 | The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody |  |
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
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.
His sick eye sealed beneath the weary lid
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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.
Do act again their awful enterprise.
313
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.
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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.
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
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!”
“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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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
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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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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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.
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
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.
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,
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!”
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
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.
320
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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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!”
| The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody | |