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

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,

294

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

295

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.