University of Virginia Library

SCENE III.

NOEMA.
How glad I am to be alone! It irked
Even to hear Irad's sweet babble purl
In endless ripples round me. I am alone,
Alone, as long I wished. Yet do I wish
Wholly to be alone? I cannot say it.
Oh! where is He, that shadow of myself,
Which I project, or as I sit or move,
And, shadow like, is still before, behind,
But never quite beside me! Yesterday,
Leagued with to-morrow, kills the day that is,
And hearts subsist on memory and hope.
Was it a dream? Hath he forgotten me?
Or have the envious Heavens sucked him up,
And clipped his too erratic pinions?
Was it a dream, only a dream? O no!
I saw his fair celestial properties,
Heard his articulate distinctive voice,
And felt his warm and aromatic wings
Swaying above me as he breathed farewell.
Was that a dream, then all the world's a dream,
Yon upstart spirals wreaths of rising mist,
The mountains flimsy as the atmosphere,
The sun himself an ignus-fatuus,
And all our senses only visionary.
No, 'twas no dream; it is the waking seems so!
Oh! shall I never gaze upon him more,
And must the sweetness of that single hour
Be long life's lasting bitterness? I feel
No wish to name him now; only to hide
The tumults he has bred! O, I do think
That when we lock a secret in our breast,
True to its task, that soft recess assumes
The casket's hardness! O how hard mine feels!
Hark!

A VOICE SINGING.
Over the realms of balsam and of myrrh,
I have flown, I have flown,
And endless deserts plumed with snow and fir,
All alone, all alone,
Seeing if other on the Earth there were,
Like my own, like my own!

NOEMA.
Oh! 'tis his voice! I could distinguish it,
Were all the Heavens singing at a time.
'Tis in the air, and yet I cannot see him.

VOICE SINGING

AFRAEL.
Yes, it is thou, and I have hit my nest
At the first swoop! Dost not remember me?

NOEMA.
Remember? No! For memory implies
Power to forget; and from my constant mind
Ne'er for one moment hath thine image passed.
But why art thou invisible? I hear
Thy silvery notes, but fail to find the spot
Where thou hang'st poising.

AFRAEL.
I am on the ground,
Not in the air, and full in front of thee.
'T must be the daylight dazzles thee, and that
Spirits resemble sunshine, and the form
Thou in the gloaming plainly didst discern,
Thou now confoundest with the garish day.
But look! look! here,—here where I bend o'er thee!

NOEMA.
(shading her eyes).
Ha! I can guess thee now, and, as I gaze,
Do from the ambient sunshine round thee off,
And recognise thy seeming. But, how bright,
How wondrous bright thou art, and whilst the air
Shimmers unstably, thou serenely shin'st!
Else were there no distinction twixt the twain,
And thou wert wholly hidden from mine eyes.
But whence hast come so early in the hours?

AFRAEL.
Straight from my star, the star of dark and dawn!
I met a lark, going up to heaven, and shaking
Dew from his feet and music from his wings,
And I did ask him of thee. At the which,
He shrilled out such a volume of sweet sound,
It filled the azure-vaulted firmament,
And set the stars a-ringing. Then I knew
He from the heaven below, where thou dost dwell,
Had plumed his flight; and through the air I slid,
Adown the path by which he had ascended.
Oh! he hath proved to me a trusty guide,
And happy be his song amid the clouds!

NOEMA.
My blessing, too, go with that messenger!
For I did think never to see thee more;
But, like a bird that on the topmost spray
Of some dark solitary tree alights,
Only to shake it with its song, then leave,
That thou hadst perched an instant on my life,
To make it lonely ever afterward!

AFRAEL.
How couldst think that, when still my wings kept warm
The sense of that brief tenancy, and yearned
To close once more on their delicious perch?
O that I were a nightingale, that I
Might hide within the scented coppice nigh
The curtain of the chamber where thou keep'st,
And with my song accompany thy dreams!
Might be that summer visitant that hangs
Its cradle under hospitable eaves,
And so abide 'neath the same roof as thou!
Be that, be anything but what I am,
Since what I am keeps me so far from thee!

NOEMA.
Why then didst bridle thy return so long,
And with delay torture expectancy?

AFRAEL.
Now must I slip my secret from its leash.
When in the dwindling twilight of that eve
Consumed in happy intercourse, I sailed
Back to my native ether, I conceived
A pang at parting never felt before,
Parting from whence I might; for novelty
Hath ever been, and is, the Spirit's joy.
But from the hour when I my pinions fledged
To quit thee, novelty had lost its charm.
There was no sun in heaven, no room in space,
No freshness in infinity, nought new
In all the illimitable realms of air.
Then had I swept to thee direct, when lo!
A strange surmise arrested my descent.
What if it were the quality of Earth
To tame the pulse of Spirits, and compel
Him who hath once its narrow bounds essayed,
Still to return, and if it was not thou,
But the mere planet's self, which had subdued
The once discursive temper of my flight?
Swift through the intervening air I shot,
And on the Earth alighted, but not here.
Mountains magnificent, and inland seas
Blue as thine orbs and deep, smooth as thy brow,
Forests of trunks stupendous, sweeping heaven
With dark audacious tops, snow-fed cascades
Taking anon the whiteness of their birth,
Then flashing into silver; oceans vast
With endless manes uplifted, foam-lashed strands,
Sweet-watered valleys, cool, and ever green,
Darkling ravines o'er-pent by crags that faced
And frowned against each other; waving meads
By asphodel and amaranth o'errun,
Stirred into music by the soughing breeze;
Lands of wide ribless snow and strident winds,
And howled at by the hungry hurricanes;
Realms of rank heat, and then of scorching cold,
And middle zones of genial compromise
Betwixt these fierce extremes;—o'er these, o'er all,
O'er many more I sailed with curious wing,
Skimming the uneven globe, its heights, its depths,
And all myself to it surrendering,
That it might make me subject, had it power.
Then to the heaven of heavens I backward soared,—
Seven times the sun having withdrawn his light,
The while I journeyed o'er the earth,—and there
Myself replenished with celestial food.

NOEMA.
But in thy travel didst encounter none
Like unto us? no man, no woman,—

AFRAEL.
None,
Though life abounded. In the deep-troughed waves,
Grim monsters rolled and belched. By river-banks
Mountainous creatures basked, their bulging backs
Cracked by the sun. In jungles choked with growth
And knotted stems, prowled gloomy-visaged beasts,
Savage though beautiful, and, as I passed,
Snapped at my wings; others, as meek as fair,
But coy as cloudlets 'fore a noonday sun,
Halted and glanced, then twinkling, disappeared
In leafy coverts; many-plumaged birds,
Dove-like and gentle, piping to themselves,
Amidst a world of sportive butterflies.
But nowhere found I trace of aught like thee,
Or those thou callest thine, though all seemed fit
To be their dwelling: only mute expanse
Of hills, and woods, and wastes, and grievous seas
Moaning around unpeopled continents!

NOEMA.
O would that Aran had been here, to hark
Thy wondrous tale, and therefrom learn what home,
What Heaven, we have to master, and desist
From vain aggression 'gainst the foreign sky!
Say, didst thou mark the egregious edifice
Which yonder looms upon the horizon big,
And with still growingly aggressive gaze
Threatens the placid firmament?

AFRAEL.
I did,
And should this very morn have paused and scanned
Its bulk, which hourly more stupendous grows,
Whilst tree, and plain, and mountain keep the same,
But that my pinions swift refused to swerve
In direct flight towards thee. What may it be?

NOEMA.
An engine of presumption reared by man
To wreck his God; a ladder by whose rungs
Would climbing mortals the Immortal reach,
And hurl Him to its base; Tower from whose top
Earth is to spring and find itself in Heaven!

AFRAEL.
That were a splendid and a central aim,
Could it but hit its mark! But 'twill fly wide;
There's so much room to miss. But why this rage?
Why doth not Earth content Earth's denizens,
Or eyes that see, grudge the Invisible
Its shroud of darkness?

NOEMA.
Ah! because 'tis Earth,
And what we see, and see not, are confused
In a perpetual twilight! Dost not know
The melancholy story of our race?

AFRAEL.
No; but would learn, if thou wilt tell it me.

NOEMA.
There was a Garden planted with delights,
And nightly fed by never-failing dews,
Which rains nor visited, nor drouth, and where
All the concordant seasons reigned at once.
Spring never shed her blossoms, and the fruit
Of Autumn hung eternal on the bough;
Whilst Winter tempered with its sprightly breath
Summer's too luscious languor. 'Twas a world
Whose atmosphere was fragrance and the sound
Of waters falling from replenished founts,
Eden so-called, a paradise untilled.
And in its midst, its sovran lords, there roamed
A man and woman, parent of us all,
Though not like us degenerate, but he
Comely as thou, she far more fair than I.

AFRAEL.
O would that thou and I had been that pair,
And were it still!

NOEMA.
Nay, hearken ere thou speak,
Nor be the sport of that temerity
Which rushes onward to a goal unseen,
From a fair starting-point! Happy they were,
As thou too fondly deem'st we too should be,
So circumstanced: not happy to the end.
For in the Garden one strange Tree there bloomed,
One only, of the which they might not eat,—
For God forbade,—the Tree whose fruit conferred
Knowledge of Good and Evil. But they ate.
Straightway the veil of innocence was rent,
And in each other's rankling minds they saw
The base-born brood of Self; greedy desire,
Grudges, and petulance, and secret aims,
Anger, remorse, reciprocal reproach,
And they who hitherto had been but one,
Were two henceforth!

AFRAEL.
Was there no remedy?

NOEMA.
'Tis said there was. There stood another tree,
The tree of Life, of which had they but plucked,—
Such is the tale obscure tradition tells,—
They might have lived for ever, and so balked
The doom which fell upon them, doom of death.
But ere that dismal fault could be repaired,
God drove them from the Garden, and its gates
Guarding with sword of flaming cherubim,
Propelled them to the wilderness, where toil
Is each one's heritage, and tares, and thorns,
Emblems of direr griefs, mix with the corn
Raised by the sweat and furrows of the brow.

AFRAEL.
But is toil pain? What is't but energy,
The same delicious hurricane of will
That sends me scudding in and out the stars,
Bore me around thy deep-indented globe,
And brings me to thy feet? Such toil is rapture!

NOEMA.
Yes, for such toil hath pleasure for its end,
Not profit, and involves none other's pain;
Whereas all mortal energy may fail,
And in succeeding must some mortal hurt.
Toil like to ours means jarring interests,
And is as though in the unfrontiered air
The wingëd tenants of thy star should clash,
Because their rival pinions strove to beat
The self-same pathway.

AFRAEL.
That we never do.
For Spirits, when they meet, oft lightning make,
But never, thunder.

NOEMA.
So! That tells me why
On summer nights I see the flashes play
About the horizon, though the skies be clear,
And all the stars lustrous and imminent.
Would it were so with us! But we, alas!
Circling in narrow rounds, for ever cross
Each other's track, then push for mastery.
For man hath still a double war to wage,
War against Nature, and thence war with man.
One brings the body ache and age, and one,
Bequeathes the heart disgust, despondency,
And hatred of that Self for which, despite
That very hate, we still are forced to strive.

AFRAEL.
'Tis a strange tale, this that thou tell'st to me.
Yet doth it sound like truth, if I surmise
Rightly its import. What might be the fruit,
The seed of so much bane, or wherefore He,
Who put it in their way, forbade its use,
Outsoars conjecture; for to us no less,
Beyond is still the portal of Beyond,
And Cause is lost in links of Consequence.
This much, withal, seems plain: thy ancestors,
Touching a tree forbidden them, exchanged
Forthwith a prosperous will for needy want,
And in the place of careless appetites
Which found immediate banquet, there arose
Necessity for labour, forethought, greed,
And fears anent the Future. Thence I see
How Self was first begotten,—dismal Self,
Which pines within the dungeon that it builds,
Deeming therein is sole security.
But is there no escape from Self, no rift
In the chill cloud Self's self doth generate,
Through which Unself shines visible beyond?

NOEMA.
O yes, there is! though it be transitory.
Amid this bare flat desert of our lives,
Through whose deep sands with staggering feet we plod,
Its heat, its drouth, its length, its weariness,
With still the same horizon, lo! sometimes
A green oasis shimmers. Oft it proves
Only a mirage, and the saddened heart,
Whose credulous pulse had quickened at the cheat,
Back to its old monotony subsides,
And beats the minutes idly. Oh! but when
It is no mirage, no distressful lie,
But an umbrageous moist reality,
Cool leaves and freshly bubbling spring, then, then,
The desert is forgotten, life and death,
And all the loathsome loads betwixt the twain
We bear, poor wretched sumpters! Then we halt,
Unpack each other's fardels, bending see
Each other's face reflected in the wave,
Drink from the self-same fount, and make our couch
Under the self-same starlit canopy!

AFRAEL.
And what is this oasis?

NOEMA.
It is Love.

AFRAEL.
And what is Love?

NOEMA.
Oh! Love is what it is!
Like nothing else in all the universe,
So is there nought it can be likened to.
To those who know it, patent, but to those
Who ne'er have known it, indescribable.
Go tell me what the tree feels, when in spring
The sweet insidious sap begins to stir
About its roots, flushes its stagnant rind,
And through the gnarled and gouty trunk transmits
The genial shock, till every limb and branch
Thrills to the spray-tips: what the mountain stream,
When glittering April uncongeals its bed,
And sends it dancing downwards to the vale,
Singing the songs of wayward liberty:
Or what the Night must feel, when the deep dark,
Which is but secret seeing, veils the Earth,
And the bared breast of hushed Heaven throbs with stars!
Tell me all these, and I will tell thee then
What the distinctions and delights of Love.
'Tis a fifth season, a sixth sense, a light,
A warmth beyond the cunning of the sun;
Another element; fire, water, air,
Nor burn, nor quench, nor feed it, for it lives
Steeped in its self-provided atmosphere!

AFRAEL.
Thou mak'st me feel like liberated stream,
Like the warmed trunk, like to the trancëd night,
Whilst I stay listening to thine eloquence;
And all the spheres of all the firmament
Seem to lack something now! Still, how doth Love
Baffle that self, which clearly I discern
Is Earth's essential bane?

NOEMA.
O, because 'tis
A transcendental egotism, Love,—
Which deifies a dearer self, and makes
The heart a shrine, pure for the sake of it;
Upon whose altar Self by self is slain,
And adoration crowned by sacrifice.
Love dwelleth in the tents of the beloved,
Though countless leagues of pasture intervene.
Its thoughts, its wants, are otherwhere; time, space,
And all conventions are its enemies.
It sickens for one only voice; the note
Of viol, flute, and hollowed instrument,
Untuned by that, remain unmusical.
One hand alone hath the electric touch,
And by the lightnings of no other eye
Is the world's darkness sundered! Such is Love;
And they whose stagnant spirits have been stirred
Once by its subterranean current, know
That Love is all, and all beside is nought,
Emptiness, and the ticking of the brain!

AFRAEL.
Why, then, I love thee! For that spreading dome
Of boundless blue, which round the universe
Nor endeth nor beginneth, and whose orbs
Are countless as its uncontainëd leagues,
Within whose inexhaustible expanse,
Which knoweth no Without, my pinions range
As unconditioned as itself, and find
Endless pursuit, endless variety,—
Since in that tender twilight I alit
Upon this new-found sphere, and felt my wings
Ruffled with unknown rapture,—hath but seemed
Infinite void, infinite weariness,
And purposeless distraction! Here alone,
Here in the palm-trees' shade, this spot of Earth,
To which by mortal chances thou art fixed,
Do I now find fulness and amplitude.
There is no pleasant pathway through the stars,
Save towards this bourne it bends; no journeying,
Which doth not tire before it doth begin,
Unless it doth propose thee for its end.
Thou fill'st for me the spacious universe,
And art its centre, and circumference too!
Say, is this love?

NOEMA.
'Tis strangely like to it!
Nor, wert thou mortal, could I doubt but thou
Hadst by its air-borne seed been fertilised.
But mortal love, though mortals' benison,
Would to immortals surely be but bane;
Since that which adds to poor humanity,
Would but subtract from thee. Nay, think of it!
Love, that can lift us half-way to the spheres,
Must, if thou couldst subserve its influence,
Lure thee half-way below them. Thou art a Spirit;
And Love, for all its potent witchery,
Inextricably tangled in the flesh,
Could not strike root in thee. O, man is gross,
And even his finest motions sensibly
From the affections of the body start,
Or feebly flag towards it as their goal!
Earth being but earth, Love, heaven in part, can bring
Terrestrial darkness some celestial light.
But if the wholly heavenly should essay
To feed on earthy blackness, why, it would
By the foul fog swift be extinguishëd!

AFRAEL.
There is a mystery here, sweet mortal voice!
Which, as it seems to my intelligence,
Thou dost not rightly rede. If there be points
Where Heaven and Earth may meet, and that point Love,
Why cannot Love therefrom a circle spread
That may contain them both? And thou didst say
That Love is but a transitory gleam.
Yet surely when two mortals have entrapped
That welcome sunshine in their dungeoned lives,
They do not let it go, but love till death
Nor perishes nor pales?

NOEMA.
Alack! it does.
That is the deepest tragedy of all,
When Love immortal dies! When two fair beings,
Who were the morning in each other's eyes,
Fade into irrecoverable night,
And hear each other through the darkness call,
But never find each other's faces more!

AFRAEL.
And doth it end like that? How pitiful!
Life sure must mark an antedated death,
At such a fell conclusion. But I glean
Flesh is the edge of that catastrophe,
And rash Love topples over! I were safe
'Gainst such a precipice, for Spirit walks
Along the crest of all things, undismayed,
Nor ever dizzied by sheer eminence.
My love for thee,—for let me call it love,
If only that the word sounds strangely sweet,—
Would be as long-enduring as myself,
Who cannot end.

NOEMA.
Would it indeed be so?
For to be loved by Spirit, and for ever,—
Oh! what could woman dream of more than that?
And 'twere from sensuous homage so estranged,
One could not grudge the other, nor the high
Upon the distant low wreak any slight.

AFRAEL.
Then let me love!

NOEMA.
How can I hinder thee,
An thou dost love? Love asks not leave to blow,
More than the wind which rises in the night,
And comes we know not whence, nor will abate,
Though chance it ruffle our serenity
More than we would. Love is as free as light,
And will shine still, though we put shutters up
To bar it out. There's no extinguishing
Love's sturdy flame by puff of human breath,
Blow we or hot or cold. Neglect, disdain,
Anger, chicane, misuse, indifference,
Weary not out Love's longanimity;
And all the wiles of doubling waywardness
Foil not Love's keen pursuit! Who shall say nay
When Love says yes, or contradiction give
To its importunate affirmative?
Itself unto itself is sovran stay,
Nor needs it smiling countenance to find,
In its own heart, hope and encouragement.

AFRAEL.
Then 'neath my wings will I enfold my love,
And bear it with me to the firmament,
And through the envious constellations sail
With my new treasure for companion!
But wilt not thou thyself, source of this love,
Lend thy divine attractions to my flight,
And let me cleave for thee with feathery plumes
The all too dense and opaque envelope
That wraps thy earthly habitation round,
And buoy thee up through heavenly distances,
Whose distance ne'er will lessen, since its goal,
A canopy of ether that is hung
Over our heads, will with our soaring soar?
Oh! say me yes, and come with me this night,
When to thy seeming all the stars will wake,
Though sleep ne'er comes to their unwearied orbs!

NOEMA.
Dost mean that I should quit the kindred ground,
And with thee journey through the alien air?
I, all of flesh compounded, should be borne
Upon the supersensuous elements,
And this my carnal weight be lifted up
Along with thee, lightsome and volatile?

AFRAEL.
Yes, that is what I ask thee.

NOEMA.
Then, indeed,
Thou dost me love! for love alone could shape
A dream so airy and fantastical.
We are gross clay, I tell thee,—loaded, clogged,
For ever striving to sink lower yet
If lowest Earth would let us; and thy wings,
Which are but shadows to thy will, and sweep,
Straight at its bidding, each imagined curve,
Would fail to wrench this body cumbersome
One foot from off its cradle and its grave.

AFRAEL.
Wilt let me once my Spirit's force essay
On thy fair matter, when the winds are still,
And the down-hanging curtains of the night
Are diapered with stars? this night, this night,
The one that's nearest!

NOEMA.
Thou hast a Spirit's choice,
And drawest a prize where all the rest were blank.
A woman's nights are mostly servitude,
But this one lifts the yoke. There will be held
A mid-nocturnal parley at the Tower,
And I shall watch alone, whilst Irad floats
With dreamy sails o'er sleep's soft-heaving sea.
Come, then, to-night!

AFRAEL.
Yes, I to-night will come.
But may meanwhile the love, which here I lay
Soft on thy breast, like water-lily sink
Into the depths that give it sustenance!
[Afrael ascends into the air, singing.

NOEMA
(sol.)
What a surpassing gift of song thou hast!
And when thou scal'st such heights of harmony,
I cannot choose but love thee! Love thee? No!
But let myself be loved. That's different,
And may not be escaped. Who blames the shore,
Because the sea woos it perpetually,
Or chides the modest stationary flowers,
Because the vagrant self-indulgent bees
Steal luscious mead from their defenceless lips?
And even to love a Spirit were no more,
Surely, than just to love the atmosphere,
The glitter of the morning, or the strain
Of joyous bird deep-hidden in a brake;
While to be loved by Spirit, were to have
A suitor less familiar than the wind,
Who kisses brow and cheek, and asks no leave.
Still, Love, for all our reasoning, retains
Such arguments to swift confound our words,
That they who know him best, know likewise this,
To name him is to tremble. . . . Oh! I trust,
He will not come to-night!