University of Virginia Library

Hear now the Words that Wisdom spake to me.
‘Before his Works of Old, thus ere the earths,
And heavens, ere the hills, and skies, and floods,
In the Beginning of his Mystery,
I Wisdom dwell with him, and with his Word,
Whenas his Law gives Order to the Heavens,
And his Commandment binds the Waters in,
And his Decree establishes the Earths,
Rejoicing in the Fountain of all Love,
Who still becomes Intelligence, and Life,
In Angels, Man, and creatures still express.

Nor Earth to me is not, nor void of Man,
Its habitable parts unpopulous.
But with the Sons of Men I still delight,
Partaking my Divinity with them,
Even to self-utterance.’ Wisdom, while Man speaks,
Prompts the pleased mind, and Beauty charms the soul—
Whence Eden, with her smile irradiate, blooms
A Paradise of joy; the common earth
Blossoms into a Garden sanctified,
Whose streams are nectar, whereat Angels drink,
Ornate with Trees whose fruit is food for gods—
Charms all too much. In her Immortal Form,
Man seeks Eternal Substance; and desire,
Creative in subsistent Loveliness,
Fruition finds. So twain becomes of One,
And Male, and Female rule the World of Life,
The Image that of Love; of Wisdom this.

One Being Woman, communed with by Man,
High Knowledge gaining, and, therewith, desire
To contemplate the Beautiful that should
Reflect herself, the Beauty in all Forms—
Thereto by the Atoning Cherub led,
The radiant Lucifer, thence Satan called,
Whose heart by his own brightness now seduced,
To make division in the works of God,
Would with his own ambition prompt the Eve,
So name the Woman, of all women type.

Fresh from the feast of Knowledge, and of Death,
With more than nectar, or with food divine,
Filled, elevate, sublimed, enrapt, inspired,
To full voluptuous joy; Eve aimed at Heaven,
Nor less than Wisdom's self, the Bride of God,
Felt in her own esteem—spiritual pride,
Wherewith the soul reels drunken in excess;
And in her beauty thus, serene, severe,
With loveliest invitation, dalliance soft,
Wooes to the banquet rare her yielding lord.
Spell-bound by her desire—her will made his—
His life within her lap dissolves away,
She dying in his arms; from which sweet death
Both rise again, she teeming with new life,
Conceived in sin, but born to be redeemed.

Hence Many of the Twain. Hence All the Forms,
In Men, and Women, of the Wise, and Fair—
Emblem of very man, not very man,
Emblem of woman, not true woman, each;
Such as their everlasting archetypes,
The Word, and Wisdom that with God abide.

Distinction first, then Separation comes,
But not Expulsion; till the Cherub dares
To lure the loving Will to outward act
Of Knowledge mixed for pure, both good, and ill.
Distant from Paradise, two Sexes then,
Of earthly generatours earthly heirs,
Sad exiles to a world that travails still,
By Labour win a Garden from the Wild,
And die—to know, what else can not be known.

No Image, hence, of Love is fallen Man,
But Symbol mere of Wisdom, partial sign;
And Woman but of Beauty the mere type,
Who should have been of Wisdom Image fair.
Yet Hope survives, though Innocence depart,
And Faith, and Love shall triumph over Death.
The Soul consumes the Sin wherein it burns,
With glory crowning, and transfiguring
The house of Death into Life's elements,
Making it radiant ere invisible,
Hallowed, and hallowing. Transgression thus
Preludes Salvation, which of twain makes one,
In dissolution but renewal finds.

Befits, in truth, such mysteries be veiled—
For Shame would Nature's nakedness defend,
And Grace in pity clothes the shrinking soul.
Better than words the hallowed symbols suit,
Which our revered progenitor himself
Bade to be pictured on his altar-tomb.
Lo, the Elohim breathe into the man,
Created of the dust, the breath of lives,
Whence he of clay becomes a living soul.

I, Wisdom, give instruction unto Men,
For I am Understanding, and with me
Is Prudence, Wealth, and Power from everlasting;
The Word of God the Genitor of all,
Through Him in the Beginning filiate;
Father of Spirits, Love Ineffable,
The Saviour, the Redeemer, evermore.
—With the First-Born, the Man his Mother hailed
As Him the Hope of Ages yet to come,
I communed from his birth; but Labour made
My lessons hard, whereby would Cain deserve
What else I proffered freely. Wroth he grew,
Full of the rage to know, and wish to merit;
Yea, and in all that he would still deserve,
And still would know, the Fury recognised,
That appetite of thirst, and hunger keen
Kept in his soul alive. Thus outwardly
Possessed, as still within; companions fierce,
Shapes of strange anger, Terrours without name,
Him from me wooed, and carried thorough realms
Of Death, and Hades; in whose murmurs wild
He learned the lore of War, and 'gan rejoice
In battle for the love of victory—
Debating, first, in words what, in the end,
Yields but to the arbitrament of blows,
Charged with the death of either combatant.
So Cain his brother slew, disputing first
The creed that both had heard from infancy;
Hence, 'twixt their rival altars, Abel fell.’

I write what ye do know. My words are truth,
Whereof, O fathers, witnesses are ye.
Adam, our Father, gave me in command
To gather, as the youngest of them all,
The patriarchs together, that they might
Be present at the death of the First Man,
To whom the Spirit had his end foretold.
Ye came, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel,
And Jared; and, with me, and with my son,
Methuselah, around the couch of age,
In grave solicitude, and silent awe,
His words attended, while he thus began.

‘Our God is good, Jehovah—God of gods—
Our dwelling-place before the mountains were,
Heaven's canopy was spread, or ocean flowed.
In his own likeness, God created Man,
And placed him in a happy Paradise,
And wedded him to Woman. On the law
Of God we meditated with delight;
To covet not, even knowledge, though divine.
His law was love, obedience loving him;
Love strong in hope, and fortified by faith:
And doubt was not until was tempted Eve,
To effort vain, of knowledge without power.
Then was revealed the Love we dared suspect.
—Evening came on: On the refreshing breeze
Walked great Jehovah's Voice—the Merciful—
And question done, and judgement passed, resumed
Such condescension, that I hailed aloud
Eve, Mother of all Living; so decreed,
To manifest the perfect Man divine.
—‘Why doubtedst thou Our love, who gave thee life?
Why fearedst that They from thee should knowledge hide,
Who made thee in their image, nor in this
Dissimilar? We would that thou shouldst know
Thy strength, but he thy weakness who seduced.
Election made, necessity begins.
Go—win by labour what free grace had given:
Aim to be gods; and be such but in aim:
So lose the end in the endeavour, till
Toil be the whole, and nothing the reward.
Earth shall ask sweat enough, and nature veil
Herself to much enquiry . . oft to all.
Such is the curse. Yet shall salvation be
Wrought, though with trembling, out. A race shall rise,
The kings, and priests of men, who shall uphold
Faith, or for good, or evil, and attain
Knowledge, or power; and human fears, and hopes
Shall hang on mortal wills: and these shall mount
Exalted to celestial seats, and earth
Adore them—heroes, demigods, and gods:
Till One shall come, who from their hands shall wrest
Their sceptres, shall dethrone them from their skies.
Meantime must God, and Man be twain, till He
Shall reunite:—In sign whereof, observe
What now I do, and oft the rite perform.’
—Thus saying; straight he of earth an altar piled,
And on it laid an holocaust, and slew
The anointed beasts, as I do now, and said,
‘Lo, Adam, this is Death.’ We saw—were thrilled—
‘Fear not, for this shall your last refuge be
From sorrow . . here behold the gate of Heaven.
And now the Fire of heaven that ye will need,
Thus willingly I render to your use—
The life that ye have shed, Heaven shall accept
And reunite unto its fount above—
And thus ye are atoned. In proof whereof,
Be clothed ye with these sacrificial skins,
Cover from shame, and armour for defence
'Gainst elemental nature, waked to strife
By your transgression. Thus by wisdom live—
And art and patience, faith and fortitude,
Obstruction shall subdue, or if not, death.’
—The while he spake, the flame descended there,
And quaffed the blood; and o'er our limbs he spread
The skins from off the holocaust; as now,
The flame descends upon our sacrifice,
And ‘I invest thee, Seth, with this same skin,
And consecrate thee Patriarch, and Priest.’

And while Seth knelt, as, prescient of his death,
Adam on him the hallowed raiment put,
He said: ‘This done, the Merciful pursued:
‘But now ye have become like us, to know
Both good, and ill, and much ambition shewn,
And less submission; ye may deem to thwart
The doom of death, and, plucking from the Tree
Of Lives, become immortal in your sin,
And earn eternal sorrow. Hence it needs
The way be barred, that Life be not outlived,
And Paradise become unparadised.
Therefore, without its walls, I do return
With you unto the Place whence thee I brought,
O Adam; there to till the ground wherefrom
I took thee.’ So he drave us forth, and left,
East of the garden, there his Cherubim,
Whereon he rode in living majesty,
To frustrate all return, until the hour
When death sets free the soul, and that great time
When for the world atonement shall be made.
—My hour is come. Farewell. Restore to earth
Earth's perishable dust.’

So Adam died.
—Six days were past in sorrow. These elapsed,
The race of Adam at his obsequies
Assembled. Seth, the Patriarch, and the Priest,
Amidst the multitudes, where now I stand,
In venerable dignity, prepared
The sacrifice of burial. In cold earth
The body of our father he entombed;
Saying, ‘As thus the chamber of the grave
Within, his mortal frame reposes here,
Thus in the bowers of Paradise his soul,
In visionary slumber, findeth peace,
Till their re-union in the end of time.’

Tears then were shed; a loud lament arose
From thousands, and from thousands. ‘And is this
The hope of man? Are all his days of toil
Decreed to this reward? Hath Adam died,
Even like the holocaust we sacrificed?
Perishes man as perishes the worm,
And, mingling with the dust, is seen no more?’

Loud sobs were heard, and then the clamour ceased;
At length, a Stranger from the Land of Naid
Rose in the midst . . and, asking with his hand
Attention, thus began: ‘Such are the hopes
Of miserable man. Knew ye not Death
Before? I knew him, King of Terrours, ere
Your generation was; for I beheld
Young Abel die, whose blood cried from the ground.’

Hereat was raised the question, like a shout—
‘Cain? art thou Cain?’ . . He answered, ‘I am Cain:’
And, taking off his iron crown, exclaimed—
‘Behold the sign upon my writhen brow,
Branded by God, devoted Fratricide,
First witness of man's death, first murtherer.
I rose against him in my wrath, for he,
Who shed blood of the firstlings of his flock,
Was pleasing to his Maker; while I—I—
Who offered of the produce of my toil,
Was hateful in his sight. I tilled the earth;
I fattened it with sweat, and watered it
With tears, . . for food, . . all to prolong this life,
This miserable life, whose end ye see.
He ate the food who earned not; but his days
Passed idly, contemplating with delight
The soil accursed, whose stubbornness would yield
Only to labour—painful, and severe.—
Alas, my lovely brother. I esteemed
Thy life but vanity . . and what is mine?
Vanity only more laborious, cursed.
A curse—a curse—a curse is on the earth,
And death within its bosom, night, and hell,
Populous hell, and night depopulate.’

Then from the ground rose Eve; where, weeping, she
Had sate, and ran to clasp her long-lost son—
Spurned rudely.—‘Cain,’ she cried, ‘my first-born son:
A happy mother I, when thou wert born:
When I to Adam said, that I had got
The man Jehovah.’—

‘I the first-born man—
Why by another are these rites performed?
Behold, a king am I. Lo, I am crowned.
The diadem conceals a branded brow—
Ye have no kings among you, . . look on me; . .
The blood I shed did consecrate me such;
Fearful my name, and sacred made my life.
Thou art Sin's mother—Death was my red son,
Who, like an harvest man asweat with toil,
Perspires all gore, dissolved in bloody dews—
Anon, he makes huge havoc with the race,
Long-time preserved, of Adam, the Unborn,
Yet dead. And soon his father shall he slay,
And I will bid him hail, and be no more.’

Then spake the youngest of the fathers there,
Enoch: . . ‘Why are ye silent, sons of God?
Ye fathers of the family of men?
Man was by God created, and was found
Of him, by nature ignorant, and wild,
Spread on the ground whence he had taken him:
Then did he lead him by the hand into
A Paradise of pleasure, and contract
With him a gracious covenant, that he
Might soar by wisdom, on the wings of faith,
To blessèd life, to immortality,
From carnal lusts abstaining; and appoint
A righteous law to manifest his sin,
If he transgressed. Then did he drive him forth,
To win by labour what the soul, absorbed
In sensible indulgence, indolent,
Left unattempted in a state of ease.
And know ye not, prophetic Adam taught,
Death is not final, but transition mere
To an immortal state for weal, or woe.
And while we speak, his spirit hovers near,
And weeps for pity at this blasphemy.’

Then Cain laughed loud. ‘His spirit, even now
Ye said, had sped to Paradise—'tis here,
'Tis there—or any where; but where it is,
Ye know not, . . ay, or that it is.’ Then tears
Channelled his rugged cheeks. ‘How oft have I,
In the lone visions of the night, with loud
And earnest prayers, and groanings from the soul,
Called upon Abel to appear to me,
And soothe my spirit with his presence once,
In sign of pardon, or that I had not
Extinguished all his being. He heard not
My supplication; had he heard, he would
Have come, . . for he was ever gentle. No—
There is no hope for man. But on the grave,
The gate of hell, sits, like a fiend, Despair.’

And saying thus, he vanished; and the rest
Departed sad, a mournful company.

Returning to the realm o'er which he ruled,
Cain, the man-slayer, the death-angel slew;
By touch ethereal slain, and not by man.