The Descent into Hell :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Descent into Hell

Second Edition, Revised and Re-arranged, with an Analysis and Notes: To which are added, Uriel, a Fragment and Three Odes. By John A. Heraud

Heraud, John A. (1799-1887)

THE DESCENT INTO HELL

I. PROLOGUE.

PART THE FIRST.

II.

IV.

VI.

III.

IV.

XI.

XII.

XII. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVI. THE SOMETIME DISOBEDIENT.

VI.

PART THE SIXTH.

XVII.

XVII. THE HOLY OF HOLIES.

XVIII.

XVIII. NOAH.

XIX.

XIX. THE FATHER OF THE FAITHFUL.

XX.

VII.

II.

II. THE HOST OF HEAVEN.

ODES.

KLOPSTOCK'S “DER FRÜHLINGSFEYER;”

THE AUTUMNAL BENEDICTION;

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I. PART THE FIRST.

THE CAPTIVITY.

“The whole Creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.” Romans viii. 22, 23.

II. THE MOUNTAIN OF SETH.

Oh! for the weeping verse of Jeremy,
The Prophet of the Lord!—For Zion mourn,
A childless Widow in captivity!

Death in her palaces hath made sojourn,
For all Creation with her suffering God
Suffered. So Hades from his secret bourn,

And Earth phantasmal from her gross abode,
With Visions of the Crucified, ere long
Transpierced and buried, on the Air forth rode,

Above her Temples, uttering doleful Song
Unto the World of Spirits. There dwelt Fear,
Dwelt in the Land of Hope, the Elect among,

There Darkness dwelt in Light's eternal sphere,
And Hell and Satan, speeding their account,
Over the Holy City, hovered near.

—Westward whereof upon the mystick Mount
Of Seth, the Patriarchs, as before the Flood,
Hold solemn Converse by the living Fount,

That with their numbers of divinest mood
Mingles its liquid murmurs. Lo, with them
Stands Moses, Shepherd meek, and Warrior good.

His hand is on his harp, harmonious gem,
And his voice swells upon the buoyant air
That mantles purple round Jerusalem.

—“Thee, first I sing, ere generations were,
And after; thee, paternal dwelling-place,
Of universal Being. We repair

O Father! to the fountain of thy grace,
And are renewed. Thou art our God for ever,
Pure keystone of Creation—bourn and base!

Arrows are we in thine eternal quiver,
With whom thou conquerest. O tarry not,
Hasten to save thy Saints, oh, hasten to deliver!”

—At once up from that multitudinous spot,
Myriads of voices, as one voice, aloud
Anthem the Song, a choral monoglot.

Glorious they stand, involved like cloud in cloud,
Hovering above the Mountain of the Even,
Gorgeously painting what their shadows shroud,

Themselves lit with the sun, and dyed in heaven!
Midway on Hermon stands the Midianite;
Above, enthroned in orbs of twelve and seven,

The Patriarchal race on Ardis' height
Crown the hill's crest, a lively diadem,
Majestically tall, magnificently bright.

Near him the Founders of Jerusalem,
Earthly Jerusalem, repose serene;
And of her glory many a lesser gem—

Poet and Sage, each interval between,
Who loved and taught the truth, of every land,
Fill up in order, and complete the scene;

A royal priesthood, an heroick band.
—Then Israel's Singer made his Song excel,
He raised his voice, and took his harp in hand.

—“Behold how good it is, that Brethren dwell
In unity together. Sweet it is
As the rich Unguent that o'er Aaron fell

From head to beard, and even deigned to kiss
His garment-skirts. 'Tis precious as the Dew
Distilled on Hermon in fine essences.

Yea, it refreshes Zion's mountains too;
For there the Blessing of Eternal Life
The Lord our God shall evermore renew.”

—The Song of Peace ascends on high, where rife
The living waters well from out the Throne;
The Song of Peace their only arm of strife,

Whereby they conquer now, though like a zone
The Northern Powers their City gates have girt,
And Death hath stricken the Anointed One.—

—“For Peace is of the Soul. Force cannot hurt
Where virtue is.” Thus he, who sang erewhile
Of Fortitude even Jove could not subvert,

Sings present here. “Nor Violence nor Guile
Can awe the Soul well-centred. Lo, He comes
Who shall release Prometheus, and I smile—

The Poet who his soul in Song consumes,
That none will hear—the Sage who pleads in vain
To human conscience of eternal dooms,

The Prophets, and all Martyrs ever slain,
From Abel's blood to that more precious still;—
Their's is the Rock, the Vulture and the Chain.

Yet are they Cities set upon a hill,
Though the tumultuous world assail them sore—
Yet their high destinies shall they fulfil.

If Pain and Sorrow lap their heart's best gore,
By its own living power it is renewed—
And the World's Tyrant can exact no more.

This is the Mystery, the eternal Feud,
The Secret that perplexed the Power of Air;
Wisdom, Art, Patience, Faith and Fortitude.

The God—the God descends into the sphere
Of Darkness, to deliver whom no storm
Might overcome, nor torment make despair!”

—The strain, by him whose infant lips were warm
With Truth, breathed in the murmur of the Bees,
Heaven-visited, and made to gods' conform,

Continued, charms with older verities—
“Not into Darkness went the Friends of Man,
Not into Darkness comes our Hercules!

We spake but as we saw. Clouds o'er the van
Of Life impended, Clouds involved the rear,
If bright the space between, how brief its span!—

How brief its span, yet thronged with Hope and Fear—
Possession never—and if good not great,
If great not good—a parted hemisphere,

Languishing for Completion; where men fret
After their lost integrity, but hate
To find in others what themselves want yet.

So is the soul perplexed by its false state!
Hence when the Perfect and the Just appeared,
Him they pursued to death, inveterate.”

—These words were with a grateful welcome heard
By him, the unskilful Shepherds who reproved
In ancient Greece, and perished though revered:

He interposes now.—“But Heaven-beloved
Are they, and loving Heaven, and what they love
Make to their souls, and are by Heaven commoved,

Who suffer for Truth's sake. They stand above
The clouds of Fate, in the serene pure air
Of Innocence, and hover like the Dove

O'er Chaos, brooding on confusion there
To turn to shape; beholding in all things
Order reflected from the happy seer.

And aspirations have they, and far wings
To bear them on their visionary flight,
And faith in bodiless imaginings.

They look beyond the bounds of Death and Night,
And interpenetrate the loving orbs
Of living and transparent chrysolite.

For Heaven's not bound to place; and Mind absorbs
All modes into its mood; all joy it makes,
And sorrow and pain high Conscience blunts or barbs.”

—This heard the Ascrean sage; and he awakes
His rich old musick, now refined and pure
Even as the muses' own,..for he partakes

Their immortality. With them, besure,
He sings the law of liberty, whereby
The universal heavens for aye endure;

And ever to their hymnings far and high,
The dusky Earth remurmurs musical—
Mysterious echoes, sweet yet shadowy.

Him the Nine taught their secrets great and small,
Of old. How lovely in the stilly night
Their Voice he heard, and grew prophetical—

A shepherd lad, they glanced upon his sight,
And to his hand the laurel-branch conveyed,
And robed his Soul in radiance of their light.

—“We turned our backs upon the Sun, and made
The Shadow that we saw, of light unable—
But now by no delusion are betrayed.

Of Will abysmal—Order firm and stable—
The Generations of the Heavens and Earth
Are born in Light, with Love unfathomable.

Regenerate, we know from whence our birth;
Even of thy Will a glorious emanation,
And with thy Word thy Spirit goeth forth.

From Generation unto Generation,
Thou art our Refuge, Being of our being;
Father of Spirits!—hasten thy Salvation!”

—Now he whom the All-knowing All-decreeing
Named, by his prophet, Zion to rebuild,
Soared to the heaven of song, with heaven agreeing,

Too wonderful for men in wisdom skilled,
Strange, as the eagle's secret way in air,
To ears of earth, and yet on earth fulfilled.

—“What was thy Name of old? thy dwelling where?
When in the Solitude of Being, Thou
Remainedst in thyself. Who saw thee there?

A boundless Ocean without ebb or flow;
There no brave Ship rides buoyant to debel,
Or breasts the billows with a peaceful prow;

No Galley, on its bosom's noiseless swell,
Plies its lithe oars, in that profound abyss,
Lonely—pacifick—vast—unvoyageable!

Great Gulf of Being, hiding all that is;
Thy works obscure thee, as a shadow doth,
And the Sun's glory is a Veil on this.

Thou sleepest not, nor art aweary; loth
Nor idle. Both Eternity and Time
Come forth from thee, of thee irradiate both;

Flung from thy Centre in expanse sublime,
One fixed—one flowing—both coincident,
Making one harmony, one perfect chime.

As the Sun's rays are in the Ether blent,
Unmoved; uncomprehended, in the Floods:
So dwells the Eternal in Time's element.

So bides the First in the Beginning; broods
O'er all the Interspace, and in the End
The Last endures, Supreme of men and gods!

To thee what shall be likened? comprehend
Thee who? Thou workst, and who shall let? All things,
Made for thy glory, to thy glory tend.

Thou madest the Mornings and the Evenings;
As Light and Darkness, Peace and Evil be;
Thy works they are though strange; all Sufferings,

Foreign and banished to afar from thee,
They are thy doing—Author thou of all,
And Hell and Death accomplish thy decree.”

—Hear ye, whose souls no fleshly lusts enthrall;
The eagle Song yet soars its hidden way,
And wantons in the Sun, nor fears a fall;

Though, like the voice of many waters, they
Enlarge the strain, through all the Congregations
Of universal Man, and thus conclude the lay—

—“Thou, even thou, hast called all generations
From the Beginning, and declared the same
Before the Ancient Time, that their creations

May know that thou art God. Thou saidst, I am!
And the Word answered—Father! yea, thou art,
And I in thee. All Creatures of all Name

Their being have in thee, live in thy heart,
And move but in its pulses. Nature yearns
To rid her imperfections,..now apart

Abiding,..and to be with thee; discerns
And feels her wants, and evermore desires
Through all the scales of Being; and returns

By a perpetual process; and aspires
By an eternal strife, and agony
Eternal,—ever baffled; and ne'er tires

Of her great anguish, for delivery
From travail groaning, with the appetence
For Being which alone is found in thee!

Arm of the Lord! awake; and recompense,
And from the Captive take corruption off,
And let the year of Liberty commence.

Arm of the Lord! awake; unweave the woof
Of controversy, make the Truth appear,
And bring the Adversary to the proof;

Come to the Valley of Decision!—hear,
And reconcile the contraries of strife;
Come, Mediator! come, Deliverer!

Bestower and Restorer of all Life!”
—The Son of Sirach thus sums up the Song:
“The Memory of famous men is rife,

And redolent through ages late and long—
The Lord by them hath wrought great glory, through
His power from the beginning, men among.

Such as bear rule in realms, and bravely do,
Are wise in council, sure in prophecy;
The eloquent, the active, and the true.

The skilled in musick, and the subtlety
Of numerous verse: rich men and graced with mind,
Abiding in their dwellings peaceably.

The Glory of their times, they leave behind
A honourable name; their righteousness
Shall never be forgotten by their kind.

Their Children shall continue, and possess
A heritage for aye, and dwell in peace;
Dying, they live: so Wisdom flourishes.

For as the herald Star is each of these,
Seen 'midst a cloud in morn's prophetick hour;
And as the Moon at full is his increase;

As the Sun shining from his highest tower
Upon the Temple of his God and King;
And as the Bow between the sun and shower;

And as the Flower of Roses in the Spring,
The Lilies by the Streams; the Branches free
Of Frankincense in summer foliaging;

A Cedar amidst Palms; an Olive-tree
Budding forth fruit; and as a Cypress rare
That groweth to the clouds..Even such is He.

Oh! Truth abideth with him every where;
And lovely is her brow, albeit too bright
For earthly eye, she veil her aspect fair,

—Lest bold vain men be blasted with its light,—
Beneath a diverse visage, now austere
Now lovely, suited to the gazer's sight.

He who upon her naked face might bear
To look, would know her heavenly and divine,
And Deity itself in her revere—

Thy Soul, oh Man! is her especial shrine;
There find her, thou unto thyself shalt wake,
And to thy God; for Heaven is her's and thine:

Seek her in youth, nor yet in age forsake.”

III. ETERNAL GENERATION.

Such was their talk in Paradise. Now wake
A three-fold Chorus their loud harmonies,
And the three Worlds in all their echoes quake.

I.1.

Man breaks Death's prison at his birth, and lies
At mercy of his nurse in infancy,
And in his youth of all propensities,

Of indiscretion in maturity,
Or worse discretion, weakness in his age;
Then to Death's prison straight returneth he—

Or brave or beautiful, or learned or sage—
Then teems with births whose spawn enriches earth,
Whence food for life in each successive stage.

—And so, in progress of decay and birth,
The possibility of life proceeds,
Corruption—Generation—but no Dearth.

—And so revolve the heavens, wherein man reads
Philosophy and Science, written fair,
As in a book, to regulate his deeds.

The Day dies in the west, and Night is there—
'Tis born again—and Night dies in her turn—
And the Stars perish, glorious as they were.

—Appearance all! Men, ye have much to learn!
The stars are stedfast, and the sun endures;
He shineth still—but ye do not discern.

Death is not. Life is all, and what obscures?
Death is Life's shadow, and the Hours its span,
Ye are their measure, and its Maker yours!

I.2.

Thy Generation when and how began,
Who shall declare? Thou Word Omnipotent!
In whom the expression of the Eternal Plan,

Alone, hath effable accomplishment;
Thyself ineffable, thy written Name
Not known on Earth, for Heaven too excellent!

Or ere the Heavens and Earths, or ere the frame
Of the mysterious universe was cast,
Ere Space and Time had measure and an aim,

Thou,..Co-eternal with the Father,..wast,
And art, and aye shall be—when Time and Space,
And Earth and Heaven, shall perish and have past.

II.1.

Only-Begotten, full of Truth and Grace!
Thou saidst—“Let Angels be!”—And Angels were,
And hadst provided them a dwelling-place.

—Awaked to gaze each winged wanderer,
First on the glories of the ethereal sky,
Then on his radiant brethren of the sphere,

And aye had stood transfixed amazedly,
Had not the Spirit divine infused the sense
Into their apprehensions audibly,

Intelligence implied Intelligence,
And Power and Being could proceed alone
From absolute Being and Omnipotence.

The lucid Truth, flashed from the Eternal Throne,
Spread quick, as o'er the steely battle-field
The lightning goeth propagating on,

Glancing from helm to helm, from shield to shield—
They tried their wings, and felt them made to soar,
Then, borne aloft, beheld their God revealed.

His Glory now they worship and adore,
Beatitude receiving from his sight,
And so in song their happy hearts outpour;

Thick as the stars harmoniously bright,
They break forth into singing as they shine,
In radiant ranks, the progeny of light.

II.2.

There Michael shone, conspicuous and divine,
Crowned with pure gold and amaranthine sheen;
His locks a wreath of beams did well entwine.

There Raphael smiled with graceful look serene,
And Gabriel towered in majesty revered,
And Uriel as the Eye of God was seen.

There also among the Blest his front he reared,
Whose name, since blotted from the Books of Life,
In holy heaven is now no longer heard;

But then unfallen, dwelling, free from strife,
In Holiness and Beauty,..types of those
Whose spring is in the Eternal Essence rife.

III.1.

There is the fount of Wisdom! thence it flows;
There the First Good and the First Fair abide,
Unseen by angels, in profound repose.

Yet they in Heaven are manifested wide,
And from Eternity together dwelt,
Triune, blest Sisters, lovingly allied;

And by the Minds of Power on Earth are felt,
And known in Sun, Moon, Stars, and shadowy Bow,
Mountain and Vale, and Ocean's golden belt.

High as the eagle's soar, far as morn's glow;
At all times present, and in every place;
First—Last; One, yet all number, and aye now:

Thou art—before all time, beyond all space,
Above all heights; lower than all depths, in Hell;—
Glorious in Heaven, on Earth how full of grace!

All light and life flow from thee, as a well:
Thou spreadst the curtain of the firmament,
To make thy majesty endurable.

Thou dwellest in the Sky as in a tent;
The beams of thy high chambers in the Deep
Are laid—and under Earth the Floods are bent.

Thou badest them her keystone overleap,
And cover her as with a monstrous weed:
They stood above the hills, a massy heap!

III.2.

At thy rebuke they fled with instant heed,
And hasted, from the thunder of thy voice,
Away. Up by the mountains, lo, they speed;

Down by the valleys; with a rushing noise,
To their appointed region and wide home.
Therein the huge Leviathans rejoice:

And, like to them, there go the Ships; the foam
Yields to their queenly beauty, as they tread
The labouring surge, dividing as they come,

Then straight embracing with the love of dread;
Or homage to Diviner Majesty;
Of Presence puissant admonished.

IV.1.

To Him reply the Lightnings—Here are we;
The Snow, the Hail, the Rain, do call him Sire;
And the Dew saith—Thou hast begotten me.

Frost by his breath is given, and coals of Fire
Are kindled in his wrath. The heavens were bowed,
And he came down, pavilioned in his ire;

“On Cherubim and Seraphim he rode
Most royally, and on the” expanded “wings
Of mighty winds came flying all abroad.”

He touched the Cities and they smoked, like things
Of smouldering conflagration. Ere man's eye
Regained its vision, or his shudderings

Subsided; lo, the flame had rolled from high
Over them like a furnace;—citadels,
And their indwellers. Roared the liquid sky,

Dissolved into a sulphur flood, like hell's,
In stormy undulation, wild and deep;
And o'er th' appalling chasm the void calm dwells;

A smoking desart, and a soldered heap;
An undigested wreck, an ashy waste;
Field of the rank bitumen none may reap,

Plants bearing fruit of cinder none may taste,
And that salt monument of Unbelief,
Stanced on the blasted site, and not misplaced.

IV.2.

Eternal and Almighty—Best and Chief!
Jehovah! the Omnifick! the clouds are
Thy chariot—winds thy steeds. The bounteous Sheaf

Of Harvest is thy gift. Enthroned afar,
Spirits thine Angels, and thy Ministers
Thou makest flames of fire. 'Twas thou didst bar

The sea as if with doors. The universe
Of creatures and of things exists in thee;
And all good gifts are thine—to Man who errs,

The Seraph that adores, the Beast whose knee
Unto the rising of the Sun is bowed:
Pervading yet remote Divinity,

Whose Glory dwells in Column and in Cloud.

Æschylus.

Plato.

Socrates.

Hesiod.

Cyrus.

This Chorus is a regular Ode, consisting of four Strophes and four Epodes, as marked.