 | The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody |  |
337
ACT III.
SCENE I
A peak above the Valley of the Judgment. Between midnight and dawn of the Day of Judgment.Raphael.
Alas, on this lone height my pinions fail,
And half my dreaming world unvisited!
As a sick woman, who, when morning glooms
Must leave for aye the house where she was wed,
Yearns to behold the thrice-familiar rooms,
And rises trembling, and with watch-lamp goes
From chamber unto chamber, stopping now
To muse upon her dead child's pictured brow,
And now to dream of little merriments
Enacted, and of trivial dear events,
Until her weakness grows
Upon her, and she sinks and cannot rise,—
So, since upon the sad and prescient skies
The darkness of this ultimate night was shed,
My feet from haunted place to haunted place
Of my familiar earth have kept their pace:
Alas, that ere the half be mused upon,
And while the coming up of dreadful day
Is still an hour away
My wing is broken, and my strength is gone!
And half my dreaming world unvisited!
As a sick woman, who, when morning glooms
Must leave for aye the house where she was wed,
Yearns to behold the thrice-familiar rooms,
And rises trembling, and with watch-lamp goes
From chamber unto chamber, stopping now
To muse upon her dead child's pictured brow,
And now to dream of little merriments
Enacted, and of trivial dear events,
Until her weakness grows
Upon her, and she sinks and cannot rise,—
So, since upon the sad and prescient skies
The darkness of this ultimate night was shed,
My feet from haunted place to haunted place
Of my familiar earth have kept their pace:
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And while the coming up of dreadful day
Is still an hour away
My wing is broken, and my strength is gone!
Star after star goes out above the peak,
And only from the morning star is shed
Keen influence. Great star! He is not weak,
His pinions fail not; for he never quaffed
This frail and fiery air that mortals drink:
He has not heard when little children laughed;
He has not watched old pensioners break their bread;
To woman's lips he never held the draught
Of anguish, that a man-child might be born;
The May woods never saw him hiding there
His wings and flaming hair
To watch the young men pluck the budded thorn;
Nor has his mouth put off its seraph scorn
To hang with startled cry
Of grievous inquiry
Above the stoic forehead of the dead.
And only from the morning star is shed
Keen influence. Great star! He is not weak,
His pinions fail not; for he never quaffed
This frail and fiery air that mortals drink:
He has not heard when little children laughed;
He has not watched old pensioners break their bread;
To woman's lips he never held the draught
Of anguish, that a man-child might be born;
The May woods never saw him hiding there
His wings and flaming hair
To watch the young men pluck the budded thorn;
Nor has his mouth put off its seraph scorn
To hang with startled cry
Of grievous inquiry
Above the stoic forehead of the dead.
O heart of man, how I have loved thee!
Hidden in sunlight what sweet hours were mine
Of lover-like espial upon thine;
Thrilled with thy shadowy fears, half guessing
The hope that lit thy veins like wine,
Musing why this was bane and that thy blessing,
My angel-ichor moved by all that moved thee;
Though oft the meanings of thy joy and woe
Were hid, were hard to know;
For deep beneath the clear crystalline waters
That feed the hearts of Heaven's sons and daughters,
The roots of thy life go.
O dreamer! O desirer! Goer down
Unto untraveled seas in untried ships!
O crusher of the unimagined grape
On unconceivèd lips!
O player upon a lordly instrument
No man or god hath had in mind to invent;
O cunning how to shape
Effulgent Heaven and scoop out bitter Hell
From the little shine and saltness of a tear;
Sieger and harrier,
Beyond the moon, of thine own builded town,
Each morning won, each eve impregnable,
Each noon evanished sheer!
Thou fiery essence in a vase of fire!
What quarry gathered and packed down the clay
To make this delicate vessel of desire?
Who digged it? In what mortar did he bray?
Whose wistful hand did lead
All round the lyric brede?
Who tinted it, and burned the dross away?
“He, He,” (doth some one say?)
“Whose mallet-arm is lift and knitted hard
To break it into shard!”
Were that the Maker's way?
Who brings to being aught,
Love is his skill untaught,
Love is his ore, his furnace, and his tool;
Who makes, destroyeth not,
But much is dashed in pieces by the fool.
Hidden in sunlight what sweet hours were mine
339
Thrilled with thy shadowy fears, half guessing
The hope that lit thy veins like wine,
Musing why this was bane and that thy blessing,
My angel-ichor moved by all that moved thee;
Though oft the meanings of thy joy and woe
Were hid, were hard to know;
For deep beneath the clear crystalline waters
That feed the hearts of Heaven's sons and daughters,
The roots of thy life go.
O dreamer! O desirer! Goer down
Unto untraveled seas in untried ships!
O crusher of the unimagined grape
On unconceivèd lips!
O player upon a lordly instrument
No man or god hath had in mind to invent;
O cunning how to shape
Effulgent Heaven and scoop out bitter Hell
From the little shine and saltness of a tear;
Sieger and harrier,
Beyond the moon, of thine own builded town,
Each morning won, each eve impregnable,
Each noon evanished sheer!
340
What quarry gathered and packed down the clay
To make this delicate vessel of desire?
Who digged it? In what mortar did he bray?
Whose wistful hand did lead
All round the lyric brede?
Who tinted it, and burned the dross away?
“He, He,” (doth some one say?)
“Whose mallet-arm is lift and knitted hard
To break it into shard!”
Were that the Maker's way?
Who brings to being aught,
Love is his skill untaught,
Love is his ore, his furnace, and his tool;
Who makes, destroyeth not,
But much is dashed in pieces by the fool.
O struggler in the mesh
Of spirit and of flesh
Some subtle hand hath tied to make thee Man,
That now is unto thee a wide domain
To laugh and love and dare in for a span,
And straightway is a prison-house of pain,
A den of loathing, and a violent place,
A hold for unclean wing and cruel face
That mock the searèd heart and darkened brain,—
My bosom yearns above thee at the end,
Thinking of all thy gladness, all thy woe;
Whoever is thy foe,
I am thy friend, thy friend!
As thou hast striven, I strove to comprehend
The piteous sundering set betwixt the zenith
And nadir of thy fates,
Whose life doth serious message send
To moon and stars, anon itself demeaneth
Below the brute estates.
Wild heart, that through the steepening arcs art whirled
To a bright master-world,
And in a trice must blindly backward hark
To the subtèrrene dark,
Deem not that mighty gamut-frame was set
For wanton finger-fret!
No empty-hearted gymnast of the strings
Gave the wild treble wings,
Or flung the shuddering bass from Hell's last parapet.
Though now the Master sad
With vehemence shall break thee,
Not lightly did He make thee,
That morning when his heart was music-mad:
Lovely importings then his looks and gestures had.
Of spirit and of flesh
Some subtle hand hath tied to make thee Man,
That now is unto thee a wide domain
To laugh and love and dare in for a span,
And straightway is a prison-house of pain,
A den of loathing, and a violent place,
A hold for unclean wing and cruel face
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My bosom yearns above thee at the end,
Thinking of all thy gladness, all thy woe;
Whoever is thy foe,
I am thy friend, thy friend!
As thou hast striven, I strove to comprehend
The piteous sundering set betwixt the zenith
And nadir of thy fates,
Whose life doth serious message send
To moon and stars, anon itself demeaneth
Below the brute estates.
Wild heart, that through the steepening arcs art whirled
To a bright master-world,
And in a trice must blindly backward hark
To the subtèrrene dark,
Deem not that mighty gamut-frame was set
For wanton finger-fret!
No empty-hearted gymnast of the strings
Gave the wild treble wings,
Or flung the shuddering bass from Hell's last parapet.
Though now the Master sad
With vehemence shall break thee,
Not lightly did He make thee,
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Lovely importings then his looks and gestures had.
Whatever cometh with to-morrow's light,
Oh, deem not that in idlesse or in spite
The strong knot of thy fate
Was woven so implicate,
Or that a jester put thee in that plight.
Darkly, but oh, for good, for good,
The spirit infinite
Was throned upon the perishable blood;
To moan and to be abject at the neap,
To ride portentous on the shrieking scud
Of the arousèd flood,
And halcyon hours to preen and prate in the boon
Tropical afternoon.
Oh, deem not that in idlesse or in spite
The strong knot of thy fate
Was woven so implicate,
Or that a jester put thee in that plight.
Darkly, but oh, for good, for good,
The spirit infinite
Was throned upon the perishable blood;
To moan and to be abject at the neap,
To ride portentous on the shrieking scud
Of the arousèd flood,
And halcyon hours to preen and prate in the boon
Tropical afternoon.
Not in vain, not in vain,
The spirit hath its sanguine stain,
And from its senses five doth peer
As a fawn from the green windows of a wood;
Slave of the panic woodland fear,
Boon-fellow in the game of blood and lust
That fills with tragic mirth the woodland year,
Searched with starry agonies
Through the breast and through the reins,
Maddened and led by lone moon-wandering cries.
Dust unto dust complains,
Dust laugheth out to dust,
Sod unto sod moves fellowship,
And the soul utters, as she must,
Her meanings with a loose and carnal lip;
But deep in her ambiguous eyes
Forever shine and slip
Quenchless expectancies,
And in a far-off day she seems to put her trust.
[OMITTED]
O Morning Star! that dost arise
Haughtily now from off thy flaming throne,
And standest in thy wings' outspreaded zone,
With hand uplift and intense vision glad,
More kindling while thy brother planets fade,—
Wilt thou, the seldom-speaker, speak and say
If this, if this be then the far-off day
When God shall give the substance for the shade?
When Man shall wake, and be no more adrad
To lose the precious dream he dreamed he had,
And the long groping of his heart be stayed?
[OMITTED]
He answers not; the globèd light he wears
Largens and largens like a wondrous flower,
And in the midst his wavering radiance fades.
Behold, upon the waters, them that be
Above the heavens, how the lily light
Blooms mystical and vast! till all the stars
And all the gathered clouds that wait the day
Are blotted by its rondure. Dimly grows
From height to depth of that magnificence
A splendor sad that taketh feature on. ...
Lo! where God's body hangs upon the cross,
Drooping from out yon skyey Golgotha
Above the wills and passions of the world!
O doomed, rejected world, awake! awake!
See where He droopeth white and pitiful!
Behold, his drooping brow is pitiful!
Cry unto Him for pity. Climb, oh, haste,
Climb swiftly up yon skyey Golgotha
To where his feet are wounded! Even now
He must have pity on his childish ones;
He knoweth, He remembereth they are dust!
[OMITTED]
Earth slumbers; and the freshening winds begin
To blow from out the unuprisen east;
Yet still abides that awful Eidolon
Large on the face of Heaven, and its light
Is as the patience of a thousand moons
Upon the peaks and gorges of the vale.
Now on that giant forehead slowly dawns
Again the star, the bright, the morning star;
Amid the changeful lampings of his orb
The Angel stands, with keen out-spreaded wings,
And lifted hand and intense vision glad,
As when he led his brother orbs in song.
But yet no word nor any breath of song
Begins upon the region silences:
All's hushed as ere the first-created throat
Was vocal.
Now remoter wonders wake,
Impatient glories gather and transpeer
That sky-suspended Image. Three by three
The beryl gates, the gates of chrysoprase,
And those that are a very perfect pearl
Open, and all the citadel of God
Even to the bright acropolis thereof,
The temple of the ark of the covenant,
Lies open, steeped in wroth light from the Throne;
And all the heavenly folk are busy there.
The spirit hath its sanguine stain,
And from its senses five doth peer
As a fawn from the green windows of a wood;
Slave of the panic woodland fear,
Boon-fellow in the game of blood and lust
That fills with tragic mirth the woodland year,
Searched with starry agonies
343
Maddened and led by lone moon-wandering cries.
Dust unto dust complains,
Dust laugheth out to dust,
Sod unto sod moves fellowship,
And the soul utters, as she must,
Her meanings with a loose and carnal lip;
But deep in her ambiguous eyes
Forever shine and slip
Quenchless expectancies,
And in a far-off day she seems to put her trust.
[OMITTED]
O Morning Star! that dost arise
Haughtily now from off thy flaming throne,
And standest in thy wings' outspreaded zone,
With hand uplift and intense vision glad,
More kindling while thy brother planets fade,—
Wilt thou, the seldom-speaker, speak and say
If this, if this be then the far-off day
When God shall give the substance for the shade?
When Man shall wake, and be no more adrad
To lose the precious dream he dreamed he had,
And the long groping of his heart be stayed?
[OMITTED]
344
Largens and largens like a wondrous flower,
And in the midst his wavering radiance fades.
Behold, upon the waters, them that be
Above the heavens, how the lily light
Blooms mystical and vast! till all the stars
And all the gathered clouds that wait the day
Are blotted by its rondure. Dimly grows
From height to depth of that magnificence
A splendor sad that taketh feature on. ...
Lo! where God's body hangs upon the cross,
Drooping from out yon skyey Golgotha
Above the wills and passions of the world!
O doomed, rejected world, awake! awake!
See where He droopeth white and pitiful!
Behold, his drooping brow is pitiful!
Cry unto Him for pity. Climb, oh, haste,
Climb swiftly up yon skyey Golgotha
To where his feet are wounded! Even now
He must have pity on his childish ones;
He knoweth, He remembereth they are dust!
[OMITTED]
Earth slumbers; and the freshening winds begin
To blow from out the unuprisen east;
Yet still abides that awful Eidolon
345
Is as the patience of a thousand moons
Upon the peaks and gorges of the vale.
Now on that giant forehead slowly dawns
Again the star, the bright, the morning star;
Amid the changeful lampings of his orb
The Angel stands, with keen out-spreaded wings,
And lifted hand and intense vision glad,
As when he led his brother orbs in song.
But yet no word nor any breath of song
Begins upon the region silences:
All's hushed as ere the first-created throat
Was vocal.
Now remoter wonders wake,
Impatient glories gather and transpeer
That sky-suspended Image. Three by three
The beryl gates, the gates of chrysoprase,
And those that are a very perfect pearl
Open, and all the citadel of God
Even to the bright acropolis thereof,
The temple of the ark of the covenant,
Lies open, steeped in wroth light from the Throne;
And all the heavenly folk are busy there.
346
SCENE II
A peak above the Valley of the Judgment. Twilight of the Day of Judgment.Michael.
God's vengeance is full wrought, unless this form
That labors from the dark mists of the Vale
Be one whose strength has overlived our wrath,
And the last hunger of whose heart shall be
To creep from out that mass of death, and wait
High on these ruined hills for death to come
At nightfall, when the last strong soul must die.
Nay, 't is no mortal creature, though he wears
A fallen unhappy splendor, and his wings,
All eyed and irised like the gladdest ones
That glimmer in the pageantry of Heaven,
Are folded sadly o'er his downcast eyes
As now he sits and dreams. 'T is Raphael.
Michael descends.
Why sitteth Raphael disconsolate
After the manifest glories of this day?
Raphael.
The rest may keep the glory.
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Wilt thou share
The love-feast of the saved in Heaven to-night
With hidden traitorous thoughts clouding thy heart?
Raphael.
Never again! Never again for me!
Never again the lily souls that live
Along the margent of the streams, shall grow
More candid at my coming. Never more
God's birds above the bearers of the Ark
Shall make a wood of implicated wings,
Swept by the wind of slow ecstatic song.
Thy youths shall hold their summer cenacles;
I am not of their fellowship, it seems.
God's ancient peace shall feed them, as it feeds
These yet uplifted hills. I would I knew
Where bubbled that insistent spring. To drink
Deep, and forget what I have seen to-day!
Michael.
What thou hast seen? The splendor of his power
Sent forth against the wicked; his right arm
Cleaving unbearable glories, lifted high
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With wheels and tramplings; the wide threshing-floor
Become a furnace; drop by anguished drop
The oozing of the wine-press of his wrath;
The gross pulp cumbering the floor of the world,
The little priceless liquor chaliced up,
Borne back 'mid plaining silver and sweet throats
For the Spirit's earliest house-gift to the Bride!
Thou would'st forget this gladly, Raphael?
Raphael.
Yes, yes; right gladly.
Michael.
Yonder where the fight
Flung its main sea of blood and broken souls
Into the nether dark, I saw a youth
Cling for a moment to a jutting rock
And gaze back at the angel shapes that rode
The neck of the avalanche; between the wings
Of the pale horse and the red his vision pierced,
Between the ranks of spectral charioteers,
Supernal arms and banners prone for speed,
Up to the central menace of the Hand
That launched that bulk of ruin; and I saw
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At all that harness and dispatch of war
Storming aslope. He laughed defiance back
Ere down cascades of blood and fire was flung
His body indistinguishably damned.
How should this puny valor rise in glee
To greet the power that crushed it, and thy heart,
Angelically dowered, stand listless by?
Raphael.
Perhaps for thinking on another sight.
After thy chivalry passed down and left
The valley-trough cumbered and heaped with death,
A broken girl o'er-lived to find the breast
Her arms had clung to in the awful fall
Strange, alien, not her lover's boyish shape
She deemed she held, but gross with years and sins.
Her changed eyes heavily a moment roamed,
Then settled back on his, the darkened mate
Whom chance had flung her at the hour extreme
In scornful bridals. From his brow she drew
The war-worn locks, and laid her kisses there
Unutterable with life's èxtreme tenderness.
[OMITTED]
350
Companioned of the hasting paranymphs
Who hear afar the Spirit and the Bride
Say “Come,” and see the nuptial torch alight
Ere they have put their saffron vesture on,—
Too eager for their goal to join the song
Those throats redeemèd raise, save that their hearts
Throb rhythmic with it, systole dim
And bright diastole, with wax and wane
Of spirit-splendor pulsing to the tune.
Redeemed Spirits.
Sing, as they fly past below.
In the wilds of life astray,
Held far from our delight,
Following the cloud by day
And the fire by night,
Came we a desert way.
O Lord, with apples feed us,
With flagons stay!
By Thy still waters lead us!
Held far from our delight,
Following the cloud by day
And the fire by night,
Came we a desert way.
O Lord, with apples feed us,
With flagons stay!
By Thy still waters lead us!
As bird torn from the breast
Of mother-cherishings,
Far from the swaying nest
Dies for the mother wings,
So did the birth-hour wrest
From Thy sweet will and word
Our souls distressed.
Open Thy breast, thou Bird!
Of mother-cherishings,
Far from the swaying nest
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So did the birth-hour wrest
From Thy sweet will and word
Our souls distressed.
Open Thy breast, thou Bird!
Raphael.
Another neareth, chill upon the wind;
Wan fire-flakes stain the clustering spires of cliff,
From ledge to shoulder hapless echo clings
And falters up.
Michael.
The pale one's homing-song!
To-day he makes good harvest, and his voice
Has autumn meanings; jealously and late
His steed foregoes the trampled threshing-stead.
Raphael.
Terrible angel! Never until now
Have I beheld his features through the veil
Of pallor that enwrapped them; now at last
Their terror is distinct, for triumph now
And large appeasement lights them visibly,
As o'er his horse's neck he strains for speed.
Michael.
One flieth with him, rosy-lit within.
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Not as the battailous breathing of thy mates
Enrubies them: more vesperine and sad.
'T will be the lordly light of Uriel, dimmed.
Hail, Uriel! Quench thy speed.
The Angel of the Pale Horse.
Flying.
Why tarry now?
God's acts are throughly complished: Heaven stays
Till all her sons be gathered.
Flies past.
Uriel.
Alighting.
Here I wait
To see the swift reprisals Man shall take.
Michael.
Blaspheme not, lest I hurl thee down to swell
The carrion sin that Raphael mourns above!
Raphael.
Uriel's place is there, by those pale heads,
Those sightless eyes with awful question changed,
Those desperate broken hands cheated in death
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Not Uriel's only,—mine, and thine, and theirs
Thy warrior mates, and chiefly his whose breast
Bathed in some dawn's bright urge and wistfulness
Put out this lovely fruitage, this sweet vine
Of man the leaf and maid the honeyed flower
In mystic alternation, and when noon
Spread clamor in the pulses of the vine,
Was pined and plucked it up! Not so shall one
Deal with another's, much less with his own.
Michael.
For sins not to be borne He cut them off.
Murders, adulteries, and acts unclean,
Idolatries, and broken covenants,
Violent hearts and unconsidering tongues.
Uriel.
The violence and the unclean acts were his;
Unto Himself himself brake covenant;
Before the monstrous fancies of his heart
His heart made heathen mummery and song.
Wherefore to-day himself He punishes.
Michael.
Thy mouth uttereth darkness. Is all dream?
Human and heavenly deed unmeaning both?
354
To Uriel.
Brother, thou art all wisdom, as I know
And still have proved rejoicingly, but now
Thy word indeed is difficult and dark.
Take not away Man's ancient dignity,
The privilege and power to elect his ways,
His kingly self-possession. Level not
The head that lies too low to-day. Snatch not
From brows abased the crown of personal will
Which made them noble, though it brought them down,
Being worn too carelessly, too like a wreath
Of ivy or poppies meant for holiday.
Man's agonies and ecstasies obscure
Were more than shadow-show! Not all in vain
His groping toward some quaint imagined good,
His blood shed for a scruple, his low days
Winged and illumined with long-suffering love!
Uriel.
Nay, not in vain were these, though otherwise
Bound with the sum of things than unto Man
Seemed likely, wearing that glad wreath he wore.
And going after good the headstrong way.
355
We wait to hear this riddling talk made plain.
Uriel.
Truth is not soon made plain, nor in a breath
Fluently solved while the chance listener waits,
Nor by the elemental wrestling mind
Wrung from the rock with sobs. Myself have held,
Where in the sun's core light and thought are one,
Æons of question, and am darkling still.
Raphael.
Speak, brother, though thy words be hard and scant.
The candle flame goes far a moonless night.
Uriel.
The worlds and all their tenantry are Him,
Even to the utmost archipelagoes
Gazed at by maritime angels ere they veer
Homeward, awestruck by omens and sea-signs
Known to no pilot of them, and far off
Watch the scared islanders beside the straits,—
All these, and whatso lies beyond our hail,
Are effluence of the life that moves in Him,
Thought of his brain, wish of his working blood:
356
Hath separate claims and separate potencies.
Oh, not a sparrow falleth to the ground
But He regardeth it! Since ere it fell
A little gladness died away in Him.
And not a creature sinneth but He weeps
His own sin with his creature's—fourfold pain.
Since god and creature, false each to itself,
Was false each to the other. Not a heart
O'ercometh evil and mounts up to good,
But He o'ercometh and is lifted too.
Each life of clay that flowered in fragrant deed,
Each grass-blade that grew willingly, each bird
That through the churlish weather hoarded song.
Not only worked its own salvation out
But helped Him in his old struggle with himself—
Or might have helped—or might have helped, it seemed. ...
Raphael.
Yet did not, thy disconsolate ending says.
Uriel.
Who shall dispute finalities with Him?
Not Uriel. But as far as Uriel sees,
357
And prone are God's true helpers.
Michael.
Clay of clay!
Wassailers, fleshlings, quarrel-mongers, thieves
Of pleasure, plighters of unholy troth,
Mimes, gypsies, idol-breakers, idol-smiths,
Dervishing fantasists—most likely help!
Uriel.
Unlikely: yet the marrow of his bones;
Heat of the breath of his mouth; corpuscles red
Energic in his veins, loud gainsayers
Of death's insinuating whisper, “Peace!” ...
Before the Heavens were spread, or He himself
Rose from his changeless and unpictured dream,
These stirred in Him, demanding to be dowered
With individual shape and destiny,—
Each one a soul, yet each incorporate
With his great soul, which to far happy ends
Should henceforth in a million shapes of will
Immensely groan and travail, not with tears
Alone, but laughter, with singing as with sobs.
Oh, many a golden station on that march
Lie backward of us! when the armèd worlds
358
And in the pleasure-places of its kings
Sat down to feast, the unhelmed gleemen chanting
Victory past and victory to come.
Let me not darken thought with imagery!
Still the naked word escapes me, being too vast,
Too simple, for our little pictured speech.
This chiefly I would say: the restless joy
Which called God from his sleep and bade his hand
Depict much life and language on the dark,
Had other aims and meanings than are writ
In yonder Valley for an epilogue.
Man's violence was earnest of his strength,
His sin a heady overflow, dynamic
Unto all lovely uses, to be curbed
And sweetened, never broken with the rod!
Raphael.
Why did He quench their passion? I have walked
The rings of planets where strange-colored moons
Hung thick as dew, in ocean orchards feared
The glaucous tremble of the living boughs
Whose fruit hath eyes and purpose; but nowhere
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And, kindly tempered, saves. All things declare
Struggle hath deeper peace than sleep can bring:
The restlessness that put creation forth
Impure and violent, held holier calm
Than that Nirvana whence it wakened Him.
Uriel.
This day declares He deemeth otherwise.
The Shining Wrestler, tired of strife, hath slain
The dark antagonist whose enmity
Gave Him rejoicing sinews; but of Him
His foe was flesh of flesh and bone of bone;
With suicidal hand He smote him down:
Soon we shall feel His lethal pangs begin.
Raphael.
Fiercer than those that clove thy burning realms
And sent grey winds to waste the plains of Heaven
When on the Cross He sought to purchase peace
And lure his wayward world back to his hand!
Michael.
His lightning dry thy tongue! Why should our minds
360
Thou knowest what glory followeth.
Raphael.
Yes, I know.
The clouds at last rolled burning from the Throne
And let us see the risen wonders there.
Again I hear the gathering psalmody
Chant out the clement tale—eternal God
Made clay, by hands of clay unto the Cross
Hung for a sign, that who beholding Him
Should find Him very God, might dwell with us
In endless light and life. Again I hear
The deep consenting chorus mount and merge
The wayward crests of treble into one;
But still between the calling deeps of song
Vague and unacquiescent hung my heart,
Conning the burden wistfully anew
In hopes to find the joy my comrades found
Hid in the dubious notes. Vague hung my heart,
Wistful as morning boughs that watch the moon,
Not strong as now when I have seen all clear
And o'er the ashes of the world declare—
Listen! Are there not voices in the Vale?
361
They talk together. Some die not till dark.
Raphael.
Aye, until dark! 'T will be a starless night.
| The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody | |