University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

NOEMA.
Oh, how intensely beautiful! The earth
Hath lost its look of gross reality,
And, like the air, waxeth impalpable.
The foliaged trees seem shapes of atmosphere,
And the tall trunks themselves mere bars of light.
The hill-tops and the firmament have blent
In the dread hush of close communion.
There is no sound, save the Euphrates flowing,
Which throws the silence into deeper shade.
O'erhead, the sky wears such transparency,
It seems a wonder that I see not through;
Save that I chance were blinded if I saw
What lies the other side. . . . How beautiful!
It is the hour when, in my inmost being,
I feel a something alien to myself,
Which sets me 'gainst myself rebellious:
A consciousness of kindred unallowed
With the deep gloaming, with the distant sky,
And advent of the silent-speaking stars:
A leaven of unrest, a dumb desire,
A wistfulness of longing that I might
Slough off this torpid chrysalis of flesh,
And nothing be but wings and gossamer
Blown through the empty spaces of the air!
O words! poor words! how behind thought ye lag!
Like crippled forms that, still importunate,
With hurrying gait and plaintive breath pursue,
But cannot catch us up! . . . In such a strait,
Silence and sighs alone are eloquent. [She sits silent and rapt in contemplation. At length she speaks again.

How strangely bright gloweth the star of eve!
Surely it never burned so bright since first
God's summons called it from the starless void.
How near it seems! and every moment nearer!
Yet no! 'tis not the star, but from its breast
A fiery scintillation broken off,
Which darts adown the unresisting air,
It cleaves and leaves behind. Withal, 'tis not
A shooting star; for, lo! it is not quenched,
Nor swallowed up, but still, as it descends,
Grows larger, larger, yet less luminous.
No, 'tis no star; it wears half mortal mien.
It is a wingëd Spirit that doth come,
Commissioned with celestial messages,
Or a belated denizen of air
Strayed far beyond the heavenly boundaries.
How motionless it poises, as in doubt
If to touch earth or sail away again.
Lo! it descends, and on the shell alights
Of this gross sphere. How like, yet how unlike,
One in whose garb youth and first manhood meet,
When beauty shares with strength dominion,
And knowledge gains the ear of innocence!
Yet ne'er was mortal brow like that, which wears
No touch of sadness and no trace of toil;
And though his limbs have form, I can no more
Betwixt them and the air discriminate,
Than in this hour betwixt the day and night.
He doth not yet perceive me, though his feet,
Silent, and slow, and musically move
More closely towards me. . . . Yes, it is a Spirit;
For he is naked, yet he knows no shame,
And I no fear. I wonder will he speak to me?
It may be I am too corporeal
For spiritual sight.

[The Spirit perceives Noema and advances towards her.
AFRAEL.
What star is this?

NOEMA.
This is no star, O dread refulgent Spirit!
This is the Earth thou seëst.

AFRAEL.
This, the Earth!
Then in the thought of Spirits how 'tis wronged!
I fancied it was foul, misshapen, rude,
And of a temper most ungenial;
Worse and most worthless of the worlds, and left
To be the butt of spiteful elements.
But it is fair as any single orb
I yet have scanned in my discursive flights
Among the planetary spheres that roll
Glibly upon the unsubstantial air.

NOEMA.
Yes, it is fair sometimes, and did this eve
Assume a bright complexion, even as though
Expecting a superior visitant.
I would my lord were nigh to bid you cheer.
To such a lofty guest even men would plead
Their imperfection; but a woman's state
Too lowly is to welcome thee, or crave
Excuse for such a greeting.

AFRAEL.
Thou art meek,
Yet doest the Earth's honours graciously;
Nor could I wish for any to amend
Thy salutation. But wherein do men,
Of whom thou speakest, differ from such as thou?

NOEMA.
They are our larger, stronger selves, to whom
We reverence owe and dumb obedience;
The delegates of God, who formed us both,
But did depute the former to control
The vain unstable motions of the weak;
And our volitions with their will they curb,
As Heaven curbs Earth.

AFRAEL.
Men must be godlike, then?

NOEMA.
'Tis said they are. I scarce have found them so.
But they are stout of limb and stern of heart,
Intrepid, stalwart, nigh invincible,
Cope with all odds, laugh in the tempest's face,
And beard obstruction, whilst we crouch at home,
Dropping our feeble tears upon the ground.
They work for us, and we belong to them,
As scents and blossoms to the strenuous breeze,
Which wafts them where it wills, nor reason gives
Save power to do it.

AFRAEL.
I would I were a man!

NOEMA.
What! Thou!—a Spirit!—be a man, and pay
The forfeit of thine immortality!
Oh! what a miser's bargain wouldst thou make,
Didst thou secrete the treasure of thy life,
Which now returns thee endless happiness,
In the dark cavern of a human heart,
To have it purloined by the greed of death!
We do not live for ever as thou dost.

AFRAEL.
Not live for ever! What, then, do ye do?

NOEMA.
We die, women and men.

AFRAEL.
What is to die?

NOEMA.
It is to bid adieu to joy and pain,
And never meet them more: to sleep with Night,
Nor to awake from her cold-clutching arms;
Never to see the sun again, nor greet
The rising moon with rapture, and the stars
With eyes o'erbrimming with delicious tears:
For the quick-flowing senses to become
A stagnant pool, fetid and nauseous,
Whence is no issue, and the very hands
Which stream of their own being called it once,
Fill up with earth, lest it should poison them,
And bring them level with itself. That's death!

AFRAEL.
But thou, thou wilt not die!

NOEMA.
O yes, I shall.
And every generation yet unborn
Will at its birth be dedicate to death,
And seal a compact with oblivion.

AFRAEL.
What will become, then, of those cheeks that seem
To wear an immortality of bloom,
Those golden tresses steeped in glorious noon,
And eyes for which I travel vainly back
Through the scoured Spheres to find comparison:
That brow seraphic, those cherubic lips,
That gently-penetrating voice which sounds
Like the last ripple of the nightingale
Just ere the silence groweth smooth again?

NOEMA.
The worms will have my cheeks, the dust my lips,
And in the socket of mine eyes the snail
Itself ensconce, and, though curled snugly there,
Deem it a sorry penthouse. For my voice,
'Twill, like the nightingale's, break off, but ne'er,
Like to the nightingale's, its note resume,
But perish on the unsympathising air.

AFRAEL.
Then all thy sort will in the end die out,
And this fair Earth be left untenanted.

NOEMA.
Not so. Our race doth still renew itself
By means unknown to Spirits. Man's delight
Is to embrace these carnal substances,
Thou dost too much extol; whilst woman's is
The passionate joy of pain which ends in joy
From which all pain hath passed: to bear him sons,
Who shall repeat the vigour of their sire,
And daughters who shall wax to comeliness
And warm with pride his chill declining years,
Then when their mother comely is no more.
And this is compensation e'en for death,—
To feel the little lips tight on your breast,
To have the little arms around your throat,
And hear the little voice lisping your name
In efforts made by love articulate.
This is pure bliss!

AFRAEL.
And thou hast known it?

NOEMA.
Yes.

AFRAEL.
Hast sons and daughters then?

NOEMA.
I have a son,
Just one: a little fellow, fast asleep,
Whom I had kissed and lullabied to rest,
Just ere thou camest. Shall I show him thee?

AFRAEL.
So, an thou wilt. He must be fair as Heaven,
If he resembles thee.

[Noema goes into the tent and brings out Irad, in her arms, asleep.
NOEMA.
This is my boy.
Is he not beautiful?

AFRAEL
(with a look of disappointment).
A pretty thing.
But he hath swarthy cheeks and jet-black curls,
And is not like to thee in aught.

NOEMA.
It is
His sire that mostly lives in him.

AFRAEL.
But why
Are his lids closed, and he so motionless?
This is not death?

NOEMA.
My darling dead! Forefend
That such a stroke befall! that I should lose
My dearest sweet and sole companion,
Who is to me what dew is to the flowers,
Themselves distil, and are fed back by it.
This is the daily mimicry of death,
Without its closing action. This is sleep,
Wherein our senses grow centripetal,
And gather round the kernel of the heart,
Which on the morrow gives them back again,
Dispensing life, motion, and energy.
I wish that you could see him at his play.

[She carries Irad back into the tent and returns without him.
AFRAEL.
May I ask more? Spirits are curious:
To feel and know is all our appetite.
And I would learn if men and women have
The power to fashion creatures like themselves,
And multiply their image, as they will.

NOEMA.
They have that power.

AFRAEL.
Why then indeed ye are
Liker to God than any I have heard of.

NOEMA.
Oh, say not so, for that sounds blasphemy.
We have the dark dread power to conjure life,
But not to keep alive; and mortal fates
Are no more godlike than the leaves that fall,
When fresh leaves come from the same origin.

AFRAEL.
There's something stranger here than thou conceiv'st,
Though I no more unriddle it than thou.
But if the dimpled cherub whom I saw
With folded wings but now within thine arms,
Be born of thee, why art not like the leaves
Whom new leaves threaten,—sapless, shrunk, and sere?
Thou hast a something Spirits do not have,
Who know nor fruit nor blight and ever keep
The blossom of existence, first they wear;
But, though unlike to these, and as to me
It seems, superior far, thou still art young,
And own'st the dewy radiance of the morn.

NOEMA.
I am nor young nor old, mortals would say:
A mother mid-way betwixt youth and age,
Like to the moon, when yet but half eclipsed.

AFRAEL.
It needs must be they see with mortal eyes,
For, to my seeing, youth and age have met,
By some divine attraction, in thy cheeks,
And made a rare complexion. All excess,
As all defect, is banished from thy brow,
And thou art perfect in thy motherhood.
Oh, I could stay and praise thee through the night,
If skies were not importunate, nor I
Must needs,—as loath I never felt before,—
Take all unwillingly my heavenward way.

NOEMA.
Hast thou a lodge in Heaven, and yet canst want
To be a tenant for one instant here,
Where there breathes nought but want unsatisfied,
And bliss that bursts like bubbles in the blowing?
Can that strange malady of mortal blood,
Which still unweds us from ourselves, and woos
That which with self will ne'er amalgamate,
Infect the veins of Spirits? Thy abode
Is in the Heaven of Heavens. What's Earth to thee?

AFRAEL.
The only Heaven that I yet have seen!
Thou misconceiv'st. I am not of the blest,
If such there be,—and if there be, no more
Envy I them,—who see the face of God.
The stars which are fast tingling into sight,
And myriads which thou canst not scan, are all
The native spot of Spirits, and I dwell
In one of these, whither I now return.
But on! if there be kindliness on Earth,
It must within thy bosom have found space;
And art thou kindly, thou wilt bid my feet
Again be lost where thou mayst still be found.
Say, will my wings be welcome?

NOEMA.
Nought so much.
But see! on yon horizon I behold
My lord approaching. Wilt not wait for him?

AFRAEL.
No, not this eve.

NOEMA.
Forgive me if I err,
Through human appetite; and Spirits perchance
Live not as we. But I have fruit, and wine,
Bread, and fresh herbs, if thou wilt eat of them.

AFRAEL.
What doth sustain such loveliness as thine,
Could for no Spirit be unmeet. Withal
We live upon the Universe we see,
And drink its all-sufficing elements.
The glory of the heavens when they open,
Slowly before the up-coming of the sun,
Thy warmth of mid-day skies, the moist decline
Of drooping day, the nightly silences,
And music of the many-cadenced rain,
Colour, and light, and shapes fantastical,
Of plain, and hill, and cloudy pinnacle,
And ever-shifting subtleties of air,
All that we see and feel of fair and far,
Is to us sustenance, as I this eve
Have on thy beauty made a rare repast;
Which other Spirits will nourish, when to-night
We sit amid the watchfires of the skies,
And tell each other tales of all the worlds.
And I shall tell of thy supremacy.
Farewell! thou unmatched mortal!

[He raises and waves his wings over Noema, and soars into the air singing.
NOEMA.
How sweetly doth he sing, still as he soars,
As though his wings were buoyed by melody,
And music were the wind that wafts him on!
Likely he singeth yet, though now, alas!
The heavenly distance to my clouded sense
Denies the strain, and I can but descry,
Dimly, the outline of celestial limbs,
Cleaving the twilight on the sails of song.
Alack! he dwindles, glimmering, into space,
And lo! goes out; and now, for all I cling
With straining eyes into that point of air
Where last he glowed, then vanished, I behold
Only the skyey vista tenantless.
O that I knew in what bright star he dwells,
That I might gaze towards him with straight eyes,
And watch at least the road whereby he went!
I never thought to ask him; for my lips,
As he discoursed, deferring to my ears,
Which drunk his honeyed questioning, forgot
To ply their curious office. So I gaze
Into the darkness, and surmise him not,
Nor whitherward he turned his final way.
Yet he hath left a something in the air,
A something all around me that was not
Here ere his coming, and which lingers still
Behind his blank departure: something soft,
And warm, and near, as unseen odours are,
When flowers that breathed them have been ta'en away.
I felt it when he o'er me waved his wings,
Just ere his lightsome feet forsook the Earth,
And, rising, took their native element:
I feel it still!

[Aran approaches. Noema rises, and advances dutifully towards him.