The Judgement of the Flood :: :: University of Virginia Library

So witnessed Samiasa. But not now
The desart-doom opprest him, to the wild
Though he returned. Within the solitude,
He sate him calmly down: for he had heard
The Word of God, from Enoch's scripture read,
And testimony to his Maker borne.
Seemed the doomed season was accomplished now,
And a man's heart to him again was given;
Still human consciousness with him remained.
A miracle it was—by miracle
His reason seemed preserved for wisest ends.
Fallen on his knees, he wept his gratitude
To Him in heaven—he wept his penitence;
All night he wept, and all the morrow-morn,
And so was found of Palal. Nor was cold
The Sophist heart, when he remarked the change,
That had brought home, as earnest of its stay,
The mind of Samiasa, and sustained.
Much they rejoiced together. Palal, then,
Admonished thus the King,

‘Since it is so;
Meet is it thou appear as man with man,
And doff these garments of the wilderness,
And go forth to the City.’

And so it was:
For soon the Sophist fit provision made
For his restored Companion; soon his locks
Of their exuberance were well excised,

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And his wild beard in civil measure flowed.
His limbs he bathed, and smoothed his shaggy brows,
And by ablution on his form so wrought,
That none might recognize him, though beheld
But yesterday. And thus his mood was pleased,
That would in secret walk, a stranger there,
Where once he King had been.

And now he stood
Beside the Temple of the Pyramis;
A ruin shunned by superstition, since
That memorable eve, when he o'erthrew,
With might insane, the Idol once adored;
Thence desecrated deemed, and, as accursed,
By all deserted. All? No: One there was,
Still faithful to that work of wonderous art;
Barkayal. At the temple's foot again,
There Samiasa found him, now as then.
Again he scaled, with his ambitious eye,
The punctual summit of the ascending spire,
Till it distinguished through the crystal tube,
With exquisite distinction, the nice point
That tapered into air, like air itself.
And still his look was melancholy, bent
To earth, dejected; when returned from that
Sufficing, soul-dissatisfying theme.
Awhile on the transcendent architect
Gazed Samiasa; then to Palal cried:

—‘Behold my gorgeous temple. Seest thou not
The builder of the comprehensive fane,
For veneration multitudinous
Decreed? Proud of his handy-work is he,
And feels therein exalted, eternized:
I, to whose pride contributed his art,
Humbled alone, see, in its loftiness,
What casts me into shade, shame, and contempt;

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And, in its durability and strength,
Odious comparison, which makes me seem
But as an insect most ephemeral,
That buzzes in the noon around some oak,
And dies ere sunset, living, in good sooth,
A sunny life, but brief; and, with much stir,
Attracting little notice, and less fame.
—How to the fading point his eyesight strains:
Think ye, that there whereto it aches, 'tis fixed?
No—through the distance-abrogating lens;
By which the delicate diffusive touch,
Of vision exquisite, to the remote,
And punctual is applied; within the deep
Of air expatiateth he, and finds
Space for free speculation: and, be sure,
That ever and anon his fancy rears
Some magic structure on the baseless wind;
And, in the combinations of the clouds,
Orders of architecture new conceives,
And hopes, ere long, to raise the like on earth.
Hence, in imagination's mere excess,
All he hath done as nothing worth he scorns,
Measured with what he yet hath power to do;
Or might have done, but for dull circumstance,
That thralled the outgoings of the plastic soul.
And, of a truth, within the Spirit of Man
Abides an instinct for the infinite.
Whatever from without the mind imbibes
Of substance, or of quality sublime,
Or beautiful, capricious accident,
Or attribute immutable; howe'er
By fancy realized to intellect,
Or by imagination's power august
Made portion of the intellect: within
The Essence of our Being, in the Soul,
There is a standard, that all things sublime

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Compares with a sublimer archetype,
Than human faculty is sentient of,
In nature's grandest works, or art of man—
Sea, sky, or mountain—city, or pyramid;
And all things beauteous, with more beautiful,
Things bright, with brighter. Nay, the Sun himself
Is dim before her; for the Soul of man
Is of Jehovah most expressive Star,
Best Image of his glory. With herself
All things compareth she; and lo, all things
Are dwarfed in her supernal magnitude.
The mightiest is subdued, the loveliest shamed;
And, in the flood of her effulgence, she
Doth merge the glorious, and magnificent.
What then hath Earth to sate her appetite,
Or aught that's visible, even heaven itself?
She sighs for miracles, yet yearneth still,
And is herself the one great miracle.
Therefore is Man not what he is, mere clay,
Because he feels he is so, and compares
Himself with something nobler in himself;
Whence such sublime ability to feel,
After this wonderous fashion; and to endure
Patient the indignation, that would else
Consume this frail, and earthly tenement
To a white wreck of ashes; or smite down
This cunning architecture—(call it such)—
To ruin hoar, the Deity within
Departed long from the neglected shrine.’
Thus argued Samiasa: but knew not
That then Barkayal, from that apex point,
Was looking into heavenly depths, beyond
Unarmèd vision, at a Stranger Star,
Which, from its most remote appearance, he
At first perceived; and now, with horrour filled,

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Upon the Cometary Omen gazed,
With vision so intense as, from its orb's
Most inner centre, he, as from its heart,
Would drag its secret mystery forth to day.
Thus argued Samiasa—and pursued
‘Herein consists man's dignity; hereot
His reason is compact; and he combines
Two worlds within, and in himself includes
The Universe. Empowered hereby is he,
To climb to each remote intelligence;
And send his daring mind on errand strange,
Into the Heaven of heavens, before the throne
Of the Most High, asserting there the right
Of his immortal spirit to converse,
Its heritage, as Son of God—as Man.
Yet overween ye not—nor let the pride
Of man rebel: For God is jealous—God—
(Speaking as man must speak, whose slavish words
Have constant reference to sublunar things,
Whereto degraded man degrades his thought,
Even when its ravished speculations rise
To holiest objects, such as angels love,)—
Is jealous of his Unity, and Name.
—Ay, God is very jealous: and we may,
By that which deifies us, be destroyed;
By our own spirits may we be destroyed,
And they imbruted, falling short, even thus,
In their probation of the Perfect One;
With self-esteem well satisfied, well pleased,
With their own proper excellence content,
No further emulous of good, or great:
Building thereon presumption flatulent,
Until the wind escape, and all be found
Mere emptiness; not from the Spirit of God
Renewed, who, in the beginning, filled the void,

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Gloomy, and waste, with light, and life, and form.
—This was the sin of Lucifer—of Man;
The mortal sin, parent of Death, and Woe—
Whence Doubt was born. The soul that left hersource,
And would be as a god unto herself,
Fell backward on the body for support,
(But found it none,) . . and asked of it to bear
Her upward in her far imaginings.
Alas! even as the spider doth within
King's palaces, should she have kept the hold
That she had taken with her hands on heaven:
But she hath let her purchase go; and, now,
The ethereal dome is not within her reach:
And He, who raised her there before, again
Will not, who only can. Unless there be
Hope in the words which doomed the infernal snake;
And wherein I should verily believe,
But for the extreme iniquity of man,
Whence fear seems only just, and dread of doom.
—These are no mysteries to the sons of Seth.
Paradisaical aspirings they
Are conscious of: the high-wrought ecstasies
Of Fancy, which had borne the soul aloft
In Eden; now, within this sensual sty,
Disturb her feathers only, fluttering
Pollution on her wings, till clogged therewith,
Broken, and trammelled to the soil. Alas—
How heavily her breathings come, and go:
Poor bird—struggling with death, till, overcome,
On her an intermittent slumber seize;
And so she dies—a second death:—Or, if
Feeling the will to soar, and having power,
Leaves her nest like the Swallow, but returns
Anon, circling some pool, already tired
With her short flight, and longing for the time
When, on its sedgy banks she shall decline,

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And ease her passage to the torpid depth
Upon the pliant reed; so winter's frost
Shall nip her not:—Or, greatly daring, scorns
Eternal barriers; and, within the clouds,
She hangs presumptuous eyrie, and doth
Abominations there; unto herself
Making a brothel universe, which she
Deems co-extensive with eternity,
And space, and time, and reigns imperial in.’

II. Hherem, and Barkayal

While thus he spake, in Samiasa's heart,
Waked pride misdeeming, exultation vain,
That needed yet the scourge, erelong to fall
And teach still bitterer truth; and scant he knew
How to the flesh had spirit been subdued—
And soon the Sophist, in that Capitol,
Found demonstration of his sensuous creed,
In men, and in their ways. For not, like him,
(As late we witnessed in the Wilderness,)
Foul Hherem had in penitence retired,
But held on Earth his triumph, and in Hell.
—Boast of his high exploit (for such his vaunt),
O'er such supreme intelligence as shone
In that great Monarch, wisest fiends seduced,
The like success to win, to stoop to brute;
That they might soar, by bad ambition stung,
To realty o'er spiritual eminence.
For erst had they, in their rebellious guile,
The sons of Adam moved to be as gods,
But now sought to embrute, and so subdue
To their dominion; ay, and ever since,
His postdiluvian children, with gross art,
Have sunk to Nature sensual, and yet sink;
Whence, not from knowledge, but from ignorance

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Redemption hath been needed, and yet is.
—So went they forth, these devils damned, to damn
The world in second doom: and, first, debased
To infidelity the minds of Men,
Turning the very intellect against
The truth of their own soul; and sowing there,
Within its living soil, first doubt, then death—
And gathered-in quick harvest, by the power
Of Amazarah, and Azaradel.

Well Amazarah knew the sordid Fiend,
And long had known, long joined in mutual pact;
The sordid Fiend, with whom in hour of scorn
She mated: fitting league for her who was
Herself half human only, pride-begot
By demon on a daughter beautiful
Of fratricidal Cain; whence gifted she,
As hath been sung, with charm and magic spell.
Wicked as wise, and bad as beautiful,
The mother she became of progeny
Who called her son Azaradel their sire:
An impish brood, and nurtured cruelly,
To cruel ends; taught, in their innocence,
To pluck the eyes of captives bound supine,
Out from the living socket: and with glee,
With infant glee, such office they performed:
And with the yet-warm orbs she would compose
A Globe of Sorcery, wherein she saw . .
A visual mirrour . . into other worlds,
By Hherem aided in her hideous art.

And now his skill she sought. Dire jealousy
Had fired her soul to madness; since the false
Azaradel, in search of younger charms,
Had wandered: and, to win affection back,
She means to make new covenant with Hell.

But vengeance was at hand she knew not of:

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Though Hherem knew, for, in that wizard globe,
All he foresaw; in silence, there he looked,
Even in her presence, faithless; and beheld
How that the threatened Flood, when it came down,
Found out the sinner in his pride of crime.
In Enos, that bad city, Hherem saw,
Huge Idol; wonderous work; compared with those
Of the degenerate genius of our world,
As the Behemoth, or Leviathan,
Creatures of God's most plastic energy,
With Whale, and Lion, even though mighty these:
(But what to those, and their imperial might,
More than the Stag, and Dolphin to themselves;
Themselves in whom He now is pleased to shew
His power, proportionate to human thought's
Capacity, conception, or surmise?)
—Statue divine. Hard by, in a temple's tower
Was Edna, for the bridal of their god,
Great Mammon, kept. In guise of deity,
—(So Hherem in that magic mirrour traced
Event to come, but yet how nigh at hand)—
Approached Azaradel, with dance, and song
Accompanied, along the public way:
Heaven's window opened, then, right o'er their heads,
A sea with lightning sent, and thunderbolt.
From her high lattice, Edna saw, with praise
Of heavenward eye, the impious rite annulled:
Deluge descending took them all away.
Ignorant of what was in the womb of Time,
And unbelieving of prophetic Truth;
Within the palace-chamber deep-retired,
Mystic commune with Hherem, summoned there,
The royal Amazarah now maintains:
How to descend to Hades; place of Fear,
Not Hope. Soon they into the State unseen,

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Pass in the power of spells. At once, the gates
Of the Abyss display the horrid gorge,
Profound, and undefined; like winter's rack,
Unfolding from the vent. Down—down, descend
The guilty pair; undaunted with the way,
But trembling with impatient sympathy.
Dark—dark that central path, which low, and lower,
Guides to the prison of the lowest gulf.
No light: till grows the accustomed eye to love
That palpable obscure, and from itself
The ray creates, which the dead mass of things
Apparent makes to its instinctive sense;
And, by that radiance strange, they now discern
The Temple of the Fiends—a gorgeous dome,
Gorgeous with horrour, mockery of the Mount
Of Vision in the Heaven. The veil is drawn,
Expectant of her visit; and, behold,
The Demon-Cherubim, whose meeting wings
O'ershadow there the Ark of Blasphemy,
Enthroning Satan on its seat of Wrath;
Whence curses roll in thunder—earthquakes—storms,
The Sanctuary of Hell; and at the shrine,
In festal terrours stands a priestly fiend,
Two seething censers pouring from his hand
Religious maledictions to the King
Of unrepealed perdition. Silence now
Awaiting the response; no longer roars
Or blast, or billow. Straight is seized the hand
Of Amazarah; and upon the Ark
Hherem, with sudden rapture, it hath placed.
‘Swear!’—And she swore, an oath ineffable.
Then rush the winds to battle, and fan wide
The Tablets of mysterious Destiny,
Set in the bosom of the priestly fiend,
Urim, and Thummim. With the sound aroused,
Uplooking, she hath read the covenant

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Whereto her soul is bound. O, bloody terms:
And from her kneeling posture up she starts,
With one strong wrench of agony matern:
—And lo, before her Samiasa stands.
She shrieks, and on the palace-floor she falls,
Even at his feet she falls, and there she lies;
There prostrate at his feet, even where she fell,
Not dead, but speechless, Amazarah lies;
At her Son's feet, fallen speechless, but not dead,
The Queen lies prostrate on that palace-floor.

III. Japhetls Vision

And now came on the End, by Vision shewn
To Japhet, as it was to Noah once.
—The Prophet-Sculptour, on his handy-work
Bestowing his last pains, beheld it stand,
Before him in its glory: such as he
Had in his heart conceived—a perfect form.

Bow ye, and adore. The God abides in stone,
Incarnate thus. Divinely halcyon,
His pregnant brow is bathed in deity.
His attitude, how eloquent: one hand
Thus mildly raised, the other held aloft
Pointing to heaven. From his disparted lips
There seemed to gush a rill of soothing speech,
Yet awful; for a God's sublimity
Girt gentleness celestial,—girt with power.
There was a sorrow in his gracious mien,
And in his sorrow a regality,
As he were uttering that doom fulfilled,
Of desolation to Jerusalem,
Whose children, but she would not, he had gathered
Under his wing omnipotent.

‘Behold:
The sun is quelled—the moon is quenched—the stars
Die in the darkled ether, and from out

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Their golden cressets drop—the sky doth quake,
And all its powers do quail. From midst the gloom,
Appeareth, like a supernatural dawn
The symbol of his coming. Mourn, O Earth.
Pavilioned in the clouds, the Son of Man
Comes;—and his Angels, with a trumpet-sound,
That the four winds, to the four ends of air,
Bear on their rushing pennons vehement,
Gather from every part the Elect of God,
And Heaven, and Earth before him pass away.’

So spake the Prophet-Sculptour, and adored . .
Words uttered since by him to whom he knelt,
And then inspired. A trance came over him.

The Vision was from Heaven: the thunder pealed:
A voice angelical cried, ‘Come, and see.’
Rose Japhet, and beheld the prophecy.
—Lo, a White Horse of purest hue . . the stream
That overflowed the star-paved court of heaven,
And blanched the purple lily, as fables tell,
Less white . . less pure. Moved by the will divine,
He bore, in steps of music, glory-crowned,
A peaceful Conquerour; clothed with life, and light,
And, by the vision of beatitude,
His aspect kindled in serenity.
Armed with a bow, his arrows quivered all;
His presence vanquished, and his coming won
Afar. Before him Paradise—behind
He left no desolation. But not thus
The rider of the Sanguine Steed—a sword
Was in the hero's hand, and he destroyed.
The black-maned charger, fierce for fields of blood,
Champing his bit until the hot foam seethed,
Raised clouds of war beneath his fiery hoofs—
The mighty there were hid. The warriour's gaze,
His sunk and savage gaze, from underneath
The forehead-burying helm, glared greedily

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On the surrounding wreck. He gnashed his teeth,
And his unslaked mouth gaped, athirst for gore.—
What Son of Night succeeds? That Sable Steed.
He comes involved in darkness palpable—
Fit witness of such scene. His Rider who?
Whence that dim speck in each suspicious eye,
Scanning the shaken balance in his hand,
Whose slant beam made him pause? Hoar sceptic, he.
Death followed him; mysterious Death: his pall
That robe funereal, darkening where it flew—
Well suited its dim skirts to that slant beam.
In fury on they came, that Sable Steed,
And the Pale Horse; Death's own; one centaur they,
Wrought of cold ice, parching the air with cold:
From their dire nostrils went consuming plague.
Hell rode on lurid clouds. Now, Death's right hand
Upraised the living serpent, that coiled up
His eager arm; and from both hands aloft
Were launched brands of blue lightning all abroad.
All leaden was his foot, and spectre neck,
And his unnatural head was strangely crowned.
And, like a whirlwind, came that icy steed,
In his unreinèd wrath; and his grey mane
Tossed in abrupt disorder, like dark waves
Sieging a steep rock in a night of storms.
And the dark features of that ghastly king
Gleamed with a hideous smile: his eyeballs rolled
Baleful in triumph, and his ominous mouth
Threatened extermination—and he looked
Into the distance—for destruction there,
While havoc revelled round. Over the wife,
His beautiful wife, the princely husband hangs,
Scarce pale with recent death, her offspring yet
In her embrace—that last kiss took one with her,
From her relaxèd grasp the sweet boy fell;
The daughter deems her mother in a swoon,

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And strives with filial care to stay her fall,
In vain. Gaunt Famine there, an old man, knelt,
Digging the uncharitable earth for roots,
With his lank fingers; and his daughter couched,
The livid Pestilence, on a mat beside,
Shivering. Still neighboured Death that Sable Steed,
And he who sate thereon, Errour's sharp judge,
Minute in estimate, in decision stern,
Weighing, in his unsteady balance, deeds
And men: one scale with woe surcharged, and one
With virtue insufficient: passionless:
Doubt hard by Death, with squint diagonal,
Gloating on misery, and afraid of joy,
So oft deluded, truth it even suspects.

Beast raged, and strove with man: and men were slain.
The horse, and rider to the lion yield;
And Strength's undaunted countenance was weak,
And Fortitude. Youth's lance was broke, and he
Tossed in the wind. The firmament was rent,
And the skies warred 'gainst man: the thunder smote
The lover; and in terrour woman fled,
With gaze reverted, as in love, or awe.
The eagle with the heron in the clouds
Held contest wild; and o'er her slaughtered mate
The galless dove, a widow, drooped in grief.

He looked again . . and lo, beneath the foot
Of him that gentle Conquerour, crushed, and slain,
The old Serpent lay, head-bruised: and far above
Soared saints, and martyrs to beatitude,
For whom he conquered. Thus the Vision closed.

The reader who is acquainted with West's picture of “Death on the Pale Horse” will perceive that the above description is derived from a study of the painting.

Whoso had seen the Prophet-Sculptour then,
In this his trancèd dream, had not perceived

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Aspect perturbed, or changed with strange event,
Albeit thus passing strange, and fraught with doom.
A whirlwind had outsnatched his spirit, and rapt
Above the Olympian hill: yet what he saw,
And heard into his marrow searched, like fire.
Like the still whispering wind at eventide,
To him prediction came not, as it comes
Oft to the dying saint, to soothe his soul,
And softly speak of heaven. The flood was up;
Tempest abroad. Anon, a gradual calm,
A gentle breeze, a quiet finishing;
And peace companioned his returning soul.

Now through each vein the electric fluid glowed,
And he awoke, inspired. Long time he mused:
‘A mighty thing hath been to me revealed—
How shall the stone express it?’ And his hand
Dashed o'er the marble with a spirit's power,
His artist-hand. The head of that Pale Horse
Snorts fire; each nostril to each eye constrained
In nigh-disrupting rage, dilated—tort.
A perfect labour, which, had it survived,
Genius would question like an oracle;
Yet, weak resemblance of its archetype,
The genius that created it despised.
—‘It is in vain,’ said Japhet; ‘human art
Strives not with skill celestial—Art, farewell.
The hand forgets its cunning. Human sight
May not behold it—but my spirit burns—
'Twas not revealed for silence—I will forth.
This weapon of ethereal tempering,
Which thus God's Spirit hath in mine inclosed,
As in a sheath, or plunged as in a bath,
To sharpen in my soul; my father, thou
Shalt pluck out thence, and prove its double edge.’

Forthwith he sought his sire; his brethren, too,
Moved by paternal mandate, also came.

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Then Japhet told his vision. As he spake
His frame dilated, and his port assumed
Strange grandeur, and impulsive energy
Of concentrated import and deep awe.
Noah his son embraced.

‘A Prophet thou;
And to thy Sire, and Brethren sent from God.’
—Shem worshipt: but tears fell from Ham's sad eyes,
He knew not why; he could not chuse but weep.

IV. Mount of Paradise

And Samiasa stood within the Vale
Of Abel; and, within a little space,
Zateel confronted him.

Then said the King:
‘Knowest thou me not?’

Hereat on him Zateel
Gazed earnestly:

‘Thy features, like a dream,
Tell of the past, but in delusive wise,
Recalling the irrecoverable.’

Again,
The King spake to him thus:—

‘Hear me, Zateel:
My heart, even as the desart where I dwelt,
Was once athirst. The fountain now unsealed,
Its waters overflow. Thy heart is not
Adust with age, nor passionless; but there
Full fancy flourishes, and lifts its head,
Even as my fortune once, a goodly tree,
Until God's Angel cut it down.’

Whereat,
Zateel, convinced, at once exclaimed,

‘My lord—
My king—my father—brother—lover—friend.’

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‘No raptures now, my son,’ said Samiasa;
‘Well may it be for thee, and curb thy mind
From the presumption, which high faculty
Builds up, until it madden, if I tell
A tale to thee: a tale, while these sad lips
Stamp truth on what thou hearest.’

Tears Zateel
Wept; but, the gush of feeling finding way,
He answered, ‘King—say on—’

‘'Tis of my Mother.
To whom was more of beauty, more of wisdom,
Given than to Amazarah—or to me?
Zateel; I sought her in the palace-chamber,
To tell her of God's dealings with her son,
And wean her from her wickedness. I found
The sleeping Sorceress as of old. I stood,
And gazed, entranced, upon the majesty
Of her repose. I will not tell thee—then—
What storm of thoughts made me to shudder soon;
But rather how, recovering from such mood,
I did essay to wake the guilty Queen;
And how in vain, with voice and hand, I strove
To rouse her from her somnolency deep.
A Power was on her I might not remove.
Her body was as dead, and well I kenned
Her spirit absent thence;—but 'twas not dead—
I looked on it for hours; till at the last
She spake, still sleeping. Ask me not the words,
What direful oath it was she ratified
With the Infernal powers. How lived I yet,
After I heard them; till, restored to sense,
She gazed upon, and knew me, and fell down?
I could no more, but from the chamber rushed,
Determined the dread purpose to forestall.’

‘What purpose?’
‘Ask me not, I say; nor speak

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Of what hath been disclosed. An awe is on me;
Be it on thee, and on thine utterance.’

Aright, and to the west of Armon, they
Stood; by the waters of Dunbadan there,
Which make right beautiful, and musical,
The Vale of Abel's Sacrifice, and Death:
Then on its banks they sate, and talked awhile;
Till Palal was approaching, by Zateel
Known, as by Samiasa, but till now
Shunned, for the doctrine which he spake abroad.
Now Palal joined the twain; and thus, in haste,
Bespake the King:

‘They come, with all their hosts,
Monarchs, and people; ardent, and grown bold,
To compass their design. Now, will they prove
The might of the Invisible.’

At this,
Rose Samiasa, and Zateel; and clomb
A lofty hill o'erlooking the far plain,
That like a continent spread out immense,
Bordering the Land of Streams. The invading hosts
They saw, in number like far-off seen trees,
Of forest, or of wild; whose lofty tops,
Beheld at distance, are so closely massed,
They seem a sea with waves, as in the wind
They bow before the heavens; communion they
Of saints, nor of the Spirit's fellowship
Unvisited; whose voice in gale, and breeze
Reverent they hear, and worship. But not such,
Nor piously engaged, those numbers, there,
That fill the champaign broad: armies of men
Rebellious, unadoring, and profane;
War-chariot, and War-Steed; and Elephant
To conflict trained, and bearing on his back
Turrets of warriours: animals besides,

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Which the restorèd world has not yet tamed
To human use, were in the throng. The huge,
And strong Rhinoceros, with solid horn
Outgrowing on the maxillary bone,
Proof-armed—by tiger dreaded, lest it rip
His bowels—bore its lord upon its back
Into the battle throng; though turning oft
War to confusion, hurling friend on foe;
Camel, and Dromedary, and wild Mule;
All these came on: bent to assail the Mount
Of Paradise, and Eden lost regain.
Fools, not to know, that of the soul herself
The real Eden is, and she may make
Such of the barest, rudest spot on earth,
If piety, or charity be there.
Urged by the fiends in human limbs arrayed,
By Hherem, Satan, and Azaziel, came
The mailèd crowds, in military pomp;
Proud of such pomp; vain show, though gorgeous; weak,
Though seeming strong in multitudes; thence weak,
And because weak in multitude arrayed.
—Aggressors, through the Vale of Armon they
Move in defile; and on the pleasant banks
Of its baptizing stream, right arrogant,
Their chivalry dispose, in order meet.
Whoso had seen them then, might deem fair troop
Of prowest men, and steeds so swift, and strong;
With other creatures, savage, fierce, and wild:
With ensigns, and with pioneers expert,
To push obstruction back of hill, or wood;
Or raise opposing mountain, where was vale;
Or bridge o'er lake, and chasm, and river broad;
Were potent greatest emprize to achieve.
Ignorant of fate, as yonder battle Steed,
Who eager snorts, and, with snake subtlety,
Winds his glad way through numbers, and performs,

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With supple spring obedient, what his lord,
Throned on his back, designs. O ignorant!—
While to the heaven thou vaultest, in soaring hope;
Or down the hill, with headlong energy,
Precipitatest like a rolling rock;
Then rising, dost as rapidly ascend,
Like a red meteor voyaging on high;
Or skimmest, with birdlike smoothness, level vale,
Tossing thy bright mane, like a torrent's foam,
Moving like air in air, but in thy course
Outstripping the swift whirlwind; or, with rein
Relaxed, glidest onward like a star, or checked,
Turnest like a comet; solid earth, meantime,
Shrinks from thy furious heel. O ignorant,
Brave Steed, art thou, thyself the while but decked,
A sacrifice; for Death's enormous strength
Ere long, with more than sinewy arm, to grasp.
Thee, when the giant seize, shall not avail
Might, or of bone, or limb, . . or effort fierce:
Fixed to the earth, within the monster's gripe,
That heavy head, so graceful now and light,
And that extended neck.

Ah, it is done—
On to that Mountain, Sodi, and his Steed,
Press confident; and to the Ark of God,
That Deluge Ship, arrive. Who there await
His formidable coming? Noah, Shem,
And Japhet, with most old Methuselah.
Patient they wait. Then on the holy thing
The glowing Knight puts his extended hand:
Fire flashes up; stones from a distance flung,
As from a sling, before the guarded hill,
Smote Steed, and Rider both. There lie they now,
O'erthrown; one dead, one dying. From within
Fire, as he writhes, at that Steed's nostrils smokes;
And the blood bubbles, both to ear, and eye,

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Through the swoln veins; till, with the agony
Upspringing, his mad hoof deep dints the sod,
With a quick spasm, as of a lightning's stroke,
And then he falls for ever. O soon quenched,
Or vanished, all that vigour fiery,
And terrible, which him so late inspired.

Not sooner yet than cooled the valourous heat,
And insolent, in those invading hosts.
For lo, the Cherubim, apparent all;
In glory blazing high, and wide, and far;
Stood like a pillar of fire; or like a hill,
Or forest burning; but with shapes, and faces
Outlooking from the flames, as from a furnace,
Unharmèd forms, human if not divine,
At least angelic, graced with numerous wings.
And still the flames advanced; still forward came;
Till, in a robe of light, they did invest
The sainted form of old Methuselah.
So venerably old, that age in him
Was verily sublime; and in the soul
That gazed upon his form, even to tears,
Kindled emotion elevate, profound.
—Yet could yon Knight, now fallen, endure his frown,
And rudely push him by, to smite that Ark,
Divinely ordered; Sodi, rebel youth,
Though valiant, yet apostate. Of the tribe
Of old Methuselah, a youngest son,
Of consecrated race, seduced wert thou
Into the ranks of the profane; and mixed
(But one of many) in their ways of life,
And in their modes of thought; and scorn conceived
Of patriarchal rule, and holy rede.
Chief laughedst thou at the awe in which were held
That self-same Ark, those very Cherubim;
Illusion all, as thou right well mightst know,
Who hadst been in the secret, and wert taught

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How such were fabricated, and adored,
For government, so that the few, or one,
Might lord it o'er the rest—the myriad minds,
Equal, and independent as their own.
Hence hardiest thou, and foremost in assault;
Filial impiety, but soon avenged;
And crowned with glory bright the insulted Sire,
With glory crowned, in sight of all mankind.

And soon Earth shook beneath those multitudes;
Horribly shook: and in the human heart
Was equal fear; flesh universal quaked,
Lest all the region gape, and swallow all:
But otherwise 'twas fated; One alone
Was doomed. Riven as with a thunderbolt,
The mountain yawned; and deep into his grave
Sank, diademed with light, Methuselah;
Thus buried, that no insult desecrate
A Patriarch's obsequies again, as mocked
With contumely Lamech's sacred bier.

Thus sank Methuselah, by earthquake gulfed,
Received to Hades. But, from out his grave,
A column high, and broad, of water wroth
Upspouted through a chasm, that might not close,
Forced by the impetuous element apart.
On high it towered a Fountain, and came down
A River, circling in the lofty air,
And flowing nether earth, a beauteous thing,
Yet terrible:—that arch of grace, and power,
In fluid motion, living in the light;
In agony, and action manifest
To ear, and eye—a spirit passionate,
Or spirits, in that stormy atmosphere,
Ascending, and descending—raging, wild.

Hereat all stood in stupid gaze. Meanwhile,
The Watchers of the Door of Paradise
Moved rapidly apart; and made a way

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For entry, or for egress, to and fro
The holy garden. Soon, between them, stood
The sainted form of Enoch, still in youth;
And still his voice was heard as ere he went:

‘He cometh, with ten thousands of his saints,
Judgement forthwith on all to execute;
And all that are ungodly to convince
Of their ungodly deeds, and their hard speech,
Which against him, Most Holy, they have dared.’

He said; and held aloft, in view of all,
The Tables of the Laws of the Most High;
Each letter made distinct with flames of fire,
And flashing outwards into trails of light.
In at the eye it entered, to the brain
It penetrated deep, and smote with pangs
Guilt where it found. With speed, and awe, away
Fled the invaders, ruinous retreat.

END OF TENTH BOOK.