University of Virginia Library

ACT V.

SCENE I

Time: as in Act IV.
An exposed upland: one side looks down into the Valley of the Judgment, on the others the snow-peaks fade into the visionary cliffs and slopes crowned by the battlements of Heaven. Sunset glow still lingers on the heights: the moon is rising.
Raphael.
Awaking.
Where are we, brother? I remember naught.

Michael.
Safe lifted o'er the Vale, and none too soon.

Raphael.
Help me to rise.

Michael.
Nay, rest thee yet a while.

Raphael.
Something of portent passes in the Vale—
I cannot well recall, but know 't is so
By thy wild looking. Can thy vision pierce
So downward through the mists? Mine eyes are weak
And blink at the mild moon.

Michael.
Spare thou to look.
Even me it grieveth, thee it will destroy
With present heart-break.

Raphael.
O remembrance now
Creeps moaning through the sea-halls of my mind,—
A sluggish neap, with loss and wreckage strewn!

Michael.
The Serpent enters now that last defile
High lifted toward the spiritual hills.
Behind him as he came has silence fallen
And gesture ceased: final ineloquence.
These hither people are the lesser thewed
But more inspirited, who held the fight
Vanward against us, and who fell the first
Before the whirlwind of our going down.

Raphael.
Is it too late to save this remnant few
For seed of a new world, planted afar
Beyond this trouble? Come, thy might and mine!
He lifts a questioning head and seems to stand
Hesitant at the mouth of the defile:
There give him battle....

Michael.
Nay.

Raphael.
Then I alone.

Michael.
Too late; and even if sooner, much too late!
He brings the second death; his fangs have power,
'T is whispered, on the flaming seraphim
To tarnish or to quench; one venom fleck
Flung from his jaws, how might it lame and scar
Our substance archangelical.

Raphael.
Yes, yes,
You give me reasons to it. Lovelier
Such scars upon the breast, though mortal proven,
Than that fair sigil set upon thy brow
The morn of thy first victory. Why live,
Why live, when all these wills that searched the earth—
Until they found their one and inward love,
Refusing to be still—have ceased to search,
Though quite unsatisfied? To feel the night
Unvexed of longing, and the day purged blank
Of laughter and of sorrow and of brawl;
No pride of life to glory in the sun,
No ecstasy to mate the moon's increase,
No heart interpreting the twilight thrush—
All the heart's business done! Nay, not for me!
Mine ear hath lain too long on Nature's pulse,
I cannot miss that music. Let me go.

Michael.
Still detaining him.

Raphael.
All is done:
The great refusal made. The wayward heats
That might have moved God's blood to sweetest ends
In dreams and deed, have bled themselves away,
And peace is his, though profitless.

Michael.
Hush! Look!
The Worm goes on!

Raphael.
What say'st thou? Speak!
Mine eyes are still too dim, I see not well
What passes 'neath the drifting fogs.

Michael.
He mounts!
He lays his length upward the visioned hills,
The inviolable fundaments of Heaven!
There where he climbs the kindled slopes grow pale,
Ashen the amethystine dells, and dim
The starry reaches. ... Now he coils his bull
About a foreland, and the nacrous light
It beetled with turns cinder. High he piles
His folds, and seems to note the upward way.
Hark, the trump sings to battle! I am called.

He flies upward toward the walls of Heaven.
Raphael.
Alone.

He flies after Michael.

SCENE II

Raphael stands on a promontory of the cloudy slope up which the Serpent has passed. The Valley of the Judgment lies far below.
Raphael.

First Lamp.
O then art thou too fled?
Haste, let us flee together! We had thought
All but the timid spirits still abode
The battle's outcome. Timid thou art not,
Though woman-gentle; is the battle lost?
Or won? Oh, surely won, since thou art here.

Raphael.
I come from earthward. Mortal weariness
Beat down my wing, and I was forced to stay.
How goes the struggle?

First Lamp.
In and in it stormed
From ring to lessening ring, until we fled,
I and the sister Lamps, save only one,
Our meekest and most patient flame of praise,
Whom naught could make afraid. Now by the wind
Distract, we wander on these withered hills.

Second Lamp.
How withered from the day thou brought'st us hence
Flowers for our lampads!—tiny troublous things
That living pierced us with a faint unrest
And dying left a nameless woe behind.

Raphael.

Uriel.
Approaching.
The dream is done! Petal by petal falls
The coronal of creatured bloom God wove
To deck his brows at dawn.

Raphael.
No hope remains?

Uriel.
To save Him from himself not cherubim
Nor seraphim avail. Who loves not life
Receiveth not life's gifts at any hand.

Raphael.
And life He loved not, though it sprang from Him?

Uriel.
He loved it not entirely, good and ill.

Raphael.
For what end should we love an evil thing?

Uriel.
Better than I thou knowest, truant soul!
Who all the summer hours didst love to stoop
O'er insect feuds, herb-whisperings, and watch
The prurient-fingered sap startle the trees
To sudden laughter of bloom. Better than I
Thou knowest what lewd rebellion stings the core
Of nature, bidding every seed awake
To sacramental life after its kind;
Better than I thou knowest what cruelties
Rage round about each starry heroism,
Out of what murky stuff the lover builds
His soul's white habitation. 'T is not mine
To lesson thee how height and depth are bound
So straitly that when evil dies, as soon
Good languishes, nor how the flesh and soul
Quicken with striving, and when strife is done
Decline from what they were.

Raphael.
Would He had dared
To nerve each member of his mighty frame—
Man, beast, and tree, and all the shapes of will
That dream their darling ends in clod and star—
To everlasting conflict, wringing peace
From struggle, and from struggle peace again,
Higher and sweeter and more passionate
With every danger passed! Would He had spared
That dark Antagonist whose enmity
Gave Him rejoicing sinews, for of Him
His foe was flesh of flesh and bone of bone,
With suicidal hand He smote him down,
And now indeed His lethal pangs begin.

First Lamp.
To Uriel.
Brother, what lies beyond this trouble? Death?

Uriel.
All live in Him, with Him shall all things die.

Second Lamp.
And the snake reign, coiled on the holy hill?

Uriel.
Sorrow dies with the heart it feeds upon.

Raphael.
Look, where the red volcano of the fight
Hath burst, and down the violated hills
Pours ruin and repulse, a thousand streams
Choked with the pomp and furniture of Heaven.
In vain the Lion ramps against the tide,
In vain from slope to slope the giant Wraths
Rally but to be broken. Dwindling dim
Across the blackened pampas of the wind
The routed Horses flee with hoof and wing,
Till their trine light is one, and now is quenched.

Uriel.
The spirits fugitive from Heaven's brink
Put off their substance of ethereal fire
And mourn phantasmal on the phantom alps.

Fourth Lamp.
Mourn, sisters! For our light is fading too.
Thou of the topaz heart, thou of the jade,
And thou sweet trembling opal—ye are grown
Grey things, and aged as God's sorrowing eyes.

First Lamp.
My wick burns blue and dim.

Second Lamp.
My oil is spent.

Raphael.
The moon smoulders; and naked from their seats
The stars arise with lifted hands, and wait.