University of Virginia Library

PRELUDE

The action falls immediately before the Incarnation.

PERSONS OF THE PRELUDE

• Raphael
• Uriel
• The Angel of the Pale Horse
• A Shepherd
• A Shepherd Boy
• A Young Man (persona muta)
• A Girl

SCENE I

A meadow and coppice near the sea; beyond low hills the roofs of a town. Dawn.
Raphael.
He sings.

Uriel.
Appearing.
Why tarriest on thine errand, Raphael?

Raphael.
I do no errand here.

Uriel.
Why camest thou then?

Raphael.
Since earth is dear to me. Sometimes it seems—
Treading the prairie's autumn sibilance,
Or when the tongues of summer lightning speak
In the corners of the cloud—I could forget
My station 'mid the deathless hierarchies,
And change into a clot of anxious clay.

Uriel.
Mock not, sweet brother! thou who knowest well—
Better than I or Michael or the rest—
The throes that shake these clots of passionate clay;
Knowest their lewd harsh blood, their shell of sense
So frail, so piteously contrived for pain.

Raphael.
I dare to say how little jest it was.
Oft, as I leave these sliding shafts of dark,
And homeward climb the immaterial cliffs,
My heart makes question which were worthier state
For a free soul to choose,—angelic calm,
Angelic vision, ebbless, increscent,
Or earth-life with its reachings and recoils,
Its lewd harsh blood so swift to change and flower
At the least touch of love, its shell of sense
So subtly made to minister them delight,
So frail, so piteously contrived for pain.

Uriel.
Brother, thou dost not well to wander here.
If thou wilt roam, choose some less troubled star.
The roaring midst of the insatiate sun
Where God has set my watch, is peace to this!
Of all the bitter drops that dewed His brow
In his old agony, this earth-drop fell
Most bitter salt, and ever since hath been
Fuller of travailing than other worlds.

Raphael.
Thy speech is dark. I understand it not.

Uriel.
Of a dark thing I speak a few dark words.
Put from thy gaze the sweet bloom of these hills
And all this gorgeous dapple of the sea,
And let thy memory stand again with me
On Time's untrodden threshold, that first day
Which searched and stung our immemorial peace
With pangs of vernal influence. Heaven rose
As if from sleep, and, lo, through all the void
Clambered and curled creation like a vine,
Hanging the dark with clusters of young bloom.
Then from the viewless ever-folded heart
Of the mystic Rose, stole breath and pulse of change,
Delicious pantings such as seize the breast
Of lovers when the love-tide nears its flood,
Yet touched with endless potency of pain,
As lips of mothers when their anguish ebbs
And leaves the waifling life. Then first the Dove
Began to mourn above the mercy-seat,
And the dear sister spirits of the Lamps
Bent all their shimmering wings one way to screen
Their wicks from the wind-flaw. Large with question turned
Angelic eyes to archangelic eyes,
Archangels laid changed lips to the ears of Thrones,
Thrones gazed at Dominations, Powers made sign
To Principalities; but not one dared,
Voicing the fear that filled him, to cry, “Lord,
What hast Thou brought upon Thy kingdom, Thou
Ancient of Days!” Their silence was right well.

Raphael.
All this the meditative spirits oft
Have pondered. But thy meaning still is dark.

Uriel.
Ourselves who questioned why the world was made
Were born of the same questionable seed,
And we who feared were the first cause of fear.
Of a dark thing I speak a few dark words.
Of old the mind of God, coiled on itself
In contemplation single and eterne,
Felt suddenly a stealing wistfulness
Sully the essence of his old content
With pangs of dim division. Long He strove
Against his bosom's deep necessity,
Then, groping for surcease, put forth the orbs
Of Paradise, with all their imagery,
And the ordered hierarchies where we stand;
Some sharing more in his essential calm,
Some, rebel spirits, banished now or quelled,
The ill-starred sons of his disquietude,—
Disquietude not quenched when fell the pride
Of Lucifer, long bastioned in the North.
Demand of joy, hardly to be gainsaid,
And vast necessity of grief, still worked
Compulsive in his breast: our essence calm,
Those lucid orbs accordant, could not bring
Nepenthe long. His hand He still withheld
Ages of ages, fearing the event,
Till, bathed in brighter urge and wistfulness
He put forth suddenly this vine of Time
And hung the hollow dark with passionate change.

Raphael.
I think for me Heaven seemed not Heaven till then,
When from our seats of peace we could behold
The strife of ripening suns and withering moons,
Marching of ice-floes, and the nameless wars
Of monster races laboring to be man;
When we could hear the wrestle of hoarse sound
Hurl gust on gust obscurely toward the time
Of disinvolvèd music: till at last,
Standing erect amid the giant fern—

Uriel.
At last! At last! O shaken Breast, nowhere
Couldst thou find quiet save in putting forth
This last imagination? Could no form
Of being stanch thee in thy groping thought
Save this of Man? Puny and terrible;
Apt to imagine powers beyond himself
In wind and lightning; cunning to evoke
From mould and flint-stone the surprising fire,
And carve the heavy hills to spiritual shapes
Of town and temple; nursing in his veins
More restlessness than called him from the void,
Perfidies, hungers, dreams, idolatries,
Pain, laughter, wonder, anger, sex, and song!

Raphael.
God had one other thought, more sweet, more dire;
Thy latest words remind thee.

Behind the trees a girl's voice sings.
O daughters of Jerusalem!
What said ye unto her
Who took her love by the garment's hem,
Where the tanned grape-gatherers were?
Did any go down and see
If she led him into her house?
Or was it aloft where the wild harts flee,
Was it high in the hills, 'neath the cedar-tree,
That she kissed him and called him spouse?

A young man and a girl come over the hill from the town.
Uriel.
Unto man
Woman was due. To hearts of fire more fire,
To pride of strength a still subduing strength.

As they pass through the coppice, the girl sings.
O keepers of the city walls!
Have ye taken her veil away,
Whose hasting feet and low love-calls
Ye heard at the drop of day?
Have ye taken her ankle-rings,
Who is fair, who hath eyes like a dove?
Must she seek her lover, her king of kings,
Naked, stripped of her costly things?
Must she have no garment but love?

SCENE II

A mountain glade and forest. Midnight.
Shepherd.
Here stand, if thou wilt see, by this great bole.
This way they passed, and hither should return.
But pray thee, gentle god, when they draw near
Abate the splendor of thy face, fold close
Thine eyed and irised plumage. God thou art,
But thou must needs be mighty to escape
The hill girls when they rage! From these old boughs
The climbing moon will soon pour deeper shade
To screen thee more.

Raphael.
How looked they when they passed?

Shepherd Boy.
Coney, how passed the hailstorm o'er, quotha!
Patter! patter! 't was sung beneath i' the dark.
I lost a birch cup full of whortleberries
Scrambling to cover when I heard their songs.
But when they burst across the glade, I peeped,
And saw their breasts gleam through their angry hair.
Evoë! they had snared the village lad
They hanker for so long. I hear them talk,
Dawdling on well-curbs with their water-skins
Or picking the May-apples.

Shepherd.
'T is the lad
Who sat mute at the merry threshing-stead,
Turned from their orgies in the sacred wood
With large bright eyes unamorous, and sang
In lonesome places piercing lonesome songs
Of other lives and other gods than theirs—
Perchance of thee and thy bright-wingèd mates,
If mates be thine, for god thou surely art.

Shepherd Boy.
To-night they have him limed! Brow of the hawk,
Throat of the hermit-thrush, and ring-dove eyes!

Shepherd.
He came across the moon-drench dragged by three
Whose bodies shone like the peeled willow wand;
The little snakes they knot into their hair
Lipping his neck, where oozed the red of grapes
From his crushed garland; his hands flung aloft
To the symbol of their fierce licentious god.
His eyes were large and fixed, his lips apart,
As I have seen him in the lonesome woods,
But madder than the maddest bacchant there!

Raphael.
Who cometh yonder?

Shepherd.
Where?

Raphael.
Across the glade.

Shepherd.
I see nought.

Raphael.
There, behind the trailing mist.
The moonlight gathers to a ghostly shape,
Unearthly silver, throbbing like a heart!
It seems a beast and rider.
The shepherds make off.
Ah, I know
That icy influence, and the voice I know,
First heard in Heaven when time began to be,—
A voice above our voices, and a hush
Beneath our hush, freezing the heart with fear,
With fear the heart even of spirit-kind. ...

The Angel of the Pale Horse.
Sings.

Raphael.
What makes thine errand here?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
Still as of old.

Raphael.
I think thou art way-wandered. Here is life.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
My horse's feet err not; they are way-wise.

Raphael.
Stand by me in the shade of these old boughs,
And let no anger fan thy wings alight
Or flake the nostrils of thy horse with fire
When the young bacchants halloo down the steep.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
Thou feedest thy giddy and half-human mind
Still on these little spectacles of change,
Forgetting Heaven's great woes!

Raphael.
What woe can come
Into those courts of old beatitude?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
Hast thou not felt its presence there?

Raphael.
Yes—nay—
I know not ... When I enter Heaven gate,
Fear comes upon me, for I seem to feel
Some subtle waning of accustomed joy,
Some dying off of music—thin, minute,
As the single cricket amid chorusing fields,
Whose ceasing breaks the rapture. Often, too,
Wan faces shun me in the woods of light
And voices of vague dolor die away
Along the living lilies as I come.
But this I held a phantasy of dream,
Bred of too earnest looking on the blight
That falls on mortal things.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
It is no dream;
Though more mysterious, more dark than dream.
Momently fades the splendor, momently
Silence and dissonance like eating moths
Scatter corruption on the choiring orbs.

Raphael.
No one declares the cause?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
The cause is here,
Here in the vagrant courses of the moon,
Who makes her lair and wanders for her love
After her own loose law; in yonder stars,
Gay spendthrifts of their plentitude of fire;
In this most dissolute earth, who decks herself
With gorgeous phantasy, and delicate whim,
And paces forth before the worlds to dance
A maiden measure, modest lids downcast
To hide her harlot's guile; but more than these,
And more than all, unutterably more,
Here in the wild and sinful heart of man,—
Of all the fruits upon creation's vine
The thirstiest one to drain the vital breast
Of God, wherein it grows.

Raphael.
Too fiery sweet
Gushes the liquor from the vine He set,
Man the broad leaf and maid the honeyed flower!

The shepherds creep back, and stand peering from behind the tree at the angels.
Raphael.
Musing.
What if they rendered up their wills to His?
Hushed and subdued their personality?
Became as members of the living tree?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
A whisper grows, various from tongue to tongue,
That so He will attempt. Those who consent
To render up their clamorous wills to Him,
To merge their fretful being in his peace,
He will accept: the rest He will destroy.

The boy whispers to Raphael.
Raphael.
What wilt thou, little friend?

Shepherd Boy.
Hither, sweet god!
But let the ghostly centaur stay behind.

Shepherd.
Lean o'er this rock and look into the gorge.
See how their torches dip from ledge to ledge.
They race beside some shape the torrent bears:
The eddies seize it now, and leaning out
Over the pool they stop to howl their hymns,
And, now it plunges, how they madden down
With laughter keen above the drumming foam.

Raphael.
Is 't not a man's torn trunk?

Shepherd Boy.
See those behind
Grasping the antlers of the lunging stag,
That bellows when their torches bite his flanks!
I know the witch who rides him!

Raphael.
Come away
That is a bleeding head she holds aloft
Above the clutching of her comrades' hands!

Shepherd Boy.
No more thou 'lt shun their orgies in the wood,
Throat of the hermit-thrush and ring-dove eyes!
Throat of the mourning thrush, thy songs are done;
Sad ring-dove eyes, the lids have shut you in!

Shepherd.
That is his harp the dancers bear before,
Mocking his solemn songs of other gods
And other lives than theirs.

Raphael.
Musing.
Those who consent
He will accept: the rest He will destroy!

Shepherd Boy.
Look! look! the ghostly centaur goeth down.