor wholly miss thee, where I soon must live,
I' the myriad moulds God doth to Matter give,
Wherein life beats: therewith my course pursue
Trusting to feeble faculties: renew
Full many times a patient purpose oft
Frustrate: and labour to the light aloft
By many darkling, many devious, ways:
And breathe, perchance in pain, vext hymns of praise

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Thro' harshest instruments. Thou, therefore, be
Wherever I at length may lift to thee,
In some yet unborn being, eye or ear
Appealing for communion. I shall hear
Thy voice, and see the beauty of thy face,
And comfort me. Thereby shall some new Race
Take note that Heaven is glad of Earth's endeavour,
And Spirit doth to Spirit answer ever!’

LI.

“And Zafyr, sorrowing: ‘Wheresoe'er thou art,
Trust me, my being must with thine take part,
Dear Spirit, with thine my hope, with thine my will!
And Zafyr shall to Zefyr answer still,
Prompt as of old, and clear as chord to chord
Of Heaven's mid-music, if new forms afford
To ancient forces their familiar play
Of interchange, Love's mandate to obey.’

LII.

“Then Zafyr's kiss thro' Zefyr's being stole
Burningly. And behold! a living soul
In Matter” . . .

(He says.)

Something from the text is lost
Which to recover, the vain hope hath cost
To me much labour, long research, and some

222

Discomfiture; for not the palindrome
Nor yet the comment, after or before,
Aids my distress'd conjecture to restore
The perisht page I still am searching for.

(He reads.)

. . . “Night answer'd to her august visitor
‘Spirit, my consciousness is made confused
By cross experience, and a sense, unused,
Of wants, to me not welcome. This I know:
That all things serve The All—I, even as thou.
Spirit, I know that Matter is His child.
But Matter's nurse am I. For thus He will'd.
And me the infant knows and answers . . . see! . . .
Not knowing yet its Father. If to thee
'Twill answer,—try! I know not. Yet I know
Many, and mighty ones, have been ere thou:
Who came to mock, and still remain to mourn.’”

(He says.)

Here also is the cryptic writing torn
To my much sorrow. It continues thus.

“After that time the Earth wax'd populous
With pageantries of prouder life, improved
By wider play of worthier power: which moved
Majestic in the forward march of Fate,

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Thro' statelier periods of more intricate
Contrivance, with superior pomp. Erect
Of stature, and serene of intellect,
The august procession to a glorious goal
Rose, and confronting heaven with human soul,
Matter, self-conscious, to emerge began
Forth from the merely mammal into Man.

LIII.

“Thus, at the last, appear'd Humanity.
Whereto was given the hand of a man, thereby
To imitate the thought of an angel: fit
And supple slave o' the spirit that doth sit
Within it, ruling it: made lord and king
Of all Earth's tribes, that to the governing
Of man were given; since, in man's nature, theirs
Is gathered up, and given forth.

LIV.

“Vast stairs
Of various range, ascending to some shrine
Wherein a God is worshipt, so combine
With the whole fabric's purpose.
From below,
Who sees, up their thick-trodden labyrinth, go,
Pushing or pusht, the multitudes betwixt,

224

The statues and the symbols each side fixt,
Perceives not more in those throng'd temple stairs
Than that each, graced with its own sculpture, bears
In its own beauty its own import plain.
But he that, mounting up them, doth attain
The god-like Image on the glorious height,
Where all parts of the Maker's plan unite
Their several uses, must perceive anon
The Temple and the Temple-stairs be one.”

(He says.)

Friends, 'tis well known to you, what from of old
Our Rabbins held, as still our Rabbins hold,
That, even as in Noë's ark combined
Lived, not alone the whole of human kind,
But also all the creatures that God chose
For patterns and progenitors of those
Which should be after, when He loosed the flood;
So also lived in Adam's life the brood,
Not only of all generations then
Yet unborn, and all families of men,
But also all the low lives of earth,
All creatures whose creation by man's birth
Was bound together, and in contact brought
With Spirit by the motions of man's thought.
Since man's thought lends a soul to everything
That man's thought lives in. Therefore is he king
Of all the creatures.

225

(He reads.)

LV.

“Thus man's consciousness
Was troubled by the sense of More and Less.
And, even as one that bears a dubious name,
Born of high lineage, yet the child of shame,
Sprung from a monarch's loins, albeit the fruit
Of a slave's womb; so, kindred to the brute,
Yet conscious of an angel ancestry,
Man walk'd his vassal world with restless eye,
Now turn'd impatient, or in proud self-scorn,
On his low native dust, now raised forlorn
In vext desire to his high native skies.

LVI.

“Now, therefore, Zefyr, gazing through man's eyes,
Sought his kin Seraph: from whose bright embrace
Was born a nobler and a mightier Race,
—Mightier than man's,—which man himself obeys,—
Of beings for whose service in all ways,
And sustenance, man's race was made.

LVII.

“For These,
Which are man's lords, using man's life to please
Their purpose, as man uses, to his own,
Earth's lower lives, whereof dominion
To him in turn is given, are, indeed,
Scarce bound to Matter by mere bodily need,

226

As man is; but have power upon man's mind
To make it ply whatever task they find
Fit for their purpose; mastering Man, as he,
For their sakes, masters Matter.

LVIII.

“These, then, be
The world's essential substances. To whom
Man's life is, from its cradle to its tomb,
Subordinated: unto whom man gives
The best part of his being: whom he lives
To serve, and perishes to please.”

(He says.)

Thus far
The text. The comment here . . . .

(Reads.)

“For men's lives are
To these as sustenance. Mark how, of old,
Men held what I, alone of moderns, hold,”

(Says.)

Ben Shishak's known philosophy in this
I recognise, and know the gloss for his.

(Reads.)

“Namely: that this thrice-complicated world,
Whereof man stands i' the centre, holds enfurl'd,

227

And superposed as 'twere, three orbs distinct
Of Life. Each diverse, tho' together linkt
By Life's one law for whatsoever lives,
Whereby of each Earth gains, to each Earth gives,
What helps in turn, the End-all, and the Be-all:
One Animal: one Human: one Ideal:
Three circles of one sphere. Of these, the least
And lowest, is the kingdom of the beast,
Which man commands: who holds the middle place
Between Earth's lowest, and her highest, race.
But that which is the loftiest of the Three,
Sole region of Ideas, I take to be:
Which man, in truth, subserveth and obeyeth,
As him the brute beneath him. Whoso sayeth
A man's ideas to a man belong,
Knoweth not what he saith, or argueth wrong.
Far rather, I imagine, doth the Man
Belong to the Idea. For neither can
The Man command the Idea, nor deny
Submission to its mandate. Can he fly
From its pursuing? or its path dictate?
Or summons, or dismiss, or bid it wait,
Or hasten—here advance, and there stand still—
Now active be, now passive—at his will?
And, if it live not servile to his whim,
Say, can he slay it? Doth it not slay him,
Inexorably, with no mercy shown,
As he would slay a beast that is his own,

228

If his death, rather than his life, promote
That end whereto the Idea doth devote
The Man it uses? All as well my mule,
Whose footsteps I by staff and bridle rule,
Might think he rules me,—goeth by the road
His choice, not mine, selects, nor own the goad,
As that, for my part, I should boast to be
The lord of that ideal lord of me
Whose force I follow, and whose burthen bear,
Not as I will, but as I must, where'er
He goads me. And, if this brute mule of mine
Should lord it o'er his fellow mules,—opine
Himself the sage whose way is Wisdom's track,
Because he bears my wisdom on his back,
Were not his folly all the worse? ‘What then,’
One asketh, ‘arguest thou, apart from men,
Ideas can exist? doth not man's mind
Create the Ideal?’ Nay, friend, for I find
Ideas make men, not men ideas. They
The dwellers of the ideal world, I say,
Are independent of mankind so much
As man is of the brutes. No more. For such
As is mankind's requirement of a race
Beneath it, born to serve it,—in like case
Is man. . . . Oh not by any means the lord,
But sturdy servitor, of that dim horde
Of dwellers on his brain; which, truly, need
And freely use,—to bear them, or to feed,—

229

For pasture, or for burthen, as may be—
Man, for their sakes created. Natheless he
Doth commonly consider and declare
That he is Something Great, because aware
Of Something Great within him. In like way
I dream'd the dial to the beam did say
‘Lo, I am Time!’ A little wind was waked,
Across the sun a little cloudlet shaked,
And the vain index of the heedless hour
Relapsed to nothingness. In many a flower
The moth and grub their dubious egglets hide.
Can the flower choose, or doth the flower decide
What to the summons of the sun shall rise
From her chance treasures to amaze men's eyes?
This launches, sapphrine-mantled, mail'd with gold,
Some warlike wyvern beautiful and bold,
Fit for the Persic fay that rides to woo
His shy queen, gaily, in her globe of dew:
That sends forth, barely fit to browze on burrs,
A monster hateful as the imp that spurs
His sooty flank, and hums a hell-born hymn,
Forth venturing darkly when the air is dim.
I can but laugh, not seldom, in my sleeve,
When I look round the world, and there perceive
How men have builded monuments of brass
To others on whose brains the whim it was
Of some Idea, on its sightless way
About the world, to settle, seize, and prey.

230

Why should the beasts, man scorns, not also raise,
After their fashion, some such baaing praise
About the sure-foot horse man drives, the ox
He ploughs with, or the fatlings of the flocks
Man kills for his best banquet? Now, I deem
That in the purpose of the One Supreme
Man is not, as he holds himself to be,
The highest necessity on Earth. But he,
Born for the service of Ideas alone,
Is for their sake, as they are for their own.
Notice, which most concerns, most occupies,
That Providence whereby man lives and dies:
Men or Ideas? An Idea hath need
Of growth,—full scope to satisfy its greed
Of power, and multiply, and propagate.
To meet which, man is there i' the mass. Now wait.
What happens? mark the issue. Men must perish
Wholesale, it may be, or piecemeal, to cherish,
Enrich, and ratify, the otherwise
Starved and pent life this one Idea tries
To nourish at men's cost; itself or these
Succumbing. Which doth the World's Ruler please
To rescue or confirm? Why, horde on horde
Nature, to serve her supernatural lord,
Of her selectest human children gives.
Little accounts she their mere deaths or lives!
'Tis but a race to ravage, but a realm
To wash away in blood, expunge, o'erwhelm.

231

Doth Nature shrink from,—Providence impeach,—
The sacrifice required? Men's bodies bleach
On bloody battle-fields uncounted. Men
Born to be used thus: ended there and then,
Their use being over. Dead and done with, they!
Yet not in vain, do after-comers say,
Lived they or died they, since their lives and deaths
(Else vainly born and buried in vain breaths)
Have served to manifest, make eminent
The Idea for which they lived and died, content.
But to themselves, who doubts these men's lives seem'd
Of all-surpassing value? Each was deem'd
By the dead owner of it something worth
The special cherishing of Mother Earth.
And if to save and foster man's life were
Earth's, or Earth's Arch Disposer's chiefest care
We must, for those men's sakes (whose life, pour'd forth
Like water, seems mere waste of what was worth
Such frustrate forethrift, care so baulk'd of gain,
In the fine fashioning of nerve and brain)
Attribute failure vast, or drear neglect,
To Earth's great Justicer and Architect.
But He,—that wrecks man's life i' the sharp ordeal
Which rescues life's pure essence from the unreal,
The false, the fleeting—heeds not how it fare
With the mere Human, born for death: whose care
Is for the Ideal that doth never die.
The human swarm swims, in its season, by:

232

Races on races rise and roll away:
The generations flourish and decay.
What laughing Phantom leads, and mocks, the dance
Of these blind mummers thro' the Masque of Chance?
Lives on the life that from their lips it drains,
More glorious waxes as their glory wanes,
Brightens its deathless eyes in that fine air
Whose ardent essence man's prolong'd despair
Feeds with the fires that waste it, and doth dwell
On dead men's graves, deathless, impalpable,
Made of immortal element, the pure
Result of man—man's life that doth endure
Above the dust man drops in? What survives
Save this, the ceaseless dying of men's lives?
Egypt and all her castes—bold Babylon,
Beautiful Hellas—Rome's Republic—gone!
What rests, on earth, the lone result of these?
The airy, but immutable, images
Of their Ideals, in the life that lies,
To light our own, above us. Starrier eyes
Than ours are on us. Egypt's Thought, the Grace
Of Hellas,—now no more to render place
To Rome's strong Will,—the stout town-stealer . . . There
Behold man's bright pall-bearers—they that bear
On their calm brows, for costliest coronal,
The symbols of the summ'd-up ages all.
Much musing on these things, I doubt not, then,
Ideas are of more account than Men

233

In that grand purpose which to further here
Each of Earth's tribes was, in its several sphere,
Created.”

(He says.)

Here the text, whereto I turn
Again, grows dubious—dark. Let him discern,
That can, its meaning!

(Reads.)

LIX.

“Thus Ideas grew
With human growth. Thus heavenly heralds blew
The trumpet of the triumph of the Earth.
For Fire, at first, with Matter mixt, gave birth
To breathing Life in beauteous flesh and blood.
Wherefrom anon (by its blind beauty woo'd
With clay to keep celestial company)
The Angelic Essence wrought, and raised on high,
Man, Earth's immediate monarch. Thence, thro' man,
Soon as the Earth-Spirit to commune began
With his unearthly kindred (lest forlorn
Of Heavenly love should be Earth's life) was born
The race of Earth's Ideal denizens,
Monarchs of men, whose life is more than men's.
Then, last of all, thro' these,—as first of all,
Thro' Man, was Matter in the Animal
Made 'ware of Spirit,—did man's self (the abode
Of Spirit) wax in the Spirit aware of God.

234

LX.

“And man, scarce started on his glorious race,
Seem'd night to touch the goal, when . . . What strange face
Of deathful beauty, with disastrous eyes,
—The wanton nurse of woeful destinies,
Rose on the road before him, unforetold,
To flatter to his fall him overbold
In passion,—him by fairest form beguiled
To foulest worship? What portentous child,
From the accurst incongruous union bred
Of what Ideal to what Bestial wed,
Arrests man's course yet? For behold it there
In the world's midst, arisen at unaware,
With its brute body and its brow divine,—
Man's curse,—the Everfatal Feminine!
The beautiful abominable one,
The watcher on the threshold, in the sun,
The lion-woman with the 'luring eye,
The inhuman riddle of humanity,
The weakness that is more than strength, the beast
That hath the brows of Power, and the breast
Of Beauty, and the body of Disgrace,
The Eternal Discord, with the dubious face!

LXI.

“Not causeless came the Curse of Sense. For when
The ideal world was felt i' the world of men,
From its strong action this re-action rose:

235

(As first, most fruitful, offspring of the throes
Of Spirit in Matter made parturient)
The consciousness of Beauty. Ill content
With merely being, man aspired to make
Man's being beautiful; and, for the sake
Of beauty, with unbeauteous circumstsnce
Contended. But, incompetent to 'advance
Except by sensuous aids, he halted there
Where his five guides, the Senses, cried ‘We fare
No further.’ There, soon satisfied to rest
With these, he built him temples, altars drest,
And statues shaped, and incense burn'd . . . and lo,
From out the incense fumes, with eyes aglow
To catch him, rose that Curse! Whereat . . .”

(He says.)

LXII.

O friends,
Suddenly, sadly, here the writing ends.
—Or rather, not the writing, as first writ
By him, whoe'er he was, that fashion'd it
Of old,—but all, alas! that time and fate
Have spared of this torn scroll; at what sad date
Thus mutilated, I divine not. Long
Hath been my labour to repair the wrong
By some rash hand, to me unknown, done here.
And all in vain! tho' many a weary year
My wandering search hath been most diligent.
Byzantium, Athens, Rome—where'er I went—

236

Thebes, and the ruin'd cities in the sand,
And wheresoe'er report from land to land
Denoted any learnèd Greek or Jew,
Studious to store all crumbs of knowledge, who
Might haply help me . . . nowhere have I found
The missing text. So that on broken ground
I seem to stand, as one that, with full heart
And lightly-bounding step, erewhile 'gan start
Bold on his journey to some far off spot
Reach'd only by untrodden ways—some grot
Hewn high up in a mountain land—the occult
Abode of that rare sage, whom to consult
On things of weight the man sets forth in scorn
Of peril by the way; and finds, tho' torn
To bleeding, hand and foot, by stone and briar,
The secret clue; and, taking heart, yet higher
And higher, clambers on 'twixt flint and stub,
Escapes the wild beast's paw, the robber's club,
(For bandit hordes infest the rocky height,
And from the thickets wild beasts roam by night)
But night and day he, chaunting hymns, fares on,
Surer and surer of the road. Anon,
Some dawn, at sunrise, hath he reach'd the peak
Where dwelt the sage he fared so far to seek,
And lo! the hermit strangled at the door
Of his own cave. That man shall never more
Have his doubts answer'd. No result remains,
But pure conjecture, after all my pains.

237

Much hath been saved, tho' much is lost: and more
Even than enough to make me much deplore
That so much saved, because of so much lost,
Should leave so unrequited care that cost
Such time and toil to save it. Question vain!
Shall Zefyr, help'd of Zafyr, yet regain
His native element original?
How shall it fare with man? What end of all
That Spirit's incarnation? Tell me you,
Whom well I deem this city's wisest two,
What think you is the import of the words
Where my conjecture halts?

ZOZOMEN.
What's saved affords
No indication of what's lost. Divine
Who may what means that “Fatal Feminine,”
I cannot. And methinks no such strange phrase
Was needed to imply, what none gainsays,
That woman, ever since the world began,
Hath been a beauteous mischief unto man.

BEN ENOCH.
No. I dismiss that meaning.

EUPHORBOS.
And elect
What other?

238

BEN ENOCH.
One, which doth, indeed, deject
And sorrow me most sorely. For I see
That man, being twofold, body and soul, must be
Against himself divided ever more;
Never at unison with life; so sore
The strife is 'twixt the body and soul. In just
So much as, discontented with mere dust
—Which is its native natural element,
The body, prompted by the spirit pent
Within it (which—a prisoner—doth conspire
Against its hapless gaoler), may desire
To pacify the querulous spirit, and do
Its mandates, run its errands to and fro,
In search of joys not for the body meant,
The soon-tired body's certain discontent
Dismays the spirit. And man fails that way.
Whilst, in so much as, willing to obey
The bidding of the body, heard in turn,
And humour thus the helpmate it would spurn
But cannot, the compliant spirit spares,
To deck the burthen its associate bears,
Some casual grace, some flying flavour lends
To spice the joys whereon the body spends
Its fleshly appetite,—the spirit's soon
Enkindled scorn of its own wasted boon,
And prompt disgust of what it deign'd to do,
Dismays the body. Man fails this way, too.

239

But, say the spirit triumphs. And what then?
Death. For it kills the body. Or, again,
Suppose the body triumphs? Again, death.
It kills the spirit. Whilst, with hinder'd breath,
The two conspire each other's failure, life
Indures, indeed: but how indures? At strife.
But in this scroll a hope, methinks,—nay, more,
A promise, seem'd vouchsafed. What I deplore
Is that, enough remaining of the scroll
To testify that, could we read the whole,
Fulfilment of that promise would be shewn,
The missing end, which cannot now be known,
Leaves, by extinguisht founts, desire awaked
To fiercer thirst, with all that thirst unslaked.
So bright the opening promise! But just here,
Here where both text and comment disappear
In a great gap of doubt, . . . man's prosperous march
Seems stopp'd by Sense, just where thro' Time's near arch
First gleams the Spirit's glorious goal. As when
That Carthaginian host, with Rome in ken,
At Capua caught, forewent the long-wisht end
Deserved by toil thus far endured, to spend
On pleasure premature, upon its way,
Forces first arm'd to seize a nobler prey.
The conquer'd, thus, the conquerors captive take.
Thus would-be Cæsars turn, with worlds at stake,
By captive Cleopatras captured fast,
Let worlds escape them, and are lost at last:

240

Thus, the Ideal Beauty, by the sense
Itself hath kindled into vehemence
O'ertaken, is in sensuous fetters fasten'd:
Thus man's defeat his first success hath hasten'd:
Thus, the old question vain returns again;
And, just where all seem'd gain'd, all's lost for men.
Which things perplex me.

EUPHORBUS.
Hush! we are o'erheard.
Who is yon stranger?

ZOZOMEN.
Not a leaflet stirr'd
Among the myrtles: on the path no stone
Cried out: and thro' the gates not any one
Can pass unchallenged. How, then, came he here?

BEN ENOCH.
A man of most strange aspect.

EUPHORBOS.
He draws near.

ZOZOMEN.
Mark him!

241

THE STRANGER
(approaching).
Peace be unto you, brethren. Much
I marvel, O Ben Enoch, that on such
A mind as thine, inquisitive of all
Light's rays, such mere interposition small
Should cast such shadow. A man's hand, no doubt,
Is not so small but what it can shut out
God's sun, if only thro' a single hole
The sunlight enters. But to thee the whole
O' the world is open'd. Seest thou not, altho'
The conquer'd do the conquerors conquer, slow
But sure from out such conquest comes a new
And nobler triumph born of both? Thou, Jew,
Were not the Roman master (as he is)
Of all thy race, how should thine master his
By knowledge, veil'd from Lars and Lucumon,
Yet view'd by Israel ere the Roman won
A rood of barren earth for that first plough
Beneath whose yoke the world's self labours now?
The Ideal thus, tho' by the Sensuous held
In bondage for a while, doth work and weld
All to itself, till form be fill'd with soul.
And, if indeed the story of thy scroll
Holds ancient warrant, as thou dost believe,
Deem'st thou the toil of Matter could so grieve
A Spirit's nature as therefrom to get
Most pitiful participation, yet
The toil of Spirit—stronger far than this,

242

And nobler much—receive of Him, that is
Father of Spirits, no assistance meet,
Even from the fugitive semblance of defeat
Securing future triumph? . . . triumph miss'd
By man in Adam, won for man in Christ!
Which, tho', indeed, for all achieved by one,
Must yet again by each be made his own,
In his own fashion, after his own kind,
Ere all possess the gain of each combined.
Meanwhile, one man's life marks where life may reach.
One ripple only touching on the beach,
Thou say'st “The whole sea spreads thus far.” But one
Of the chain's many links holds fast the stone
The mason's engine lifts: yet say'st thou not
“The whole chain's motion moves the stone?” I wot
Thou hast much to learn, Ben Enoch.

(He passes.)
EUPHORBOS
(after a pause).
Come and gone
Incredibly! and with announcement none,
More than the sudden shadow on the grass
Of a cloud passing.

ZOZOMEN.
Thou didst let him pass
Too lightly.

243

BEN ENOCH.
There was that upon my mind,
Whilst yet his eye was on me, I could find
No answer to his speech.

ZOZOMEN.
Nor I.

EUPHORBOS.
Didst scan
His face?

BEN ENOCH
I think it was no living man.
I think it was Elias.

EUPHORBOS.
Could he speak
Our language, Jew? For this man's speech was Greek.

ZOZOMEN.
What if it were—once more vouchsafed to us,—
He of Tyana, that taught Ephesus
Things inconceivable . . . since of his death
No man is certain?

EUPHORBOS.
Such-like rumour saith
The same of Heavenly John, whom Christus told
How God to him had granted to behold,

244

Whilst yet on Earth, the coming of the Day
Of Renovation. For that man, some say,
Is yet among us: and at sundry times,
Of sundry folk, in many different climes,
Hath certainly been seen. And whensoe'er
The man hath shown himself at unaware,
Great things have happen'd. Him I think it was
That hath been with us, and is gone. Because
Did he not name the man, or god, whom we
From some of the new Jews have heard to be
The founder of their sect,—bowing his head
The while he spake? Moreover it doth spread,
This sect, already, even amongst ourselves
Who walk with Plato: even on mine own shelves
I keep a book—'tis barbarous Greek, indeed,—
About that selfsame Christus and his creed,
Ascribed to this same John . . .

BEN ENOCH and ZOZOMEN.
We'll follow him.
Went he this way?

EUPHORBOS.
No. Where the air is dim
Deep in yon tamarisk thicket.

BEN ENOCH.
Would I knew
What he would have us think he knows!

245

ZOZOMEN.
I too.

EUPHORBOS.
Hark!

A DISTANT VOICE.
Kai to pneuma kai hê nymphê . . .

EUPHORBOS.
There!

THE VOICE.
Legousin Elthe . . .

ZOZOMEN.
Yonder! where the air
Is dim . . .

THE VOICE.
Kai ho akouon eipato
Elthe!

EUPHORBOS.
That voice again! in tones, as tho'
The man's hand beckon'd while his mystic hymn
To us he chaunts.

BEN ENOCH.
Shall we not follow him?

246

OMNES.
Most certainly.

ZOZOMEN.
But if it be, indeed,
Only a phantom which the air doth breed
Not seldom, near the setting of the sun,
Out of the womb of Eve—an eidolon
That hath no substance save what it hath power
To suck from mortal sense at this dim hour
Which ushers in the night, . . . all search were vain.

EUPHORBOS.
And I am bidden . . .

THE VOICE.
Elthe!

BEN ENOCH.
Hark, again!

EUPHORBOS.
I cannot. Follow, you. I cannot. I
Am bidden to the great festivity
Which What's-his-name,—the new-made Consul's choice,—
This very night . . .

THE VOICE.
Elthe!

247

BEN ENOCH.
Again that voice!

ZOZOMEN.
By Bacchus! I too must away. To night
Myself am one of those his friends invite
To hear our bran-new poet, Proteus, read
His bran-new Epic . . .

BEN ENOCH.
And for me, indeed,
Philemon, the Librarian, waits by this,
To overlook that learnèd work of his
Which crowns the labours of Ben Shittag, who
Reform'd erewhile the Kabala,—a Jew
Whom the Greek justly honours. Yet 'tis sad.
I would have follow'd.

EUPHORBOS.
I too, if I had
The time . . .

ZOZOMEN.
And I.

BEN ENOCH.
But weightier matters . . .

248

EUPHORBOS.
Then
Farewell, Ben Enoch. Farewell, Zozomen.

ZOZOMEN.
Farewell, Euphorbos. Farewell worthy Jew.

BEN ENOCH.
And, gentle friends, a like farewell to you.

(They disperse.)
TIME
(passing in the silence).
Go, fools! It tasks a century's search to espy
What oft a moment drops in passing by.

END OF BOOK IV.