The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody

All is well.
Ere the thunder had ceased to yell
I flew through the wash of the sea
Wing and wing with my brother the gull.
On the crumbling comb of the swell,
With the spindrift slashing to lee,
Poised we;
The petrel thought us asleep
Till sidewise round on stiffened wing,
Keen and taut to take the swing
With the glass-green avalanches in their swerving plunge and sweep,
Down the glassy, down the prone,
Swift as swerving thunder-stone,
We shot the green crevasses
And we hallooed down the passes
Of the deep.

On earth all is well, all is well.
In the weeds of the beach lay the shell
With the sleeper within,
And the pulse of the sleeper showed through
The walls of his delicate house
That will wake with the sun into silver and purple and blue.

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Where the creek makes out and the sea makes in
Between the low cliff-brows
Was borne the talk of the aldered linn
Matching the meadow's subtile din;
And hark, from the grey high overhead
The lark's keen joy was shed!
For what though the morning sulky was
And the punctual sun belated,
His nest was snug in the tufted grass,
Soft-lined and stoutly plaited,
And shine sun may or stay away
Nests must be celebrated!

Drowsy with dawn, barely asail,
Buzzes the blue-bottle over the shale,
Scared from the pool by the leaping trout;
And the brood of turtlings clamber out
On the log by their oozy house.
Round the roots of the cresses and stems of the ferns
The muskrat goes by dodges and turns;
Till she has seized her prey she heeds not the whine of her mouse.
Lovingly, spitefully, each
Kind unto kind makes speech;

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Marriage and birth and war, passion and hunger and thirst,
Song and plotting and dream, as it was meant from the first!

He climbs higher, and sings.

Peering in the dust I thought
“How all creatures, small and great,
For his pleasure God hath wrought!”

When I saw the robins mate
Low I sang unto my harp,
“Happy, happy, his estate!

“Down curved spaces He may warp
With old planets; long and long,
Where the snail doth tease and carp,

“Asking with its jellied prong,
A whole summer He may bide,
Wondrous tiny lives among,
Curious unsatisfied.”

Still climbing.
The trees grow stunted in this keener air,
And scarce the hardiest blossoms dare to take

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Assurance from the sun. Southward the rocks
Boast mosses and a poor increase of flowers,
But all the northern shelters hold their snow.
Such flowers as come, come not quite flower-like,
But smitten from their gracious habitudes
By some alarm, some vast and voiceless cry
That just has ceased to echo ere I came.
These white buds stand unnaturally white,
Breathing no odors till their terror pass;
Those grey souls toss their arms into the wind,
Peer through their locks with bright distracted eyes
And hug the elfin horror to their breasts—
Poor brain-turned gypsy wildings, doomed to birth
In this uneasy region! ... Yonder lift
The outposts of the habitable land.
Ages of looking on the scene beyond
Have worn the granite into shapes of woe
And old disaster.
He climbs higher, to where the ravine debouches into the Valley of the Judgment.
Each time when I stand
Upon the borders of this monstrous place,
I still must question wherefore it was flung

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Thus ruinous with toppled peak and scaur,
Sheer from the morning cliffs that hold up Heaven
To nether caverns where no foot of man
Has clambered down, nor eye of angel dared
To spy upon the sluggish denizens,
If any dwell so deep. What giant plow
Harnessed to behemoth and mastodon
Set this slope furrow down the side of the world?
And to what harvest? ... Here the sons of men,
Living and dead and yet unborn, might come
Unto the final judgment; here the lost
Might make one desperate stand. ... What moveth there?
What leonine and wingèd shape is he
Steals up yon gorge all desolate of light
Whence voices of fierce-tongued and desperate streams
Sound faint as throats of nooning doves? Till now
Never have I beheld a living thing
Amid these wastes. What manner beast is he
That he hath power to awe me, though removed
So far the fallen vastness of a cliff
Wherefrom a temple might be quarried, looks
Fit for a shepherd's sling? ... Surely he comes

301

From nameless battle yonder in the depths;
But whither steals he homeward there aloft?
What lair is his cloud-hidden in the snows,
Whose mates and loves wait 'neath the desert palms
To hear him tell his deed? Huge was the fight
That left that mighty prowess broken so!
For sorely is he broken: now he stops
And lies exhausted by an icy pool,
Now labors up the shale, skirts the bald top,
Drops with fierce caution down the further slope
Eyeing the next hard pass. I wonder ... ? No ...
Strange! 't was a blood-drop fell upon that flower
A-tremble from the brink. Another here
Upon the ground-moss—nay, upon my hand—
It falls all round me! ...
Looking upward.
Ah, an eagle goes
Lame from the battle, mate or duelist
Of him who crept by yonder. Even here
I see the vast wings, shattered and unpenned,
Almost refuse their labor; now he swerves
To rest upon a needled dolomite,
Then upward grievously another stage

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Toward some sad eyrie where his heart abides.
I too must seek my eyrie—sad enough,
Since there my heart abides not any more,
Amid the waste infinitudes of light
Missing the flow of day, the refluent dark;
Amid the bliss of unconcerning eyes
Remembering woman's anguish, man's resolve,
Youth's wistful darling guess, kindled and quenched
And quenched and kindled yet a little year
In eyes too frail to hold their meaning long
Where chance and enmity conspire with death.

He flies up the Valley.

303

SCENE II

Above the peaks that crown the head of the Valley of the Judgment.
Raphael.
Flying.
Soon will the cliffs of Heaven give easier way,
For though my heart grows human, yet my frame
With immaterial things accordance keeps,
And to my feet these spiritual hills
Feel native, and the climate kind to breathe;
Still kindlier for the shredded mist of song
That wanders here at morning and at eve
Whispering witless words and prophecy.

Voices.
Above.

Through the vines of tangled light
In the jungles of the sun
Swept the Hunter in his might
And his lion-beagle dun
Gaped for prey to left and right.

O'er the passes of the moon
Strode the Hunter in his wrath:
The eagle sniffed the icy noon,

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“Master, knowest thou the path?
Shall we meet thy foe-man soon?

“On what interstellar plain,
'Mid what comet's blinding haze,
Storm of star dust, meteor rain,
Shall we spy his crouching gaze,
Leap at him, and end thy pain?”

Peace is on the heavenly meres,
Sabbath lies on Paradise;
But the little Throne-Lamp fears,
For she sees the Master's eyes,
And she tastes the Master's tears.

Raphael.
Many an age your song has hovered round
This theme of Heaven's distress. What mean ye now?
Was that the lion-hound of which ye sing
Crept wounded hither, masterless, this hour?

Voices.
As before.
Where had his gadding spirit led?
Beside what peopled water-head

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Stooped he, or on what sleeping face
Was he intent the dream to trace?
Had creature love upon him fawned
Or had he drunk of mortal mirth
That he knew not what a morning dawned
Over his darling earth?
Heard not the storm, heard not the cries,
Heard not the talk of the startled skies
Over the guilty earth?

Raphael.
Those dubious voices fade, and in their stead
Succeeds a sound more anxious and perturbed,
Voices and mutterings of supernal wrath
Or whisperings of fear. ... Ah, there aloft
Upon the beetling rosy crag they stand,
The pale horse and the white horse and the red!
What rage vermilions his expanded wing?
Why streams his mane so fiery on the wind
Back from his staring eyeballs? What should make
His brother's steady candor pulse and throb
And falter like the light on cavern walls
Rocked under by the tide? O never yet
Did the pale horse seem terrible as now,

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Pawing the margent cliff and snorting down
Pale fire into the Valley! ... Brothers, hail!
I fare from outland. Tell me what befalls.

Angel of the White Horse.
He strays too much abroad. He hath not heard.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
They say that he has lived too much in the sun
And waxes mortal, mortal. We shall see.

Angel of the Red Horse.
Saw'st thou aught stirring in the valley deeps?

Raphael.
Far down below a beast crept wounded hither.
Why gaze ye on each other thus aghast?

Angel of the Red Horse.
Cast ye that way—the passes and defiles!
This way will I.

The Angels of the Horses disappear.
Raphael.
What news has spread concern
Even to these marks and purlieus of God's dream?

307

Below the sun's pale rim a paleness moves,
Grows larger, blots the disc with deepening light. ...
And now above the Valley treads a shape
Too lordly to be aught but Uriel!
Poised on a peak he halts to gaze behind;
Now wingeth nearer, in the Eagle's track—

Uriel.
Approaching.
Hail, brother.

Raphael.
Hail! Saw'st thou the fight below?

Uriel.
Of what I saw I cannot spell the sense,
Too darkly hid for me!

Raphael.
Share me at least
Thy news, though scant. That winged and brindled bulk,
Whence came it and what quarry did it seek?
And the great eagle, was it mate or foe?

Uriel.
No earthly beast it was, no earthly bird,
Seeking no earthly quarry. More than this

308

I know not how to say, ere I have mused
Where in the sun's core light and thought are one.

Raphael.
But yet conjecture clamors at thy heart.

Uriel.
Thou knowest what whispers are abroad in Heaven;
How God pines ever for his broken dream,
Broken by vague division, whence who knows!
And pangs of restless love too strong to quench
Save by the putting of creation forth,—
Quenched then but for a moment, since the worlds
He made to soothe Him only vex Him more,
Being compact of passion, violent,
Exceeding quarrelsome, and in their midst
Man the arch-troubler. Fainter whispers say
He ponders how to win his prodigal
By some extremity to render back
The heritage abused, to merge again
Each individual will into his will:
Till when, his pangs increase.

Raphael.
A nine days' tale.
I hold Him no such weakling! Yet ... and yet ...

309

I have beheld ... I know not ... pallor couched
On brows that wont to beacon; through the orbs
Quivers of twilight, hints and flecks of change. ...
We cannot be, we would not be, I deem,
The same as ere space was, or time began
To trellis there life's wild and various bloom.
—We linger. Let me hear.

Uriel.
Some things He made
Out of his wistfulness, his ecstasy,
And made them lovely fair; yet other some
Out of his loathing, out of his remorse,
Out of chagrin at the antinomy
Cleaving his nature; these are monstrous shapes,
Whereof the most abhorred one dwells below
Within the caves and aged wells of dark
Toward which this Valley plunges. There it waits
Hoarding its ugly strength till time be full.

Raphael.
How nam'st thou him?

Uriel.
The spirits meditative
Darkly name him: The Worm that Dieth not,—

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Perhaps the scourge reserved for those who prove
Rebellious in the event, perhaps himself
Scourge of the Scourger, biding but his hour
To 'venge his miscreation. So he lies,
A thing most opposite to spirit-kind,
Most hated by the Four who guard the Throne,
Within the viewless panoply of light
Immediately ministrant. To them,
But to the Lion and the Eagle most,
Is given to gaze in the Eternal eyes
Like hounds about a hunter's knee, that watch
Each passion written on their master's brow,
And having read his trouble, steal away
To taste the troubler's flesh beneath their fangs.
So stole away the Lion of the Throne,
The Eagle for his aid. Beneath the moon
Last night I came upon them stealing down,
Too eager on the scent to mark my flight.
Even to the splintered curb of the last profound
I followed, and thence heard the battle rage
Bellowed above by the loath elements,
Till dawn showed in the east, an ashen dawn
Clotted and drizzled o'er with sullen light.

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Raphael.
Their hearts were faithful. They were fain to save
The Master from some sad extremity. ...
But not in yonder depths, alas, doth lie
The arch-foe of his peace. Would it were so!
A monster bred to hatred in the dark.
Would it were so! not rather, as we fear,
Man the uplifted stature, the proud mind,
The laughter!

Uriel.
Speedily our doubt shall end,
For not much more delayeth the event.
—My watch is set within the sun, and thither
My hour constrains me.

Raphael.
Heavenward I. Farewell!

SCENE III

A garden in Heaven. The Eagle sits on the Tree of Knowledge; the Lion and the Angel of the White Horse rest beneath.
Angel of the White Horse.

Deep in the purple umbrage droops the bird,
His sick eye sealed beneath the weary lid

312

Which scarce his right wing's torn and gaping gold
Disfeathered hideth, since long hours ago
He sidewise tucked his wounded head away,
Shunning the light's offense; and through the boughs
Let sink this mighty pinion sinister
A vast and ruined length, whereof the plumes
That yesterday planed sunlike o'er the Throne
Are all blood-rusted now and misted on
With obscure breathings of a nadir clime.
Between the Lion's paws a thousand flowers
Have withered since he laid him groaning down,
And in uneasy slumber racked with dreams
Flingeth at whiles a sanguine froth abroad
To sear what rests of herbage or of bloom
Unwithered by his breath. They saw me not
Though close I tracked them up the cloudy heights,
Nor once have marked me through the exhausted hours
While here I wait the time to question them.

Hark! in their dreams they speak, and in their dreams
Do act again their awful enterprise.

313

The Eagle.
Creep softly, softly! Heaven's streets are still,
Each seraph sentry drowseth on his hill,
The winds of song are folded, and as flowers
Folded are all the domes and dreaming towers.
Creep softly, softly; I am with thee, mate!
Softly I soar above the shrouded gate,
And till thou comest past the warding swords
Lone in the outer moonlight I will wait.

The Lion.
Wing swiftly! For the walls of chrysopras
Have melted at my roar to let me pass;
But Heaven is up and peers with mazèd eyes,
And wings are weighed to hinder our emprise.
Wing swiftly, swiftly, down the glooming air,
Past cloud and precipice and mountain stair,
For ere another morning drowns the stars
We must have met the Worm within his lair.

The Eagle.
Drear are the depths, O brother,
Bitter the fight!
Vainly we stand by each other.

314

Thy might and my might
Are as straw, in the flame and the smother.

Angel of the White Horse.
O ye familiars benedite,
Who, hidden in the eternal glow,
Keep guard about the Throne,
What things were given to your sight
Ere to the hold of such a foe
Ye dared to venture down?

The Lion.
Awaking.

Ages and ages we gazed,
Stricken at heart and amazed,
Till the morning look
From his brow was strook,
Silver and vair
In the flame of his hair
And his lip with anguish crazed.

Then low I spoke to my mate,
“My heart must unburden its hate.
I will walk through the pathless woods
Where the wild stars hatch their broods,
I will girdle the steppes

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Where the meteor creeps
Like a slug on the rimy sward
Perhaps at the trampled brink
Where the Bear goes down to drink,
Perhaps where on the purple seas
Dance the young Pleiades,
Somewhere at length
I shall laugh in my strength
Spying the Shape abhorred,
Somewhere at last
I shall break my fast
On the flesh of the Foe of the Lord!”

The Eagle.
Wearily thou crep'st back
Sore from the track;
Thy hide was torn and thy tongue was black.
Long thou did'st slumber and deep.

The Lion.
A voice came in my sleep
Saying, “Why wander so far?
Nearhand lieth the earth
Full of rumors of war,
Of passion and pride no dearth.
There in his cavern cold

316

Lurketh the Dragon old;
He lies and pastures, plain to see,
On God's heart, sluggishly,
As once he sucked of the fruits of gold
Ages ago, on the Eden tree.

Angel of the White Horse.
Hearken! A wind walks in the Tree
Though the lily-heads are still,
From bough to bough inscrutably
It feeleth out its will;
And now the leaves, a-tremble long,
Utter impulsive song.

The Angel of the Tree.
Not in the loosened whirlwinds that invade
The sun's white core with shade,
Not in the wandering tribes of fire that sweep
With rapine through the deep,
Not in the venom of the caverned Worm
That drowseth out his term,
Nay, not in these or aught akin to these
Consisteth of God's groaning and disease
The incorporeal germ.
Though all that He hath made
Rebels and is exceeding turbulent,

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Though all his loins' increase
Go after pleasures other than He meant,
And with excessive claims
Drain and defile the founts of his content,—
Yet only one of all the shapes He brought
Out of the gulfs of thought,
One only creature of his quickening hands
Hath from its brow
With reckless laugh and with reiterate vow
Stripped clean away all decencies and shames;
Till with continual strife
And divagant demands
Of separate life,
The searching and the scornful heart of Man
God's inmost being maims.

The Eagle.
For naught have my wings been broken,
Vain are the wounds of thy paws!
Hark what the Tree hath spoken.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
Hush! For a murmur shakes the bloom
That once drank Eden dew,
A shadowed wind like a word of doom
Darkens the branches through.

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The Angel of the Tree.

Now draweth on the time declared of old
When He shall make division of the fold,
Shall winnow out the kernels from the chaff,
Shall tread his grapes, and in a silver cup
Chalice the good wine up
And cast away the pummace and the draff.

Too long and much too long
He hath endured his wrong.
A little vine of life He set to grow
Not far off from the footstool of his feet,
That it might be in spring a pleasant show
Of budding charities,
In autumn clothe itself with temperate sweet
Of love's long-mellowing fruit
So mild the angel youth might pluck and eat
Nor feel the mortal savor trouble shoot
Across their holy ease.
But now the vine,
Grown waste and riotous, has sent its root
With monstrous loop and twine
In circles nine times nine
About the bowels of his holy hill,
And million-fold its mouth

319

Has drunk his songful springs and quenched his veins with drouth.
Twelve shapes of sculptured dream
On Heaven's twelve gateways gleam,
Jasper, chalcedony, and jade,
Beryl and lazuline;
And there-amid the rank leaves of the vine
Earthy and lush
At morn with laughter push,
At evening droop and fade.
Its carnal fruits are insolently laid,
With stealth and hasty birth,
Even in God's streets and in his garden bowers,
And from the topmost glory of his towers
Singeth and maketh mirth
The exultation of its sudden flowers.
Long and too long hath his compassion shrunk
From laying of the axe unto the trunk;
Nor, though the blade is ground, and kindled white
The furnace, will He quite
Even now,
Even now, though day is late,
Utterly burn and cast into the slough
The thing He made to love and still is loath to hate.

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But first He will put off eternity
And put on body of their flowering clay,
That thus brought near He may familiarly
Close in each ear the word of pleading say.
Each blinding heart that stubborns all astray
Shall hear Him calling closer than the blood
That both its ruby gates with tumult fills;
And to the wild procession of their wills
Raving idolatrous in the sacred wood,
His voice of poignant love
Though quiet as the voice of dust to dust
Shall clearly sound above
The beaten cymbal and the shrewd-blown shell,
Saying as soft as rain,
“The gift I gave I fain would have again,
Ye have not used it well!
Break ye the thyrsus and the phallic sign,
Put off the ivy and the violet,
A dearer standard shall before you shine
And for your lustral foreheads ye shall twine
A fairer garland yet,
When the processions mild
Shall greet you and behold you reconciled
And sing you home across the deathless asphodel.
But ye who will not so,

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Take up the phallus and the wreathèd snake,
Let the wine flow,
And let the mountains echo to your yell.
Your ways lie by the burning of the lake
Long kindled for your sake:
Be ye not slow,
But go
Urging your panther teams through the wide woods of Hell!”

University of Virginia Library

ACT I

PERSONS OF THE MASQUE

SCENE I.

SCENE II

SCENE III