Chronicles and Characters By Robert Lytton (Owen Meredith): In Two Volumes |
 | I. |
| II. |
 | III. | BOOK III.
ROMANCES. |
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| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
| VIII. |
| IX. |
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 | Chronicles and Characters |  |
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BOOK III. ROMANCES.
“Quid salvum est si Roma perit?”—
Hieronymus, Ep. 91.
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LICINIUS.
I. PART I. THE TIME.
I.
It was the fall and evening of a timeIn whose large daylight, ere it sank, sublime
And strong, as bulks of brazen gods, that stand,
Bare-bodied, with helm'd head and armèd hand,
All massive monumental thoughts of hers
Rome's mind had mark'd in stately characters
Against the world's horizon. These, at last,
Fading, as darkness deepen'd thro' her vast
Dominion, Rome became mere space, spread forth,
Confused and shapeless, east, west, south, and north;
And, the whole homeless earth thus made her home,
Rome now might nowhere rid herself of Rome.
The heavens were all distemper'd with the breath
Of her old age. She, very nigh to death,
Paced thro' her perishing world in search of air
Unpoison'd by herself; but everywhere,
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The blood of his slain foe clung fast as flame,
Withering the mighty limbs he could not free
From their disastrous trophy, so did she,
Choked by her own ensanguined purple, pant.
II.
Rome, in all places earth's inhabitant,In no place earth's possessor any more,
Was thus by Rome pursued from shore to shore.
And, in that vast and sombre universe
Which was her dying chamber, 'twas Rome's curse
To see the shadows change to substances,
The substances to shadows: and all these
Mock'd her dim eye with their delirious train.
For now, from Power decay'd, in the dull wane
And woeful wasting out of her spent day,
Sick vapours rose that, rolling vague and grey,
Unshaped the face of everything that was.
III.
That severe Senate, once by CyneasTo gods in synod liken'd, was become
Mere kennel for the curs that cramm'd in Rome
(Rome,—robb'd in turn by Goth, Hun, Vandal, Gaul,
And, having all devour'd, devour'd by all!)
Earth's offal,—the filch'd filth of every land:
Mongrels, they lick'd each new-made master's hand,
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The purple gluttons of the globe,—no more
They, whose tremendous sires were fain to tug
For savage nurture at the she wolf's dug,
With Mavors march'd, beneath the Bird of Jove,
To scale the shaken walls o' the world. Craft throve,
As courage fail'd. Nor, now, the People rose,
And clamour'd, but the Courtier, plotting close,
Bided his time, and stabb'd. Thus tyrants, dying,
Made room for tyrants: tyranny thus vying
With tyranny: to suit which, slavery
With slavery, and fear with fear, did vie;
While Roman swords, for daggers used, were red
With murder, not with conquest. At the head
Of Rome's worst rabble (ill revering it!)
A new Religion's weird labarum, writ
On Rome's red ensigns by a Faith unknown
To Rome's rude sires, from Tiber, now, to Rhone,
Replaced her Senate's and her People's name:
Claiming whose sanction, in contempt of shame,
Blood-smear'd Brutality with grim Disgrace
Coupled, like dogs, upon the public place.
Slander, the stylus, Treason plied the knife:
And, preaching peace, Religion practised strife.
IV.
Old things had ceased, nor new things yet begun,To justify their place beneath the sun.
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To wreck the Present, for whose faith they fought:
And, in the barbarous bosom of the new,
Grimly the worn-out old world's vices grew.
Some pure Patrician, in whose veins yet ran
The scornful blood of sires Etrurian,
Saw, newly shrined, as, frowning, past he trod,
The Mother of the Galilean God,
And cursed her: some hook-nosed Antiochene,
Whose great-grandfather Paul's first prize had been
Among the Rabbins, on the other side
Passing, beheld stark naked, wanton eyed,
Stout-bodied Venus in her ancient place,
And spat, devoutly brutal, in her face:
Some half-bred Cæsar, waiting for his chance,
Bow'd to both goddesses, and, with a glance
Behind him, pass'd, suspicious, on his way.
V.
Rome, in the main, for her part, like some greyBedridden beldam, petulant and weak,
That from her own stout firstborn's sunburnt cheek,
And brawny arm, turns, captious, to caress
The sprawling grandchild on her knees, and bless
With mumbling lip the unswaddled infancy
Whose manhood will not dawn before she die,
Less loved whatever rested of her prime
Than the loud childhood of the later time:
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Fondled and scolded, and both ways made worse,
Babbling, clench'd baby clutches to destroy
Both sun and moon. An empire was its toy.
Donatus, with fierce fingers dipp'd in gall,
Dragg'd down Cicilien thro' the councils all:
From sultry churches Carthagenian
To convents cold in Arles the echoes ran
Of curses, all pure Christian, in bad Greek:
Cicilien damn'd Donatus. Shriek for shriek,
And stab for stab, with gladiatorial gust,
And, clamorous, scattering cumbrous clouds of dust,
The well-match'd theologic athletes strove,
While Cæsar, smiling, eyed them from above.
Meanwhile, amid the hubbub, unalarm'd,
That “Christian Cicero,” Lactantius, charm'd
Young Crispus; and in smoothest Latin praised
Those Christian virtues on whose work he gazed;
Discomfited the Polytheist sore,
And smote the fall'n Olympians by the score;
Slaughtering, with finely-pointed periods
Of borrow'd Ciceronian, Cicero's gods.
VI.
Then, when Licinius, Rome's last Roman, sawThe gods, his sires had worshipt with grave awe,
By slave, and savage, pimp, buffoon, and priest
Scorn'd and insulted, “Unavenged, at least,
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And, breaking bound from wilds Pannonian,
He, with a remnant rallied to the name
Of Jove the Avenger, cross'd the world, and came,
Camping on Hebrus, to confront the Sign
Of that new Creed proclaimed by Constantine.
II. PART II. THE MAN.
I.
Evening. At morn the battle. Met at last,Stood, face to face, the Future and the Past.
Under the wild and sullen hills of Thrace,
Ominous, wrathful, ruin in his face,
On the last day of his own deity
The sun sunk. Mystic lights, from sky to sky,
Shot meteoric thro' the startled stars,
O'er regions named from him that, born of Mars,
First reign'd among those snowy mountain tops,
What time grey Saturn by the sons of Ops
Was, in his turn—as, by himself, had been
Coelus, his sire—dethroned. For Power, not e'en
In Heaven, one hand holds ever. There, while o'er
Rome's antique ensigns, Jove's own Bird once more
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The robed Haruspices, with silent care,
Prepared the victim, and asperged the shrine
Mysteriously with sprinkled meal and wine
And frankincense, till all together gleam'd
The altars of the Twelve Great Gods, and stream'd
With fragrant fumes. A shout of pride: a sound
Of shields in closing circle clasht all round
The central camp: where martial cymbals clang'd
Applause, as old Licinius thus harangued
The legions loyal to the gods he loved:
II.
“Romans, whose pride is by your name approved,The immortal gods, that to your fathers gave
The empire they now call their sons to save,
From yonder altars on those sons look down,
And all Olympus deems our cause its own.
With us the gods to battle go: with us
Whatever rests of Rome yet virtuous,
Yet Roman: all of manhood left on earth,
Of godhood left in Heaven. From every hearth
Where Roman sons revere heroic sires
Our hearts have caught hereditary fires.
Each Roman here, to rescue Rome her laws,
Her gods, her memories, her manhood, draws
The sword Rome gave her children. Friends, our foes
Not us alone, but the great gods, oppose.
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To change Rome's laws, and chase her gods away,
Have arm'd Dishonour. Such their cause. Our own
To serve, and save, the old worth, the old renown
Of all that made Rome, Rome. A cause so just
I, with just faith, to the great gods entrust;
Whose cause it is. But if, O friends, in truth,
All we now fight for—all that to our youth
Was sacred, all that to our age is dear,
The greatness of the gods that we revere,
The manful Past that manly minds admire,
The immortal name of Rome's immortal sire,
The urns wherein our fathers' dust is laid,
The shrines they built us, and the laws they made,
Ay, even the banners that they bore in war!
—Were all these things less noble than they are,
Yet, where, in fortune's poorest state, is he,
So poor in spirit, that can endure to see
Foul'd by the rabble on his own hearth floor
The meanest garb that his dead father wore?
Or what man breathes, tho' born of humblest birth,
That hallows not whate'er remains on earth
—Each frailest relic, and each feeblest trace,
His reverent love can rescue from disgrace—
Of her that bore him? Direr monster none,
Since Pyrrha's age, hath prey'd on earth, nor done
More impious deed, than this unfather'd Faith;
Man's memories all unmothering by a breath
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Godless, and doth the barren Future blast
Bare of the bright presiding Powers that blest
Our great forefathers, gone to glorious rest;
They in whose names, with pure libations
Full-pour'd, our mothers blest their unborn sons;
Man's fair familiar Presidencies all,
Whose forms made sacred even a foeman's hall!
These, whom we fight for, are the gods that fought
For great Achilles; are the gods that brought
The wise Ulysses to his island home,
And brought from Troy the patriarch sire of Rome.
Them old Homerus, them Virgilius, sung:
Them heroes worshipt: them we know. This young
New-found half-god, Jew-born and bastard both,
Patron of slaves, and Power of upstart growth,
Where was he when Troy burn'd? Enough! We know
Whose cause is ours—Rome's cause! whose foe—Rome's foe!
Whose gods—Rome's gods! In hands, more mighty far
Than ours, the mighty issues of this war
Hang. If we fall, Romans, with us falls all
Romans have lived for. But we cannot fall,
Rome cannot fall, while yet of Rome there be
A score of Romans left to cry with me,
‘Honour to our dead fathers!’”
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III.
Proud he spake.And from that armèd auditory brake
The multitudinous echo of his mind,
In human-hearted thunder, the night wind
Roll'd hoarse above the battle-heapèd ground.
III. PART III. THE GODS.
I.
But afterward; when, save the steel-shod soundO' the surly sentinel from tent to tent,
The camps were silent, and the night far spent,
Licinius, rising in the restless night,
Mused by the altars of his gods.
II.
Faint lightStream'd from the faded embers, and faint fume.
O'er all his spirit a supernatural gloom
Had fall'n, and that profound discouragement
Which seizes on the soul whose passion, spent
In stormy thought, leaves action half unnerved.
In dead cold skies the dark east, unobserved,
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About the old man's heart. Licinius cast
His body upon the ground, and felt a Fear
Plant its foot on him in the darkness drear,
And pray'd intensely, as men only pray
When Fear is on them. Terror pass'd away.
A mystic wind was moving in his hair:
And hands unearthly touch'd him unaware.
III.
He, gazing up against the scatter'd gleamOf the late stars, what time her dragon team
The night's moon-fronted maiden charioteer
Down o'er the dark world's edge was driving clear,
Saw—bright above the black and massy earth,
From cope to base—beyond the utmost girth
Of their wide-orb'd horizons, the intense
And intricate heavens, with silent vehemence,
Burst supernaturally open; as tho'
A bud should in a moment's time, not grow,
But change itself, into a flower full-blown.
IV.
To his sole sight was such a marvel shown.The fair Olympians, all at once, and all
Together, in the Ambrosial Banquet Hall!
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In complete calm) ineffably composed
To an aweful beauty. Unendurably bare
The bright celestial nakednesses were.
And, far behind those Heavenly Presences,
Heaven's self lay bare to the innermost abyss
Of the unsounded azure. Orb in orb
Of what both seem'd to emit and to absorb,
In the same everlasting moment, light,
Space, silence,—sporting with the infinite!
For, to the universe, the universe
Listening, the while it answer'd, did immerse
The sound within the silentness of things.
Lights—meteors—mystic messengers, with wings,
Wands, trumpets, crowns—silently came and went
In the profound, but lucid, element
Of that unfathomable, far abysm,
Wherein (as, cloven by the crystal prism
It pierces, one pure ray of perfect light
Doth into divers colours disunite
And scatter its uncolour'd unity)
Life—all the vast varieties, that lie
In Life's vast oneness, loosed. Befitting form
Each Spirit shaped itself from calm, or storm,
Snow, fire, rain, thunder, and sea-thrilling wind:
All creatures of the All-creative Mind,
That makes each moment, and each moment mars
Its own imaginings: thoughts, many as stars,
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Some, with congenial chance incarnating
Their restless essence, and so, brightening: some,
As soon as born, dissolved within the dome
Of that deep-lighted distance. Underneath,
The dim world, wrapt in mist of mortal breath,
Low glimmering, sea and land. And all about
The belted orb, close-coiling in and out,
Like a sleek snake with vary-colour'd back,
Glitter'd the constellated zodiac.
But, over savage peaks in lonesome lands,
Plains strown with battle, billowy seas, blown sands
Where round the raggèd bulks of broken ships
The white foam whirl'd,—and over leafy slips
Of sunken lawns, lone isles, and slumbrous lakes,
Where naked nymphs lured fauns from forest brakes,
To roaring cities, girt with gated walls
(Whitening whose mason'd floors at intervals,
'Twixt bridges piled, and dark with passing droves,
Past milk-white temples, past green temple groves,
Tall obelisks, and statues somnolent,
Along the streeted wharves the water went
Barge-laden) slided down the silent sky,
Bearing disaster, bearing victory,
With benedictions these, as those with ills,
The viewless heralds of the Heavenly Wills,
Unmindful of the murmuring of mankind.
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V.
All vague as vapour shapen by the windTo mimic mountain, cape, or continent,
That every moment changes, came and went,
With wondrous modulation manifold,
The vision of that marvellous movement, roll'd
Around the zonèd orb of Circumstance,
Revolving in the marginless expanse
Whereon the serene doors and porches all
Of that sublime god-builded Banquet Hall
Opening, let in and out Eternity.
VI.
There, midmost of his kindred godheads, highIn contemplative glory, and calm as morn
On lone Olympus (where no foot hath worn
Heaven's white snow from the summit of the world)
Sat Father Jove. From whose crown'd temples curl'd
The locks that, shaken, shake the woody tops
Of scornful hills, and o'er the full-ear'd crops
Roll blighting thunders, in storms, white or blue,
Of hail and rain. Broad-brow'd, broad-bearded too,
In meditative mood, with slack right hand
The cypress sceptre of his vast command
He, leaning forward, lightly held. All bare
The god's broad chest and ample shoulders were:
For gods, in company with gods, forego
Disguises meant for men: but all below
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From his large knees the lilied vesture roll'd:
Lest mortal eyes should, even in Heaven, espy
Aught save the robe that wraps the Deity.
VII.
Firm by Jove's foot, watching the heedless playOf the low-flighted world, his purblind prey,
Perch'd on the sheavèd thunders, with keen eye,
The dusky-feather's King of Birds. Hard by,
At the right hand of her great spouse, the Queen
Of scorn, majestic, with man-quelling mien,
And regnant eyes, whose large looks everywhere
Were felt in Heaven, gazed from her blazing chair;
Whereon, to left and right, from either side
Four crested peacocks droop'd their Argus-eyed
Junonian trains. Behind, above her head
The attendant Iris, her handmaiden, spread
Her bright bow, woven from the azure grain
Of the midsummer silver-threaded rain.
That eloquent spirit of the woodland air,
Men call the cuckoo (which, being bodiless there,
Needs not, and builds not, any nest on earth)
Sat on her stately sceptre.
VIII.
Solemn mirth,Like sempiternal summer, fill'd the hall
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At ease reclining by the ambrosial board,
In rosy circle ranged. Save one: Hell's lord,
The black-brow'd Pluto. Thro' Heaven's cloudy gaps,
Where lurk the lightnings, no loud thunder-claps
Companion (they whose sport on sultry nights
Peoples the peak'd horizon with pale lights)
His gloomy kingdoms on the nether deep
Glimmer'd, as dreams do thro' the gates of Sleep:
From earth removed than earth is from the sun
Thrice further: where sulphureous Phlegethon
Vomits his sullen ooze—main sewer of sin,
That, in Hell ended, doth on earth begin.
There, dubious in the light by Hecate brew'd
For ghastly uses, a vast multitude
Of shapes—all shadows of the lives of men—
Continually coming, sought the den
Man's fear digs in his conscience for his crimes:
The outcasts of all ages, from all climes,
Doom'd by all creeds: Religion's ship-wreck'd crew,
Barbarian, Roman, Christian, Greek, and Jew:
Who, in the glare of that disastrous light,
Gazed on each other's faces (dismal sight!)
And knew themselves, at last, for kinsmen drear,
The common offspring of one parent, Fear.
For, tho' man change his gods full many times,
Yet changed gods change not man, nor he his crimes:
Still from the knowledge of himself he breeds
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Or old or new. And, even already, all
The brazen bound of that Tartarean wall,
Which not the gods themselves can overleap,
In windy circuit o'er the sulphurous deep,
Half-Gothic towers, by Monkish masons built,
Put dimly forth. Nought but the shame and guilt
Seem'd real in the ghostly flux below
Of swimming change, that surged from woe to woe:
So, flexile as man's ever-moving mind,
Whose masonry all monstrous forms combined
In one immense metropolis of Pain,
Tho' moor'd by Fear upon a midnight main,
Yet pace with time Hell's fluent structures kept,
From each new architectural adept
Fresh grimness winning.
IX.
But all this was seenIn fluctuation indistinct between
The gaps of Heaven, thro' filmy distances
Of darkness, wild as wicked fancy is:
Nor marr'd the mirth of that Olympian feast
More than spots floating on the sun's bright breast
Darken his glory.
X.
Only, in the first146
On him that saw it, Hebe, filling up
With nectarous oenomel a glorious cup,
Paused, as she pour'd, and stared, with open eyes
And open mouth, in half-displeased surprise,
Upon the wondering mortal. For he had,
To her, the ever-insolently-glad,
In the great human sadness of his face,
The aspect of a creature out of place:
As tho' into her golden cup had dropp'd
Teasing Jove's Eagle: who, with a great cry,
Rose, rough'd his feathers, seem'd about to fly,
But, seeing Jove so quiet, droop'd his wing,
And waited watchful of his keen-eyed king.
Venus with glance disdainful turn'd to scan
The old man's face: then, seeing that the man
Was chopp'd with battle, sun-bronzed, seam'd with scars,
She, whose white arm was round the throat of Mars,
Pointed a rosy finger, veiling half
In her soft eyes a little mirthful laugh
Under delicious lids dark-lash'd. But he
Look'd on his worshipper remorsefully,
As some grave chieftain, when the strife is done,
Safe and unhurt himself, might gaze upon
His wounded battle-horse about to die.
Amor, that, trifling with his bow hard by,
Noticed not this new comer of the earth
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Guess'd, with that instinct arch to children given
For mischievous occasion (since, thro' Heaven,
The babble of the mighty banquet hall
Suddenly ceased, a moment's space) that all
The attention of the gods was occupied:
And furtively, by Dian unespied,
From her chaste quiver stole the arrows keen,
And, in their places, with mock-serious mien,
The rosy rascal-hearted child his own
Lascivious little wingèd darts dropp'd down.
Poor Psyche, with sad eyes, silent, apart,
Sat watching her boy-spouse: and wish'd his dart
Had ever been like Dian's. For, tho' now
The wrath appeased of Venus did allow
To her, as true wife of her truant lord,
Place by his side at the ambrosial board,
Yet on her still the great gods look'd askance,
As a new comer, of small circumstance,
And doubtful origin: and light-hearted Love
'Mid loose-zoned goddesses was wont to rove
Not seldom, with no Psyche by his side:
“For,” said they all, “'tis fit that one allied
Beneath him, to his nobler native place
Returning, should consort with his own race,
Not tamely tied to a mate of meaner birth.”
Such things in Heaven once, and oft on earth,
Have been. So Psyche mourn'd to find Love wed
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Much to console her, whispering at her ear
“Love comes and goes: but I am ever here:
Look in my face: am I not fair?” And she,
Sighing, said only “O Hymen, counsel me,
If thou art wise, how souls may hold Love close!”
IV. PART IV. THE PAST.
I.
But great Apollo in all his glory uprose.And, even as when, what time strong mountains swoon,
And tremble, in a sumptuous summer noon,
And all the under air is still, so still
That no leaf stirs, o'er some etherial hill
Round which heaven's highest influences range
Invisibly, a cloud, with solemn change,
Begins to move; drooping his globèd glory
Slowly adown that inland promontory;
So down Olympus moved the Lyric God,
Majestic. All his serious visage glow'd
With inner light, and music, mixt with fire,
Stream'd from the strings of his Mercurial lyre,
Preluding prophecy.
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II.
Severe, he stood
Above the Roman, resting in a flood
Of radiance clear, and thus stern speech began:
Above the Roman, resting in a flood
Of radiance clear, and thus stern speech began:
“Ill counsell'd, and rash-spirited old man!
Learn to revere the all-wise Necessity,
That to the unceasing wheel of Time, whereby
Earth takes the shape by Heaven design'd, holds fast
Man's ductile clay; and, with the solid Past
Fusing the fluid Present's ardours, doth
The bright fantastic Future form from both.
Deem'st thou that, at thy summons, shall return
To earth the Powers whose parting footsteps spurn
Shrines where forever, since his course began,
The Names man worships are belied by man?
I will unfold the full mind of the gods,
From men obscured by Time's dull periods.
For man was on the earth ere we, that are
Not his first teachers, nor his last, were 'ware
Of his unblest condition: who, being born
Above the brutes, is but the more forlorn,
If missing consciousness of aught above
Himself, for him, in turn, to serve and love.
We, therefore, then, with gentle visitings,
To earth descended; and, from lonesome springs,
And hollow woods, lending to mountain winds,
And forest leaves, our language, with men's minds
Held commune: prompting man, by wishfulness
For the divineness of things fair, to press
Strong search for what they only find that seek.
Until, at length, from every river creek,
And winding vale, and wooded mountain, stole
Upon man's sense, in visible shape, the whole
Society of that immortal life
Which, mingling with man's own, made strong its strife,
Inspired its contemplation, beautified
Its being, and, ennobling earth, allied
Men, by gods visited, to gods, by men
Sought and perceived. Nor were we churlish then
To mortals. Wisdom, out of whisperous trees,
More sweet than whitest honey by wild bees
Suck'd from Midsummer's veins, to shepherd priests
We pour'd in oracles; and at men's feasts
Sat down familiar, or beside their hearths;
Teaching Old Age how best the dædal earth's
Wind-sown abundance, might, by skill increased,
Be harvested, when manful Youth the beast,
That's foe to man, had, help'd of us, subdued:
Youth, whose yet earnest eyes in ours first viewed
The images of what man's life might be
By imitating gods! Neither did we
Withhold the godlike gift of glorious Song.
Brutish we found man's life, the brutes among;
Beauteous we strove to make it . . . strove in vain!
Since man's low nature, failing to attain
The life of gods, but filch'd from gods their names
To deify what most degrades, most shames,
The life of man. Ill thank'd was all our toil!
To glorify earth's clay, oh, not to soil
Heaven's azure! came we from the kindly skies,
Kindling immortal fire in mortal eyes.
We gave men Beauty. But our gift, misused,
Hath wrong'd the givers. Have not men abused
Our very names, invoking them amiss
To deify ill deeds? Was it for this
Dian is chaste? Mars brave? and Venus fair?
And Jove just-minded? Wherefore, whatsoe'er
Henceforth men worship (whose base sense, indeed,
With its own baseness grown content, hath need
—If any price man's race may ransom yet
From bondage to its own bad life—to get,
By sharp compulsion of Heaven's highest will,
Keen knowledge of a nobler godhead, still
More potent, or more pitiful, than ours,
Whose images men's hands have hid with flowers
So thick, men's eyes no longer mark the frown
On each wrong'd forehead 'neath its shameful crown)
We, at the least, resign man's earth, and man,
To fates by us no more controll'd. Nor can
Man's worship mock our altars any more.
Not unto us, henceforth, your priests shall pour
The victim's blood. Not ours, henceforth, the names
Invoked on earth to sanction earth's worst shames.
Not simulating service in our cause
Shall Fraud forge Heaven's approval of the laws
Devised by wicked Force to sanction Wrong.
Not ours the worshippers whose zeal shall throng
Dungeons with dying, charnel dens with dead.
Nor yet to us shall praise be sung, prayer said,
Whenever men henceforth have injured men.
Why should we bide on earth, and be again
Dishonour'd in the deeds whereby mankind
Profess to honour Heaven?
“Yet shall they find,
Who yet may seek, us. Not where we have been,
By thrones, on altars, seen, and vainly seen,
Thro' purchased incense clouding shrines profaned!
But I, that from of old this power attain'd,—
Having foreseen the Future,—to make fast
What in the Future man desires—the Past,
Have wrought for man, by means of mighty Song,
A mystic world, which neither change can wrong,
Nor time can trouble. And, therein, man yet
May gaze on gods, and fashion from Regret
Fair forms resembling Hope. Wherefore, do thou
Cease to avoid the Inevitable. Know
That we, the gods, who minister no more
To man's ambition, fairer than of yore
Thy fathers found us, since henceforth set free
From all that mixt us with mortality,
Range undisturb'd, beyond all reach of change,
In regions where immortal memories range,
Unvext by mortal hopes: responsible
For mortal wrongs no longer.
“Deem not ill
For man whatever betters aught man deems,
Or hath deem'd, beautiful, tho' but in dreams.
Not by shrines shatter'd, not by statues spurn'd,
Temples deserted, altars overturn'd,
And incense stinted, are the gods disgraced;
But by base homage of a herd debased,
By Faith in service to a fraudful Force,
And wrongful deed by righteous name made worse.
Learn to revere the all-wise Necessity,
That to the unceasing wheel of Time, whereby
Earth takes the shape by Heaven design'd, holds fast
Man's ductile clay; and, with the solid Past
Fusing the fluid Present's ardours, doth
The bright fantastic Future form from both.
Deem'st thou that, at thy summons, shall return
To earth the Powers whose parting footsteps spurn
Shrines where forever, since his course began,
The Names man worships are belied by man?
I will unfold the full mind of the gods,
From men obscured by Time's dull periods.
For man was on the earth ere we, that are
Not his first teachers, nor his last, were 'ware
Of his unblest condition: who, being born
Above the brutes, is but the more forlorn,
If missing consciousness of aught above
Himself, for him, in turn, to serve and love.
We, therefore, then, with gentle visitings,
To earth descended; and, from lonesome springs,
And hollow woods, lending to mountain winds,
And forest leaves, our language, with men's minds
150
For the divineness of things fair, to press
Strong search for what they only find that seek.
Until, at length, from every river creek,
And winding vale, and wooded mountain, stole
Upon man's sense, in visible shape, the whole
Society of that immortal life
Which, mingling with man's own, made strong its strife,
Inspired its contemplation, beautified
Its being, and, ennobling earth, allied
Men, by gods visited, to gods, by men
Sought and perceived. Nor were we churlish then
To mortals. Wisdom, out of whisperous trees,
More sweet than whitest honey by wild bees
Suck'd from Midsummer's veins, to shepherd priests
We pour'd in oracles; and at men's feasts
Sat down familiar, or beside their hearths;
Teaching Old Age how best the dædal earth's
Wind-sown abundance, might, by skill increased,
Be harvested, when manful Youth the beast,
That's foe to man, had, help'd of us, subdued:
Youth, whose yet earnest eyes in ours first viewed
The images of what man's life might be
By imitating gods! Neither did we
Withhold the godlike gift of glorious Song.
Brutish we found man's life, the brutes among;
Beauteous we strove to make it . . . strove in vain!
Since man's low nature, failing to attain
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To deify what most degrades, most shames,
The life of man. Ill thank'd was all our toil!
To glorify earth's clay, oh, not to soil
Heaven's azure! came we from the kindly skies,
Kindling immortal fire in mortal eyes.
We gave men Beauty. But our gift, misused,
Hath wrong'd the givers. Have not men abused
Our very names, invoking them amiss
To deify ill deeds? Was it for this
Dian is chaste? Mars brave? and Venus fair?
And Jove just-minded? Wherefore, whatsoe'er
Henceforth men worship (whose base sense, indeed,
With its own baseness grown content, hath need
—If any price man's race may ransom yet
From bondage to its own bad life—to get,
By sharp compulsion of Heaven's highest will,
Keen knowledge of a nobler godhead, still
More potent, or more pitiful, than ours,
Whose images men's hands have hid with flowers
So thick, men's eyes no longer mark the frown
On each wrong'd forehead 'neath its shameful crown)
We, at the least, resign man's earth, and man,
To fates by us no more controll'd. Nor can
Man's worship mock our altars any more.
Not unto us, henceforth, your priests shall pour
The victim's blood. Not ours, henceforth, the names
Invoked on earth to sanction earth's worst shames.
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Shall Fraud forge Heaven's approval of the laws
Devised by wicked Force to sanction Wrong.
Not ours the worshippers whose zeal shall throng
Dungeons with dying, charnel dens with dead.
Nor yet to us shall praise be sung, prayer said,
Whenever men henceforth have injured men.
Why should we bide on earth, and be again
Dishonour'd in the deeds whereby mankind
Profess to honour Heaven?
“Yet shall they find,
Who yet may seek, us. Not where we have been,
By thrones, on altars, seen, and vainly seen,
Thro' purchased incense clouding shrines profaned!
But I, that from of old this power attain'd,—
Having foreseen the Future,—to make fast
What in the Future man desires—the Past,
Have wrought for man, by means of mighty Song,
A mystic world, which neither change can wrong,
Nor time can trouble. And, therein, man yet
May gaze on gods, and fashion from Regret
Fair forms resembling Hope. Wherefore, do thou
Cease to avoid the Inevitable. Know
That we, the gods, who minister no more
To man's ambition, fairer than of yore
Thy fathers found us, since henceforth set free
From all that mixt us with mortality,
Range undisturb'd, beyond all reach of change,
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Unvext by mortal hopes: responsible
For mortal wrongs no longer.
“Deem not ill
For man whatever betters aught man deems,
Or hath deem'd, beautiful, tho' but in dreams.
Not by shrines shatter'd, not by statues spurn'd,
Temples deserted, altars overturn'd,
And incense stinted, are the gods disgraced;
But by base homage of a herd debased,
By Faith in service to a fraudful Force,
And wrongful deed by righteous name made worse.
“Nor yet, before the blaze of shrines not ours,
Fail we, or fall we. For the Heavenly Powers
Strive not against each other, as do those
Earth breeds of earth; nor can the gods be foes
O' the Godhead. Conquer'd are we not: since not
Contending. Deemest thou that Time can plot
Against Eternity? Fool! doth the seed
Grudge to his place the tree 'twas born to breed?
The bud the blossom which it bursts to bear,
When Summer's summons thro' the sunlit air
Shatters the long-shut sleep, whose dreams occult
Are realised in sleep's aroused result?
Time, that returns not, errs not. Be content,
Knowing thus much: nor toil against the event
Whereto Time tends.”
Fail we, or fall we. For the Heavenly Powers
Strive not against each other, as do those
Earth breeds of earth; nor can the gods be foes
O' the Godhead. Conquer'd are we not: since not
Contending. Deemest thou that Time can plot
Against Eternity? Fool! doth the seed
Grudge to his place the tree 'twas born to breed?
The bud the blossom which it bursts to bear,
When Summer's summons thro' the sunlit air
Shatters the long-shut sleep, whose dreams occult
Are realised in sleep's aroused result?
Time, that returns not, errs not. Be content,
Knowing thus much: nor toil against the event
Whereto Time tends.”
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III.
Thus, frowning, Phœbus said.And Jove, from high Olympus, bow'd his head.
V. PART V. THE PRESENT.
I.
There is a stillness of the upper air,
Foreboding change; when mighty winds prepare
In secret sudden war upon the world.
And when that stillness breaks, forests are hurl'd
Asunder, and sea-sceptring navies drown'd.
There is another stillness, more profound,
Worse change foreboding; of the inmost soul,
In that dread moment when, from the controul
Of life's long acquiescence in whate'er
Life's faith has been, revolted thoughts prepare
War on man's nature. When that stillness breaks,
A heart breaks with it, in the shock that shakes
Deep-planted custom, and roots up the hold
Of long-grown habit, and observance old.
Foreboding change; when mighty winds prepare
In secret sudden war upon the world.
And when that stillness breaks, forests are hurl'd
Asunder, and sea-sceptring navies drown'd.
There is another stillness, more profound,
Worse change foreboding; of the inmost soul,
In that dread moment when, from the controul
Of life's long acquiescence in whate'er
Life's faith has been, revolted thoughts prepare
War on man's nature. When that stillness breaks,
A heart breaks with it, in the shock that shakes
Deep-planted custom, and roots up the hold
Of long-grown habit, and observance old.
From such a stillness in himself, at last,
Licinius raised his voice. The spasm, that pass'd
Across the quivering features of the man,
Smit by stern speech from lips Olympian,
Vext, as it rose, the staggering voice, down-weigh'd
With heavy meanings hard to express.
Licinius raised his voice. The spasm, that pass'd
155
Smit by stern speech from lips Olympian,
Vext, as it rose, the staggering voice, down-weigh'd
With heavy meanings hard to express.
II.
He said:
“Immortal gods, by Rome revered! to me,
A mortal man, revering Rome, did she
This creed bequeath: that to all sons she bears
There is but One Necessity (made theirs
In Rome's requital for a Roman's name)
—Living, or dying, never to know shame:
Never to shrink from pain: never recant
Recorded faith: never be suppliant
For life less noble than 'tis man's to make
Death in the cause which, even tho' gods forsake,
Honour, retain'd, keeps sacred to the last.
This, also, in the records of Rome's Past
My life read once: and read long since, indeed,
Too far to new-live now a new-learn'd creed:
—That, when to all the creatures under heaven
Their severally allotted tasks were given,
On man—man only—the injunction fell,
To do, by daring, the impossible:
That he who doth, tho' dying, dauntless still,
Plant the pale standard of unbaffled Will
On Fate's breach'd battlements, and to the end,
Defeating thus defeat itself, contend
Tenacious in the teeth of tenfold odds,
Uplifts the life he loses to the gods.
“Immortal gods, by Rome revered! to me,
A mortal man, revering Rome, did she
This creed bequeath: that to all sons she bears
There is but One Necessity (made theirs
In Rome's requital for a Roman's name)
—Living, or dying, never to know shame:
Never to shrink from pain: never recant
Recorded faith: never be suppliant
For life less noble than 'tis man's to make
Death in the cause which, even tho' gods forsake,
Honour, retain'd, keeps sacred to the last.
This, also, in the records of Rome's Past
My life read once: and read long since, indeed,
Too far to new-live now a new-learn'd creed:
—That, when to all the creatures under heaven
Their severally allotted tasks were given,
On man—man only—the injunction fell,
To do, by daring, the impossible:
That he who doth, tho' dying, dauntless still,
Plant the pale standard of unbaffled Will
On Fate's breach'd battlements, and to the end,
156
Tenacious in the teeth of tenfold odds,
Uplifts the life he loses to the gods.
“Lies! lies! all lies! Since gods live careless lives,
Concern'd in nought for which man's being strives.
Justice? men deem'd the image of the mind
Of gods—a mere invention of mankind!
Love?—some blind blood-beat in the veins of youth!
Belief?—man's substitute for knowledge! Truth?
—Unknown in Heaven! Why man, whom you despise,
O'erweening gods, for getting all these lies
By heart in vain, seems nobler after all,
More godlike, than yourselves.
“Nor yet, so small,
So slight, so all unworthy, first appear'd
Man's race, but what you gods have interfered
Too much with man's condition to assume
This late indifference to your work—his doom.
Since one thing have you been at pains to do,
—To cheat the chosen fools that trusted you,
False gods, and filch thanksgiving, foully gain'd,
For all whereto the woeful end ordain'd
Was but betrayal.
“What! then, all meant nought?
All, all, that Delos told and Delphi taught,
Tho' a god spake it? All your oracles,
Your priests, your bards, your sacred woods and wells?
Liars of lies! all pledged to cheat man's hope
In gods too careless, or too weak, to cope,
With aught man suffers!
“Well can I believe
How man's imperfect progress might deceive,
And fail, as 'twere (man's prowess, at the best,
Crippled by means inadequate confess'd!)
The august hopes, by some bright periods
Of his brave promise, in the mind of gods
Inspired. But I, a man, no way can find
Among the many wanderings of my mind,
To imagine even how gods (whose godheads are
Glorious with power, each perfect as a star)
Should at the last fall short of hopes by them
In man's mind once awaken'd.
“Gods, condemn,
Punish man, plague him . . . but forsake him? No!
Not for your own sakes! Lest your godhoods grow,
From long disuse of godlike attributes,
Less lovely even than the life of brutes,
Not being so helpful.
“Yet, howe'er that be,
I, at the least, have loved ye, trusted ye,
So long that, tho' for me you fight no more,
Still must I fight for you. 'Twill soon be o'er:
Or one way, or another. Soonest, best,
I think: nor greatly care to know the rest.
One thing's to gain yet—death. No room to range
From what I am! The gods may change, Fate change,
I cannot. Not each casual tomb will fit
The fame a Roman's death consigns to it.
And I for this too-long-continued life
Must find fit end: hew out, with gods at strife,
Tho' sword break, heart break, all break, in the attempt,
Memorial—mournful, but, at least, exempt
From all incongruous contradiction vile.
Nor is life left me to lament, meanwhile,
Life's failure—frustrate faith, and fruitless deed!
One life, wherewith to fail, or to succeed,
Is man's. One only. I, at my life's end,
Cannot go back to the beginning—mend
What it hath made me—unlove what I loved—
Love what I loathed—condemn what I approved—
New-self myself, to suit occasion new.
The arrow, sped, must still its flight pursue
As first the bowman aim'd it, tho' since then
The bowman shift his ground. Life speeds with men
Even thus. And few can chuse, none change, what's done.
A man hath but one mother: and but one
Childhood: one past: one future: but one hearth:
One heart—to give or keep: one Heaven: one earth:
And one religion.
“Yet thus much, tho' spent
His force, and spoil'd his whole life's element,
A man may do: and this, at least, will I!
Ere, quench'd, the fires that still consume me, die,
I will collect their scatter'd heats, push all
Life's ashes, even while yet the embers fall,
Into a heap, and send the dying flame
Full in Heaven's face!
“O worthy of thy name,
Loxian Apollo! Boots it me to know
That men may see thee, as I see thee now,
Far from the life thy beauty doth but wrong,
Calm on the golden summits of Old Song?
No singer I! but a dull soldier: fit
Simply to love a thing, and fight for it,
Or hate a thing, and fight against it. Vent
My soul in song, I cannot, I! content
To do, at least, what merits to be sung:
Hold fast, when old, the faith I pledged when young:
Live up to it: die for it, if needs be.
What comfort, O Apollo, dwells for me,
Or what for any man, in leave to praise
The life of gods whose life his own betrays?
Their loves, that love him not? their power, that is
The mockery of the weakness they leave his?
Sing no more songs, Apollo, in men's ears!
Leave us, ye gods, in silence to the tears
You understand not! Spare this much vext earth
Distracting visions of Heaven's unshared mirth!
This, also, ere I die” . . . . .
Concern'd in nought for which man's being strives.
Justice? men deem'd the image of the mind
Of gods—a mere invention of mankind!
Love?—some blind blood-beat in the veins of youth!
Belief?—man's substitute for knowledge! Truth?
—Unknown in Heaven! Why man, whom you despise,
O'erweening gods, for getting all these lies
By heart in vain, seems nobler after all,
More godlike, than yourselves.
“Nor yet, so small,
So slight, so all unworthy, first appear'd
Man's race, but what you gods have interfered
Too much with man's condition to assume
This late indifference to your work—his doom.
Since one thing have you been at pains to do,
—To cheat the chosen fools that trusted you,
False gods, and filch thanksgiving, foully gain'd,
For all whereto the woeful end ordain'd
Was but betrayal.
“What! then, all meant nought?
All, all, that Delos told and Delphi taught,
Tho' a god spake it? All your oracles,
Your priests, your bards, your sacred woods and wells?
157
In gods too careless, or too weak, to cope,
With aught man suffers!
“Well can I believe
How man's imperfect progress might deceive,
And fail, as 'twere (man's prowess, at the best,
Crippled by means inadequate confess'd!)
The august hopes, by some bright periods
Of his brave promise, in the mind of gods
Inspired. But I, a man, no way can find
Among the many wanderings of my mind,
To imagine even how gods (whose godheads are
Glorious with power, each perfect as a star)
Should at the last fall short of hopes by them
In man's mind once awaken'd.
“Gods, condemn,
Punish man, plague him . . . but forsake him? No!
Not for your own sakes! Lest your godhoods grow,
From long disuse of godlike attributes,
Less lovely even than the life of brutes,
Not being so helpful.
“Yet, howe'er that be,
I, at the least, have loved ye, trusted ye,
So long that, tho' for me you fight no more,
Still must I fight for you. 'Twill soon be o'er:
Or one way, or another. Soonest, best,
I think: nor greatly care to know the rest.
One thing's to gain yet—death. No room to range
158
I cannot. Not each casual tomb will fit
The fame a Roman's death consigns to it.
And I for this too-long-continued life
Must find fit end: hew out, with gods at strife,
Tho' sword break, heart break, all break, in the attempt,
Memorial—mournful, but, at least, exempt
From all incongruous contradiction vile.
Nor is life left me to lament, meanwhile,
Life's failure—frustrate faith, and fruitless deed!
One life, wherewith to fail, or to succeed,
Is man's. One only. I, at my life's end,
Cannot go back to the beginning—mend
What it hath made me—unlove what I loved—
Love what I loathed—condemn what I approved—
New-self myself, to suit occasion new.
The arrow, sped, must still its flight pursue
As first the bowman aim'd it, tho' since then
The bowman shift his ground. Life speeds with men
Even thus. And few can chuse, none change, what's done.
A man hath but one mother: and but one
Childhood: one past: one future: but one hearth:
One heart—to give or keep: one Heaven: one earth:
And one religion.
“Yet thus much, tho' spent
His force, and spoil'd his whole life's element,
A man may do: and this, at least, will I!
Ere, quench'd, the fires that still consume me, die,
159
Life's ashes, even while yet the embers fall,
Into a heap, and send the dying flame
Full in Heaven's face!
“O worthy of thy name,
Loxian Apollo! Boots it me to know
That men may see thee, as I see thee now,
Far from the life thy beauty doth but wrong,
Calm on the golden summits of Old Song?
No singer I! but a dull soldier: fit
Simply to love a thing, and fight for it,
Or hate a thing, and fight against it. Vent
My soul in song, I cannot, I! content
To do, at least, what merits to be sung:
Hold fast, when old, the faith I pledged when young:
Live up to it: die for it, if needs be.
What comfort, O Apollo, dwells for me,
Or what for any man, in leave to praise
The life of gods whose life his own betrays?
Their loves, that love him not? their power, that is
The mockery of the weakness they leave his?
Sing no more songs, Apollo, in men's ears!
Leave us, ye gods, in silence to the tears
You understand not! Spare this much vext earth
Distracting visions of Heaven's unshared mirth!
This, also, ere I die” . . . . .
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III.
But there, his heartBrake the thought in it, sharply; as a dart
Breaks in the effort of a wounded man
To pluck it from the wound.
O'er Heaven's face ran
A tremble of white anger: like the light
Of wind-blown stars when, on a winter night,
The howling earth-born gust, that devastates
His own dark birthplace, having burst the grates
Of some grim-pillar'd forest (whose black bars
Release him, groaning) strives against the stars;
Their icy brilliance only kindling thus
To a keener glory. Eyes contemptuous,
Eyes cruel with calm scorn of all that pain
Which scorch'd his own, burn'd on him. The disdain
Of brows divine, in phalanx infinite
And formidable of transcendent light,
Glow'd from Heaven's depths against him. But all these
Luminous and severe solemnities
He noticed not. For, when the wretched man
First to accuse the assembled gods began,
Love, from the midmost rosy Heaven, where he
Was sporting, stole a-tip-toe, curiously,
Closer at each word, by no eyes perceived
Save Psyche's, brightening while her bosom heaved
With some unwonted spasm, and her sad brow
Flush'd, as a pale star flushes when the glow
161
Is pour'd upon it. With half-lifted arm,
And troubled countenance, and listening ear,
Love, thus, in pensive posture, linger'd near
Whence came that voice (among their bright abodes
Ambrosial, then first heard by those glad gods)
Of Human Pain denouncing Heavenly Joy.
And, on the blind face of the beauteous Boy
The man's look lightening, as he lifted it
Defiant of whatever it might meet
In Heaven, was caught, and fasten'd where it fell,
By new incentive irresistible
To special indignation. Even as when
In the throng'd circus, from the swarm of men
That hem and hurt him, some wild beast selects
One man, whom suddenly his wrath detects
As most obnoxious, and, in mid assault
On all the others, swiftly swerves, makes halt,
And flies at him that's nearest; so the man,
From all that hostile cirque Olympian
Selecting Love, cried to him
IV.
“Thou immatureAnd mindless god! whose smiling sinecure
Is but a blindfold childhood never grown!
Comest thou to mock at what thou hast not known
—Man's full-grown misery at the end of all
162
Used out, in urging, on its destin'd way
To dissolution, force that went astray
By struggling upwards? Such a vapour streams
From altars vainly lit; which, tho' it seems
To go up to the gods, goes nowhere—is
Made nothing, merged in that wide nothingness
Men take for Heaven! Thou purblind lord of all
Purblindest instincts! thee, not Love I call,
But Lust. For man's loss, Love must needs be sad:
Lust, with no eyes to see man's loss, is glad,
As thou art. Yet, since men misname thee Love,
Loose, if thou canst, what, pent in me, doth move
Importunate, as some dumb creature curst
With such a secret as at length must burst
Its heart, endeavouring to be understood.
O Love, if thou be Love, pluck off that hood
That hides thine eyes from human grief. Revere
Love's last result on earth—a wretch's tear!
Break silence, Love! Thee only, of the gods,
I ask . . . What is it heaves earth's sullen clods
When Spring winds, wet with tears from trembling boughs,
Breathe, and behold! in place of snows (those snows
Themselves earth's seasonable comforters)
The abounding violet! Or what Spirit stirs
In tones and scents that bathe man's wearied heart
With fresh belief, and bid the strong tears start
For solemn joy? What mystic inmate gives
163
Some worth, tho' hinder'd, to the humblest worm
That crawls; some purpose to the poorest germ
That buds unwitness'd from the meanest seed:
Some beauty to the barest rock's worst weed?
Which, thro' all pores of Being, everywhere
Passing, at last, into Man's Life; and there
Changing what was (till such a change it knew)
Merely, perchance, some droplet of wild dew,
Clasping a thorn, to Pity; some tost sea,
To Aspiration passionate; some tree,
That struggles with the savage gust forlorn
All night, wherein a wild bird sings at morn
Exulting, to the Fortitude of Faith;
In Man grows audible; speaks out, and saith
To Heaven “Await me!” with a human voice:
Man here, God everywhere! Which doth rejoice,
And droop, live, strive, and grieve, and grow, with man:
And so, completing from all points, the plan
Of a god's vast experience in God's Bliss,
—Too perfect, too immeasurable, to miss
The manifold significance of tears,
Strength strain'd from weakness, struggle that endears
Triumph, and failure forced into success,—
Looks down thro' all inferior grades to bless
Life's hopes with Love's assurance of the end
Whereto all Life, by Love inspired, doth tend!
Such a god dare not be indifferent
164
Which man, His Means, he fashions to fulfil:
A god's means, therefore worth a god's care still!
Oh, such a god, my spirit whispers me,
Tho' nameless yet, and yet unknown, must be.
I seek His Face among your faces all,
Olympians; and, not finding it, I call
Earth's woe to witness that you do not well,
Being gods, to leave man godless . . . You! that tell,
Smiling the while, as you depart serene,
Me that have loved you, me whose life hath been
Yours, tho' in vain, yours past recovery, here
At that life's cheated end, to now revere
What love of you hath bid me loathe . . . .
“If He—
If He, indeed, were—what ye are not, ye!—
That God—that Love, which . . . Ah, but know I not,
Too well, with cause to curse them all for what
They are—and do—His worshippers? the late
Last form of man's forlornness . . . men that hate
Even each other!
“Fair, false Forms depart!
Happy in ignorance of the human heart
You have deceived! Apollo, load some star
With liquid music far from earth! Far, far
From eyes worn out with weeping wasted love,
O Venus, guide whatever golden dove
Delights to draw thy lucid wheels!
165
The men that loved you, and are left?
“Ah me,
What goal to us remains, whose course some Fate
Impels unwilling where no prize can wait
The weary runner?
“He, that late is come
To rule from your abandon'd thrones the scum
And sewage of that rough-hewn rabble world
Wrought from the ruins of Rome's pride down-hurl'd,
Why comes He now, who comes so late? He too,
Hath He not all too long connived with you
At man's disaster? If He love to be
Beloved of men, why so long linger'd He?
Letting men grow familiar, age by age,
With gods not destined to endure; engage,
Unwarn'd, to you the homage, He now claims,
And you resign; while men that got your names
By heart, have now no heart left to unlearn
The faith which, sued for ages, given, you spurn!
Is nothing sure? Must man's existence be
Barter'd and bandied thus eternally
From god to god? By each new master made
Pull down in haste what each last master bade
The o'ertask'd drudge build up with toil intense?
Oh, for some voice Love's sanction to dispense
To Life's endeavour! oh for one, but one,
Of all you gods, whose forms I gaze upon
166
This else-wrong'd spirit, that, in despite the Past,
Which fail'd in power, the Present, by despair
Darken'd, the Future, desolate and bare,
It did not ill to trust an instinct, wrong'd
Not seldom, oft rebuked, but yet prolong'd
Thro' strangling hinderance and confounding chance;
Which, fronting Heaven with constant countenance,
Would whisper, ‘I am love, and love is there,
And love to love is kindred everywhere!’
But which of all the gods can do this?”
167
VI. PART VI. THE FUTURE.
I.
“I!”Love answer'd; and sprang forth with such a cry
As paled, beneath their golden porches, all
The rosy lords of that Ambrosial Hall.
Olympus groan'd aghast beneath the sound,
Whereto the throbbing universe all round
Responded with a million echoes wild
Of awful joy.
II.
For lo! the glorious child,By one transcendent moment's mighty throe,
Full-statured sprang into the new-born glow
Of his superlative godhead. His right hand
Wrench'd from his lustrous orbs the blinding band
That had for ages held their lordly light
From flooding heaven and earth with infinite
And all-transforming splendour. Faint and wan
Wax'd all the lesser lights Olympian
In the sunrise of that surpassing gaze:
Like their own orbs. Mars, with diminisht rays,
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A single spot of angry fire in fast
Increasing distance. Like a happy tear
About to fall, Venus, a trembling sphere
All pale in rosy air, descended slow.
Of Phœbus rested nothing but a glow
Of solemn gladness on heaven's serene face.
Even Jove himself, in that expanding space
Love's ever-greatening glory lit, became
No brighter than his own broad star, whose flame
Burns lone on night's far frontier.
III.
In amaze,Beneath the Face whereon he dared not gaze
The man, prostrated, fell. In whose thrill'd ears
A voice rang, musical as moving spheres:
“The sound of Human Sorrow heard in Heaven
Immortal love to mortal life hath given:
Whereby in grief of life is growth of love.
Arise! On Earth below, in Heaven above,
Part of all creeds, and every creed surviving,
The Ever-loving is the Ever-living.
Heavenly and Human both: which, thro' man's eyes
Forever gazing upward, to Heaven cries,
‘Behold me, Father!’ and from Heaven anon
Down gazing cries to Earth ‘Behold me, Son!’
Arise, and follow where Love leads.”
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IV.
The manArose: and, guided by the Voice, began
To ascend that solemn mountain. Changed was all
Its aspect. Gone the Olympain Festival!
Gone all the rosy revellers! Rough the road
With raunce and bramble, where once breathed and glow'd
The clear-cupp'd cistus and bright asphodel.
And lo, where last each golden goblet fell,
A grinning scull! On the sharp summit seem'd,
Where late Olympian Jove's bright throne had beam'd,
Some dim stupendous image, looming thro'
Red morn's dull mist, and lurid in the dew,
Till at its foot the god-led mortal stood:
Then on his brow fell drops of human blood
From a great Cross, wide-arm'd, that o'er him spread.
V.
He shrank, indignant.Music o'er his head,
Like a light bird, came fluttering. And again,
To that light music lured, in mistlike train,
From rosiest air's remotest inmost deep,
Troop'd—dim and beautiful, as dreams that creep
Under the sweet lids of a sleeping child,
On whose wet lashes tears, tho' reconciled
With trouble soon dismiss'd, are trembling new—
The old Olympians. Wreaths of every hue,
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In Memory's dewiest meadow-deeps, they brought;
Wherewith to deck that darkling Cross. Whereon
The Past's pale blossom-bearers every one,
Each as he came, fresh garlands hung. Till, lo!
The Cross in flowers—the flowers themselves—the flow
Of flower-bearers—all, began to fade
In ever deepening light.
VI.
Love, only, staid.Yet Love's self changed. Whose form, expanding, seem'd,
To him on whose awed gaze its glory beam'd,
To absorb into itself all things that were.
Heaven's farthest stars were glittering in His hair:
All winds of heaven His breathing loosed or bound:
His voice became an ever-murmuring sound,
The sound of generations of mankind:
Shut in His hand, the nations humm'd: Time twined
About His feet its creeping growths; which took
From Him the life-sap of the leaves that shook
Light shadows from His glory.
VII.
Mute with awe,And lost in light, Licinius mused. He saw
His own life, suddenly, as when, thro' rain
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An instantaneous sunbeam strikes.
VIII.
Even then,Even while the vision broaden'd on his ken,
A sudden trumpet sounded as in scorn
From the dark camps.
It was the battle morn.
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GENSERIC.
Genseric, King of the Vandals, who, having laid waste seven lands,From Tripolis far as Tangier, from the sea to the Great Desert sands,
Was lord of the Moor and the African,—thirsting anon for new slaughter,
Sail'd out of Carthage, and sail'd o'er the Mediterranean water;
Plunder'd Palermo, seized Sicily, sack'd the Lucanian coast,
And paused, and said, laughing, “Where next?”
Then there came to the Vandal a Ghost
From the Shadowy Land that lies hid and unknown in the Darkness Below,
And answer'd, “To Rome!”
Said the King to the Ghost, “And whose envoy art thou?
Whence art thou? and name me his name that hath sent thee: and say what is thine.”
“From far: and His name that hath sent me is God,” the Ghost answer'd, “and mine
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But arise, and be swift, and return. For God waits, and the moment is late.”
And “I go,” said the Vandal. And went.
When at last to the gates he was come,
Loud he knock'd with his fierce iron fist. And full drowsily answer'd him Rome.
“Who is it that knocketh so loud? Get thee hence. Let me be. For 'tis late.”
“Thou art wanted,” cried Genseric. “Open! His name that hath sent me is Fate,
And mine, who knock late, Retribution.”
Rome gave him her glorious things:
The keys she had conquer'd from kingdoms: the crowns she had wrested from kings:
And Genseric bore them away into Carthage, avenged thus on Rome,
And paused, and said, laughing, “Where next?”
And again the Ghost answer'd him, “Home!
For now God doth need thee no longer.”
“Where leadest thou me by the hand?”
Cried the King to the Ghost. And the Ghost answer'd, “Into the Shadowy Land.”
174
IRENE.
“YE HAVE DONE IT UNTO ME.”
Matth. xxv.40.
I.
The moonlight lay like hoar frost on the earthOutside. But, all within, the marble hearth
Made from its dropping logs of scented wood
A rosy dimness of warm light, to flood
With fervid interchange of gloom and gleam
That gorgeous chamber,—from the mad moonbeam
Curtain'd secure. No other light was there.
The outer halls were silent everywhere.
Midnight. And in the bed where he was born,
I' the Porphyry Chamber at Byzance, outworn
By seventeen years of pleasure without joy,
Not yet a man, albeit no more a boy,
His flusht cheek heavy on the fragrant sheet,
Slept Constantine the Porphyrogenete;
When glided in his mother leonine,
Irene.
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II.
She, reluctant to resignTo her own whelp that prey beneath her paw,
The bloody Empire, stealthily 'gan draw
The crimson curtain; with keen ear down-bent
To count the breathings, thick and indolent,
Of her recaptured cub: who, sleeping, smiled,
By visions lewd of folly and lust beguiled.
Anon, she beckon'd to the unshut door:
Whence, crafty-footed, down the glassy floor
Crept to her side (with wither'd features white
Bow'd o'er a trembling lamp) her parasite,
Storax, the lean-lipp'd, low-brow'd Logothete.
III.
“Set the lamp down,” the mother mutter'd. “SweetMust be his dreams. My son is smiling . . . see!
Wake him not, Storax!” Then, while softly she
Let fall the curtain, he from out its sheath
Slided his dagger, pusht the flame beneath
The weapon's point, and watch'd with moody eye
The heated metal reddening.
O'er the high
Bed-head (to safeguard sleeping Cæsars, slung
Slant from the golden sculptured cornice) hung
On dismal ebon cross limbs, carven keen
In livid ivory, of a stretch'd-out, lean,
And ever-dying Christ. . . .
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IV.
(For, not long since,—As rapturous Priests remember,—to evince
For God's Church Orthodox her filial zeal,
Irene's righteous regency,—with heel
Set on the heads heretical of all
Iconoclasts, had rescued from their fall
The Images of God—assaulted sore
Erewhile by Antichrist's mad Emperor,
That “hell-born dragon,” “the Old Serpent's grub,”
“Black-spotted panther of Beelzebub,”
Whom, being dead now, lodged, too, in hell's flame,
God-fearing folks no longer fear to name
Accurst Copronymus)
V.
. . . His white lips setFast with a formidable will, while yet
Storax, who turn'd and turn'd it slowly, scann'd
The reddening steel, Irene's rapid hand,
With restless finger o'er her pucker'd brow
Flitting, made airy crosses in a row.
Her eyes had settled sullenly upon
The superimpending image of God's Son:
And Habit,—that hard mock-bird of the mind,
Whose tongue, to chance-got utterance confined,
Memories by chance recaptured out of place
Set talking out of season,—to the Face
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Offend thee, pluck it out,” she mutter'd. “Ay,
That is sound Gospel,” Storax in her ear
Whisper'd. “The thing is white-hot now . . . See here!”
“And I am Empress” . . . hiss'd Irene . . “Smite!”
VI.
The arm'd Armenian on the guard that nightAbout the palace precincts somnolent,
Where, like a weary beetle, came and went
Across the flinty platform,—else dead-dumb—
The slumbrous city's desultory hum,
Heard, pacing drowsy-cold, (his watch nigh done)
Beneath the stars, thro' shrivelling silence run
A sudden scream, fierce, devilish, agonized,
Of quintessential pain; and all surprised
Started upon the watch,—waiting what sound
Should follow. But that dreadful cry, soon drown'd
In dreadful silence, response none uproused,
Save of an owlish echo half unhoused
Among the moody towers, that down again
With churlish mumblings in her mason'd den
Settled to slumber.
Then the soldier said,
Laughing at the discovery he had made
Of what, to him at least, that sound meant, “So!
To-morrow, and the amphoræ shall flow.
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Whereat he turn'd, and (while i' the east, black-barr'd
With lazy clouds, slow-oozed a watery light)
Waited, well pleased, the trump of dawn.
VII.
That night,In league with Hell, ere morning streak'd the skies,
Left all its darkness in the misused eyes
Of Constantine the Porphyrogenete:
—The shadow of a shadow, forced to fleet
Out of the glare that gave him in men's sight
The semblance of a substance once.
VIII.
That night,Irene, ere the Porphyry Chamber (pale
With strife wherein to triumph is to fail)
She left triumphant, glancing back,—her glance
Fell casual on the conscious countenance
Of that white Christ upon the black cross spread,
Whose eyes, into the now-close-curtain'd bed
Erewhile down-gazing, had beheld why those
Tight draperies round it had been twitch'd so close.
And lo! where late those witnesses had been,
Instead of eyes, two gory sockets, seen
Thro' the red firelight, stopp'd her, stagger'd her,
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Fasten'd and froze her.
For a while she stood
As one that, traversing a solitude
Where nothing dwells but Danger (all in haste
To reach the end, and, after peril faced
And pass'd, proclaim “The deed I dared is done!”)
Turns, by ill chance, midway, to gaze upon
Some hideous gulf in safety cross'd; and so,
Seeing how deep the death that yawns below,
By unanticipated terror, just
In the fresh moment of achievement, thrust
Into the suddenly-suggested jaws
Of an imaginary failure, draws
Breath faint and fainter; forced to keep in sight
His own success, which, seen, defeats him quite.
But, soon return'd, the exasperated will,
Still strong to scourge the rebel senses, still
Defiant tho' dismay'd, with effort fierce
Pluck'd up the keen-cold Fear that seem'd to pierce
Her feet, and fix them to the floor, beneath
That eyeless gaze. And at the sculptured wreath
Above the unblest bed wherefrom It hung
She, like a wounded cat o' the mountain, sprung,
And caught, and gripp'd, and tugg'd, and tore away,
And crouch'd with glaring face above, her prey,
—God's Image.
Still that dreadful dearth of eyes
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With fierce and bitter cries
She dasht It sharp against the marble floor,
And bruised It with wild feet.
Still as before
The Eyeless Face implied . . . “Do what thou wilt
Henceforth, and hug thy gain, or hate thy guilt,
Never shalt thou behold God's eyes.”
She snatch'd
And hurl'd It on the smouldering hearth: and watch'd
The embers quicken round It: heap'd up wood,
And made the blaze leap high: and all night stood
Feeding the flame: till all was burn'd away
To ashes.
And ere this was done, the day
Began to dawn.
IX.
Afterwards, she becameOne of the world's chief rulers. Her fair name
Was praised in all the churches. God's priests pray'd
God to safeguard the mighty throne she made
Illustrious.
Three times,—in the hippodrome
Once, in the palace once, once 'neath the dome
O' the high cathedral,—the Estates took oath
After this fashion . . . “Witness Christ! we both
Swear, on the Gospels Four, to guard the throne
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Irene, and swear also, bearing leal
Allegiance to her person, for her weal
And in her service, ever to oppose
Our lives against the persons of her foes.”
This on the wood of the True Cross they swore.
And their recorded oath, with many more,
Among the relics of the Saintly Dead,
On the main altar was deposited
In St. Sophia.
Four Patricians, proud
So to be seen of the applausive crowd,
Held in their hands the golden reins of four
White horses, pacing in high pomp before
Her festive chariot, when Irene pass'd
Along the loud streets, greeted by the vast
Vociferation of a land's applause.
X.
To all the Roman world she set wise laws.Men praised her wisdom. Wealth was hers immense.
Men praised her splendour and munificence.
Alms to the poor her hand distributed.
Men praised her bounty. High she held her head
Amid the tempests of a turbulent time.
Men praised her courage. Cruelty and crime
She scourged with scorpions. Men her justice praised.
Gifts to the Church she gave, and altars raised.
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Treaties proposed and embassies addrest
To Charlemagne. She in the East maintain'd
On equal terms alliance undisdain'd
With great Haroun Alraschid. “For,” said she,
“We understand each other's worth, We Three.”
The world, when speaking of her, said “The Great.”
XI.
At last her fortune changed.For 'twas her fate
To win a worthier title. So, one night,
The eunuchs of her palace,—slaves whose spite
Her power had scorn'd,—conspiring its downfall,
Pluck'd the throne from her: seized her treasures all:
And drave her forth from power and wealth, to be
An exile and a pauper.
Meekly she
Surrender'd what she had so proudly worn,
Rome's Purple. And, retiring from men's scorn
To Mitylene, lived there, lone and poor:
A careworn woman at a cottage door
Spinning for bread.
The world was sad to see
What it had done, then. Men remorsefully
Remember'd, not her many evil deeds,
But her few good ones. For who counts the weeds
In any garden where, tho' desolate,
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So bitter borne so blameless of complaint,
The world, when speaking of her said “The Saint.”
XII.
And after all these things, at the late endOf a long life, she died.
XIII.
Then Priests to sendPilgrims to deck her tomb made haste. They came
Bare-footed, chanting hymns unto her name,
And made a noise of praise above her bones,
Which waked her spirit in the grave.
XIV.
Old tonesOf some glad tune, first heard long years ago,
When to their music life went gladly too,
If heard once more when life, after long years,
Goes not at all, but rests, in him that hears
Awaken thus the wild unwonted spasm
Of life's long-buried old enthusiasm.
Earth under earth, the earthly instinct, raised
By earthly praises in the corpse thus praised,
Return'd to life.
She rose i' the tomb, and said
“Open! and let me forth. I am not dead.
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My joy thereat assurance that I live.”
And the tomb answer'd, in its own dumb way,
“I neither know the living, nor obey
Their voice.”
The pious pilgrims above ground,
Their rites perform'd, departing now,—the sound
Of human praise about that tomb wax'd faint,
Then silent.
“Ay,” she mused, “a Saint? . . a Saint
Should seek, not men, but God.” She stood before
The creviced hinge of the tomb's granite door
And struck it with dead hands, and said again
“Door of the Tomb, since I have done with men,
Show me the way to God.”
The sullen door
Answer'd, “I am the Door o' the Tomb. No more.
Find thou the way.”
XV.
Even then, an awful light,Not of this world, thro' chink and crevice (bright
With brightness as of burning fire that turns
Whatever thing the burning of it burns
Into its sifted elemental worth:
Substance to spirit, ashes unto earth)
Smote all the inner darkness where she stood.
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XVI.
Whereby she saw, outstretch'd upon the roodThe Image of the Christ (by Human Faith
Placed there in token of life's trust in death),
And on her soul the sudden memory came
Like hope . . . “I am The Way!”
Who said the same
Was There i' the Tomb.
To Whom she, kneeling, said
“Teach me, O Christ (if I, indeed, be dead)
The way . . . Thou seest . . . .”
A Voice replied “To Me,
Woman, give back mine eyes that I may see!”
She dared not answer: dared not gaze upon
The Face Above.
XVII.
That moment's light was goneEven as it came. Darkness return'd.
The rest,
Hid in that darkness, never shall be guess'd.
END OF BOOK III.
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