The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Enthroned, and mantled in a snow-white robe
Man's sire I saw, the Lord of all the globe;
High-priest of all the Church, and Prophet sure
Of Him whose promised kingdom shall endure
Until the last of Adam's race is dead.
Nor crown, nor mitre rested on his head;
Yet kings with awe had viewed him! Deep and slow
His speech; the words I knew not nor could know;
But sighed to hear amid their golden sound
A melancholy echo from the ground.
Ages were flown since Adam's lifted hand
Had plucked, insurgent 'gainst Divine command,
That Fruit, a sacrament of death which gave
Perpetual life a forfeit to the grave:
Yet still those orbs their Maker once that saw
Governed the nations of the world with awe.
Mournful they looked, as though their sorrowing weight
Reposed for aye on Eden's closing gate;
Mournful, yet lustrous still those lordly eyes
First mortal mirror of the earth and skies
And still with piercing insight filled as when
God's new-made creatures passed beneath their ken
While he decreed, in his celestial speech,
Prophetic names symbolical for each.
All round, checkering the steep with giant shade
His mild and venerable race were laid,

236

For dance and song no wreaths as yet had won:
Many their strong eyes bent upon the sun,
Some on a sleeping infant's smiling face,
Wherein both Love and Faith were strong to trace
The destined Patriarch of a future race!

II.

Then through the silent circle, winged with joy,
A radiant herald moved, a shepherd boy.
Wondering he stepped; ere long, like one afraid
A tribute at those feet monarchal laid,
A Lyre, gem-dowered from many a vanished isle.
Thereon the Father gazed without a smile:
But some fair children with the bright toy played;
While sound so rapturous thrilled the echoing glade
That Seers, cave-hid, looked up with livelier cheer;
And the first childless mother wiped away a tear!

III.

Later there came, as one who comes from far
A branded warrior, gloomy from the war:
Dark was his face, yet bright, and stern as though
It bent o'er that of an expiring foe,
Retorting still with sympathetic glare
The imprecating anguish imaged there!
A tribute too that warrior brought, a shield
Graven with emblems of a death-strewn field
And placed it at the Patriarch's feet, and spoke;
‘Certain Oppressors reared an impious yoke
And passed beneath it brethren of their race;
Therefore we rose and hewed them from their place.’
All pale the Patriarch sat—long time his eye
Fixed on the deepening crimson of the sky

237

Where sanguine clouds contended with the dun:
Then turned, and whispered in the ear of one
Who, on his death-bed, whispered to his son—
That son beheld the Deluge!

University of Virginia Library

ADAM REFUSES THE GIFTS OF THE RACE OF CAIN.

A FRAGMENT.

I.

II.

III.