University of Virginia Library

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.

Michael.
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
To hurl his chivalry down slopes of flame
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
A light of mighty pleasure fill his eyes
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]
Hark! where the last of those redeemed go by,
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.

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.

Raphael.
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
With poor embraces chance and alien.
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?

Raphael.
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.

Raphael.
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:
Yet every separate creature of his thought
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,
Salvation lies annulled in yonder Vale
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
Broke leaguer round some conquered capital,
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
Found any law but this: Passion is power,
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
Peer and conjecture of the danger past?
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?

Michael.
They talk together. Some die not till dark.

Raphael.
Aye, until dark! 'T will be a starless night.